A Girl in Wartime (38 page)

It wasn't as easy as it sounded. Men coming home in droves to no jobs, and with little money to find the rent for somewhere to live, usually ended up living in one room in a parent's house. This was what Tom and Mavis were going to have to do. With no room at home with Mum and Dad, who had two sons and three daughters crammed in a shabby East End terraced two-up two-down in Burgoyne Road off Grove Road, they'd go to his parents' house.

It would be a frugal wedding with no frills or flounces. With food shortages the wedding breakfast would be made up of whatever the family could bring. At least Dad had work at the docks and there was the promise of a job there for Tom if Dad could pull strings, so Mavis would have her trousseau.

Even so, Geraldine envied her sister, wishing it was she who was getting married and leaving her cramped home where three girls had to share one bed, while her brothers, one older, one younger, shared a single bed in the back room where the family ate. It meant they couldn't go to bed until everyone else did or went off into the front room, normally kept for best.

Some families around here had even more kids and heaven knows how they coped. But all Geraldine ever dreamed of was one day having her own room to do what she liked in, as Mavis would four weeks from now. But as yet she didn't even have a regular boyfriend, let alone one to marry. There were plenty who fancied her and whom she'd been out with, but none she'd want to marry. The only one – Alan Presley from Medway Road – was married although going through a divorce and had no interest in other girls these days – a case of once bitten twice shy.

When she was fifteen and he was seventeen they'd gone around together in a group and he'd been sweet on her, but they'd lost touch when he went into the Army in 1917. Writing letters was a chore and later she heard that he'd found a girl from the next street to hers while home on leave. The girl had got pregnant and on his next leave they had to marry, but a year later he'd come home from France to find her in bed with another bloke and that was it. Even so, you can't start making eyes at someone still married, if separated and waiting for a divorce. Wouldn't be appropriate. But he was a handsome-looking bloke and her heart still went pitter-pat for him.

Standing in the bus queue outside Mile End Station, Geraldine eyed the clock outside a watchmaker's opposite: ten to two. If a Number 25 didn't arrive soon she'd end up frozen stiff. Huddling deeper into her thick jacket with the wind pressing her heavy hobble skirt against her ankles, she sighed.

The queue was growing steadily as there had been no bus for nearly fifteen minutes. The first one along would no doubt be full by now, not even standing room, and would probably sail right by, though it might be followed by another after all this delay – buses seemed to love keeping each other company.

Geraldine turned her mind to signs of life from the London & General Omnibus Company. She was partially correct about buses keeping each other company as finally two 25s appeared, the first doing exactly as she'd expected, the driver looking smug as it trundled straight by.

Crinkling her pretty face into a wry grin as she took her turn boarding the second bus, she managed to find a seat on top where at least she could have a smoke. Lots of girls doing men's jobs during the war had learned to smoke and it had become accepted. She didn't smoke all that much herself, but the odd puff helped a girl of eighteen get through a humdrum week as a machinist on piecework in a clothing factory where utility dresses, blouses and skirts offered very little variety of design. Anyway, she was tired having worked like mad all Saturday morning and a cigarette helped to perk her up.

Today, however, she felt perky enough, eagerly looking forward to what she had in mind to do once she'd alighted on Oxford Street. She'd done it many times before but today was special for she needed to look good at her sister's wedding, and for someone on a meagre wage there was only one way to do it.

She found little in Oxford Street to tempt her even though London's West End had all the newest fashions. Moving on to Regent Street, there was nothing there either that really caught her eye. Disappointment growing, she found herself wandering down New Bond Street. If there was nothing here she'd be properly stuck. There was such a scarcity of fabrics even though the war was over, and unless you could afford to pay something like ten or twelve guineas, which for her represented nine to ten weeks' earnings, a really stunning dress was out of the question. But what she was looking for had to be extra special to make her stand out at this wedding, though she always aimed to stand out anywhere.

True, for most of the time she and her fifteen-year-old sister Evelyn would be wearing bridesmaid's dresses – skimpy things in cheap rose-pink cotton that would make them look like a pair of candlesticks following the bride up the aisle. Tom's six-year-old cousin Lily, in pale blue, to Geraldine's mind would just about put the kybosh on the whole ensemble. Though it was all Mavis could do on so little money, she'd never had any dress sense. How they could have ever been sisters was beyond Geraldine.

‘Let me make the dresses,' she'd implored. ‘I'm a good dressmaker, as good as anyone.'

But Mavis had been adamant. ‘I want ter buy them ready-made. That way I can be certain of 'em.'

‘I could make them all at half the price.'

‘I want proper ones.'

‘And I don't know how to make proper dresses, I suppose!' she had stormed at Mavis, getting angry. ‘Look at what I make for meself – everyone thinks they've been bought. And I save loads of money.'

‘I don't care!' Mavis had stormed back. ‘It's my day. And I decide what I want and 'ow I want it.'

‘And end up makin' a pauper of yerself!'

‘No I won't! Cos I've bin puttin' by fer ages for a decent weddin' dress.'

Mavis and Tom had been saving for this for two years but still hadn't much to show for it, with Tom away in the Army while she had got herself a job in a munitions factory, though now she worked in a local bread shop.

‘All I want is a decent wedding,' she'd gone on. ‘And I'm buyin' me own dresses.'

‘Sewn tergether with cheap cotton what breaks as soon as you stretch a seam by accident, you wait and see. And, I'm sorry, Mave, but I think that rose pink you want us to wear is an 'ideous colour.'

Mavis had yelled at her again that she liked pink and it was her day and she'd do what she liked, walking off close to tears, leaving Geraldine to give up on her. Mavis was getting more uppity and highly strung the nearer her big day came and was best left alone. She would put up with the horrible colour as best she could and anyway, it would only be for a couple of hours.

Thinking of it, Geraldine wandered on down New Bond Street, gazing in the shop windows she passed. Moments later all other thoughts were swept from her mind at the sight of the most beautiful dress she had ever seen.

Mesmerised, she stared at it through the window. Draped tastefully on a graceful papier-mâché manikin was an ankle-length afternoon gown in pale-blue silk with separate dark-blue velvet panels. It had a square neckline and was cut in the latest barrel line, loose panels of velvet falling from the waist back and front with a square, tabard-like silk overbodice from shoulders to hips.

Real silk!
It could be seen at a glance. She could never afford
real silk
. But artificial silk like Courtauld's Luvisca and a cheaper velvet would look every bit as good.

It took some courage to push open the boutique door. Usually she'd aim her sights lower. Big London stores held no fears for her, nor did most high-class shops. But this place – the opulence of it, the perfume wafting out of it crying, ‘Nothing under fifteen guineas!' She was stepping on hallowed ground.

Clenching her teeth and trying to look as though fifteen guineas was nothing to her, although her beret decried all that, she approached another manikin draped in an identical dress to that in the window. So at least the outfit wasn't exclusive. Even so, she needed time to browse, to study the garment and make mental notes of every stitch, the cut, to see how the material fell. Real silk always fell beautifully. Would cheaper artificial silk do the same?

‘May I be of assistance, madam?' The measured, almost sarcastic, cultured tone right behind her nearly made her leap out of her skin, as though she was already being accused of stealing.

Gathering her wits, she turned to the voice, immediately aware of the haughty, intimidating frigidness on the face of a woman neatly clad in a black dress with white collar and cuffs, her hair pulled back from her brow and not a trace of powder on her face. There was no warmth in her enquiry such as she might have used to a valued customer. The way it was couched practically screamed her opinion of a common working girl trespassing on her domain, riff-raff needing to be got out as quickly as possible and without fuss.

Steeling herself, Geraldine stood her ground, putting on her best high-class accent, which she could do when needed. ‘I am browsing at the moment.'

She knew immediately that the sort of patron who entered here did not
browse
but would make straight towards an assistant to state what they had in mind and request to be conducted and advised.

The woman's face was vinegary. ‘I should not imagine we have here anything that would suit madam.' In reality she was saying that would suit her pocket. ‘Perhaps if madam tried one of the large stores.'

Geraldine ignored the broad hint. ‘No, thank you,' she replied in her best West End voice, though even she was aware that to an ear accustomed to such there was no disguising a trace of flattened East End vowels.

‘This caught my eye,' she went on, ‘and I felt I needed to decide as to whether it would suit me or not.' She was overdoing the accent a bit.

The woman, thin, middle-aged and no doubt a spinster, was shorter than her, which gave Geraldine some feeling of advantage.

‘I will let you know what I decide,' she dismissed her as haughtily as she could.

But still the woman hovered, saying nothing, her mien one that announced she would be keeping her eye on this intruder. It was humiliating but there was nothing Geraldine could do except turn back to the garment on the pretence of being deeply interested in buying it. All the time she could feel those eyes boring into the back of her neck lest she made off with something without paying for it. Suspicious old crow, trying to make her feel she was the lowest of the low.

There was no ticket on the gown – a place like this would never stoop to such practice. The type of customers who frequented here probably took it for granted that they'd be able to afford it whatever the price. Rude even to ask and she for one wasn't going to lower herself to ask either.

How exactly did they handle themselves, these people who frequented places like this? She could still feel those eyes burning into the back of her neck.

But there, it was done – every stitch, every fold and tuck, every line committed to memory. Turning back to the hovering assistant, she smiled.

‘Thank you for your assistance, but I don't think this will suit me after all.'

How delightful, seeing the look on that prim face at being robbed of its triumph of catching her out for a tea leaf or turning her out as a common time-waster.

Even so, it was a relief to be away from those peering eyes. What she had selected was etched in her brain as clearly as though she still circled it – now to find the material as near a match to those lovely blues as possible.

A week perhaps to make it, meticulously copying the design now fixed in her mind, and then on the evening of the wedding, once out of that awful bridesmaid's gown, she'd have all eyes on her. And on her the next day too, compliments from all the family at Mum's – aunts and uncles, cousins and grandparents – as they gathered around the big table in the front room for Sunday dinner to round off the celebration, the newly-weds having gone off on honeymoon to Eastbourne.

In her fifteen-guinea outfit – it had to be at least that, though hers would cost not much more than fourteen shillings at the most, still a whole two weeks' pay – she'd be the talk of the family. She could hardly wait to seek out just the right stuff that would make her look like a lady of means.

It was in triumph, if very wearily, that she made her way back home, the parcel she clutched containing material from Selfridges in nearly identical colours to those she'd seen in New Bond Street, together with poppers and buttons that nearly matched, a spool of light-blue cotton and one of dark blue.

She'd need a nice row of beads to set it off, stones of rich sapphire blue – not the real gems of course. And she knew just where she could get something exactly like that, made and strung especially for her at nothing like what the real gems would cost.

Perhaps she would put in her order right now. Oddly, the thought of doing that, of going into the shop and speaking to its proprietor, made her heart step up a beat, and not just because of a mere necklace.

It was well dark by the time she reached home, walking through the streets from the bus stop. Ten to five. The jewellers near the corner of Grove Road and Burgoyne Road where she lived was already closed. She'd have to wait until Monday, calling in on her way home from work, which was a nuisance.

Geraldine itched to secure just the right sort of necklace for the gown she would make. On the other hand she ought not be too impatient – better to finish it properly before looking for jewellery. She'd know by then what she really wanted and it would only take three or four days to do. Best to wait until then. But it would have been nice to pop in there now, if only to tell the proprietor what she was looking for.

She'd been in there a couple of times for cheap Christmas presents for her mother and sisters. The goods being cheap were an attraction and she'd found him very polite and helpful; being young and nice-looking was an even greater attraction to someone her age. The name above the shop said Hanfords and she assumed he was the Hanford who ran it but she didn't know his first name and she longed so much to know, especially as just lately she'd been seeing him in her dreams.