by Pet Jeffery
From the second-floor window of Benson's department store on Church Street, I had a view of wet roof slates and the tops of double-decker buses. None of this was in the least interesting, and I wouldn't have been distracted by such commonplaces but for the fact that I was very tired. Working two jobs was exhausting me: here in Benson's by day, and in the Crown and Anchor on Hope Street during the evening. A middle-aged woman's voice roused me from my reverie.
"Excuse me, dear, but how much are these?"
It can't have taken any great powers of deduction to identify me as a member of staff; like all of Benson's female shop assistants, I wore a plain black dress with white collar and cuffs. With the addition of an apron, I would have been unmistakably a waitress.
The lady waved a string of pearl-type beads in my direction. Her question should have been unnecessary; there was a clearly legible price label. Perhaps she was too short sighted to read the figure.
"They're seven and fourpence," I replied. "Very smart: they'd suit you." This was insincere, but we were encouraged to say such things. To my eye, the necklace was obviously plastic and, in my estimation, hardly worth half the price.
"It's so hard to find really nice things nowadays, dear. I'll take them."
She handed me a banknote. I should have propped the note on the cash register until I'd given her change. The procedure was well-established, but I was half-asleep. Thoughtlessly, I put the money into the till before I counted twelve and eightpence into the customer's outstretched palm. As I wrapped the fake pearls, she stared myopically at the cash in her hand.
"I'm sorry, dear," she said, "but there's been a mistake. You've given me change for a pound; I'm sure I only gave you ten shillings."
As I rectified the error, I noticed Mrs Giddings, the department manager, hovering at my shoulder.
"Miss Atkinson," Mrs Giddings said to one of my colleagues, after my customer had departed, "could you take over on this till, please?" Then, to me she said, "Miss Wharton, perhaps you could step into the office."
I prefer to be called 'Terri'. 'Theresa' seems too formal, and too often means that I'm in trouble. 'Miss Wharton' is, if anything, worse than 'Theresa'.
The office into which I followed Mrs Giddings might, more accurately, have been called a stock room. There was a small desk and a couple of chairs, but most of the space was occupied by racks and heaps of boxes. My department manager seated herself behind the desk, I took the other chair. Mrs Giddings was perhaps in her late thirties or early forties. She reminded me of my earliest memories of my mother, before Mum became ill. Her facial expression might have been Mum's on discovering me in some particularly bad piece of mischief - as when, around my twelfth birthday, I'd created a pavement ice slide on which the postman had slipped and broken his collar bone.
"Well, Miss Wharton," Mrs Giddings said, "you appeared to give that customer an extra ten shillings change."
"It was all right, though, Mrs Giddings," I attempted to excuse myself. "The customer was honest and..."
"Miss Wharton, it most decidedly is not all right. Neither is it all right that you've been in a dream all morning: staring out of the window when you should have been restocking the display. Is there any reason why I shouldn't report your conduct to Miss Sweetman?"
Miss Sweetman was the ladieswear manager, and Mrs Giddings' immediate superior. Although a senior member of staff, Miss Sweetman was a young woman, and couldn't have been much older than me.
"No, Mrs Giddings," I replied, "there isn't any reason. But please don't. I'll try to be..."
I didn't mean to, but I couldn't help myself; I broke down in tears. Mrs Giddings must have risen from her chair, but I didn't see her do so. I felt her place her arms about me, and I cried in her embrace for what seemed a long time.
Eventually, she said gently, "This isn't very professional, Theresa."
"Call me Terri, please, Mrs Giddings," I said, as soon as my tears had subsided sufficiently for me to speak. "It's just such a struggle to pay my rent."
"Rent, Terri? I'd have expected a young unmarried woman, like you, to live with her parents."
"My father was killed in Malaya." I scarcely remembered my father; it was easier to talk about him than about my mother.
"Well, I'll be... My husband never came back from Malaya. And your mother, sweetheart?"
'Sweetheart' didn't sound as though I was about to be sacked; the endearment cheered me a little. Talking about my mother was never easy, but I did my best.
"She was taken ill when I was about thirteen, Mrs Giddings. She died just before my twentieth birthday."
Again, I cried. Mrs Giddings held me, and rocked me gently, as she might a small child.
"Are you eating properly, Terri?"
It was such a maternal question that I couldn't help laughing, although my tears hadn't ceased. Eventually, I replied, "Oh, yes, Mrs Giddings. I made myself a sandwich last night and..."
"Sandwich!" She sounded scandalised. "Tonight, young lady, you're eating with me and my daughters." She pronounced this as a statement of fact, rather than an invitation. "It won't be anything fancy - shepherd's pie with cabbage and carrots - but I'll warrant it'll be the best meal you've had this month."
"Your daughters?" I asked.
"Yes, Sylvia's seventeen and Ruth's sixteen. Their company may do you almost as much good as the dinner. It sounds as if you missed your teenage years."
"Yes," I agreed, "I've got to twenty-four without ever, properly, being your daughters' ages."
After work, I took the bus with Mrs Giddings. It was not a long journey. She lived in a street of unremarkable Victorian terraced houses. Immediately on walking through the front door, I felt at home. Everything here seemed to have struck a happy medium. The house was neither obsessively clean nor unpleasantly dirty. The furniture had grown comfortable with obvious years of use, without becoming dilapidated. A large ginger cat rubbed himself against my legs. Mrs Giddings introduced me as 'Terri from work', and her daughters behaved as though they'd known me for years. Without being asked, I helped them in the kitchen. The girls chattered incessantly about school, boys, pop music, fashion and a dozen other topics. Occasionally, I was able to add something to the conversation; more often, I relaxed into the flow of words as though wrapping myself in a blanket on a chilly evening. Although nothing particularly funny was said, we dissolved into giggles at frequent intervals. When I thought about it afterwards, it seemed to me that, through some strange sorcery, I had been transported into my lost teenage years.
Dinner, as Mrs Giddings had predicted, was nothing fancy - yet it was perfect. After the tastiest shepherd's pie I'd ever eaten, there was rhubarb crumble and custard. When the meal was finished, I washed the dishes, while sixteen-year-old Ruth dried them and put them away.
As we re-entered the living room, I heard Sylvia say to her mother, "Yeah, I know. Sally Robertson and Julie Jones were saying..."
This was greeted by a sudden and ominous silence. Sylvia didn't complete her sentence. Mrs Giddings glared at her daughter with a ferocity of which I wouldn't have believed her capable. For the first time since my arrival, my muscles tensed. Something, I knew, was very wrong.
Just as the pause in the conversation became unbearable, Mrs Giddings said, "Sylvia Alison Giddings, I must have told you twenty times to have nothing to do with those girls. They take drugs."
"Mum! They may have smoked a joint a time or two, but it's not like they-"
"A joint, young lady, is something decent folk have for Sunday dinner. If it also means something to do with drugs, you have no business knowing it."
"I can't help knowing, Mum. Everybody knows..."
"Everybody, Sylvia Alison? I make it my business to know no more of drugs than I need to in order to shield you and Ruth."
"It's the real world, Mum. Don't be stupid."
"Oh, so I'm stupid, am I, Sylvia Alison Giddings?"
"Yes, you are, Mum, if you think..."
"Listen, Sylvia, I love you and Ruth more than life itself. There's nothing I wouldn't do to protect you. I'm not going to see either of you end up like Maureen Hackett: hooked on heroine and selling herself on York Road to feed her habit."
"That's not going to happen, Mum. Get real! No matter how much I chat with Sally and Julie..."
"You silly girl! In two words: peer pressure."
"Even if Ruth or I did experiment with drugs, we'd never..."
"That's right, you'll never: not while I have breath in my body."
"Oh, shut up, Mum. You're such a pain."
"Enough!" The power of this word shocked me. Mrs Giddings spoke with an overwhelming firmness of purpose. I am convinced that not even a politician could have responded with so much as a syllable of argument. Sylvia stared at her mother, mouth agape. "Big as you may be, you will not tell me to shut up - and one way or another - I'll see that you're protected. Upstairs this instant. Lose your jeans, young lady, and fetch your hairbrush."
While I didn't consciously foresee what was about to happen, at some deeper level I saw the situation for what it was. I felt that I should depart, longed to be elsewhere, in an environment where no teenager was ever spanked, yet I remained rooted to the spot: as unable to shift as the trees that line Montgomery Avenue.
Sylvia choked back a sob and left the room. Nobody spoke. It felt, to me, as if the seventeen-year-old was gone for hours. In reality, I suppose that she returned within five minutes.
By the time Sylvia reappeared, she had removed her jeans, but still wore a T shirt and a sensible pair of plain white knickers of the sort girls wear to school. The teenager carried a hairbrush, which she handed to her mother. Without any further ado, Sylvia placed herself over Mrs Giddings' knee. The girl squirmed, as her mother tugged her knickers down to mid-thigh level. I didn't wish to look - squeamishness combined with a sense that this was a private matter - but I couldn't tear my eyes from the mother and daughter. On occasion, I'd seen an exasperated mum aim a smack at a misbehaving toddler, but this was something entirely different. I was profoundly disturbed, not least because, hitherto, this had been such a pleasant evening.
Mrs Giddings raised her right arm high before bringing the back of the hairbrush down on Sylvia's bottom with what was obviously considerable force. The impact produced a loud sharp cracking noise; it sounded almost like a gunshot in a film or on television. Sylvia whimpered. The buttock that had taken the force of the blow blushed bright red. I shifted my seat so that I wouldn't see the effect of the next whack, should there be one. As I sidled, I became aware of anticipatory tingling of my own bottom. Was this empathy with Sylvia or did I expect Mrs Giddings to treat me in a similar fashion? No sooner had this thought arisen than I dismissed it as silly. Sylvia was seventeen, and perhaps too old to be spanked, but I was twenty-four: an adult, not a person who might conceivably be subject to corporal punishment. However firmly I dismissed the idea of my being spanked, my bottom continued to feel as though it might soon be subject to such treatment.
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