On Furniture and Household, Jim had made his sale.
‘If you’ll sign here, please, Mrs Jenkins, I’ll send this up to the Cash Office to get your receipt.’
He stuffed the sheets into the little drum, rolled it shut and inserted it into the pneumatic tube. Off it whizzed upstairs. Jim smiled at Mrs Jenkins, another of the store’s regular customers.
‘I’m not sure when we can deliver, I’m afraid,’ he began. ‘With the new petrol regulations …’
Mrs Jenkins held up her hand. ‘Don’t worry, a few days won’t matter. We’ve been without a kitchen chair for months – I had to give cook one of the dining chairs when the old one got past repairing. I’m grateful you had anything, even second-hand!’
‘The Utility Scheme will help,’ said Jim. ‘We should get more regular supplies.’
Mrs Jenkins looked sceptical.
‘Newlyweds get first dibs, though?’
‘Oh, yes. And anyone who’s been bombed out.’
The tube throbbed as the cylinder plopped back into the little cup at its base. Jim retrieved it and handed Mrs Jenkins her copy.
‘I’ll telephone,’ he promised, ‘with a date for delivery. I hope within the next week.’
‘Marvellous – well, as good as it gets these days! Thank you. Goodbye!’
‘Goodbye.’
Jim closed his sales book and looked across to Childrenswear, hoping Lily was looking his way, but she was with a customer. Lily’s blonde curls bent close to Mrs Mortimer’s grey head as they examined the smocking on a summer dress.
The clock showed half past twelve. Only half an hour to go before all four lights below it would be illuminated, the sign that the last customer had left the store and the commissionaire had bolted the doors and drawn down the blackout blinds.
Thirty minutes, then freedom … or was it? Jim had a funny feeling that there’d be a list of jobs for him ahead of the afternoon’s little party. No change there, then! In a year as their lodger he’d realised that it was Lily’s mother, Dora, who made work for idle hands. The devil never got a look-in.
‘Really, Jim, is that the best you can do?’
‘What? I’m at full stretch here, I’ll have you know!’
‘Come off it!’ Lily scrutinised his efforts. ‘What’s the point of a banner if it looks like a drooping petticoat?’
Jim lowered his arms and the ‘Welcome Home’ banner he’d been holding up slumped dispiritedly to the floor.
‘That’s better.’ He eased his neck and shoulders. ‘My arms were nearly dropping off.’
He might have known he wouldn’t get away with that.
‘How can they drop off when they’re above your head?’ Lily retorted. ‘Drop implies down, doesn’t it? Tch! And to think you’re the one with the School Certificate!’
Jim looked at her, head on one side, mouth twisted. Only a few weeks ago the two of them had finally admitted that their friendship had grown into more than just that. But their fledgeling romance didn’t mean they weren’t still friends first and foremost – friends who teased each other relentlessly.
To show she was on his side really, Lily dragged over a dining chair. Jim was over six feet tall but her mum had been adamant that the banner had got to be thumb-tacked to the top of the picture rail, not the front – she wasn’t having it look as if it had woodworm. To say Dora Collins was house-proud was a bit like saying Hitler had simply got out of bed on the wrong side on the day he’d invaded Poland.
‘Haven’t you two finished yet?’ Dora, pinny wrapped across her slender frame, hair bound up in a turban, appeared from the scullery, sounding stern, but only concerned that everything should be just so. ‘There’s lettuce to wash and tomatoes to slice, sandwiches to make …’
She was carrying a sponge cake on the best cut-glass stand. The icing and the little silver balls that Beryl had requested had of course been impossible, but it still looked delicious. Dora Collins wasn’t to be beaten in the cake-making stakes, and thanks to the hens they kept in the yard, cakes in this house didn’t have to be made with foul-smelling dried egg, either, even if it meant sacrificing sugar in tea.
Jim and Lily exchanged a ‘that’s told us’ look and Jim scrambled up onto the chair, having first, of course, removed his shoes. Dora might have been turned away, setting the cake in the middle of the table, but she had more eyes in the back of her head than a whole platoon of snipers. Lily passed up the tacks, and soon the banner was in place to everyone’s satisfaction.
Ivy and Susan, Beryl and Les, Gladys – Dora checked she’d set out enough plates. That was five, plus the three of them – yes, eight in total.
Banner fixed, chair replaced, Dora marshalled Lily and Jim into the kitchen.
‘Now,’ she instructed. ‘Let’s get a bit of a production line going. If I slice the bread—’
‘Jim can spread the marg, and I can fill.’ Lily finished the sentence for her.
Jim smiled to himself.
‘The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,’ was one of Dora’s many favourite sayings and it certainly explained where Lily’s organisational skills – he wouldn’t have dared call it bossiness, not to her face, anyway – came from.
‘Aw, you shouldn’t have!’
‘But we did! And it’s all for you, Les!’
Beryl hung on to her husband’s arm as they stood in the doorway, Les grinning at the spread. But he wasn’t the Les that Lily remembered. He looked very different; thinner, and paler than you’d expect after months in the desert. But she’d been silly to expect him to look brown, Lily realised – most of his tan would have disappeared in the weeks he’d spent in hospital and a further few getting home on a troop ship. He looked older somehow.
‘Me and Susan made the banner, Ivy and Dora’s done the tea …’
Beryl steered Les into the room as his sister, Susan, carefully carrying baby Bobby, came in behind them.
Beryl had scribed the ‘Welcome Home’ in big fat letters, but she’d let Susan do the colouring, which was why it was all wonky and went over the lines. Les’s sister was thirteen, but she’d been born with all sorts of difficulties, including a weak heart and poor eyesight. Co-ordination wasn’t one of her strong points, and as the doctor had gently put it, Susan would always be backward in her development.
‘How are you?’ Jim was enthusiastically shaking Les by the hand, but Lily could tell he was just as shocked as she was by Les’s appearance.
‘He needs feeding up, that’s what!’ clucked Ivy. Still in her shapeless duster coat and even more shapeless hat, Les’s mother was adding her contributions to the table – a plate of sausage rolls and a dish of junket.
‘That’s right,’ Les agreed. ‘Nothing a bit of home cooking won’t put right.’
‘Was it awful, the food out there?’
Lily was keen to know, as the story back home was that they had to do without to keep the Army marching on its stomach. Though frankly Les looked as if he hadn’t eaten for weeks.
‘Not