Later that night, Ivy stood in the little flat above the shop and stared about her in amazement. ‘Are yer quite sure you heard her right?’ she questioned. ‘All this fer just eight bob a week? Why, we’ve even got us own bedrooms an’ a proper little kitchen to cook in.’
‘I know.’ Holly gave a little twirl of excitement. ‘Just think we might even dare to venture out after dark without worrying about women of the night shouting after us on street corners because they think we’re after their clients. Oh, do say you like it, Ivy!’
‘Like it! I bloody love it,’ Ivy responded, hardly able to believe their luck. ‘But when did she say we could move in?’
‘We haven’t spoken about that yet but I dare say as soon as we’re ready. Bear in mind it will be Christmas in a few days’ time and you won’t want to be moving then … will you?’
‘Not ’alf! I’d carry our stuff here tonight given half a chance.’
‘In that case I’ll speak to Miss May first thing in the morning then,’ Holly promised and after leaving the flat they carefully locked the door behind them and made their way back to Soho.
‘I don’t see why you shouldn’t move in just as soon as you like,’ Miss May told Holly the next day, and so that very evening she and Ivy packed up some of their meagre possessions, took down the curtains that Holly had made and set off for the flat.
‘We can bring the rest tomorrow after work,’ Ivy said. ‘Though I have a feelin’ Mrs Hall ain’t goin’ to be none too pleased when we tell her we’re leavin’.’
Holly shrugged. ‘She can’t complain. We’ve paid the rent up till the end of this week,’ she pointed out, but as it turned out, Ivy was proved to be right.
‘What do yer mean, yer goin’ tonight?’ Mrs Hall sputtered when late the next evening Holly tapped on her door to return the key. ‘It’s almost Christmas – what chance do I ’ave of lettin’ it out again till after the ’olidays? Yer should ’ave given me some notice so I’m goin’ to ask fer another week’s rent fer me inconvenience.’
‘Ask away but yer won’t get it.’ Ivy stepped forward and taking the key from Holly she firmly pressed it into the woman’s hand. ‘We paid fair an’ square fer the time we were here an’ you’ll not get a penny piece more.’
‘Humph! Ungrateful bitches,’ Mrs Hall grumbled as she went back into her own room, slamming the door resoundingly behind her.
They had almost reached the front door when Sally, the little girl from the room next to theirs, appeared from the street, her face pinched and her poor little hands blue with cold.
‘Oh, I’m glad I’ve seen you, I wanted to say goodbye,’ Holly told her and was shocked when the little girl’s face crumpled. Holly often slipped her a penny and she would miss her. Now Holly fumbled in her purse and pressed some coins into the little girl’s hand.
‘Go and buy yourself some sweeties,’ she urged her and suddenly the little girl threw her arms about her waist and hugged her fiercely before disappearing out of the door again like a shot from a gun. She knew better than to go home with money in her hand, as her father would take it off her and she had every intention of doing exactly what Holly had suggested.
‘Poor little mite. I hope she’ll be all right,’ Holly fretted.
Ivy gave her a sympathetic smile. She knew what a soft heart Holly had.
‘Come on,’ she urged. ‘If we want to get our new place all set up for Christmas we need to get a move on.’
For the next few nights and every spare minute they had when they weren’t working was spent scrubbing and cleaning the little flat from top to bottom and it was soon transformed into a comfortable little home that they were very proud of. Ivy had attacked the dark wood table and chairs and the old sideboard with lavender furniture wax and now it gleamed in the light from the fire. The bare floorboards had been scrubbed until they were almost white and Ivy had whitewashed the walls, which had brightened the place up no end. Even the fabric on the sofa had been thoroughly washed and now looked inviting with its pretty cushions spread across it. The curtains that Holly had stitched for their old room hung at the window in the living room, although after Christmas they would have to buy some more for their bedrooms.
‘There, I reckon we’re all ready fer Christmas now,’ Ivy said as she stood back and eyed their little home with pride. ‘It’s a shame we couldn’t have got us a Christmas tree though.’
‘Perhaps next year. At least we have a chicken to cook,’ Holly pointed out. ‘And tonight we’ll go to the carol service at St Anne’s. I’m starting my Red Cross course there after the New Year.’
They spent Christmas and the New Year quietly at home together, content in each other’s company, although Holly’s thoughts constantly drifted to her mother and she wondered how she would be coping with their first Christmas apart. She hoped she managed to enjoy it, because she hated to think of her mother being unhappy without her.
On the stroke of twelve on New Year’s Eve, as they listened to the chimes of Big Ben, the girls toasted each other with a glass of sherry that Ivy had bought especially for the occasion, and Holly resolved to make her mother proud of her in the coming year. Neither of them had drunk alcohol before and Holly wasn’t that keen on it but Ivy drank two small glasses straight off and then couldn’t stop giggling.
The day after New Year’s Day, they were back at work bright and early and Holly began to feel a little happier, though she still missed her mother dreadfully and wondered if it might be possible to visit her. She suggested it to Ivy that night as they sat eating dinner.
‘I don’t see why not,’ Ivy answered. ‘You could always meet her away from the house if you don’t feel comfortable going back there. Your gran’father couldn’t object to that surely? There’s no reason why you couldn’t let her have your address either. At least we have somewhere respectable to live now.’
And so that very evening Holly sat down and wrote to her mother.
Dear Mother,
I hope this letter finds you well and that you had a good Christmas and New Year. Both Ivy and I are well and are now living in a very nice flat above the shop where I work. My employer, Miss May, is a dear soul and Ivy and I are enjoying making the flat into a home when we are not working. We had a quiet Christmas together and I must admit that I missed you terribly and I know Ivy missed her family too. In fact, she sent a large portion of her wages home to ensure her mother had money to buy some little gifts for her siblings. I pray that some time soon I might see you, there is so much to tell. It is so different living here to being back in our sleepy little market town. Everything here is hustle and bustle and the city never seems to sleep! I found it hard to adjust at first but thankfully I am getting more used to it now. Do give my love to Cook and, of course, my regards to Grandfather. It seems so long since I last saw you …
She went on to talk of trivialities before adding their address and the next morning during her short break she hurried along to the post box to post it.
The girls spent the next weekend scouring the markets for things for their flat. Holly still had some of the money her mother had given her and she was eager to make their little place into a real home. They bought a roll of oil cloth, which they managed to fit in the lounge themselves and then they found a large rug to cover most of it and make the room feel warmer. She also bought some material which she sewed into curtains for their bedrooms.
‘Cor, it looks quite posh now, don’t it?’ Ivy commented proudly. ‘An’ now we’ve got it all just about how we want it we can start to do a bit o’ sightseein’ on our days off.’ She was longing to see some of the sights Holly had shown her in books. There was Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square and the Houses of Parliament, to name but a few, but up until now there had been no time.
‘We’ll start this very Sunday,’ Holly agreed. Thankfully, although it was cold the snow had held off. ‘We can use the trams to see most of the places.’
The following day, Miss May followed them upstairs to see what they had done with the place and she was clearly impressed with their efforts.
‘Why, you’ve made it into a real little home,’ she said approvingly as she looked around admiringly.
Holly hurried away to put the kettle on for tea and Miss May eyed Ivy with interest. She and Holly seemed poles apart in every way. Ivy was nowhere near as well spoken as Holly but it was clear that they were close and she wondered how they had met.
‘Did you know each other back in your home town?’ she asked tentatively as she took a seat on the sofa beside the fire.
‘Yer could say that … I was Holly’s maid.’ Ivy chortled with laughter at the astonished look on Miss May’s face. ‘An’ when I knew she were comin’ here there was no way I could let her come on her own.’
‘I see. How very unusual for two such young ladies to choose to come and live in the capital all alone,’ Miss May commented.
When Holly appeared with a tray of tea, Miss May told her, ‘Ivy here was just telling me that she was your maid when you lived at home. Whatever made you both come all this way to live?’
‘Oh, well, as you know I needed to get away, and we just got on the first train out, so we could have ended up anywhere, I suppose,’ Holly said as she poured the tea into some dainty china cups she had found on a stall in the market. ‘How is your husband?’ she asked, and the woman’s face clouded.
‘Not well at all to be honest. He has a degenerative muscle-wasting disease and struggles to get about now. That was something I was going to talk to you about actually.’ She eyed Holly thoughtfully for a moment before asking, ‘Do you feel confident enough to open the shop each morning for me yet? Just so that I can have a little extra time with him before I have to come into work each day.’
‘Of course,’ Holly agreed eagerly. She had grown very fond of her employer and would have done anything to please her.
‘In that case I’ll give you the key to the shop door.’ Miss May fumbled in her bag for it. ‘I’ll aim to be in for ten each morning. That will give me time to help Ernest get dressed and get him settled.’
‘That’s no problem at all,’ Holly assured her. ‘Make it even later than that if you need to. I know how to use the till now and I know where everything is so I’ll be fine.’
‘That is a weight off my mind, dear, thank you so much.’ Miss May finished her tea and rose reluctantly. ‘Well, I really ought to be off, my husband will be wondering where I’ve got to,’ she told them. ‘Although I must admit I could quite happily sit here by your fire all night. It’s so cosy up here.’
Miss May left feeling a lot happier than when she had arrived and Holly glowed with pride at the trust she had placed in her.
‘I reckon we’ve really dropped on us feet here,’ Ivy sighed happily as she sipped at her second cup of tea. And Holly could only agree with her.
The arrangement worked well. Each day Holly made sure she had opened the shop in time for the seamstresses to arrive and then she would attend to customers who came in, or tidy up until Miss May arrived.
The two seamstresses were both London born and bred and Holly got on well with them. Dora Brindley was a huge, motherly woman who came from Whitechapel and Enid Weston was her complete opposite, tiny and birdlike who proudly informed Holly that she had been born within the sound of Bow Bells.
‘My friend works in Bow,’ Holly informed her one morning as Dora was setting her sewing machine up ready to start work. ‘At the Bryant and May match factory.’
‘Hmm, well she’d do well to look for another job,’ Dora warned. ‘It ain’t a good place to work long-term. All that phosphorus they have to work with affects their health in the end. A very good friend o’ mine died from phossy jaw from workin’ there and it weren’t a pretty sight, I don’t mind tellin’ you.’
Holly nibbled her lip anxiously as she returned to the shop and turned the sign on the door to ‘Open’. Perhaps she should have a word with Ivy about it. She couldn’t bear to think of anything like that happening to her.
When she raised the subject that evening Ivy’s reaction was far from what she would have expected.
‘I’ve been thinkin’ much the same meself,’ Ivy admitted. ‘Some o’ the poor women I work with have gripin’ toothache and loads of ’em suffer from abscesses an’ all. Still, the job is better than nothin’ for now but don’t worry, when we have a bit behind us, I’ll look around for some other job. There’s bound to be somethin’ goin’.’
The following day the bell above the shop door tinkled and a rather stout lady in a very heavily plumed hat breezed in.
‘Ah, Lady Hamilton.’ Miss May scooted forward to greet her, pulling out a chair, and glancing through the window Holly saw a chauffeured automobile standing at the kerb.
‘Good morning.’ The woman sat down and inclined her head imperiously. ‘I have come to choose the material and the pattern for a new gown. It’s for Ladies’ Day at Ascot in June. One must look one’s best for such an event. All the most elite people will be there, of course, and one wouldn’t like to be outdone.’
‘Of course,’ Miss May agreed as Holly tried hard not to laugh. It appeared that this woman was larger than life in every way and was clearly a raging snob.
‘Holly, would you lift some of the material down for me?’ Miss May simpered. ‘What sort of thing did you have in mind, Lady Hamilton?’
The woman waved a heavily beringed hand airily. ‘Oh something bright, don’t you think? It will be summertime after all. What’s that blue satin the girl has there? The colour reminds me of summer skies.’
As Miss May stared worriedly at the lady’s large girth she thought that the material would be quite wrong for her. It could only accentuate her portly figure but as she had taught Holly, the customer was always right, so she fetched the material Holly had just laid on the counter and spread it across the lady’s lap.
‘It’s a very fine quality,’ she assured her. ‘But perhaps we could use it for accents on something a little more discreet?’
‘Nonsense,’ the woman snorted, clearly used to always having her own way. ‘Let me look at the pattern book.’ And so for the next twenty minutes she pored through the patterns, finally settling on one that again Miss May thought was quite unsuitable. Even so she sent for one of the seamstresses who ushered her into a fitting room where she took her measurements. When the woman finally breezed out of the shop sometime later Miss May sighed. ‘Aw well, it’s her choice, I suppose.’
Holly giggled. ‘They’ll certainly see her coming,’ she said wickedly. ‘Especially if she has a milliner make her a hat in the same material.’
‘She lost her husband a short while ago,’ Miss May informed her. ‘And from the rumours I’ve heard she’s having a whale of a time and is very attracted to younger male escorts.’
They both fell about laughing and Holly realised that in actual fact Miss May had quite a wicked sense of humour despite the prim façade she presented to the public and her customers.