It was just after ten when Molly got back to the guest house that evening. She had had egg and chips in a café, followed by apple pie and custard, and had then walked for what seemed miles, looking in shop windows. The café experience hadn’t been frightening, though she had felt a little self-conscious eating alone. As for the fear of being robbed, that had vanished. She had kept a tight hold on her handbag, but she hadn’t feel threatened in any way. As she climbed into bed, she felt very satisfied with herself at overcoming some of her fears.
The interview at Bourne & Hollingsworth was held in an oak-panelled room right at the top of the building. Molly had heard someone refer to it as the boardroom. In films, such rooms had a huge, oval, shiny table and men sat all around it, but the one at the London store had a very ordinary long table, behind which sat the three interviewers, and in front of it, one single chair for the interviewee.
‘You do understand that being an assistant in a high-class fashion store is very different from slicing bacon and weighing up sugar and tea,’ one of the interviewers, a hawk-faced woman, said. She sat between two middle-aged men and was wearing a very smart black costume, her dark-brown hair in a bun. Her voice was what Molly’s mother would call ‘BBC’. Every word was pronounced with precision. All the questions she’d fired at Molly had been insulting to Molly’s intelligence, but she had responded politely.
‘Of course I know the difference between a fashion store and a grocer’s,’ Molly said, her patience beginning to run out. She was sure this hard-faced woman was appalled by the home-made navy-and-white dress and jacket and little white hat. She probably didn’t like Molly’s West Country burr either, so she might as well say her piece and be done with it. ‘But even if the products sold are very different, customer care should be the same. I have been brought up to treat every customer as very important, to go that extra mile for them.’
To Molly’s astonishment, the more portly of the two men gave a little hand clap, glancing round at Hawk Face to see her reaction. ‘You are quite right, Miss Heywood. Customer care is the most important thing, but you do need to have a keen interest in fashion, too.’
‘I always read fashion magazines,’ Molly volunteered. ‘I am keenly interested in it and hope that you’ll give me the chance to prove my worth.’
‘Will you wait outside, Miss Heywood? We’ll call you in again later,’ Hawk Face said.
Molly went back outside with a heavy heart and joined the five other girls waiting there. Despite all the patronizing questions from Hawk Face, she thought she’d given a good account of herself, and the men had seemed impressed with her School Certificate results. But these other girls waiting all looked smarter, prettier and more confident than she was. She was just a country bumpkin in handmade clothes. It was tempting to leave now and avoid the humiliation of being turned down.
One by one, the girls went in, but they must have left the interview room another way, as they didn’t come back out to where Molly was. Finally, when she was the only girl left sitting there, Hawk Face called her in.
‘Well, Miss Heywood,’ one of the men spoke up. ‘We have decided to offer you a position here in Bourne & Hollingsworth, and would like you to begin in-store training with Miss Maloney, one of our fashion buyers, on Monday the seventeenth at 8.45.’
Molly’s mouth dropped open in surprise, but she quickly pulled herself together. ‘Thank you so much. I hope I can justify your faith in me,’ she said, with as much dignity as she could muster.
Hawk Face half smiled. ‘We hope for that, too, and that you will have the stamina to remain cheerful and attentive to our customers at the very busiest times. Your room in Warwickshire House, our hostel in Gower Street, will be available on Saturday the fifteenth. It’s always better for our new girls to get settled in a day or so before beginning work, and it gives Miss Weatherby, our matron, a chance to tell you the rules over the weekend.’
Molly’s mind was reeling when she finally left the London store and headed for the tube station. She was to get a starting salary of sixteen shillings per week, her board and lodging all found. She would share a room with another girl and be issued with a black dress as a uniform. Some of the other things she’d been told – days off, commission and laundry arrangements – had all gone straight out of her head.
As the nearest thing she had had to a wage back in Sawbridge was the odd half-crown from her father, she felt rich just thinking about earning sixteen shillings. On top of that, she would get staff discount off anything she bought in the shop.
But just being chosen was the real thrill. Those other girls were well turned out, they looked confident and poised, but the interview board had picked her.
Her new-found confidence swept her on to the tube without a false step. But when she came out of Whitechapel tube station she had to stand still for a moment to regain her equilibrium, because it was like landing in a stinking, overcrowded hellhole.
Nothing had prepared her for such squalid mayhem. It made her think of a huge anthill; there were people scurrying about and horse-drawn carts, cars, lorries and buses vying for routes between them.
Right opposite was a big, soot-blackened hospital and, even as she stood there, two ambulances tore into the forecourt, bells jangling. Adding to the tumult was a market which spread right along the street. She could hear the stall holders yelling out inducements to buy. But it was the smell which really turned her stomach and made her want to get right back on the underground. A potent mix of horse droppings, sewage, human body odours, rotting rubbish and drains.
It was a warm, sunny day and there had been no rain for a while, so maybe that was why the smells were so bad, but everyone looked terribly shabby, too. Very old ladies and men bent almost double over their walking sticks were wearing little more than rags. Young mothers wheeling ramshackle prams didn’t just have one baby in them but often a couple of toddlers and a big bag of washing, too. Everywhere Molly looked, the children were scrawny and pale.
She didn’t like it one bit. She felt threatened by the sheer numbers of people, and it was all so dirty and squalid. She had to go and see Constance now, because she was expected, but as soon as that was over she’d rush away from this horrible place.
She asked a man selling newspapers outside the station for directions to Myrdle Street, which is where Constance lived.
‘You sound like a farmer, ducks,’ he said. ‘You come up from Bristol?’
‘Near there,’ she said, surprised that he had any interest in her. ‘Do you know it?’
‘Never bin there,’ he said. ‘But I ’ad a mate in the army from there and ’e sounded just like you. Come up ’ere to work, ’ave you?’
After a brief exchange with him, Molly followed his directions to Myrdle Street, only to find that Whitechapel Road was a smart address in comparison to the side streets she was now walking along. There were so many houses missing in the long terraces, big timbers held up the remaining ones, and the weed-covered bomb sites in between were now impromptu playgrounds for huge packs of skinny, pale, sharp-featured children.
Molly looked up at the remaining houses and shuddered, because she could imagine how grim and comfortless they were inside. Old folk sat on the doorsteps of some of the houses, and the sight made her feel unbearably sad for some reason she didn’t understand.
Myrdle Street was much the same as the others she’d passed through, but there was a gang of about twelve girls skipping over a long rope turned by two of the bigger ones. Molly paused to watch them for a moment, noting that they wore plimsolls on their feet, some with the toe cut out to give more room, they all had scabby knees, and every one of them wore a dress so faded and worn they looked like they’d fall apart in the wash. She was suddenly reminded that, however horrible her father could be, she’d always had enough to eat, good clothes and shoes. She hadn’t realized until now what real poverty looked like.