‘Come on, you two. Hurry up, otherwise all the bargains will be gone,’ Dulcie called over her shoulder to Tilly and Agnes as she made her way determinedly through the Saturday crowds of Leather Lane Market.
With Christmas not so very far away there was an extra air of energy and determination about the shoppers. Not that Tilly minded the crowds. In fact, she loved the air of pre-Christmas excitement and bustle, pausing by one stall filled with holly decorations, the bright green leaves and red berries so shiny that they looked as though they had been polished.
‘Fresh ’olly from His Lordship’s estate. Picked it meself, I did,’ the stall holder hollered when his sharp gaze noticed Tilly’s interest.
‘Nicked it, more like,’ Dulcie told the other two. She grabbed hold of Tilly’s arm. ‘Come on, we’ve got better things to do with our time than stand staring at a bit of holly.’
‘It always makes me think of Christmas, and it looks so pretty,’ Tilly defended herself good-naturedly, allowing Dulcie to draw her away, and then pulling back as something on one of the other stalls caught her eye. ‘Hang on . . .’
‘What is it this time?’ Dulcie demanded impatiently, but Tilly wasn’t listening. Instead she was reaching for the open box of pretty handkerchiefs, each with one corner adorned with delicate lace. They would make an ideal gift for her mother, who, Tilly knew, would love something so elegant and dainty. But just as she reached to pick up the box, someone else put a possessive hand on top of her own – a buxom florid-faced woman with small, mean-looking blue eyes and an expression on her face that said she was not going to give up her prize, even if Tilly had got to it first.
‘Them’s mine, if you don’t mind,’ she informed Tilly with a mixture of determination and sarcasm.
‘Actually, I think I picked them up first,’ Tilly retaliated, unwilling to be brow-beaten and bullied out of the hankies.
The excitement of a bit of an argument was already drawing a crowd of shoppers to gather round Tilly and the older woman, much to the stall holder’s delight, as he started shouting up his other wares to the growing audience, most of whom were paying more attention to Tilly and her adversary than to his stall.
It was Agnes, flushed of face but stalwart in her defence of her friend, who piped up, ‘You picked them up first, Tilly,’ her comment drawing nods of agreement from those women who had been close enough to see what had happened.
For a minute Tilly thought that she was going to be the victor, but then the other woman called over her shoulder, ‘’Ere, our ’Enry, come and give me a hand,’ and to Tilly’s horror the crowd fell back at the sight of the large overweight youth pushing his way through.
‘You’d better let her have them, Tilly,’ Dulcie advised in a warning whisper. ‘I don’t like the look of him.’
Tilly didn’t either. He had a mean look about him, his head swaying slightly from side to side, his small blue eyes just like those of the woman, whom Tilly guessed must be his mother. Something about him struck an unexpected chord within Tilly, reminding her of a long ago visit to Smithfield Market with her late grandfather. There had been a bullock being led to the slaughter house, and it had had the same kind of angry hostile look in its eyes. Half cross with herself for being a coward, Tilly relinquished the box, taking some comfort from the murmurs of sympathy for her from the crowd.
‘Thanks for sticking up for me, Agnes,’ she said as they started to walk away.
‘What about thanking me for saving you from getting yourself into real trouble?’ Dulcie demanded, all three of them stopping in mid-stride as a young lad came running up to them, dark curls escaping from under his cap, a moth-eaten scarf knotted round his neck over the too-tight tweed jacket he was wearing.
‘Me brother said he had another box of them hankies and that you can have them for eightpence if you want them?’ he announced, waving a thin pale blue square box in front of Tilly’s nose. ‘’E said you’d done him a favour getting all them people round his stall.’
Tilly looked back towards the stall, which was now besieged by shoppers, smiling ruefully as the good-looking young man behind it doffed his cap and gave her a wink.
‘Don’t you go giving him any money until we’ve seen what’s inside. It could be an empty box, for all we know,’ Dulcie warned, taking charge.
Happily, though, once the lid was removed they could all see the pretty lace-edged handkerchiefs inside it.
‘Hold these for me, please, will you, Agnes?’ Tilly begged her friend, handing them over to her whilst she opened her purse to get the money to pay the waiting boy.
‘Eightpence for three handkerchiefs?’ Dulcie grumbled after the boy had gone.
‘I bet they charge more than that for them in Selfridges,’ Tilly pointed out.
‘Yes, but them as they sell are from Selfridges,’ Dulcie retorted.
‘They are so pretty, Tilly.’ Agnes tried to pour comforting oil on the potentially troubled waters.
‘Oh, look there’s a label on the bottom that says Harrods,’ Tilly squeaked in excitement, when she turned the box over.
‘Probably come out of some Chelsea lady’s dressing table drawer,’ Dulcie sniffed, determined as always to have the last word.
Not that Tilly minded. It had been really kind of the stall holder to find another box for her. Mum would love them, she knew. Her mother did so much for other people, and hardly ever got any special treats for herself.
It was a cold crisp day with ice still shining prettily on rooftops, even if the cold did make one’s nose and cheeks pink. Leather Lane Market had originally specialised in leather goods from the many small factories that had surrounded Smithfield Market before the Blitz. The stall holders had obviously taken advantage of shoppers being anxious to make the best of things by filling their stalls with Christmas cheer in the shape of second-hand toys, and decorations. Tilly spotted a stall selling second-hand jigsaw puzzles and games, the sight of them making her smile as she remembered how much she had enjoyed such things herself as a girl. There were still stalls selling leather goods, many of them with signs indicating that what they had for sale was ‘bomb damaged’ in one way or another.
Several stalls were selling second-hand clothes, among them ‘ready darned’ sturdy socks, ‘a special treat for a serving man’s feet’. A solitary clown was attracting a Pied Piper’s trail of small children, and keeping them entertained with tricks on sale at a nearby stall, much to the irritation of their harassed mothers, whilst a small troupe of actors in pantomime costume were handing out advertisements for their panto. A man and a woman in Salvation Army uniform were standing outside the door to a small pie shop, and on impulse Tilly broke away from Dulcie and hurried across to slip a few pennies into their collection.
From there, another stall caught her eye, this one selling brightly coloured Christmas stockings made from red felt and sewn with white felt icicles.
‘What are you getting those for?’ Dulcie demanded, thoroughly exasperated.
‘Because I like them,’ Tilly told her. Secretly she was thinking that if Drew and the other boys should spend Christmas Day with them, then it would be fun to make up stockings for them, and if they didn’t, well, then they would always come in useful for the church’s children’s Christmas party.
It was a busy bustling scene, bright with the colours of Christmas, its brave attempt to get into the spirit of the season highlighted by thin fingers of pale yellow watery sunshine. Tears pricked Tilly’s eyes. If you closed your eyes and breathed in deeply you could just –
just
– smell the promise of Christmas in the air, even if it was cloaked in layers of dust and despair. They had all come through so much in these last dreadful weeks, Christmas felt like a beacon of hope, a rock, a small haven they must struggle to reach to give them all a small space of time to draw breath for the fight that inevitably lay head.
Christmas. Truly Tilly’s most favourite time of the year – thanks to her mother, who had always made it such a very special time for her.
‘Come on,’ Dulcie urged Tilly, taking a fresh firm hold on her arm and on Agnes’s as she dragged them with her through the crowd until she found a space to stop and look around purposefully for the boy who had accosted her in the street earlier in the week.
‘What are you looking for?’ Tilly asked.
‘Wait and see,’ Dulcie responded smartly. ‘Wait here,’ she commanded when she spied the boy lurking by several bicycles that had been left on the corner of one of the streets.
‘Dulcie, where are you going?’ Tilly protested. ‘You know Mum said we had to stay together.’
But Dulcie was ignoring her.
‘What’s she doing talking to that boy?’ Agnes asked Tilly.
‘I don’t know. Maybe she knows him,’ Tilly responded.
Having spotted the boy who had approached her on Oxford Street, Dulcie wasn’t about to let him go before she had the information she wanted.
‘So where’s this shampoo you were telling me about then?’ she demanded. ‘Only if you were having me on . . .’
‘I wasn’t,’ he promised her, making a cross sign with one grubby finger. ‘Cross me heart and hope to die, I wasn’t. He’s down there,’ he told her, gesturing toward the stalls. ‘Fifth stall in. Tell him it’s the special stuff you want.’
‘A book stall?’ Dulcie questioned in disbelief.
‘It’s all right. Dad keeps the stuff hidden away inside the books,’ the boy insisted.
‘And it’s proper shampoo, is it, and not some fake stuff that’s being passed off as shampoo?’ Dulcie demanded suspiciously.
‘It’s the real thing. I swear it.’
‘If you have been having me on you’ll be for it,’ Dulcie warned him, before going back to join Tilly and Agnes.
‘I’ve been thinking. What we could really do with,’ she told them, oh so casually, ‘is some proper shampoo.’
‘Proper shampoo? You’ll never find that,’ Tilly laughed. ‘Nancy was telling Mum the other day that even hairdressers are finding it hard to come by. I don’t know why though, because it isn’t on ration.’
‘Maybe not,’ Dulcie agreed darkly, ‘but there is a shortage, and I know where we can find some. Because a little bird has told me that there’s a stall here that sells shampoo.’
‘What? Real shampoo?’ Tilly demanded eagerly.
Dulcie grabbed hold of her and put her hand firmly over Tilly’s mouth. ‘Keep it down. Don’t tell everyone,’ she warned her. ‘Come on, this way.’
The stall the boy had pointed out to her was stocked, as Dulcie had already seen, with piles of dusty-looking second-hand books. The stall holder, a thin wiry-looking man wearing a pinstriped suit that was almost as sharp as his narrowed gaze, was standing behind it, eyeing the crowds and smoking a cigarette, his pork-pie hat pushed back on his head. The sight of such a dubious-looking character, far from putting Dulcie off, gave her a grudging willingness to believe what the boy had told her.
Marching up to the stall, leaving the other two to follow her, Dulcie told the stall holder without preamble, ‘We want some of your special stock.’
‘Keep it down,’ he urged her, the cigarette dangling out of the side of his mouth as he scanned the crowd before reaching down behind the counter to where Dulcie could see books piled haphazardly on top of a large tin tray, to keep them off the wet pavement.
‘Dulcie, what are you doing?’ Tilly hissed impatiently as she watched the stall holder lift a large battered-looking family Bible onto a stool he had pulled out from beneath the stall.
Ignoring her, Dulcie kept her gaze fixed on the Bible, from which, so speedily she barely saw the cover open, he produced a bottle of Drene shampoo. They were permitted no more than a glimpse of it before it was stashed back in the Bible box, as though it was a gold sovereign, not a bottle of shampoo. The stall holder all the while kept his intense gaze moving over the bustling street.
‘I want a proper look,’ Dulcie announced, reaching out to take the bottle from him.
He was obviously reluctant to hand it to her, and Tilly’s eyes widened when, the minute she’d got it, Dulcie uncapped it, first to sniff it and then put a bit on her finger.
‘Here, wotch it,’ the stall holder protested. ‘You ain’t bought it yet.’
‘No, and we won’t be doing unless it’s the real thing, and not a bit of something else you’ve put in the bottle,’ Dulcie assured him.
Tilly, though, who had realised that the bottle hadn’t been properly sealed, nudged Dulcie in the ribs and hissed, ‘Dulcie, I don’t think we should buy it. That bottle was open already.’
‘Yes, I know,’ Dulcie agreed. ‘But it’s full.’ She gave a small shrug. ‘I reckon whoever had it first hasn’t used more than a capful.’
‘Whoever had it first?’ Tilly was shocked.
‘That’s why we’ve got to check that it’s the real thing,’ Dulcie explained impatiently in the kind of voice adults normally reserved for very small children. ‘It’s all very well buying stuff that’s been looted from bombed-out buildings, but I’m not paying good money for something that’s a con.’
‘Looted?’ Tilly looked at Agnes and then back at Dulcie. ‘That means it’s black market.’
‘It’s no such thing,’ the stall holder protested vigorously. ‘Smoke-damaged, it is, that’s all. Got it off a chap who had a warehouse wot got bombed and caught fire. I’m just doing a bit of a favour for him.’