Heartache for the Shop Girls. Joanna Toye

yes, I know, it’s like a music hall joke! They’d never been a problem, not once! I hadn’t a clue till I went for the medical.’

      Lily was about to say it had been the same with Jim and his eyesight, but somehow she didn’t. Frank was carrying on anyway.

      ‘They’ll get desperate enough to take me in the end and I hope they do! My feet are fine – football, running, the lot; I was regional under-sixteen boxing champion!’ He extended an arm. ‘Want to feel my muscles?’

      ‘No, thank you!’

      ‘Your loss.’ Frank was unperturbed. ‘Ah, here’s our tea. Are you going to be mother?’

      And so it went on. Frank might say he’d rather be doing something different – he didn’t see himself as a babywear rep all his life, he declared – but there was no doubt he was in the right job. He was so persuasive and talkative – cheeky, too. Lily had to laugh at some of his stories – he could have sold sand to the Arabs.

      Try as he might, though, as they left Lyons, having insisted on paying for them both, he couldn’t persuade Lily to join him for a drink.

      ‘I don’t mean some spit and sawdust pub,’ he coaxed. ‘You’re worth more than that. The White Lion’s the place to go, isn’t it, round here?’

      The White Lion was utterly respectable, but Lily stood firm.

      ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t think so.’

      ‘Oh, come on. Not even a Tizer? Or a cordial? Would that be demure and ladylike enough for you?’

      ‘That’s not the point. I’m late as it is. My mum will worry.’

      ‘All right, you win,’ Frank conceded. ‘I’m not in the business of putting girls’ mums’ backs up. Not when I hope to see them again.’

      This time Lily didn’t falter.

      ‘It’s out of the question,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a boyfriend.’

      ‘I’m sure you have,’ said Frank easily. ‘Someone as attractive as you. Away in the Forces, is he?’

      ‘No, actually—’

      Her reply was irrelevant. Frank was continuing, smoothly, smiling.

      ‘Well, whatever. He’s obviously not around at the moment, or not all the time, or you wouldn’t have entertained the possibility of spending the evening with me.’

      ‘I did try my best not to!’

      ‘Well, I’m glad you changed your mind.’ Suddenly he sounded sincere. ‘Very glad. I am grateful, Lily. It’s the bit of the job I don’t like, the evenings on your own in some strange place.’

      ‘Hinton’s not that strange.’

      ‘Well, it is if a girl can’t go out for an innocent cup of tea and a bite of cheese on toast with a colleague, don’t you think?’

      A colleague … was that what he was? She supposed so. And maybe … there were things she’d learnt from him tonight, like making yourself think up good points in an item you don’t think much of, and what he called ‘linking the benefit to the customer’. There was a lot more she’d be interested to find out about his side of the business. Then perhaps she could really impress Miss Frobisher.

      Frank could see her mind working and he let it work. He wasn’t a salesman for nothing.

      ‘I have to go,’ she said finally. ‘But … maybe. When you’re next in town.’

      ‘Attagirl! It won’t be for a while, you heard what Mr Ward said. But think of me in the wilds of Wales with the autumn gales blowing.’

      ‘Oh, I’m sure you’ll survive.’

      ‘You reckon?’

      ‘Get some of those Army combinations that Ward and Keppler are making.’

      Frank threw back his head and laughed.

      ‘You’ve got a very strange image of me if you think I’d be seen dead in those!’

      Lily blushed and turned her face away. She wasn’t sure she wanted to have any image of Frank Bryant, let alone one of his muscled torso in his underwear.

      ‘Bye, then,’ she said. ‘Thanks for my tea.’

      ‘You’re very welcome,’ grinned Frank. He tipped an imaginary hat at her. ‘Till next time, Miss Collins.’

      Jim spooned the stew he’d made onto plates. His father had already shuffled to the table, but his mother was hovering behind him, watching critically as Jim pulled the scraps of meat apart and mashed down the vegetables into the gravy. Both his parents needed soft, mushy food; almost what you’d feed a baby. Jim thought, not for the first time, how dreadful it was – for everyone – when you had to parent your own parents.

      ‘Go and sit down, Mother, I’ll bring the plates through.’

      With a grunt, his mother obeyed – she was more compliant at the end of the day, when she was tired. In the mornings she was querulous and demanding, and barely a month into the new regime, Mrs Dawkins had twice threatened to walk out. Jim didn’t think she was serious – the money was too useful – but it was another pressure. He wondered if he dared to ask his mother to be a bit more patient with her.

      The meal dragged. No one spoke, both his parents laboriously eating. Jim’s father had never been a talkative man, and nowadays breathing was so much of an effort that he had no energy for using his voice. Jim had one eye on the clock, wondering if he’d make the 9.35 from Worcester. If he struck lucky and thumbed a lift straight away, he might. Last week it had been nearly two when he’d got back to Hinton, and he’d had to be up at seven for work the next day. But, Army life, Navy life, certainly life in the RAF was far more demanding, night after night with little or no sleep, and no break in sight, which at least Jim got from Tuesday to Friday. Count your blessings. Like everyone, he’d become practised in making the best of things.

      His mother put down her spoon and tugged at the napkin Jim had tied round her neck.

      ‘Like a two-year-old!’ she muttered, or something like it. Officially her speech had been unaffected; in reality it was indistinct because the whole side of her face now drooped.

      ‘Come on, Mother, you’ve hardly touched it. It’s got to be better than Mrs Dawkins’s offerings!’

      His mother gave a snort.

      ‘You get with Margaret, we’d be rid of that slut!’

      Jim winced. The stroke hadn’t taken his mother’s powers of speech, but it had certainly made them cruder. The old, proper, Alice would never have used a word like that.

      ‘That’s not going to happen,’ he said firmly. ‘Margaret’s a very nice girl, but as I’ve told you, Mother, Lily and I are courting.’

      His mother mumbled something under her breath which Jim feared was ‘hussy’, then pushed her plate away as if it was something from the cesspit.

      ‘Bed. Now.’

      Jim sighed and stood up. At least once she was in bed, he could safely go. She still insisted on sleeping upstairs, painful as it was to see her haul herself up. His father slept on the settee, the stairs being too much for him. He was a much more compliant character, and Jim thanked his stars for that.

      In her room, he settled Alice, looking away as he stripped off her dress and petticoat and handed her the flannel to wash herself, then quickly slipped her nightdress over her head before unrolling her stockings. She fell heavily back on the pillows, and Jim made sure she had a glass of water and her stick beside her to bang on the floor if she needed anything.

      ‘I’ll pop up again before I go,’ he told her, as he always did.

      With any luck she’d be asleep