All That Glitters (5 page)

‘If you don’t mind me saying so, because you look as though you could do with some.’

She thought hard for a moment before replying. He was good-looking enough to have any girl he wanted without resorting to tricks. And he’d said he knew someone who ran a second-hand clothes stall …

‘One and eleven pence.’

‘That’s not enough to buy a dress.’

‘But it has to be. I need that job.’

‘There’ll be other jobs. Why don’t you go back to wherever it is you’re working now?’ he suggested tactfully. ‘Save your wages. In a few weeks you’ll have enough to buy yourself a dress, then you can -’

‘There are no wages.’

‘Wherever you work, they have to pay you something. It’s the law.’

‘My keep and a shilling, and they take that off me for my washing.’

‘Look – what’s your name?’

‘Just tell me where the second-hand clothes shops are.’

‘Don’t you even know your way around Pontypridd? There are no shops. Just stalls. In the old Town Hall.’

‘Is that where the theatre is?’

‘No, it’s the other end of the block in Market Square.’

‘I’ll find it.’

‘Wait …’ The door closed and she was gone. Eddie continued arranging the food display. Idiot girl. Just how long did she think she was going to last in that get-up before a constable picked her up and took her back to the workhouse, or wherever it was she’d run away from? Well there was nothing he could do to help her. He had his own life to lead, and he wasn’t even doing that very well. Not when he’d failed to get Jenny to agree to go to the pictures with him during the last waltz.

Jane crossed the road by the fountain. The light had grown strong enough to read the price tickets on the goods displayed in the shops. She lingered in front of Leslie’s Stores consoling herself with the thought that a boy wouldn’t know much about the price of women’s clothes. A dummy dressed in a spring suit of navy and white dominated the central display; it was the kind of outfit the ladies of the parish wore to attend Workhouse guardian meetings. She read the ticket and blanched. Two pounds fifteen shillings!

The dummy was standing in a sea of elegantly draped underclothes: ‘Petticoat and knickers sets, 3/11. Vests 1/11. Bust shapers 2/11.’ She didn’t even have enough for underclothes. She walked around the window into the porchway, reading the prices pinned on the hats, the stockings, the shoes. She could afford to buy a cheap-quality vest for a shilling and a pair of knickers for ten pence halfpenny, that was it. But then, this was a shop. That boy had told her about the second-hand clothes market. Things had to be cheaper there.

She set off up Taff Street, only just remembering to turn into Market Square. A clock chimed out again, and this time it carried on chiming. Seven strokes. She had no idea when the shops opened. One or two of the cafés and food shops, like the cooked meat shop, had unlocked their doors, but the clothes shops were still shut. The first market entrance she came to was shuttered. She went to the end of the block where a man was unfastening the steel grids at the entrance to an arcade. Alongside it was a side-street, cobbled like the square, and half-way along she spied another doorway and a light shining out on to the narrow strip of pavement. She’d found her market. A man was standing behind the stall in front of the entrance lifting clean, ironed shirts from a flat cardboard box and hanging them on a rail at the back of his stall. The counter itself was bare.

‘Want something?’ he demanded gruffly when he noticed her standing at his stall.

‘An outfit.’ She opened her handkerchief to show him she had money. The pennies were still wet, green and slimy with copper mould.

‘What kind of an outfit?’

‘I’m applying for a job. As an usherette.’

‘Plain black dress then.’ He registered the coins but not the amount.

‘And shoes, and stockings, and underclothes, and -’ she patted her hair, still sticky with gobs of yellow soap – ‘a hat.’

‘That little lot isn’t going to come cheap. Let me see what I’ve got.’ Taking a key from a chain on his belt he unlocked an immense chest in the centre of the stall. He delved into its depths, re-emerging moments later with three black dresses. He stood back and eyed her for a moment. This is the smallest I’ve got in at the moment.’

It was cotton. Short-sleeved black, and plain, it was also drab and shapeless. She’d always imagined her first non-uniform dress would be something special, but she could hardly complain when it was serviceable and what she’d asked for.

‘How much is it, please?’

‘Half a crown.’

‘I’ve only got one and eleven pence.’

‘I’d be robbing myself if I let that quality go for less.’

‘I really need that job. Would you give me what I want for a down payment of one and eleven pence if I promise to pay the rest when I’ve got the job?’

‘And if you don’t get it?’

‘Couldn’t you do with some help here?’ She glanced around the stalls. All the others had helpers.

‘I thought workhouse girls were only allowed to take live-in work.’

‘I’m not a workhouse girl.’

‘You just like the clothes?’

‘I’m trying to change them.’

‘If you’re not in the workhouse, where do you live?’

She could hardly say Bletchetts’ because only men lived in the dosshouse. She couldn’t say nowhere, or he wouldn’t advance her the clothes. ‘The Graig.’ She named the one area of Pontypridd she did know a little bit about.

‘What part?’

‘Graig Avenue.’ There had been a woman called Phyllis in the Homes who’d left to go and live in Graig Avenue. Eira Williams had told her Phyllis’s story after Phyllis had been rescued from the Homes by a man who loved her. It had been very romantic. Phyllis had run out on her lover with her baby, thinking he didn’t want her, but he’d come to the workhouse to look for her, telling the matron that he wanted to employ Phyllis as a domestic. She’d got to know Phyllis really well in a short time. They’d had adjoining beds in the dormitory. She’d been nice. Older than her, more like what she imagined an aunt would be than a friend, but really nice. She was sure Phyllis wouldn’t mind her using her name or address in an emergency like this.

‘Who you staying with in the Avenue then?’

‘Phyllis, Phyllis Harry.’

The old man’s attitude changed at once. ‘Well, why didn’t you say so, girl? Keep your money, take what you want, and I’ll add it up. You work for me on my busy days, that’s Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. After you’ve worked off your outfit I’ll pay you half a crown a full day.’

‘You mean it?’ All she could think of was that she’d better learn the value of money, and fast. No wonder the boy in the shop had given her a funny look when she said she had one and eleven pence.

‘I’ll be after Phyllis for the money, mind, if you don’t turn up first thing tomorrow morning. And it’ll be long hours – six until nine at night.’

‘But that’ll interfere with my job as an usherette.’

‘I took on a boy once who worked in the Town Hall. The only matinee day is Saturday. You can still work the other two if I let you off early, and give you half-day on Saturday. But then your wages will drop to one and three pence on Saturday and two bob on week days.’

‘It’s a deal, sir.’

‘You can call me, Mr Horton.’ He pointed at a sign at the back of the stall that read WILF HORTON, BEST FOR PRICES AND QUALITY. ‘Shoes, dress, stockings, hat, underwear … anything else?’

She smiled as she shook her head. There’d been no point in her worrying. None at all. She’d make that interview; all she had to do now was get the job.

‘I can make you bacon and eggs, Haydn,’ Phyllis offered. It was all very well Evan telling her to treat the boy as she did the rest of the family, but Haydn wasn’t like the rest of the family any more. He’d been gone for months when she’d moved in. She wasn’t used to him or his ways, and he’d changed, becoming a lot more worldly-wise and sophisticated than either Eddie or William. He didn’t dress, or even speak, like them any more. If it hadn’t been for Andrew’s introduction she would never have recognised the bespoke-suited, handsome, confident young man as the ragged Haydn who’d grown up across the road from her, and run errands for every shop on the Graig.

‘Nothing too heavy, thanks. Toast will do.’

‘Are you sure?’ she asked doubtfully as he walked through from the washhouse in his vest and trousers with his shaving kit in his hand and a towel slung around his neck.

‘I’m sure.’ He smiled at Brian who was playing on the hearthrug with the truck he’d given him. ‘Hi-ya, nipper.’

‘Hi-ya,’ Brian answered, less inhibited than his mother.

‘What time will you be back tonight?’ Phyllis pushed a slice of bread on to a toasting fork and opened the stove.

‘Not until after the last show, about eleven or half-past.’

‘What sort of meal would you like then?’

‘None, thanks.’

‘Haydn, you have to eat.’

‘Between rehearsals for the Variety in the day and Revue performances in the night the best thing you can do is forget about me for the next two weeks.’ He left the door to the passage open as he walked into the front room that had been Charlie’s. He’d agreed with this father that working the irregular hours the theatre dictated, it made more sense for him to move downstairs into Charlie’s old room than back into the bedroom he’d shared since babyhood with Eddie. But as he’d watched his cousin William walk up the stairs with Eddie last night he couldn’t help feeling a twinge of jealousy, and something more. A sense that his absence from the family had relegated him to the position of outsider. That he was now more lodger than eldest son. He slipped on his shirt, picked up his collar and returned to the kitchen.

‘You’ll be ill if you don’t eat.’ Phyllis laid the first piece of toast on a plate, buttered it and handed it to him, then poured out his tea. ‘Milk and sugar?’

‘I’ll put it in, thank you. And I do eat. Variety people eat after and between houses … shows,’ he corrected reading the bemused expression on her face. ‘We send out for food all the time.’

Phyllis pushed the prongs into a second piece of bread and began to toast it. Polite, and distant. She couldn’t fault Haydn’s behaviour towards her, only his lack of warmth. She slipped the finished toast on to his plate.

‘I’ll butter it,’ he interrupted as she reached for the butter dish.

‘Would you like another piece?’

‘No thank you. I’ll be rehearsing all day and that’s best done on a light stomach.’

‘You’re sure about tonight?’

‘As I said, we’ll either send out, or go out after the show. Eat before and you risk throwing up on stage.’

‘Haydn …’

‘I have to go.’ He pushed the last piece of toast into his mouth and picked up his collar from the back of the chair. ‘See you.’

As she sat down to finish the last cup of tea in the pot before clearing up, Phyllis realised he hadn’t once addressed her by name. Neither the ‘Miss Harry’ he used to call her, nor the more familiar ‘Phyllis’ that the rest of the family now used.

Wilf Horton chose Jane’s outfit for her. She only hoped he knew what he was doing, because she certainly didn’t know enough about clothes to contradict him. The whole outfit came to twelve and sixpence, seven shortened days’ work before she’d be able to pay him off, but she wasn’t worried. Once she got the job in the Town Hall as well as this one, she’d have money coming out of her ears. Taking the parcel and promising to be at the stall at six prompt the next morning, she looked around for somewhere to change.

‘Toilets by the fountain,’ Wilf suggested. ‘You can have a wash and brush-up there for two pence, and if you don’t mind me saying so you look as though you need it.’

She walked back out into Market Square. A pedlar was standing outside the entrance, a tray of combs, brushes and matches around his neck.

‘Two pence,’ he said when he saw her looking at the combs.

She handed the money over and returned to the fountain. Walking down the steep flight of steps that led to the Ladies she paid the old woman who sat at a table in the entrance her twopence, and waited while the woman went into a cubicle, wiped a seat with a damp cloth and dried it with a towel. Closing the door and the seat, Jane set the parcel down on it, stripped off her dress and put on her new clothes. The bloomers were pink, long and fleecy lined with elastic legs that ended just above the knee. The tops of the stockings were covered by the bloomer legs and fastened by plain black elastic garters. White cotton vest and petticoat – Wilf had told her she could dispense with a bust shaper – black dress, and the shoes. Low heeled with a bar. She turned her foot first one way, then the other, admiring her ankles in them. Elegant. They were really elegant. Although Mr Horton had warned her they were only oiled cloth and wouldn’t last long, it didn’t matter. They were far lighter than the rough wooden clogs.

Picking up her two workhouse dresses and the clogs, she made a bundle of them. She would ask the woman if she could leave them here. She had done with them. From now on this was the way she intended to look. The new Jane Jones: market-stall assistant and usherette, someone to be reckoned with. Not a workhouse skivvy and a nobody. Taking the black felt beret Mr Horton had thought ‘suitable’ for her, Jane left the cubicle.

‘Well that’s an improvement I must say,’ the plump, motherly woman beamed, wrinkling the skin on her face until it resembled a winter apple that had been kept too long in storage. ‘Off somewhere special, love?’

‘An interview.’

‘Well, one look at you dolled up to the nines like that, and the job will be yours.’ She went back to her knitting as Jane washed at the sink. As Jane dried her face on the roller towel she caught sight of herself in the mirror. Her hair was appalling. Like a balding, battered old doll’s, it stuck up in dry, rigid tufts. She took the comb from her dress pocket and tried to tug it through the mess without much success.

‘You’ll have no hair left if you carry on like that,’ the woman warned. ‘Always from the bottom up when it’s tangled like that, that’s what my old mother always used to say. “Daisy, you start at the bottom and work up.”’ She took the comb from Jane and tried to run it through the last half-inch of hair. ‘You’ve something stuck in this.’