Patty and Fay, and Miss Jacobs (whose Christian name remained a secret), all arrived at Goode’s Staff Entrance by twenty to nine in the morning, as they were meant to do, except that Fay once in a while was late, and looked it—harried and untidy. They went up to the top of the building (Staff and Administration) in the Staff Lift and went to the Staff Locker Room (past Accounts) to change into their black frocks, which were hanging in their lockers where they had left them on the previous night after changing to go home.
These black frocks were worn through the week and dry-cleaned by Goode’s over the weekend ready to start another week’s work on Monday morning, and smelt peculiar. Not nasty, but different—simply the result of the smell of frequent dry-cleaning, mingled with the scent of cheap talcum powder and sweat. Every Goode’s assistant had this smell while she was wearing her black frock.
These garments, which were supplied by Goode’s, who retained ownership, were designed to flatter both the fuller and the thinner figure and truly enhanced neither, but then, Goode’s assistants were not there to decorate the shop but to sell its wares. So each woman climbed into her black frock with a sigh of resignation, twitching hopelessly at it to make it sit better while regarding her reflection in the full-length mirror. The frocks were made of rayon crêpe in a somewhat late 1930s style, which had been retained because it was neat in outline and used relatively little cloth.
Patty Williams’s frock was an SSW as we know, whereas Fay Baines was an SW, but Miss Jacobs was a perfect OW, especially around the bust. Her size and her general appearance were pretty well the only things about Miss Jacobs which could be known; everything else was a mystery.
“That Miss Jacobs,” said Fay to her friend Myra in Repin’s where they were drinking iced coffee, “is a real mystery.”
Even Miss Cartright found a moment now and then to wonder about Miss Jacobs, who had never missed a single day’s work through either illness or misadventure. Who was she: where did she live and eat and sleep; what was her existence outside the opening hours of F. G. Goode’s? No one there had the merest idea, except for the Wages Department who knew where she lived but declined to share the information should anyone think of asking, which they didn’t. Miss Jacobs left Goode’s every evening in the skirt and blouse (and if it was winter, the jacket or coat) in which she had arrived, carrying a large string bag with a brown paper–wrapped parcel or two within it. What was in these parcels, for example? No one could say. She walked away down Castlereagh Street in the direction of the Quay: which could mean all kinds of places from Hunters Hill (unlikely) to Manly (just possible).
Miss Jacobs, stout and elderly, had a swarthy face and exiguous dark grey hair tied into a small antique-looking bun at the back of her large round head. She wore glasses with steel frames and always had a clean white handkerchief tucked into her bosom. She wore black lace-up shoes with Cuban heels and had a stompy rather pathetic walk. Mr. Ryder caught up with her in Pitt Street one evening and attempted to accompany her for some distance in a spirit of friendliness, but whether for necessity or not, she parted from him at the very next corner and walked away alone down Martin Place, muttering a word about Wynyard, but Mr. Ryder thought this must be a put-up job because he himself travelled via Wynyard and had never seen Miss Jacobs in the vicinity thereof.
Miss Jacobs had not only worked at Goode’s for longer than Mrs. Williams (who had started after leaving school in Children’s and transferred to Ladies’ four years ago) but was also rather important to the scheme of things in Ladies’ Cocktail, because she was in charge of alterations, which you could probably tell by the fact that she always wore a long tape-measure around her neck, so as to be ready for the ladies who wanted hems adjusted or even seams: the assistant who was serving such a lady would come out of the fitting room saying, “Miss Jacobs? Miss Jacobs, please? Alteration here when you’re free!” and Miss Jacobs would look up from the hem she was pinning in another fitting room and say around the pins in her mouth, “All in good time, I’ve only got one pair of hands. And legs, for the matter of that.” And the lady she was pinning would smile, or titter, in sympathy, as it were. When the frock was pinned it would go up to the seventh floor for sewing by one of the alteration hands and when it was done (it might have to wait its turn for a few days) it would be delivered, like so much of Goode’s merchandise (“Send it, please”), in one of Goode’s blue and yellow vans, which were a familiar sight in all the better-class suburbs of Sydney:
F. G. Goode’s
Serving the People of Sydney since 1895.
Miss Jacobs had been serving the people, at any rate the ladies, of Sydney since before the war—that utterly legendary and even fabulous era. She had started in Gloves and Hosiery, done a stint in Ladies’ Day Frocks (where she was taught to take charge of alterations) and then gone down to Ladies’ Sportswear and Casuals, but she had not cared for the ton of this department very much, and had been glad to come back to the second floor when a vacancy occurred in Ladies’ Cocktail, where she had now been ever since the New Look, tape-measure at the ready, and a box of pins to hand.