Promised Land (11 page)

‘No more Kitty, honestly I can’t afford any more. You’ll have me broke.’

In Switzer’s Ella added a summer button-through dress in a bright print with a tiny waist and lovely full skirt, a simple pale blue cotton skirt which swung out from her waist that she just couldn’t resist. Looking in the shop mirror she was pleased with the new impression she was trying to create.

‘I always find that shopping is the best cure when you’re feeling blue,’ confided Kitty, linking arms with Ella as they went back out into the bright sunlight.

They shared a pot of tea and had a scone and a sticky bun each in Bewley’s Oriental Café before walking home to the flat.

‘I’ll have to get a job. I’ll start tomorow. There’s bound to be a job that suits me.’

Kitty and Terri had said nothing, both of them remembering how long it had taken them to find work. There was no point disillusioning Ella by telling her how hard it was to find gainful employment in the city, and of the vast numbers of friends and acquaintances who had only recently gone to Liverpool and London and Manchester in search of jobs. Why, the only reason Kitty had an empty bed in the flat was because Maureen, the previous girl she shared with, had left to work in Birmingham. Ella had no work experience that was of any use to her in the city unless she was to consider going into service with a wealthy Dublin family, doing cooking and cleaning and running the household or minding children. However this sort of job held no appeal for her and would probably have meant living in.

‘I’ll find something! I know I will.’

Ella applied for positions in all the shops and offices and hotels without success and even tried the Civil Service and the hospitals, but to no avail.
They
wanted someone with typing and shorthand skills, previous sales experience, a good reference from their last employer. She had none of these things. At night Kitty and the girls did their best to stop her getting downhearted, and kept telling her that a good job was only round the corner. Secretly, Kitty had made enquiries about the cost of the ferry fare to Liverpool and to Holyhead, and the train fare to London, as in all likelihood Ella would have to join the thousands of other emigrants going to Britain if she didn’t get a job soon. De Valera’s Ireland was in a terrible state, still caught in the grip of a post-war depression that was forcing so many people to leave the country they loved. They were deserting the drab farmlands and grey tenements for higher-paid work and opportunities in England and America.

On Thursday night, Kitty, bursting with excitement, flung herself in the hall door of the flat calling, ‘Good news! Good news, Ella!’

Ella felt curious as to what it was all about.

‘Sally Sheridan is pregnant!’ Kitty could see her cousin still had no idea what she meant. ‘She’s expecting a baby and has to give up work. Lennon’s won’t employ married women, or women who are pregnant. It’s written into our work agreement.’

‘What’ll she do?’ exclaimed Ella.

‘Well, she’ll have to give up work and try and get that boyfriend of hers to marry her. But the good news is that Lennon’s need a new drapery
assistant
. It won’t be advertised until next week, but I told Mr Harry’s secretary Denise that I already knew somebody who was interested in the job!’

‘Me! You told her about me!’ cried Ella, jumping up and down with excitement and kissing Kitty.

‘You’ve an interview on Thursday at ten o’clock sharp. Remember, Mr Harry hates people who are late.’

Chapter Eleven

TERRI HAD TAKEN
the scissors to her head and clipped at least three inches off her long brown hair. Her fingers moved deftly, lifting and angling Ella’s hair as she snipped. ‘Ella, this length and shape will suit you much better,’ she promised. ‘It will show off your bone structure and those huge blue eyes of yours, with your long eyelashes.’

Ella tried to appear completely trusting as the young hairdresser washed and combed and cut her hair, attempting to hide her dismay as pieces of it tumbled onto the bathroom linoleum. But already she felt lighter, more feminine even. Terry styled and side-parted it, creating a soft wave flowing over one ear. Ella looked in the mirror, scarcely believing the change.

‘Please, let me!’ begged Terri. She took a small pair of tweezers out of the bathroom cabinet and began to pluck and shape her eyebrows. Ella’s eyes watered with the pain, but afterwards looking at herself she realized that it was worth it. Her eyes
looked
enormous and her face had more definition.

The girls made her try on every stitch of clothes she possessed and came down enthusiastically in favour of her new skirt and blouse.

‘Classic!’

‘Simple and businesslike.’

‘Mr Harry doesn’t like frills and flounces on his staff, after all, Lennon’s is a quality shop!’ jeered Kitty, lying stretched out on the bed watching her.

Sitting across from Mr Harry Lennon was slightly disconcerting as she could feel the sixty-year-old man’s gaze rest on her crossed legs; she was glad of the sheer nylons that Kitty had lent her.

His partner Mr Sylvester, his brother, was writing down notes on a pad on the large mahogany desk, in front of them. Kitty had told her to lie and invent jobs where she had worked, but Ella was one of those people who was unable to fib without giving herself away, and decided not to even try. She was already nervous enough of the interview without making things worse by turning bright red and appearing shifty.

‘I’m sorry but I’ve never had any experience other than farm work.’

Mr Sylvester wrote in his book and her heart sank.

‘Whereabouts was this farm?’ he asked, not even bothering to look up.

‘Kilgarvan, sir, down in the Wexford–Waterford
border
area. ’Tis only a small place but my father had a good farm there.’

‘Did you like that work?’

‘Aye, I did.’

‘Our father was a farmer, from the midlands. You might not think it looking at the two of us, but we’re both farmer’s sons! So we know exactly what it’s like to rise early and milk cows and feed animals and work every hour God gave us. There’s no harder grounding for a young lad or lass.’

Ella didn’t know how to respond, and decided to stay silent in case she said the wrong thing.

‘Because of your lack of experience,’ murmured Mr Harry, ‘it would only be the most junior of sales positions that we could offer you. However, we do train our people well, ask any member of our staff and they’ll tell you that.’

‘There is a good pension scheme, sales commission and a lunch room at the top of the house,’ added his brother.

She sat in the chair flabbergasted, wanting to throw her arms round the two rather plain-looking bespectacled men, but instead just shook their hands. She’d got the job! She just couldn’t believe it!

‘Since you do not have to work out a notice period with another employer, we would expect you to start next Monday. There is a uniform of grey skirt and cardigan and white blouse which is issued to all staff, and is expected to be kept neat
and
clean. Any additional blouses etc. can be purchased at a special price from Miss Ganley, our head of sales. You will start work on the second floor, in our ladies’ lingerie department.’

‘Welcome to Lennon’s!’ they both added in unison.

Kitty had shown her where everything was, and Miss Ganley had seen to it that she was fitted out in the correct uniform of a drapery assistant. She was put working at the very back of the shop on the second floor where the range of women’s lingerie was discreetly displayed. Nightdresses, dressing gowns, bedjackets and silk robes all hung along one wall. Glass cabinets held a display of brassieres and Ella thought that she would go through the very ground with embarrassment the first time a customer asked to be shown one. Julia Cullen, the senior sales girl, cracked up with laughter watching her. There were undergarments of every shape and size and she thanked the Lord that she was not expected to fit the customers as that was left to Miss Byrne, her department manager, and Julia to do. She could not have faced measuring some poor girl’s breasts and deciding what cup size she was, or trying to fit a rather plump woman customer into a roll-on girdle that refused to roll on. It was embarrassing enough to be handling knickers and discussing the benefits of interlocking stitches around the gusset, or lace trims.

‘You all right, junior?’ Julia enquired, when a rather irate customer kept insisting she was only a size sixteen when she was clearly an outsize. Julia came over and got her to try on a much larger size by reassuring her that French factories always marked their sizes too small, and having room to move around in the bed was a prerequisite of a nightdress.

‘You’ll learn,’ she advised Ella, ‘that the customer is always right, and if not, well, it must always appear that way.’

Ella was back and forwards to the dressing room, removing stock to be hung up, and spent the rest of her time folding and refolding things. The only thing that she could sell with any confidence was pairs of nylons, where girls came in and just rustled through the box, checking their colour and size, and then went and paid for them. She met Kitty briefly at lunchtime and her cousin gabbled about a dozen introductions, few of which she managed to catch. She was glad to sit down and rest.

The afternoon saw her snowed under as a bride-to-be and her mother spent over an hour assembling bits and pieces for the honeymoon. Miss Byrne sent her up and down to the stock room looking for garters and a broderie anglaise nightdress in a size ten, and boxes of co-ordinating lingerie that might appeal to the young lady, including a fitted corset of Italian lace. Two mothers-to-be were in buying nightdresses and
nursing
brassieres for their confinement; she hadn’t even known such items existed.

Walking home to the flat that evening with Kitty, her feet ached and she longed just to sit down. ‘My ankles are swollen and my feet are killing me,’ she protested, holding onto her cousin, as she felt otherwise she might have flopped down on the pavement of Grafton Street and not budged.

‘You’ll get used to it!’

‘I feel like I’ve been ploughing for hours, every bone in my body aches so.’

‘It’s because you’ve been standing in much the same position for most of the day. A lot of the girls have varicose veins you know. I’d bloody die if I get those yokes.’

‘Why can’t we sit down if we’re not serving anyone, even just for a few minutes?’

‘If you want to get the sack let Ita Ganley find you sitting down, she’d have you out of the shop in two shakes of a lamb’s tail. The old rip’s got legs of iron herself and expects everyone else to be the same. “Customers expect staff to be alert and attentive at all times,” that’s her dictum. The holy customer has got to be looked after no matter what! We could be hobbling and on crutches and it would make no difference to her.’

Ella laughed; she loved the way Kitty got angry and annoyed about things and was always so outspoken. She envied her that capability.

* * *

Gretta and Terri were delighted for her and insisted they all go to one of the pubs in Baggot Street that evening, to celebrate the start of her new career. She was relieved to be a working girl just like the rest of them. They roared with laughter when they heard which counter she had been put working on.

‘Now we all know where to go to buy our underwear,’ slagged Gretta.

‘Don’t you dare!’ begged Ella. ‘I couldn’t handle dealing with any of you lot!’

A group of handsome-looking young men up at the bar glanced over, one of them approaching the group of laughing girls. ‘Hi Gretta!’

‘Oh hello, Rob. I thought that you were on night duty tonight.’

‘No. That was last week.’

Gretta introduced the final-year medical student to the rest of them and he encouraged his group of friends to come and join them. The girls shoved over making space for them all.

Rob generously ordered a round of drinks for the whole table and they all toasted Ella’s first day of proper employment. She yawned as the night went on. She was tired. Back home in Kilgarvan she would have been wrapped up in bed with a hot-water bottle hours ago instead of sitting up late in a pub making conversation with some students. One of them, Mike, even insisted on her slipping her feet out of her shoes and examining them.

‘Beautiful! Beautiful!’ was all he kept saying but then he was after downing a few pints of Guinness.

Chapter Twelve

ELLA FELT LIKE
a right ‘Amadan’ handling the small lace items that made up a proportion of the stock of the lingerie department, with her big farmer’s hands and unpolished ways. Often she felt uncomfortable with some of the customers, city women with their airs and graces and keen sense of style about what was the right thing to buy or not. She wouldn’t have dared offer them any sort of fashion advice as she could see in their eyes that she only ranked as a country girl to them. By contrast she held the girls and women from the country in high respect and did her very utmost to help them. The farmers’ wives who had saved their money and come to Dublin on an outing could sometimes only afford a day trip on the train, or if they were lucky would have booked into the Wicklow or the Clarence hotel for a short stay. Their husbands had usually managed at the last minute to find an excuse not to come and left them to the mercy of the
Dublin
shop girls and assistants with regard to purchases of immense importance. She could sense their unease and guilt at spending hard-earned money, yet also the need to have some kind of recompense for the long hours and interminable toil of heavy farm work. Their faces were round and pink, eyes trusting like a calf’s, their figures full and in need of corsets and girdles and deep brassieres. Blushing, they bought silk nightgowns and pastel-tinted negligees to surprise their husbands with when they returned home. Ella did her best to be truthful and honest with them, to sell them lingerie that would be worn and not hidden away in a drawer. They relaxed with her and saw her as a friend as she ran between the dressing rooms and the rails and drawers searching for something to suit them.