The Women in Black Read Online Free PDF Page A

or even a day frock with their little ones in tow. Up here, all was luxe, calme et volupté , with nice pink lights and pink-tinted mirrors which made you look just lovely, and the thick grey silence underfoot of finest Axminster.
    The women in black were all at their stations ready to face the summer day by nine o’clock precisely, when Miss Cartright came swishing over to them in her coin-spotted cotton piqué.
    ‘Girls!’ she cried.
    How they detested that. It was rumoured that she had been Head Prefect at PLC and couldn’t they just imagine it. Such side! Here she was. Now what?
    ‘One of the temporary staff will be joining you next week,’ said Miss Cartright with a bright smile. ‘I hope you’ll make her welcome. I know you don’t usually have a temp in this section, but I think she will be useful, and she can help Magda out as well.’
    Oh, gawd.
    At the very end of the Ladies’ Frocks Department, past Cocktail Frocks, there was something very special, something quite, quite wonderful; but it wasn’t for everybody: that was the point. Because there, at the very end, there was a lovely arch, on which was written in curly letters Model Gowns. And beyond the arch was a rose-pink cave illuminated by frilly little lamps and furnished with a few elegant little sofas upholstered in oyster-grey brocade; and the walls were lined with splendid mahogany cupboards in which hung, on pink satin-covered hangers, the actual Model Gowns, whose fantastic prices were all in guineas.
    To one side of the cave there was a small Louis XVI-style table and chair, where ladies could write cheques or sign sales dockets, and to each side was a great cheval glass where a lady having donned a Model Gown (did she dare) in one of the large and commodious fitting rooms might look at herself properly, walking around and turning, to get the effect of the frock in the sort of proper big space where it would ultimately be seen. A chandelier hung from the ceiling; almost the only fitment lacking to the scene was the bottle of Veuve Clicquot foaming at the mouth and the tulip-shaped glass; in all other respects the cave was a faithful reproduction of the luxurious space in which its clients were to be supposed continually to have their being: and the pythoness who guarded the cave was Magda.
    Magda, the luscious, the svelte and full-bosomed, the beau tifully tailored and manicured and coiffed, was the most over whelming, scented, gleaming, god-awful and ghastly snake-woman that Mrs Williams, Miss Baines and even, probably, Miss Jacobs herself had ever seen, or even imagined. Magda (no one could even try to pronounce her frightful Continental surname) was just a terrible fact of life which you ignored most of the time, but if they were going to share a temp with Magda they knew who would be doing most of the sharing: they were going to have Magda slithering out of her pink cave and sliding over to Ladies’ Cocktail and pinching that temp away from them just the minute she showed herself useful.
    That was a fact , because Magda was the kind of woman who always got what she wanted: you could tell. Because Magda (gawd help us) was a Continental : and weren’t they glad they weren’t.
    At least Mrs Williams was; she was quite definite about that. ‘Gawd,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t stand to get about like that.’
    Miss Jacobs simply looked more than usually affronted, even slightly offended, as if she had just seen a spider in her teacup. Fay Baines thought her frightful, just frightful, the way she walked, and that; but at home in front of her mirror she wondered seriously just what sort of make-up Magda used and how she put it on, because the woman was forty if she was a day, and she looked—you had to hand it to her—she looked terrific. You had to hand it to her.

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    When Lesley Miles arrived for her interview for a position as Sales Assistant (Temporary) at Goode’s, she was given a form to fill in, and the first word she wrote on it,