“What would you like to do after this?” Jean asked, helping herself to more tea. An art gallery might be pushing things. You could have too much culture.
Margaret looked shy. “Shall I tell you what I’d like to do most?”
“Yes, please do.”
“I’d like to go and surprise Daddy at his shop.”
“Oh.” This wasn’t what Jean had been expecting and she had no ready excuse to hand, so she said, “Well, all right. If that’s what you’d like. But if he’s busy with customers we’ll have to keep out of the way.”
When the bill came, Margaret produced a small beaded purse from her shoulder bag and tried to give Jean a shilling.
“Mummy gave me some money to pay for things,” she said.
“Oh no,” said Jean, laughing. “That isn’t how it works at all. This is my treat.”
Margaret accepted this as she did all of Jean’s utterances and dropped the coin back in her purse.
It was only a short walk to Bedford Street and Jean felt her spirits lift at the first glimpse of the bottle-green shop front and the gold painted sign. A Silver Cross pram was parked on the pavement outside; a baby in a blue knitted romper was kicking vigorously at his blankets and chewing on his fist. One cheek was fiery red with toothache. Jean and Margaret stopped to chatter to him until the mother emerged from the shop next door and bore him away.
Howard was in conversation with a man by the till and didn’t notice the visitors peering through the window. Even when they opened the door, setting the bell jangling, it was a second or two before he recognized his own daughter, and then his face broke into a smile of surprise and pleasure.
“I don’t know what she’d like,” the customer was saying, peering helplessly at the velvet trays of necklaces and bracelets laid out on the display case. “They all look much the same to me.”
“Perhaps this lady can advise you,” said Howard, indicating Jean. “She can bring a feminine perspective.”
The man, who was in his late twenties, perhaps, with a haircut of military severity, looked at her with helpless gratitude.
“But be warned, she has very expensive taste,” he added.
“That is quite untrue,” Jean assured the customer, who was now looking rather confused. “I know next to nothing about jewelry. But I can tell you which one I think is the prettiest.”
She indicated a delicate silver bracelet, dotted with moonstones—the cheapest of all the exhibits, though this was not, for once, a consideration.
“I like this one,” said Margaret, pointing a nibbled finger at a more ostentatious and costly ruby pendant.
“That’s lovely too,” Jean agreed, realizing that she had hardly done Howard a favor by recommending the one with the modest price tag.
“Yes. Perhaps a ruby,” the young man said. “I think it sends the right signals.”
Howard’s lips twitched and Jean looked away, feigning sudden interest in a display of gentlemen’s wristwatches.
“There are actually matching earrings,” said Margaret. “You could get those, too.”
“Good heavens, Margaret,” said Howard. “I’m afraid this young lady is my daughter,” he explained. “And therefore not an entirely disinterested party.”
“Quite the saleswoman already!” said the man, and almost seemed persuaded to take them until it occurred to him that he couldn’t now be sure whether his fiancée had pierced earlobes. The fact that he couldn’t remember this detail troubled him. “You’d think I’d have noticed a thing like that,” he said, shaking his head as Howard polished the ruby pendant and put it in a velvet box.
The box went inside an elegant green bag with handles of satin ribbon. Jean felt a surge of envy for this unknown young woman, soon to be the recipient of such a lavish gift. Although she could not imagine any circumstance in which she would be able to wear a ruby pendant, it would be an exciting addition to her drawer of treasures.
Margaret was staring with unembarrassed interest as the man produced four new five-pound notes from his wallet and laid them on the counter with what was almost a shiver of reluctance. Jean could sense his anxiety at parting with such a large sum of money all at once. It would take her nearly a month to earn it.
“Well done, you two!” said Howard when the customer had gone on his way, carrying the dainty bag a trifle self-consciously, having failed in his attempt to squash it into his pocket. “That’s the best sale I’ve made all day.”