of Lily’s own fair hair. It made life interesting, she supposed, because she never knew when she woke up which way her strong-minded curls would have decided to arrange themselves overnight. She imagined them in the small hours, debating long and hard.
‘I’ll flop over her right eye if you stick out at an angle at the top.’
‘No, hang on, I stuck out at the top yesterday! Why don’t I do the flopping? And for a change, you can spring off her ear?’
It hadn’t used to matter that much. At school she’d had to force her hair back any old how with grips and a hairband, but for a job interview, and with hairgrips just one of the things that had started to disappear now the war was in its second year … The best she’d been able to do was a complex arrangement with as many grips as she could muster and a couple of combs – also her mum’s. The effect she’d been aiming for, since Sid was asking, was side-parted and crimped at the side – Bette Davis in Dark Victory, basically – but her brother’s face told her the effect was more like something from The Wizard of Oz. And not Judy Garland, either.
‘Sorry, Lil, I’m not sure …’
‘It hasn’t worked, has it?’
‘You’re ahead of your time, that’s all. Give it six months, a hairdo that looks like you’ve stuck your finger in the socket’s bound to take off.’
‘Sid! They’re never going to give me the job!’
‘No. They won’t. Not unless you get a shake on, have you seen the time?’
In her anguish, Lily hadn’t seen or heard her mother come in.
‘Now sit yourself down and let’s sort that hair out.’
Dora Collins crossed the room. Lily was her youngest child but neither being the baby of the family, nor, after two boys, being a girl – at last! – meant that she was in any way indulged. If their father had been around, it might have been different – a lot of things would have been different – but he’d died of a heart attack the year Lily was born and Dora had been left a widow with three children under five.
Lily’s stomach took a plunge.
‘Here we go,’ she thought. ‘She’ll see the make-up. I’ve had it.’
But if she noticed – and she would have done, Dora missed nothing – her mother said nothing. Instead she sat Lily down at the table, snapped her fingers for Sid’s comb, and began with practised eye and hand to tame her daughter’s hair. Miraculously she managed it with half the amount of hairgrips Lily had used.
‘Now you’re presentable,’ she said with brisk satisfaction. ‘If Marlow’s don’t take you on, well, it’s their loss.’
Marlow’s. Simply hearing the word set Lily’s stomach somersaulting again.
It had first come up at the end of the Easter term when her headmistress had called the girls in Lily’s year in one by one for the customary interview. She’d been sorry, she said, to hear that Lily wouldn’t be staying on to take her school certificate.
‘I’m sorry too, miss,’ said Lily with real regret. ‘But Mum can’t afford for me not to be working.’
Miss Norris sighed. As a bright girl unable to make the most of her chances because of her family situation, Lily wasn’t alone. It had been the case through all Miss Norris’s teaching career – all the previous decade and the one before – despite the Great War, despite the vote, despite the new opportunities that had supposedly opened up for women. And now another war, which had brought with it more opportunities – of a sort.
Miss Norris sighed again. It had come so close. In 1939 there’d been debate about raising the school leaving age to fifteen, but the outbreak of war had put paid to that, for the time being at least. And now that unmarried younger women had to register for war work – it’d be married women next, including those with children – there was even talk of women being conscripted before the end of the year – it also meant that girls like Lily were in demand for the jobs they’d left behind. Shops, cafés, laundries, pubs, hotels … there were plenty of jobs for fourteen-year-olds. In fact the country was relying on them to ‘do their bit’ as well.
‘What do you think you might do?’ Miss Norris enquired.
‘They’re looking for someone at the Fox and Goose – general assistant, they call it,’ Lily replied. ‘Or Mum’s got a friend that works at a laundry …’
Miss Norris looked pained.
‘Lily. You’re better than that,’ she protested. ‘You don’t want to go skivvying!’
‘Well …’
‘And I won’t let you. Let me make some enquiries.’
And so Miss Norris had made her enquiries, and within a few days told Lily of the opening at Marlow’s – the biggest department store in town. It was only a junior’s job – skivvying too, in its way, Miss Norris had explained apologetically – but it would at least have prospects – promotion, if she worked hard. And from the very start it would be better paid and what Miss Norris called a ‘better working environment’ than either of Lily’s other possibilities.
Lily had tried to look grateful – and she was. It was really kind of Miss Norris to have taken the trouble; she didn’t have to. But Marlow’s! Their motto was ‘Nothing but the best’. They might as well have added ‘for the best’ because who could afford to shop there? Not the likes of Lily’s family, for sure: she’d never been further than the black-and-white mosaic tiles in their doorway, and that was only because she’d sheltered there from the rain once, when she’d been in town buying a present – a scarf ring – for her mum’s birthday. Which she’d bought from the haberdasher’s in the market, of course.
And now Miss Norris expected her to work there? Marlow’s, with the drift of scented air which had escaped when the commissionaire had opened the door; Marlow’s with its oak-and-glass counters, polished parquet floor and dove-grey carpeted staircase – Lily had made sure to take a good look inside. Marlow’s … only the poshest shop in town. And Lily just a girl from a back street.
And now here she was, at two o’clock on a Monday in June, ready for her interview. Or was she?
Her mother jerked her thumb over her shoulder, jolting Lily back to reality.
‘Scullery, and double quick,’ she said. ‘Wash all that off your face. Wasting my powder like that! The nerve!’
Sid shot her a look that mixed sympathy with ‘might have known’ as Lily went to do as she was told. This never happened to Bette Davis, she thought wistfully, drying her face on the rough roller towel. Even at my age.
‘She doesn’t mean it, you know, our mum,’ said Sid consolingly as he walked, or more accurately, limped, alongside Lily into town.
Their older brother, Reg, had been eighteen the month war was declared, and had signed up straight away – Sid, too, enlisting for the Navy the minute he was old enough in April. Reg was doing well – going to be made up to lance corporal soon, he’d hinted – but poor Sid hadn’t got much further than training camp. He’d managed to crack a bone in his foot landing badly from the vaulting horse and, to his frustration, was now stuck at home till it mended. Not the sort of thing, he’d remarked ruefully, that you ever saw happening to James Cagney in the films – unless it led to him meeting a pretty nurse. Which in Sid’s case, it hadn’t, only an unsympathetic naval doctor with bad breath, apparently.
‘Thing is, she’s had to be mum and dad to us, hasn’t she?’ Sid continued now. ‘That’s why she lays it on a bit strong sometimes.’
‘I know,’ said Lily.
She knew her mum wasn’t really that cross, because after checking that Lily’s face was scrubbed as clean as the day she was born, she’d lent Lily her white fancy-knit cardigan, with her lucky horseshoe