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  So we sat and fed my gas fire to capacity with pennies and told each other the stories of our lives instead. It was such a success that we’ve arranged to do it again whenever life becomes overbearing.

  I feel so cheered now that I could go on writing for hours. Except that nine o’clock next morning tends to drive one to bed by midnight.

  And it’s that now. Good-night, my lamb.

  Hilary

  EVERYMAN’S STORES

  For use in inter-departmental correspondence only

  From Miss Sparling. Library

  To Miss Ward

  November 16th, 1931

  SubjectMiss Fane

  Memo

  I have been charge of the Library for six years, and I hope I have given satisfaction. In the interests of the Firm, therefore, I feel I ought to point out that the appointment of Miss Fane can only cause trouble. No amateur can be expected to deal with such complicated and specialised work after a few week’s experience and no training whatever!

  In my opinion at least, she is quite incompetent and a thoroughly bad influence for the other girls. She seems to enjoy making herself conspicuous, and this afternoon she so far forgot herself as to persuade one of our most important customers, Lady Barnley, to take her out to tea in the Restaurant, where she stayed twenty minutes beyond her regulation half-hour for tea.

  I should just like to say that I cannot hold myself responsible for anything that occurs in the Library while Miss Fane is in it, which is most unfair to the other girls.

  A G SPARLING

  EVERYMAN’S STORES

  For use in inter-departmental correspondence only

  From Miss Ward

  To Mr Grant

  November 16th, 1931

  SubjectMiss Fane. Library Assistant. Fiction C

  Memo

  I am sorry to trouble you again about Miss Fane, but her appointment to the Library seems to have caused more disturbance than I anticipated.

  She has thoroughly upset Miss Sparling, who complains that she is unsettling the Library girls. Among other things, she prevailed upon one of our most important customers, Lady Barnley, to take her to tea in the Restaurant, where she stayed twenty minutes over her tea half-hour. I understand from Miss Fane that Lady Barnley is her aunt, but even allowing for the relationship, such conduct, as I have pointed out to her, was in very bad taste.

  Perhaps you would like to speak to her yourself on this occasion.

  M E WARD

  BT/MEW

  EVERYMAN’S STORES

  For use in inter-departmental correspondence only

  From  G Grant

  To Staff Supervisor

  November 17th, 1931

  SubjectMiss Fane

  Memo

  I am not disposed to view this affair too seriously. At worst, it is a tiresome indiscretion. For your guidance in replying to Miss Sparling, I should perhaps mention that it has always been understood that the half-hour for tea allowed to members of the staff is at their own disposal. The majority prefer to take it in the canteen, but there is no regulation to prevent an assistant being taken out to tea in any public place by a relation, though the necessity for a punctual return might be pointed out to Miss Fane.

  Further, Lady Barnley is, as we know by experience, easily offended. It might have been difficult had Miss Fane refused.

  Miss Pane’s appointment to the Library will not, of course, be affected by this, on the whole, irrelevant occurrence.

  M G GRANT

  SN/MGG

  EVERYMAN’S STORES

  For use in inter-departmental correspondence only

  From Staff Supervisor

  To Miss Sparling

  November 17th, 1931

  SubjectMiss H. Fane, Library Assistant

  Memo

  While appreciating your point of view in this matter, I am asked by Mr Grant to inform you that no regulation has actually been infringed by Miss Fane, though the usual fine will be levied in respect of the twenty minutes over-time taken for tea.

  Her position in the Library will, therefore, be unaffected by the incident.

  M E WARD

  BT/MEW

  EVERYMAN’S STORES

  For use in inter-departmental correspondence only

  From  Fane

  To Mr Grant

  November 17th, 1931

  SubjectPersonal

  Memo

  I am most frightfully sorry. If I had realised:

  Miss Sparling’s sensations at the Incident

  Her rendering of it

  Miss Ward’s reactions

  Your probable exasperation at this woman’s wasp-nest

  And the interruption of Departmental Routine,

  Nothing would have persuaded me to have tea with Aunt Bertha. And I assure you that my own feelings while providing a Roman Holiday63 for the Book Floor Staff were in themselves some penance. But I am willing to perform any other you may see fit to impose.

  Hilary Fane

  EVERYMAN’S STORES

  For use in inter-departmental correspondence only

  From  G Grant

  To Miss Fane

  November 18th, 1931

  SubjectYour memo of yesterday’s date

  Memo. Personal

  Quite. But no more bread and circuses.

  M G G

  SN/MGG

  23 Burford Street

  November 18th

  Dearest Mummy and Daddy,

  The mountain has fallen upon Mahomet! In other words, it’s one thing for me to decide not to visit Aunt Bertha in her grandeur, and quite another (and impossible) for me to prophesy or prevent her visiting the Library in Everyman’s, and recognising me.

  It caused rather a sensation, I’m afraid: I had to make my peace with the authorities afterwards. And also to go to lunch with Aunt Bertha and explain very elaborately why it would be better for those family reunions to take place in private.

  It was a very amusing luncheon party. Just the two of us. Uncle Tom was away. Aunt Bertha adored hearing as much about Everyman’s as I thought safe to tell her, considering all her presidential connections with Welfare Societies and Boards. My own career, she says, will have her special attention. I only hope she won’t wreck it. Aunt Bertha’s such a haphazard guardian angel – so apt to trouble the waters!

  But she gave me a superb, enormous meal and insisted on my drinking rather a lot of burgundy, because it was ‘so blood-making’. All this in her palatial club, as it would have been beyond me to reach Cadogan Square, eat a meal and be back in Everyman’s within an hour. And I’ve already mortgaged my ‘shopping hour’ for November. As it was, we discovered over coffee that I had three minutes in which to get back to the Book Floor. This, in Charles Street, aristocratically inaccessible by bus! I shot up, murmuring about taxis and trying to remember whether my bag had two shillings and a half­penny or two half-pennies and a shilling in it. But Aunt Bertha took charge of the situation, beaming.

  ‘I thought this might happen,’ she said. ‘So I told Edwards to wait. I know what it is to be a woman of many engagements.’ (Rather an exalted description of my activities, on the whole.) So I was borne, slightly comatose, up to the very Staff Entrance of Everyman’s, in an enormous, dove-grey, appallingly conspicuous Hispano-Suiza. I’d meant to tell Edwards to put me down at the corner, but the burgundy made the extra exertion of reaching for the speaking-­tube unthinkable. Also, between Fanes, it’s not every day that I have the chance of such an opulent return from lunch. But there were disappointingly few people about. The two shillings fortunately proved to be a half-crown, which I stoically gave to Edwards. I shall lunch on tick to-morrow … and to-morrow.

  Aunt Bertha sent all sorts of messages to you both, and then, finally, said that she would write herself. So you’ll probably be amused.

  Rumours of the Christmas Rush are rolling about already. As Christmas Day falls, mercifully, on a Friday, I ought to get away on Thursday night and have
three clear days at home. I might even be able to get an extra concession because of my long journey. I’ll try and find out. Lovely to be back again. I wonder what leave Basil will get. That probably depends on your own conscience, though, when you’re as grand as he is, and that’s always so uncomfortable. Anyway, I’ll take every minute I can wring out of the management. Appalling to remember the fourteen weeks’ vacs that I thought nothing of in the Oxford days. Now a long week-end seems munificence.

  This week-end I’m going to spend with the Meldons (who used to live next door but two in University Close). I’m expecting to enjoy it more than the Bellamys. The Meldons are poor but nice: like us.

  With lots of love,

  Hilary

  Burford Street

  November 19th

  My Dear,

  I agree. It was one of those women’s fusses about next to nothing, and I’m thankful to say that nothing much seems to be coming of it. But Sparling still goes about like one of those ancestral voices prophesying war.

  I’ve done my best. I apologised to Authority and went to lunch with Aunt Bertha, and implored her not to call for me personally in the Library. I pointed out that people who were above such merely mortal emotions as jealousy might like me to have grand relations for the sake of the shop’s prestige. But people like Sparling couldn’t really be expected to enjoy seeing their latest interloper fêted by their special celebrities. Aunt Bertha quite understood that. I left her flattered, and conspiratorially promising me the cold shoulder for as long as I required it. ‘So romantic; quite a little kingdom of its own! I shall tell the Federated Women Citizens all about the inner workings of our Great Stores now that I’ve had a peep behind the scenes. ‘The Far Side of the Counter’ – how’s that for a title?’

  So I only hope that no libel actions are pending, though I doubt if she can do much damage, with the best intentions in the world. If she’d really been behind the scenes, of course, she’d have had a very much better story for her Federated Women. Mine, for instance. I’ve just had another spectacular rise.

  My scheme for improving the Library began it. I sent in a very discreet and modest memorandum, no names, of course, but quite disruptive. It was a really concise, dry-as-dust report for the Minor Prophet; all headings and numbers and cause and effect. Together with a sketch map of desks and shelves, and facts about waste of space and undusted corners and classification of subscribers. I used my imagination and sent the thing in, very proud and nervous.

  Authority approved. The scheme is to be carried out almost to the last detail, but it has been considered wise to inaugurate the reforms as from headquarters, and safer for me to be out of the Library altogether while they’re in progress.

  It was partly that and partly because Miss Ward’s Assistant Staff Supervisor has got engaged and downed tools on the strength of it that I’ve been moved up again. What I owe to appendicitis and holy matrimony, Basil! I’ve got the engaged one’s job.

  Isn’t it grand? It means getting back to the sort of organising work that I really enjoy. Also, one comes less into physical contact with books and ink and labels and typewriters, which is so fortunate, considering how much I’m at the mercy of the malice of the inanimate.

  Of course, the immediate result of the change hasn’t been imposing, so far. I’ve been running round after Miss Ward, carrying her pencil on her tours of inspection, making notes on the state of staff lavatories, the number of assistants absent and why, ringing up obscure departments to send people to show tongues to Sister Smith, running a finger along window-sills to demonstrate to cleaners where they’ve become weary in well doing, and chivvying typists out of the cloakrooms. ‘Training me,’ Miss Ward calls it. And it’s been most illuminating. I feel that I’m beginning to have an idea of the fabric of the business: it’s thrilling because everything’s woven into it; pots and pans and silks and carpets and wood and brass and sales books and typewriters and people’s lives. I don’t suppose I shall ever write: ‘Dear sir, – Will you send me a cake of soap to the above address and charge my account. Yours faithfully …’ quite unthinkingly again. I shall always see the wheels that I inspected this morning grip my letter and hurry it away.

  

  ‘Chivvying typists out of cloak-rooms’

  I went with Miss Ward to the Mail Order Department (the Central Mail Orders, of course, not the Book Floor’s own very minor corner run by Mr Simpson and company.) The central Mail Order Department is housed on the other side of Manifold Lane, in a hygienic, red brick building, mostly windows. A covered way runs above the garages across to the main block, and trolleys thunder along it from nine to six. We walked gingerly among them, and a child (Miss Ward called her a Query Clerk) swung open doors for us.

  ‘Mail Orders,’ said Miss Ward, with a casual flip of a finger towards the immense, grey room.

  ‘All of it?’ (That single department runs across the thickness of two buildings, back to back, from Manifold Lane to Severn Street.)

  ‘We deal with seven thousand letters a day in the course of ordinary routine,’ said Miss Ward. ‘And twelve thousand in a rush season. Sales, you know, and Christmas.’ I believed her. That room looked like the photographs of the Irish Sweep64 on Mixing Day. There was a sort of horse trough running down one side of it and divided into a dozen alphabetically labelled compartments. Six girls shovelled letters into the compartments, six more snatched them out, pounded them with rubber stamps, shot them into trays marked Soft Furnishings; Piece Goods; Turnery; Juvenile; Gowns; Furnishing Fabrics … and so on. Boys with satchels came round and grabbed them out to take them to the right place in the main store.

  The last tray was marked To be Dissected: a young man collected the letters in it and took them to a long table. Here four other harassed­-looking young men were dealing with the letters of people who had been thoughtless enough to order silk stockings and pillow slips and tinned peaches and writing paper on the same letter. The men flapped catalogues and wrote the orders down on forms with the name of the department printed enormously at the top and carbons underneath. Everybody’s lightest wish is recorded there, world without end, and the dissected, original letter goes to be filed, in a maze of rubber stamps. It’s humbling to watch it all: if it weren’t for the fallible human factor, it’d be nearly perfect as a system.

  Miss Ward insisted on telling me all about it when I just wanted to stand and soak in all its exciting complexity instead. Then a very small man with the inevitable bowler came up and distracted her attention so that I could gape undisturbed. He sounded plaintive.

  ‘I can’t do it,’ he said. ‘Not without I have another clerk. Them four’ – he jerked a thumb at the toiling dissectors with their catalogues – ’just can’t keep up with the orders. They’re two hundred behind as it is, aren’t you, Thomas?’

  ‘One hundred and eighty,’ said Thomas, licking his fingers and whirling from the Fashion Shoes to the Perambulators.

  ‘It’s this Character from your Handwriting what does it,’ said the man in the bowler. He waved a double sheet of dark-blue, crested paper splattered with hieroglyphics at us. ‘Here’s an order as long as your arm from yours faithfully Gawd-knows-wot.’

  ‘Don’t they ever type?’ asked Miss Ward.

  ‘Do they not! With their feet by the look of it. No, the only hope for most people’d be block caps. And now, miss, wot about that clerk you promised me?’

  ‘Well, will you have a man or a girl?’ said Miss Ward, taking out her note-book. ‘I can get you a couple of nice girls by this afternoon.’

  The small man’s voice rose to a squeak. ‘No, Miss Ward, I will not have a gel. I’ve told you before how it is. I can’t do with gels. Not on this job. They talk too much. Sifting’s about their mark. Can’t do much harm without bein’ noticed by somebody, even if it’s only them Jimmys.’ And he jerked his bowler at the scuttling boys.

  Miss Ward said she’d see to it, quite meekly, I thought, and I made a note in my book. We went on to th
e next section. This room was lined with steel bins belching parcels.

  ‘The Assembling Room,’ said Miss Ward.

  All the bits of dissected orders come here to join up, and are packed in boxes and put on a moving band that takes them on to the Packing Room, which is a sort of primeval chaos of brown paper, shavings, straw and string. It’s staffed by very large men in shirt sleeves who make up packages, slap labels on their sides and heave them on to a sort of moving staircase which empties them into the goods lift.

  After that we went to some of the Store Rooms, where part of the stock is kept before it reaches departmental shelves. Things like gowns and cosmetics and lingerie live in the main building, but all the bulky items, like garden rollers and crates of cheap and nasty china to be found in the humbler seaside lodgings and impoverished ‘quaint’ tea-rooms are stored on the far side of Manifold Lane.

  One of the biggest and hottest of shirt-sleeved men came up to us with his bowler pushed well back and a red rim bitten into his forehead. He positively scolded Miss Ward, and I prepared for thunderbolts which somehow didn’t come.

  ‘Now, look ’ere, miss,’ he said. ‘Wot about them gels you promised me? Day before yesterday it wos that I spoke, and I asks you now, w’ere are they? Wot I wants to know is can I count on you for six gels this afternoon or can I not? Because if not how’s the best line of bedroom china we’ve bought this year to be unpacked? I’ve got to ’ave ’ands. I mean, I put it to you, can you expect a miracle to get the paper off them lovely ewers and …’

  

  ‘Wot about them gels?’

  ‘I quite see,’ said Miss Ward. ‘And I’ll send you all the help you want. I’ve got a string from the Labour Exchange outside my door this minute.’

  ‘Gels!’ said the large, hot man to himself as we went away. ‘Try the patience more’n a cats’ concert. You can always take your boots to a cat …’

  After that we went back across the covered way among the trolleys and errand boys. ‘We’d better have a look at what the Labour Exchange has brought,’ Miss Ward said. Rather as if she were going to pinch arms in the slave market, I thought, remembering that same Labour Exchange and my feelings there.