Free The Women in Black by Madeleine St John Page A

order five or six of the semi-formal evening frocks which hung together in one mahogany open cabinet on their pink satin-covered hangers and was now hunting amongst the unsorted remainder for the model named Tara, described in the book as black and white silk taffeta, Creed.
    As she carefully slid each hanger forward to inspect the Model Gown which hung behind it, finding now Laura, now Rosy, now Minuit, but never yet Tara, her gaze was suddenly—as she pushed Minuit further forward to clear a space—filled with the vision of—it was a magical coincidence—Lisette.
    Child of the imagination of a great couturière , having that precise mixture of the insouciant and the romantic, the sophisticated and the simple, that only the female mind can engender, Lisette was the quintessential evening frock for a young girl: a froth of red pin-spotted white organza with a low neck, a tight bodice, a few deep ruffles over the shoulders, artful red silk piping edging these ruffles and the three tiers of the gathered skirts whose deepest tier would have cleared the fl oor by some eight inches, to leave a good view of a slender leg, a delicate ankle. The effect was of tiny spots set off by narrow stripes, the gaiety of crimson set off by the candour of white; the silky fabric very faintly shimmered.
    Lisa stood, gazing her fill. She was experiencing for the first time that particular species of love-at-first-sight which usually comes to a woman much earlier in her life, but which sooner or later comes to all: the sudden recognition that a particular frock is not merely pretty, would not merely suit one, but answers beyond these necessary attributes to one’s deepest notions of oneself. It was her frock: it had been made, however unwittingly, for her.
    She stood for a long time, drinking it in. The encounter was faintly, vaguely, strangely similar to her first meeting with the Tyger. She gazed on, marvelling, and then at last slowly, wrenchingly, she pushed the hanger forward, and continued her search for Tara.

17
    Miss Jacobs, Mrs Williams, Miss Baines and Miss Miles had just received their wages envelopes, with their Christmas bonuses added on, which aroused very satisfactory sensations in each one as she contemplated the disposition of the surplus funds. The shape of Miss Jacobs’s contemplations must remain forever a mystery; Lisa’s we might quite easily guess at; Fay’s perhaps less easily; Patty’s, we know.
    ‘I’m just going to change out of this black frock,’ she told Fay at lunchtime, ‘and go down and look at them swimming cossies, and one or two other things maybe, so maybe I’ll see you in the canteen later on, and maybe not, I might have to skip lunch today.’
    Oddly for her she had not mentioned the black nightdress to a soul: it was her secret. Except for Paula, of course. She would just change now very quickly and then run down to Lingerie and—no, she thought, I won’t; I’ll go to the cossies first, because I don’t want anyone to see me carrying that parcel from Lingerie (which used a different patterned wrapping paper, printed with a lace and ribbon design) because they might guess what’s in it, or they might ask. So I’ll just go to the cossies first.
    The consequence was that she spent so much time trying on swimming costumes and then suddenly felt so hungry that she thought, I haven’t time to get my nightie and eat as well so I’ll get my nightie tomorrow; and that was how she came at last to reach home on the Friday night before Christmas carrying a Goode’s Lingerie parcel containing one black nylon nightdress with pink satin ribbon trim, SSW.
    The sun had shone constantly every day now for several weeks during which the temperature had steadily, relentlessly, risen, and every wall in the vast city, every pavement, every roof, was soaked in heat. People moved slowly through the miasmic atmosphere, their eyes narrowed against the glare; their minds contracted into a state of wilting apathy,