Free The Good Provider by Jessica Stirling Page B

would be marrying a city gent, though how that transformation would be accomplished was a question that remained unanswered.
    Naturally Craig would not be caught dead inside such a repository of feminine culture. He hung about on the pavement, his back to the windows, paced up and down, smoked three of his five cigarettes, watched a gang of labourers tear up cobbles and a tar-boiler pour out pitch, eyed the pert and pretty misses from the professional offices and ogled the elegant ladies as they climbed in and out of cabs and carriages and showed their ankles, all very aware of themselves. He had told Kirsty to take her time, to set the goods she wanted to one side, come out, tell him how much she had spent and he would give her the money. He still had a market mentality. He did not trust swanky city shopkeepers any more than he trusted Irish horse-traders. He expected Kirsty to be absent for about ten minutes or a quarter of an hour; Craig had never been in a clothing store with his mother and had no notion of the sort of haze that can descend on a girl under such circumstances. Kirsty was gone for well over an hour. She emerged – at last – glowing.
    Craig said, ‘About bloody time.’
    She looked jubilant, radiant.
    ‘How much?’ he enquired, realising that no matter what sum she had spent it would be cruel to go back on his word. ‘What’s the bad news?’
    ‘It’s – it’s seven pounds an’ eight shillin’s.’
    ‘ What! ’
    ‘But Craig, you told me—’
    ‘Aye, aye.’
    Stoically he dug into his trouser pocket and took out one of the fivers and three single pound notes. Glancing furtively this way and that, as if he expected to be picked up for soliciting a lady’s favours on a public thoroughfare, he slipped the money into her hand. Kirsty kissed him on the cheek and, laughing, whirled and shot like an arrow back through the shop’s swing-door.
    ‘Seven bloody guineas!’ Craig murmured under his breath, ‘Dear God!’ and lighted another cigarette even though his throat, unused to such indulgence, was sore and constricted.
    The essential folly was a powder-blue costume with a shaped bolero jacket and a mermaid skirt. It was totally impractical, hardly the sort of rig she could wear to scrub steps or polish brasses. But she could not resist the appeal of the garment or the patter of the smart Glaswegian counter-hands, who oohed and aahed and assured her, when she tried the costume on for size, that she would knock all the lads for six in that one. Kirsty convinced herself that Craig would adore it as much as she did, would be proud to be seen with her in the powder-blue.
    After spending three pounds and fourteen shillings on the original items, spending more seemed as easy as sweeping a floor. She flitted from department to department with an almost proprietorial air and purchased a pair of quite sensible shoes, a useful long coat of showerproof cloth, similar to Mrs Nicholson’s, and a plain – well, plainish – hat. Finally she bought a dress-hamper in buff wicker, had the assistants accumulate her purchases at the counter in the gown department and total up the cost.
    It did not strike Kirsty that she had acted irresponsibly or that Craig, in not clipping her spendthrift wings, was being irresponsible too. In due course she emerged from the door of the fashion house accoutred in all her finery, lugging the basket and an extra brown-paper parcel. She had a suspicion that it hadn’t been quite ‘proper’ to put on the new clothes there in the shop and carry her old ones away but she no longer cared. She cared even less for customs and good manners when she saw the effect that the outfit had on Craig. She slipped her arm through his and made him turn around. His mouth opened, and his eyes were round as saucers.
    ‘My God, Kirsty! What’ve you done to yourself?’
    ‘Do you not like it?’
    ‘Aye,’ he said, inspecting her. ‘Aye, you’re a corker, a real corker.’
    ‘It cost an