The Dazzle of the Light

Chapter 4

11

Thursday afternoon

They walk in pairs down Oxford Street, keeping at a distance from one another. Ruby is full of cream buns and has her arm threaded through Edith’s. She enjoyed the buns so much that she’s even feeling kindly disposed to Edith, whose shoes are pinching. Edith is bellyaching about her blisters. It serves her right; the shoes are new. They’re smart, so Ruby can’t help but admire them. Perhaps she can persuade Edith to let her have them – once she’s worn them in and softened up the leather. It wouldn’t be the first time she’s benefitted from Edith’s cast-offs.

Ahead are Maggs and Alice, followed by Daisy and little Florrie. Florrie is thirteen and already an experienced lifter in the smaller shops. This is her first outing with Maggs’s cell in a large department store and, even from several paces behind, Ruby can hear that she’s twittering like a canary. Daisy is allowing her to chirrup on, making occasional noises so that Florrie won’t think her rude. Ruby can remember what it was like, going out hoisting with the older women for the first time. Daisy will remember, too, and she won’t want to dampen Florrie’s excitement. Even so, she is quieter than usual and her shoulders are sagging. Maggs will be annoyed if she turns around and sees it.

The Forties make a habit of entering places like Selfridges or Debenham and Freebody as though they own the place. Dress to the nines and look like you have money to spend, Maggs always says, and no one will suspect that you’re there to do anything else. Ruby knows this is true. If you shuffle in looking like a pauper, then everyone’s watching, wondering why someone like you would be in the store, knowing that you can’t afford the goods on sale. Daisy is still mooning over Harry. No good will come of that – he’s banged up for five years – and she needs to walk tall and look like a lady. Especially in the store they’re raiding.

Pair by pair they turn into Wigmore Street and prepare to enter the vast white building that is Debenham and Freebody. Ruby gives a little shiver of excitement as she stares up at five gleaming floors of wonder. Windows glint in the dull afternoon, shimmering with light from inside. There must be hundreds of windows across the front of this building, all scrubbed and polished and showing none of the dust and dirt that has covered the whole of London during the war. Sculpted cherubs appear to fly about the portico, and above the grand doorway with its lacquered wooden doors stand two giant green-marbled columns. They are entering a temple, a hallowed place.

Florrie stifles a gasp as she tips her hat back to look up. Everyone looks up. Everyone’s heart beats a little faster the first time they come here. It’s not as exciting as Selfridges, of course, but it is beautiful and majestic.

It is one of Ruby’s favourite haunts, mostly because it is quieter than Selfridges. She’s even been known to pay for goods here. But not today.

They know what to do. They’ve had instructions from Maggs. They will remain in their pairs and operate on different floors, as usual. That way, if anyone is caught, the others can make their escape. Ruby gives Daisy a sharp poke between the shoulders as she passes, reminding her to stand up straight, before she and Edith saunter through the marble-clad entrance hall, still arm in arm, like two well-to-do young women out for a shopping expedition. They inhale the luxurious perfumes of Guerlain, Coty and Poiret that waft through the archway leading to the ground floor. They chatter about the cinema, about the picture they saw last week, as they ascend the wide staircase to the third floor, ostensibly to look at coats. The words are meaningless nonsense; they are communicating more by gesture and instinct, as only the Forties can.

A stand of umbrellas, brightly coloured, catches Ruby’s eye as they arrive at their floor. The stand is unattended, so she picks one up as she passes and hooks it over her arm. The blue matches the colour of her best French coat. The colour of a cloudless sky when you walk through a park on a summer’s day. She bought it the other day, she decides. Monday, or was it last week? She can’t recall now and she’s lost the receipt.

They make their way to the main room. The area is busy, but the atmosphere is hushed and reverent. Women of all ages mill around touching the coats, stroking them, bowing to inspect the quality of the cuffs and buttons, squeezing the shoulders before asking to try them on. This is why stores like Debenham and Freebody are so successful: they allow a customer to decide what she wants to examine, what she wants to wear. They give her choice and credit her with intelligence and discernment.

They also enable someone to lift with relative ease.

Ruby strokes a fur wrap. Silver fox, lined with grey silk. Not her personal style, and they are not in the store to take coats or wraps today.

‘What do you think?’ she asks Edith, who is admiring the fur collar on a long coat of the finest black wool. ‘A bit old-fashioned?’

Edith plays the game. ‘You’ll look like my grandmother.’

‘Shame. It feels lovely and soft.’

The conversation causes another woman to turn her head. She is wearing a dull grey coat and a very ordinary, wide-brimmed navy blue felt hat that doesn’t fit very well. She is middle-aged, but not old. She is trailing a hand rather listlessly down the arm of a garment that she is unlikely to buy – the sort of coat one might wear out in a motor car. She doesn’t seem like the adventurous, driving-out-for-the-day sort.

Ruby smiles at her and leans into Edith.

‘Come on,’ she says. ‘I’m done with this, let’s go elsewhere.’

She squeezes Edith’s wrist twice, quickly and sharply, and Edith nods. She will leave now that she’s been given the agreed signal, and the two of them glide away, out of the main room and back to the store’s central staircase.

‘They’re using detectives now?’ Edith mutters, limping down the stairs, heels clacking on the marble. She scowls at Ruby, her feet feeling the blisters.

Ruby checks the stairs behind her, making sure that they are not being followed.

‘She looked like one. The woman with the navy blue hat. Didn’t you see her? There was just something about her.’

‘No, I didn’t see her.’ Edith takes a surreptitious glance over her shoulder. ‘More places are using them now; I suppose we should have expected it.’

‘We should warn the others.’

Edith pulls a face. ‘Maybe. If there’s a woman with the coats, there’ll definitely be someone by the smaller goods – they’re easier to lift.’ Edith stops at the entrance to the first floor. ‘I’ll look for Daisy and Florrie. You go down to Maggs and Alice. If Maggs wants to move on to another store, come and find us. Otherwise, go to the second floor, not back to the third, and pick up the gloves as planned. Do you understand?’

Edith likes giving orders. She’s ready to lead a cell of her own. She’s said so to Annie more than once.

Ruby gives the smallest nod and continues down the stairs. She would not be in Edith’s cell even if she were paid her own weight in diamonds.

She spots Maggs easily enough, next to a counter selling boxes of Coty talcum powder. She won’t stand anywhere near her, but hovers several yards away, waiting for her to look up. Maggs, who can always sense when she is being watched, lifts her head and sees Ruby. She does not look directly at her. She doesn’t know her as long as they are in the same store.

Ruby makes a small gesture, confident Maggs is watching even as she pretends to browse the goods. The men have their secret codes for betting; the Forties have developed their own for hoisting.

Maggs nods almost imperceptibly and turns away to look for Alice, who is browsing the perfume bottles that are arranged on top of several glass-fronted cabinets. The nod means Maggs is wary and on her guard, but that there’s no need to leave the store. They just have to be careful.

Ruby trails back to the stairs and climbs up a storey to make sure that Edith has given the signal to the others. Edith jerks her head, and the two of them head up to the second floor, leaving Daisy and Florrie studying blouses and dresses, now alert to the danger.

The pockets of their coats have been specially adapted. Gertrude Squires is a seamstress with her own shop on Borough High Street. She’s an established businesswoman with a respectable trade, but she grew up next door to Maggs and is an old friend of the Forties. Long beyond the age for running wild in department stores, Gert maintains her allegiance by fashioning the specialist clothing they all wear when they’re out hoisting. There’s not a dress or a coat that she can’t adapt with deep pockets and folds. Ruby knows that she can fit at least a dozen pairs of gloves into the plain brown coat she’s wearing today and no one will be the wiser.

But it is Edith who will be lifting today. She’s decided to change the plan, worrying about the woman Ruby has seen, the store’s eyes on the third floor.

‘You’ll do as I say,’ she hisses when Ruby begins to argue. ‘Maggs told me you’d hidden a score in your handbag earlier, trying to keep it for yourself. You’re too much, Ruby Mills. You think you’re the best of us, just because you’re with Billy now, but you don’t work on your own, remember? You’re nothing without the Forties. Nothing.’

‘Oh, Billy Boy,’ Ruby croons, eyeing up the gloves as Edith looks about nervously. ‘Quite a lover, ain’t he…?’

Edith gives her a look that would freeze hell, but Ruby has already turned her back and started to walk away. She’s not going to trade barbed words with Edith – she can do that later – not when she’s seen what she is looking for.

A young woman, of a similar age to her, is inspecting a collection of kid leather gloves. These are the items that Edith intends to lift. Ruby wanders over and stands next to the woman, casually picking up a pair to examine the lines of stitching. They are pretty, set with neat, pearly buttons.

‘Dear me,’ she says, weakly, to no one in particular. ‘I feel rather faint. Is it me, or is it unbearably hot in here?’

The woman turns at her words, about to say that she feels perfectly cool, when Ruby grips her arm and falls into a slump, dragging the woman down as she collapses to the floor.

‘Somebody, help us!’ The woman calls out to anyone who might assist. A shop assistant scurries over, and another woman who, Ruby can see through half-closed eyes, had also been masquerading as a real customer. Another store walker.

‘She just fell. Fainted, I think,’ the young woman says, disentangling herself from Ruby and standing upright. ‘She said something about feeling hot and then… She just sank down.’

The store walker chafes her hands in front of Ruby’s face.

‘Should we take her hat off? Loosen her coat a little?’ the woman asks. ‘Help her cool down, perhaps?’

‘Let’s remove her to a chair,’ the shop assistant decides. ‘Will you help me?’ she asks the store walker. ‘Put a hand under her armpit and lift her up. I’m sure we can carry her between us. She’s quite small.’

The two shop workers, along with the young woman, bundle Ruby to a chair at the side of the room.

A small crowd gathers to fuss over her. Through her lashes, she sees Edith at the glove table picking out half a dozen pairs. She pushes them down into her long outer coat pockets and then moves quickly and quietly to the other side of room. She scoops up some fur-edged gloves and winds several scarves into a tight ball, shoving them into the inside coat pockets. Her blisters are obviously stinging her heels and she’s had enough already. As a parting thought, she picks up a pretty brooch from a display of glittering silver marcasite jewellery before disappearing from Ruby’s squinted eyeline to the staircase and down, out of the store through the solid wooden doors. There, Ruby knows, the doorman will usher her onto the street with a smile and a slight bow. Edith will thank him graciously enough, but in a suitably haughty tone. Being too familiar with men like that only leads them to pass comment. Besides, if she is not careful, he will try to engage her in conversation – and she needs to be away.

Ruby opens her eyes wide and expresses some dismay at having caused a scene. She reassures everyone that she is quite well but accepts the glass of water that has been brought for her with a weak smile. Perhaps she might try to stand? Her legs wobble, and she sits down for a moment before attempting again. She will go home straight away, she agrees. She’ll catch the omnibus directly and have a lie down for the remainder of the afternoon. She acquiesces as the shop assistant makes suggestions, offers diagnoses. Yes, Ruby decides, recognising her means of escape, it probably is the monthly curse. She should have realised because it always makes her light-headed. She really ought to be on her way, to take care of herself.

At this, the small crowd predictably parts and drifts away. The women are sympathetic, but there is nothing more that they can do except encourage her to stay warm and go to bed.

Ruby moves slowly, carefully, as one who might be unwell or at least in discomfort. She makes use of her new umbrella, leaning on it as if it is a walking stick as she takes the first couple of steps. Then, gingerly, she crosses the floor to the stairwell, growing stronger with every yard she takes. If it were not for the fact that she is almost certain she is being watched, she would pick up a few items on the way out.

Instead, she contents herself with the umbrella – at least on this floor.

She trots down the stairs to the ground floor, where she might find a few things to take with her. She has, she reflects, already contributed an unintended twenty pounds to the Forties today, so she’s not done badly – but a compact mirror, a few lipsticks or a pot of rouge might please Annie Richmond more than an umbrella.

When she reaches the archway to the ground floor, she freezes.

Standing in her eyeline is the girl from Hartleys, the one with the spots and the teeth, the one who knows that she lifted a mink coat. Ruby cannot reach the main door without passing her, and the girl might recognise her.

She ducks her head, grateful that she has noticed the girl first. She’s not in her Hartleys uniform and she looks even more dowdy than before. Perhaps she comes here on her half-day to look at goods she can’t afford on her wages.

Ruby watches as the girl peeps around then stretches a hand across the counter to pick up a pot of Pond’s face cream. She looks about her again and then, to Ruby’s amused astonishment, slips it into her pocket. Well, well.

Ruby is about to approach the door when the large-shouldered woman in the grey coat and navy hat, who had earlier been on the third floor, pushes past her, jolting her shoulder, and grabs the Hartleys girl. The girl calls out in shock, fright, panic. She is not a thief. She is not a thief. She only put it in her pocket to take it to the counter. She is not a thief.

Another woman emerges from out of nowhere, red-faced and flustered.

‘There are others in the store. They’ve taken gloves – a pile of kid gloves – and several silk blouses.’ There is a howl rising in her voice, and she announces to the whole floor: ‘There are thieves in this store!’

Ruby presses herself against a solid white pillar, trying to melt into it. Daisy and Florrie will have left the store by now, surely. Edith will be long gone – which is a good thing because she can’t run in those shoes.

Maggs is near the door. She hears the commotion and her chin rises as she tries to see what is happening. It is time to leave.

Alice is still at the other side of the large ground-floor room, cut off from Maggs by counters, tables and stacked displays. She panics, recognising that something has happened. Who has been caught? She drops the manicure set she was holding and lurches away from the table. She stumbles heavily and bumps into a man who is craning his neck to see what the fuss is about.

Twenty or so handkerchiefs, tucked too hastily inside her skirt, slip to the floor by her feet.

‘Another one!’ The man shouts excitedly and waves a hand high in the air as though he has just won the Derby. He reaches for Alice, but she staggers past him, pushing him roughly, and begins to run for the door, desperately clutching her thigh. She cannot run far – not without leaping over the counters, and not with customers in the way. She would not make it to the door even without a sore hip.

The grey-coated store detective meets her halfway and the two of them jostle one another in the centre of the floor, to the fascination of everyone who stands watching. Alice is wrestled to the ground and the woman sits on her. She starts shrieking and swearing – the woman is on her bad hip, pressing it into the hard floor. People are shocked that a well-dressed woman might know such words, let alone use them at volume.

Someone has called the police. They push their way through the customers to reach Alice. One of them appears to recognise her and greets her like an old friend: he tells her to calm down and shut up before hauling her up from the floor. The man who had been next to the handkerchiefs has scooped them up from where they fell and has brought them to the police. He offers to tell them what he saw. Says that she thumped him in the chest.

The store walker opens Alice’s coat and, like a magician plucking rabbits from a hat, pulls out bottles of perfume, swansdown powder puffs, packets of hairnets and several boxes of assorted cosmetics. The goods keep emerging, to the entertainment of the gathering crowd.

Ruby groans and rolls herself away from the pillar. She slinks away like a cat, unseen by the police, the store detective or the girl from Hartleys, and leaves quietly through the main door.

Poor Alice.

At least if she ends up in Holloway, she’ll have some time away from George.

That thought cheers Ruby. She pushes open her new sky blue umbrella to keep the drizzle from her hat.