Within the hour he was off again for another wearisome journey. Lily saw him to the door. It didn’t seem the right time to start going on about her day out with Miss Frobisher, and what it might mean, but when Jim kissed her briefly, Lily did mention that she’d been invited on a buying trip with her boss.
‘Oh, good,’ said Jim distractedly. ‘You’ll still be able to get that letter to Staff Office, though, won’t you?’
Lily didn’t say that she and Miss Frobisher were meeting at the station, so she’d have to set out early to divert to Marlow’s first. But it was the least she could do.
‘Good morning! You’re looking very smart.’
Lily, already a little pink from her detour with Jim’s letter, blushed some more. She hoped it wasn’t too obvious that her jacket was a black and white bird’s eye check – Miss Frobisher had a bird’s eye suit in navy – or that her black barathea skirt was not unlike the skirt of Miss Frobisher’s black barathea costume with its back pleat. Fortunately her boss wasn’t wearing either of them today, but a camel coat and skirt, and court shoes the colour of conkers. Lily surreptitiously wiped the toes of her own black lace-ups on the back of her legs to buff them up a bit. If only she could be as polished as Miss Frobisher.
Miss Frobisher flourished the tickets.
‘Platform three. And wonder of wonders, they’re not predicting any delays.’
Wonder of wonders, ‘they’ were right for once. Settled smugly in the train – they even managed to get seats – Miss Frobisher began to fill Lily in on what to expect.
‘I deal with Mr Ward directly,’ she explained as the train pulled out in a hiss of steam and a shower of smuts. ‘It’s a relationship I’ve built up over many years – in fact, I was the one who persuaded him to sell through Marlow’s. I dealt with him when I was at Marshall and Snelgrove’s.’
Lily gaped. ‘I had no idea you’d worked anywhere but Marlow’s!’
‘I started out at Marlow’s as a junior like you.’ Miss Frobisher put out a hand against the window as the train jolted on the tracks. ‘In Ladies’ Fashions. Ran around unpacking boxes and ironing out creases and picking up pins. Then gradually worked my way up through sales.’
That explained it! Miss Frobisher always looked like a fashion plate. How she did it on clothing coupons had always fascinated Lily; perhaps she still had contacts in the trade.
‘But at the time – before the war, before the staff shortages we have now – there was no movement above me. No progress that I could see in any department. And then … one of the reps recommended me and I was made an offer I couldn’t refuse. Junior buyer – in London.’
‘London!’
‘I only came back to Hinton because of the war. I … well, I had my son by then, I didn’t want to risk it.’
Lily knew Miss Frobisher was married: it was one of the store’s quainter conventions that its women employees were addressed as ‘Miss’. Her son, she also knew, was only about four – a neighbour looked after him during the day. As for her husband, he was serving abroad. That was all anyone knew. Miss Frobisher never talked about him and she was hardly the kind of person you could ask. It wasn’t their place, Lily and Gladys had agreed, and it wasn’t uncommon; it was the way some women coped with the separation. But at the same time they’d convinced themselves that he couldn’t be talked about anyway because he was engaged on some kind of secret hush-hush work – he’d obviously be doing something glamorous, in keeping with his glamorous wife.
Now Lily knew Miss Frobisher had lived in London, which was presumably where she’d met him, it turned the speculation into certainty. London was another world, exciting and different. Anyone Miss Frobisher might meet there – over champagne at the Café de Paris, no doubt – was bound to be too.
But Miss Frobisher had gone as far as she intended with her personal revelations – further perhaps – and she drew the subject to a close.
‘We’re not here to talk about me. Let me show you some figures.’
She produced a sheaf of papers from a small attaché case and spread them out on the little table between them.
The miles and the minutes flew by hand in hand as Lily tried to absorb costings and profit margins and sales by volume. She asked scores of questions – how did you decide what to buy in the first place? How could you ever estimate demand? Though that was easy these days – it always outstripped supply.
Before Lily knew it, the train clanked in to Nottingham. On the jostling platform, Lily kept her eyes fixed on the back of Miss Frobisher’s smooth French-pleated head as they threaded their way through soldiers, airmen and civilians, women porters yelling ‘mind your backs’ and guards blowing their whistles. Outside, Miss Frobisher hustled her into a taxi – the extravagance! Dora would have died! – which wove through the streets and dropped them at a huge red-brick building; a proper old Victorian mill, long and low with tall chimneys.
Inside, Mr Ward’s secretary led them up to the management offices, built on a sort of platform on cast-iron pillars overlooking the massive factory floor. Lily blinked in wonder. Not just the platform but the air itself seemed to vibrate. Looms rattled and clattered as the shuttles wove from left to right and back again, transforming loose skeins of thread into smooth sheets of cloth. The noise was deafening and it was a relief when the secretary left and closed the office door behind her.
Miss Frobisher made the introductions: it had been Lily on the train, but she was Miss Collins again now. Mr Ward, small, bald and so stout he looked as if he’d been blown up with a bicycle pump, shook her by the hand.
‘Pleased to meet you! You couldn’t have anyone better than Miss Frobisher here to teach you what for, but I expect you know that already!’
He kept up the merry chat as tea was brought in and poured. He didn’t get much of a response – Miss Frobisher wasn’t one for small talk – but it didn’t seem to bother him. He answered his own questions about the trains and the weather and the state of the war while Lily surreptitiously eyed the plate of ginger biscuits. She’d never seen Miss Frobisher eat, nor heard her stomach rumble, as her own often did so humiliatingly during a long morning and, as she expected, Miss Frobisher politely waved away the plate when Mr Ward wafted it in front of her. Lily had no such qualms. She knew Miss Frobisher was keen to get down to business, but surely one wouldn’t hurt? She extended her hand and Mr Ward beamed.
‘Take two!’ he urged. ‘Spoil yourself!’
Lily didn’t need telling twice. Aping Miss Frobisher’s clothes and trying to copy her poise was one thing, but there were limits.
Miss Frobisher was flourishing her sheets again, and as Mr Ward squeezed himself into the chair behind his desk, she produced another on which she’d logged all the customer requests for Robin Hood babywear that she’d been unable to fulfil.
‘I realise you’re under pressure with government orders, but …’
‘Long Johns and combinations,’ Mr Ward confirmed. ‘Bandages, blankets, and now they’re talking about webbing and camouflage nets.’
Busy trying to eat her biscuit as unobtrusively as possible, Lily looked up; Miss Frobisher seemed shocked.
‘Goodness! That’s a lot more than I realised.’
‘A lot more. In fact, things have got so bad that …’ Mr Ward sat back, light through the taped-over window glazing his bald head. His tight waistcoat had a big gold watch inserted even more tightly into the pocket. ‘Mr Keppler and I have discussed it and we’ve decided to stop producing Robin Hood babywear