Free The Palace of Strange Girls by Sallie Day Page A

in to
     buy last-minute dresses for their holidays. And lots of them ask me what I think. We’ve barely a rail of summer dresses left.
     Blanche has had to order more from the suppliers. She’ll have been busy with all the work pressing and pricing up…”
    Helen’s voice trails off in disappointment. It is not merely the money she could be earning; she misses the excitement of
     all the new dresses and the crush of customers all wanting her attention. Helen is treated like an adult from the moment she
     starts work until the shop shuts and she reluctantly returns home.
    “You must be worth your weight in gold to Blanche.” Helen smiles and a blush of pleasure advances up her cheeks. “Do you get
     paid a bonus for all the dresses you sell?” Irene asks.
    It is common to discuss money and terribly impolite to ask about anything as personal as wages. Helen would love to tell Mrs.
     Sykes that she gets five percent on every dress she sells but years of conditioning prevent her.
    Helen has a natural aptitude for sales. It is to Helen that Blanche turns for an “up-to-date opinion” when a customer can’t
     make up her mind between a shot satin décolletage and a backless velvet cocktail dress. It is an unwritten rule that Helen
     recommends the more expensive gown, thereby maximizing Blanche’s profit margin and Helen’s percentage. There has only ever
     been one exception to the rule. Mrs. Taylor came in shortly after Helen started working in the shop. She was in search of
     an outfit for her daughter’s wedding and was very taken with a bright-blue suit that drew attention to her varicose veins
     and drained her face of color. Helen managed to persuade Mrs. Taylor into a cheaper floral dress in peach with matching jacket.
     It was only when she was ringing up the sale that she noticed Blanche looking daggers from the entrance to the dressing rooms.
     A sharp exchange between owner and assistant followed Mrs. Taylor’s triumphant exit from the shop. Despite Helen’s hopes that
     the customer, content with her purchase, might return to the shop on future occasions Blanche was adamant. “That beggar won’t
     come in again this side of Preston Guild. Eileen Taylor’s a cheapskate. She buys mail order.”
    This is the worst insult Blanche can ever bestow. Mail order sells mass-produced ill-fitting summer dresses for a fraction
     of the price. A thirty-five-shilling dress from Gammage’s Mail Order Catalogue retails at nearer four guineas in the front
     window of Blanche Fashions. Customers at the shop are provided with a personal fitting service undertaken by a qualified member
     of staff (Eva during the week and Helen on Saturdays). Their purchases are lovingly folded in tissue paper to prevent undue
     creasing and placed reverentially in a candy-striped box with pink rope carrier handles. Certain clients, due to their longstanding
     custom or the professional nature of their husbands’ work, are deemed worthy of the personal attention of Blanche herself.
     Such was Blanche’s fury following Mrs. Taylor’s purchase that Helen was forced to stay late to sponge face-powder stains off
     necklines and press various garments before returning them to their hangers. Helen would have had to stay longer had she not
     pricked her finger while mending a hem ripped earlier by a careless stiletto. It wouldn’t have mattered if the dress had been
     black, but Blanche, terrified of getting blood on the cream crêpe de Chine, snatched the dress out of Helen’s weary grasp
     and dismissed her with a wave.
    “What do you spend your wages on? Do you get cut-price dresses?” Mrs. Sykes asks.
    “No. I mean I could if I asked, but Mum thinks the sort of dresses Blanche sells are too old for me. Anyway, I’m saving up
     for a Dansette record player.”
    “Oh, do you like Cliff?”
    “He’s OK, but I like Bobby Darin better. He’s gorgeous. I wish I could see him.”
    “It was rock and roll night at the Mechanics’