The Women in Black by Madeleine St John Read Free Book Online Page A

Goode’s, where we must now—’ and here Magda consulted a diamond watch—‘return, I believe.’
    ‘Oh yes, thank you,’ Lisa stuttered in confusion.
    Magda’s eye swept over her as she rose, gathering her book and her litter. What a tiny and half-made creature this was, who had been proposed to her as an assistant in her Model Gowns—should she need her. As if she might!—but come to think of it, she could be useful for one or two tedious little tasks; and in any case, if she were to spirit Lisa away from Ladies’ Cocktail for a while, it would spite those catty women who had the present charge of her. Well, she would do it, and soon, too.
    ‘Dear Miss Cartright—she is so elegant, don’t you agree? She has true style, unlike many women I see around me,’ and here Magda cast a great lustrous-eyed glance around her which comprehended everyone within a radius of one hundred yards, and sighed, but with resignation. ‘She tells me I am to have the use of your no doubt excellent services during the next few weeks while I cope with my Christmas rush. Is that not so?’
    ‘Well, yes,’ said Lisa, ‘I think she did tell me that I was to help you too sometimes.’
    ‘Yes, well, we shall plan that in the next week,’ said Magda comfortably. ‘In the meantime, I wonder why your back is wet. Have you been sweating?’
    ‘Oh no!’ cried Lisa, ‘I’ve been sitting by the fountain—it’s just the spray.’
    ‘You silly girl!’ exclaimed Magda. ‘Do you not know how dangerous is it to sit by a wet fountain in such heat? My God. You will catch la grippe if you persist in this folly. Furthermore, damp clothes are very inelegant. Please do not do such a thing again. The damp is also bad for your hair,’ she added, casting a critical eye at the same, and thinking, I wonder if I could persuade her to go to Raoul, he is the only person in this entire city or perhaps this entire country who could cut such hair. Ah, the people here know nothing. And this child here knows, my God, even less.
    They had reached the Staff Entrance and Lisa ran up the fire stairs to change. Magda looked at her retreating figure and began her own slower and briefer ascent in a state of some satisfaction. She was doing arithmetic in her head and reassuring herself that, at the rate she and Stefan were going, they would by the end of the next year have saved enough capital to buy the lease of a shop in Macleay Street or even Double Bay: for Magda had every intention of presiding in time over her own extremely exclusive and exorbitantly expensive frock shop, and the Model Gowns could go to hell.

9
    Patty Williams and Fay Baines were sitting at a table in the Staff Canteen at Goode’s on the second Monday in December. They did not usually have their luncheon break at the same time, but with Lisa on the strength it was now felt to be a convenient arrangement as far as the manning of Ladies’ Cocktail was concerned, because in fact this section tended not to be too busy during the lunch hour, Ladies, it seemed, who bought Cocktail Frocks preferring to do so earlier in the day or else, in a rush, much later. So here they were.
    But it was more convenient for Patty than for Fay as any intelligent person might have observed, for such a one would have noted that Fay’s make-up today covered a very wan reality: her eyelids indicated sleeplessness and her pallor dejection.
    ‘Is that a new face powder you’re trying?’ said Patty. ‘It looks paler than your usual. I always use the same one, myself. Never changed since I left school. I don’t suppose Frank’d notice even if I did,’ she added, with a modulation of tone which promised worse.
    Here it came.
    ‘I could paint my face green and he wouldn’t notice, not him. Oh well.’
    And she pursed her lips, because she suddenly thought to herself, I don’t want to be saying things like that to Fay.
    ‘The trouble with Frank is,’ she went on, more brightly, ‘he’s got this new boss