Fire (5 page)

Irene waved out to Louise as she dashed past lingerie then skipped onto the escalator, resisting the temptation to take the moving stairs two at a time in case she scuffed her shoes. She stepped off at the second floor, which was as far up as the escalator went, and headed for the rugs and rolls of carpet and linoleum in the floorings department, behind which was the staff door to the stairs leading to the top-floor administration offices and workrooms. Unfortunately, halfway there, she spotted the most divine little Indian rug—just the thing for a wedding present for Daisy and Terry. She bent down and turned the ticket over. Christ, seven pounds and thirteen shillings, just for the smallest size! Oh, well, Martin wouldn’t find out if she put it on her staff credit account, and what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.

‘Can I help you, madam?’ a voice asked, except that ‘madam’ was pronounced ‘mo
dom
’.

‘Vince! You gave me a fright!’ Irene exclaimed, straightening up.

‘Sorry,’ Vincent Reynolds said insincerely. He lowered his voice. ‘My God, Irene, you’re looking
ravishing.
’

Irene felt a surge of the brittle excitement she craved and her heart soared with elation. Her Spanish red skirt was tight enough to mould her full buttocks, but not so tight that the typing pool supervisor would give her dirty looks all day, and the matching jacket sat nicely over her bust and hugged her small waist, giving her the sort of hourglass figure most women would die for. She also knew that the colour contrasted fabulously with her shining black hair, and she’d worn the suit deliberately today with the specific aim of tantalizing Vince. Obviously she was succeeding.

He reached out to touch her, but stopped himself just in time and stuffed his hands in his trouser pockets. He glanced quickly around then whispered hoarsely, ‘Meet me in the basement at lunchtime.’

Irene didn’t think so. She’d made other plans, but she wouldn’t have gone down to one of the warren-like basement storerooms with him today anyway because the longer she made him wait, the better it would be. So far they had only kissed—a snatched but rather exciting clinch in one of the small rooms to the rear of the second-floor lifts—but she was prepared to be as patient as necessary to get him exactly where she wanted him.

‘Oh, Vince, I’m sorry, I can’t. I’ve arranged something with the girls today.’

‘Tomorrow, then?’ he suggested, aiming for a nonchalant tone but not quite achieving it. His eyes kept darting down to the twin cones of her bosom and a thin sheen of sweat had appeared on his forehead.

Irene pretended to think, though she knew she had
nothing planned. ‘Tomorrow? I’m not sure. Shall we see at morning tea?’ She didn’t need to tell him what time that would be: he seemed to know exactly when she took her breaks.

Vince nodded.

She felt his eyes on her as she walked away and, letting her hips sway just a little more than usual, she couldn’t help smiling.

D
o you think I’ll find it in a pattern book? Or something like it?’

Daisy had a picture of a wedding dress she had cut out of a magazine and was studying it intently as she picked at her sandwich.

Louise looked at the illustration. ‘I expect so. It’s quite classic, isn’t it, but still modern with the rolled neckline and the cap sleeves.’

‘I was going to have long sleeves, but Mum said not to because they’d be too hot for January,’ Daisy said, a hint of disappointment in her voice.

‘Then get married in the winter, if you want long sleeves,’ Irene suggested. She eyed Daisy speculatively for a moment. ‘Or can’t you wait that long?’

Daisy looked down at the table top. ‘No, I can’t,’ she replied, her face flaming.

There was a long silence.

Then Louise said, ‘Oh, Daisy. Why didn’t you tell us?’

But Daisy didn’t say anything. Irene reached across the table and patted her hand, then surprised everyone by offering some very sensible advice.

‘Look, it happens to the best of people, and we all know you think the sun shines out of Terry’s backside and the pair of you would have got married anyway. So make yourself the wedding dress
you
want to wear, hold your head up when you walk down the aisle, and to hell with everyone else. What difference does it make, really, eh?’

‘You should tell that to my mother,’ Daisy said. She was smiling again, but her eyes glistened with unshed tears. ‘She won’t come out and say it, but she thinks I’m a trollop. And an idiot.’

Louise ferreted in her handbag for a handkerchief and passed it to Daisy. ‘I’m sure she doesn’t. I expect she’s just disappointed. Most mothers would rather everything happened in the right order, but like Irene said, it doesn’t always work out like that, does it?’

Daisy shook her head and honked into the handkerchief.

Louise put on her talking-to-a-three-year-old voice. ‘So come on then, finish your sandwich and cup of tea and we’ll go and look at patterns with long sleeves, shall we? It’s your day and you should wear what you like.’ She turned to Irene and gave her a small, grateful smile. ‘Do you want to come?’

Irene shook her head. ‘I would, but Allie’s got a date tomorrow night and we’re going to work on her make-up.’

‘Have you?’ Louise said to Allie excitedly. ‘Who’s the lucky man?’

‘Everyone’s asked that!’ Allie tried to sound annoyed but failed.

Just then Sonny sauntered past their table, a food-laden tray casually balanced on one hand. He inclined his head and winked at her.

Why was it, Allie thought, that when Sonny Manaia winked it was clean and fun and like a breath of fresh air, but when Vince Reynolds did it, it was like yesterday’s chip fat? She wanted to wink back but knew she wasn’t very good at it and would only end up pulling an ugly face, so she smiled instead, and then he was gone.

Grinning, she confessed, ‘It’s him. Sonny Manaia.’

‘Why am I not surprised?’ Louise said.

‘I don’t know, why
are
you not surprised?’ Allie was laughing.

Louise nodded. ‘Well, good for you. It’s about time you went out with someone nice. In fact, it’s time you went out, full stop. It’s not good for a girl to sit at home night after night.’

‘I don’t!’

‘Oh, stop being everyone’s mother, Lou,’ Irene admonished. ‘Come on, Allie, let’s go and get stuck into this war paint.’

The light was quite good in the staff restrooms, because the row of handbasins and mirrors against one wall reflected the light from the high windows opposite.

‘It’s important, you know,’ Irene said, ‘to have the right light. You need to see every tiny imperfection.’

‘I’d rather not,’ Allie replied, scrutinizing her face in one of the mirrors. ‘I’m covered in freckles. Oh God, is that a pimple starting? There, on my chin?’

Irene looked. ‘A little one, maybe. And you’re not covered in freckles, there’s only a few across your nose. They make you look…’ she struggled for an appropriate description, ‘sun-kissed!’

‘Sun-kissed, my bum. It’s not fair, I’m twenty years old and still getting pimples.’

‘Are your monthlies due?’ Irene asked.

Allie had to think for a second, then nodded. ‘In a couple of days.’

Irene waved her hand dismissively. ‘You’ll be all right for tomorrow night, then. Safe as houses.’

Allie opened her mouth to ask Irene what she meant, then caught on. ‘There won’t be anything like that! It’s only the pictures and I hardly know him.’

‘But you’d like to, though, wouldn’t you?’

‘I’d like to what?’

Irene laughed at the look on Allie’s face. ‘Know him. Isn’t that why you’re going out with him?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘There you are, then.’

Irene used one of the toilets, then came out and washed her hands. She reapplied her lipstick then eased her skirt up around her hips, hitched up her stockings and reattached them to the clasps on her suspender belt. ‘Bloody things,’ she said. ‘They’ve just about had it. Right, are we ready?’

Allie nodded and Irene took her make-up kit out of her handbag and spread the contents across the bench.

‘All right, first we’ll start with foundation, then a bit of rouge and some powder, some eyeshadow, and just a touch of mascara, I think.’

Alarmed, Allie said, ‘I don’t wear eyeshadow.’

‘You don’t wear anything,’ Irene replied. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t make you look like a tart.’

And Allie didn’t think she would, either. Though Irene did habitually wear quite a lot of make-up, she always looked beautifully groomed and never overdid anything.
Well, hardly ever. She never needed to—she already had lovely looks, even with no make-up on at all.

Allie closed her eyes and let Irene do whatever she wanted.

When she opened them again and studied her reflection in the mirror, she looked a different person. Well, no, not a
different
person, but certainly a noticeably more glamorous version of herself. Her freckles had disappeared and her complexion was the same colour all over, even her nose, which was often a bit pink from the sun. And her eyes looked bigger and darker, and her mouth was a pretty shade of rose.

Irene stood back and appraised her work. ‘Not bad, but you really should do something with your eyebrows,’ she said eventually.

‘Such as?’

‘Pluck them.’

‘I wouldn’t know where to start,’ Allie admitted.

‘Well, I would.’ Irene rummaged in her bag. ‘Here we are,’ she said, producing a pair of tweezers. ‘I’ll just tidy them a bit for you.’

Allie eyed the tweezers nervously. ‘Don’t make me look like Greta Garbo, though, will you? Mum will kill me.’

‘Well, hardly. Greta Garbo’s look is very dated. It’s all a lot more natural now. Well, a lot fuller, at any rate.’

She leaned in close, pressed a thumb against Allie’s temple so the skin there was pulled taut, clamped an errant hair with the tweezers and pulled.

‘Ow!’

‘Keep still, will you?’

‘That really hurt,’ Allie complained, rubbing her eyebrow and blinking back tears.

‘Do you want me to do this or not?’

‘Not really.’

Irene sighed in exasperation. ‘Don’t be such a baby, Allie. It only stings for a second.’

‘For God’s sake, Irene, it’s only—’

‘—the pictures, I know. But you want to make a good first impression, don’t you?’

‘He’s already seen me with untidy eyebrows, you know. Every day at work, remember?’

‘Yes, but not up close.’

Allie rolled her eyes.

‘Trust me,’ Irene insisted. ‘This will really make a difference.’

So Allie suffered for another ten minutes, and when Irene had finished she had to admit that the result was quite pleasing, apart from the angry red blotches that Irene guaranteed would be gone before she knew it.

Allie had to wash everything off again because of Dunbar & Jones’s no make-up rule, but the marks beneath her eyebrows stayed until afternoon tea.

Fortunately, Sonny wasn’t in the cafeteria.

Daisy felt sick again. She knew about morning sickness—from her older married sister Iris who’d had it with both her babies—and she’d certainly been getting that. But it wasn’t morning now, it was almost three o’clock. She wondered if feeling sick all day was God’s way of punishing her for falling pregnant before she was married, but decided this was stupid. God wouldn’t be that mean, surely—or that interested in Daisy Farr.

But then she often had stupid thoughts, or so everyone
in her family continually told her. Terry never did, though. Terry only laughed, but in a nice way, when she came out with one of her questions or observations. And her boss, Miss Button, definitely thought she was stupid. When Daisy had started off stitching orange and red feathers onto one side of a hat and had somehow ended up with bright blue ones on the other side, Miss Button had said, ‘No,
no
, Daisy! That hat is supposed to be a symphony of sunset hues, not something you might mistake for a parakeet! Get those blue feathers off as quick as you can. We’re behind already and we can’t be doing with silly mistakes like that!’

Daisy suspected that Miss Button probably thought she was too busy dreaming about her wedding dress to pay attention to her work, but that wasn’t it at all. She was focusing all her will on not being sick, and at least she’d only sewn the wrong coloured feathers on the hat, not thrown up on it. It was a dreadful hat anyway; whoever had ordered it obviously couldn’t care less that they were going to look like their head was on fire.

Daisy burped quietly, pressed her fingers to her mouth and swallowed bile. God, she wished this would go away. All of it, not just the morning sickness. She wished she and Terry were already married and living in their own little house somewhere all comfortable and happy. He would mow the lawns in the weekends and she’d cook delicious roasts for Sunday lunch and in the evenings they’d think up names for their baby, which would be arriving at the very earliest nine months after their wedding day, not a shameful five or six months. But instead, she was going to have to waddle down the aisle with a belly on her like a watermelon and all the world knowing what she and Terry had been doing.

She felt a wave of panic jostling to get past the nausea in her throat and did what Louise had suggested at lunchtime: she closed her eyes, breathed slowly in and out until she felt calmer, and told herself about all the good things.

For a start there was Terry, whom she loved more than anything else in her entire life. And there was the baby that they both loved to death already, even if it was coming at the wrong time.
And
they were getting married in only five more weeks. Irene was right: she’d still only be four months pregnant then and if she chose a pattern with a high waist and an A-line skirt and wore a girdle (but not one that was too tight—she didn’t want to squash the baby) people might not even notice. So it wasn’t all bad, was it?

Beatrice Button climbed off her stool at the head of the work table and came to peer over Daisy’s shoulder.

Daisy knew she was there but didn’t look up from her work, terrified she would make a hole in the hat with her stitch unpicker if she didn’t pay attention. She was a funny woman, Miss Button. She was in her early fifties, Daisy guessed, very short and rather round, but her clothes always fitted her perfectly. She said that to patronize any other store would be disloyal and only ever wore clothes from Dunbar & Jones, whether they were off the peg—which wasn’t often because of her rather odd shape—or garments she’d had made by the store’s dressmakers. When she and Miss Willow arrived at work together, which they did every day because of their living arrangements, they looked more than a little bit like Laurel and Hardy, though no one dared say that to their faces.

Miss Button said, ‘You look a little green around the gills, Daisy. Are you not feeling well?’

Alarmed, Daisy replied, ‘No, I’m all right, Miss Button, thank you.’

Miss Button gave Daisy a look. ‘You don’t look all right. Do you need to go to the sick bay?’

‘No, thank you,’ Daisy lied. Her nausea had suddenly worsened and her mouth was starting to water. Through clenched teeth she added, ‘I might just go and get a drink, though, if that’s all right.’

‘Of course it is.’

Daisy got off her stool and hurried from the workroom, heading for the toilets. Banging into a cubicle, she knelt in front of the bowl just in time as her lunch came up in a hot, stinging gush. She waited for a minute until she was sure it was all out, spat a couple of times and wiped her mouth on a wad of toilet paper, then flushed the loo.

In the mirror above the handbasin, she looked a fright. Her eyes were red and watery and her face was very pale, but she felt a lot better. This seemed to be the pattern her body had established—feeling sick just before breakfast then OK after she’d eaten, then sick again until lunch, then again afterwards until she finally threw up. But at least she got to enjoy her afternoon tea.

On the way back she bumped into Terry, who was hovering in the corridor that led along to the millinery workroom. His tie was knotted crookedly, the tail of his shirt wasn’t tucked in properly, his kind brown eyes were full of concern and his usual shy smile was noticeably absent.

‘Are you all right? I saw you rushing into the toilets,’ he said in a loud whisper. ‘Are you feeling sick? Because if you are, I’ve got these for you.’ He handed Daisy a paper bag; she opened it and saw that it contained home-made oat
biscuits. ‘Mum said they’re good for morning sickness. A bit late today, though, obviously.’

Daisy looked up at Terry’s lovely, gentle face and wanted to kiss him, but didn’t in case she smelled of sick. Instead, she pushed back a lock of his dark brown hair that had flopped over his forehead. ‘Oh, that’s so nice of her, tell her thank you very much,’ she said, wishing her own mother were a bit more like Terry’s.

‘She made them this morning,’ he went on, ‘so they should last a few days. She says you’re meant to have them with a cup of tea whenever you feel squiffy.’

‘Oh, right,’ Daisy said, not convinced that Miss Button would be too happy about her setting up her own little tea party on the workroom table.