Miss Carter's War by Sheila Hancock Read Free Book Online

French-conversation coaching to help out the French department, parents’ evenings, staff meetings and the endless marking.
    As she settled into a routine she had more free time, and this she began to spend with Tony. The rest of the staff were older than her, with established friendships, and she found Tony more fun to be with. He occasionally went away for the weekend to visit ‘a friend’, so Marguerite assumed he had a serious relationship with someone and she settled for merely enjoying his companionship. They were merry in each other’s company. He lightened her life with laughter. As at the Tory rally, he had a knack of drawing attention to himself. At first she felt embarrassed by this, but she could see that people were amused by his extrovert behaviour. Having, of necessity, always inclined towards reticence, she found herself enjoying being on the sidelines of his escapades. He could turn an everyday occurrence into an event. For instance, shopping.
    Miss Fryer had hinted that his apparel for Parents’ Day – a pair of the newfangled blue-denim Levi’s and a Fair Isle jumper – was unsuitably casual, so Marguerite dragged him to the local department store to buy something more appropriate, despite his protests that he was a PT teacher, not a bank clerk, and the jeans, as he called them, were the latest thing. The whole shop was brought to a standstill by his howls of horror at his reflection in the mirror now that he was wearing a dark grey-flannel suit, complete with waistcoat and stiff-collared shirt and tie.
    ‘I can’t move. Arggh! I’m choking. I feel done up like a dog’s dinner. I wouldn’t be seen dead in this.’
    Marguerite encouraged the gathering group of laughing staff and customers to reassure him.
    ‘You look very smart, son,’ said the lady on the glove counter.
    The ‘A real gentleman’ from a passing Brylcreemed customer in an identical suit didn’t help, but the two saleswomen from corsetry did. The elderly one, her ramrod stiffness a credit to her department, ventured, ‘You look like a film star.’
    ‘Which one? Bela Lugosi?’
    But it was her sweet blonde colleague, a walking endorsement of their uplift brassieres, with her brazen, ‘I could fall head over heels for you in that,’ that quietened Tony’s wails. Pouncing on his hesitation, Marguerite wrested the money from his pocket, handed it to the manager of the store, who, on Marguerite’s insistence, stuffed it quickly into a container, and sent it whizzing along the overhead wire towards the cash desk, to the applause of the onlookers, who had thoroughly enjoyed the diversion from the usual solemnity of mahogany and hushed voices in the sedate emporium.
    Thenceforth, outings were classified ‘suit’ or ‘non-suit’. Definitely ‘suit’ were staff meetings with Miss Fryer, trips to the theatre, apart from the Royal Court, where his maligned jeans were de rigueur, concerts at the Wigmore Hall, but not Promenade Concerts at the Albert Hall. He and Marguerite always went up to the top gallery, where they were allowed to sit or lie on the floor, blissfully drinking in the music for which they shared a mutual love. Also ‘suit’ was a visit to the doctor’s surgery with his smoker’s cough.
    More ‘non-suit’ occasions were trips to the pub, and going up to town, wandering round the bomb-scarred city, usually ending up at Joe Lyons Corner House for an ice-cream sundae whilst listening to Ena Baga, resplendent in chiffon, playing popular tunes on the Hammond organ, to which Tony would sing along, sometimes joined by other customers, to the delight of the usually ignored Ena.
    ‘Semi-non-suit’ occasions were football and motorbike speedway races when the waistcoat and stiff collar were replaced by a pullover, and team scarves and rosettes permitted. Both sports were new to Marguerite but she loved watching the English abandon their reserve and sing and shout their support or good-humoured opposition.
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