Free Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín Page B

something wrong, fixed quickly again on Miss Bartocci’s face.
    “Miss Fortini is going to teach you how to use the cash system, which is easy once you know it. And if you have any problems, go to her first, even the smallest thing. The only way for the customers to be happy is for the staff to be happy. You work nine to six, Monday through Saturday, with forty-five minutes for lunchand one half-day a week. And we encourage all our staff to do night classes—”
    “We were speaking about that just now,” Father Flood interrupted.
    “So if you wanted to do night classes, we would pay part of the tuition. Not all of it, mind. And if you want to purchase anything in the store, you tell Miss Fortini and with most things there will be a reduction in the price.”
    Miss Fortini asked Eilis if she was ready to start. Father Flood took his leave as Miss Bartocci went to her desk and briskly began to open the post. When Miss Fortini led her to the shop floor and showed her the cash system, Eilis did not want to say that they had exactly the same system in Bolger’s in Rafter Street at home, where the cash and a docket were put into a metal holder that was sent through the shop by a system of tubes until it arrived at the cash office, where the docket was marked paid, put back in the container with the change and returned. Eilis allowed Miss Fortini to explain it to her carefully, as though she had never seen anything like it before.
    Miss Fortini then alerted the cash office that she would be sending a number of dummy dockets, each with five dollars enclosed. She showed Eilis how to fill out the dockets, writing her own name and the date at the top, then below the item purchased with the quantity on the left-hand side and the price on the right-hand side. She should also, Miss Fortini said, note the amount of money she was sending on the back of the docket, just so there would be no misunderstanding. Most customers would have to wait for their change, Miss Fortini said. Hardly anyone ever came up with the right amount, and most items, in any case, cost some number of dollars and then ninety-nine cents, or an uneven number of cents. If a customer were purchasing more than one item, Miss Fortini advised, Eilis should do the maths herself, but it would always be checked as well in the cash office.
    “If you don’t make mistakes, they’ll notice you and they’ll get to like you,” she added.
    Eilis watched as Miss Fortini wrote out several dockets for her and sent them and then waited for them to return. She then filled some out herself, the first for a single item purchased, the second for a number of the same item, and the third for a complicated mixture of items. Miss Fortini stood over her as she did the addition.
    “It’s better to go slowly and then you won’t make mistakes,” she said.
    Eilis did not tell Miss Fortini that she never made mistakes when she did addition. Instead, she worked slowly, as she had been advised, making sure that the figures were correct.
    She was surprised by some of the items of clothing for sale. The cups of some of the brassieres seemed much more pointed than anything she had seen before, and an item called a two-way stretch, which looked as though it had plastic bones in the middle, was new to her. The first thing she sold was called a brasalette, and she decided that, when she knew the other boarders at Mrs. Kehoe’s well enough, she would ask one of them to take her through these items of American women’s underwear.
    The work was easy. Miss Fortini was interested only in time-keeping and tidiness and making sure that the slightest complaint or query was immediately conveyed to her. She was not hard to locate, Eilis discovered, as she was always watching, and if you seemed to be having the slightest difficulty with a customer and if you were not seen to be smiling, Miss Fortini would notice and begin to move towards you signalling to you, stopping only if she saw that you looked both