Free Mrs. Engels by Gavin McCrea

put my hand under my chin and tap my lip with a finger, as if considering. “Do me one without the frills and I’ll give you a pound for it.”
    â€œWithout the frills, madam?”
    â€œNone of those ridiculous trimmings you have in the window there. All that unnecessary bib and tucker.”
    â€œWe have other models we can—”
    â€œI want it plain, plain as can be.”
    â€œYou don’t want to see—?”
    â€œDo you understand the word plain, young lass?”
    â€œOf course.”
    â€œWell, that’s what I want. And I want it for a pound.”
    â€œI shall have to speak to—”
    â€œSpeak to whomsoever you like. Mrs. Engels is the name. One-two-two Regent’s Park Road. I’ll be here.”
    Curly curtsies and goes into the back room. Pinch forces a smile into her cramped little face and goes to busy herself with the show dummies. I turn my gander to the carpet to keep from catching myself in the looking glasses that leer from every side.
    â€œAll right, Mrs. Engels,” says Curly when she comes back, “that should be fine. If you would like to come this way, we shall get you measured up.”
    â€œThat won’t be needed, I can tell you straight off what I am.”
    â€œI do not doubt it, Mrs. Engels, but at Barrow’s we like to measure all our customers to ensure the best style and fit.”
    â€œListen, chicken, do you have a book to write in?”
    â€œOf course.”
    â€œWell, put this down.”
    Flushing, she picks up her feather. Dips it.
    â€œBust thirty-four, hips thirty-six, length-to-foot just as you see me.” I step back to give her a full view. She frowns at me and scribbles down. “I’ll be back at five tomorrow to pick it up.”
    â€œTomorrow?”
    â€œThat’s right.”
    â€œMadam, I’m sorry, but we usually need at least three working days. We could have it ready by close of business Monday.”
    I pick a sovereign out of my reticule and put it down on the page of the book.
    She waves her hands over it as if to magic it away. “No, madam, please, you can pay when you come to collect it.”
    â€œTake it now and be done with it. And I’ll be seeing you tomorrow.”
    I find a cookshop a little up the road and order a chop and a pint of Bass’s ale, and now a slice of plum pudding and a cup of ready-made coffee with cream and sugar. I take the table in the window, for I like to look out.
    Passing by, streams of people with bags and boxes: gone out for a ribbon and coming home with the stock of an entire silk mercer’s. These places, they do it on the cheap and make their capital out of pressure and high prices. It takes cleverness and steel for a woman to get her fair portion.
    Exhausted, I look into my cup and try not to feel like the only one fighting.

VII. The Party
    When it comes to the dangers of a bit of food, the Germans can be as afraid as the English, so I eat before we leave. Spiv heats me up a kidney pudding, and I have a glass of milk with it to line the gut, and after that some cold saveloy and penny loaf.
    As it happens, I needn’t have ruined my stomach, for there’s vittles enough to feed a battalion: tables of meat and fowl and fish and cheese, salvers of delicates and dumplings carried by livery servants in silk hose, all sorts of strong-tasting aliments smelling up in our noses. Who’s died? I think as I marvel the fare.
    Tussy appears beside me. “I’ve been looking all over, Aunt Lizzie.”
    Embarrassed to be the only one grazing, I drop my pastry roll onto the damask. “Tussy, my sweet darling.”
    â€œCome on, I want to present you.”
    She takes a glass of red from a tray, puts it in my hand, and pulls me with her into the crush. “I don’t think I have ever been in a room with so many interesting people at once,” she says.
    The men have changed the usual shab-and-drab for