Babbacombe's

It's December, so it's time for the Dean Street Press Challenge! For those who don't know, Dean Street Press is an indie publisher bringing 'forgotten' books back to life. The company's catalogue includes a lot of Golden Age crime, as well as the Furrowed Middlebrow imprint, which features some wonderful novels that have fallen from popularity over the years, but are well worth rediscovering. Anyway, Liz Dexter at Adventures in reading, running and working from home is hosting a celebration of all things Dean Street, which runs until Christmas Eve.

I've read (and enjoyed) a lot of DSP books over the last few years - they've provided perfect, light-hearted reading to while the time away during the Darling Husband's many hospital visits. So here are some thoughts on Babbacombe's, by Susan Scarlett (aka Noel Streatfeild). Babbacombe's is a department store, where Beth Carson is just starting work as the junior in Gowns, at everyone's beck and call. Her father George is a salesman in Hardware, and her or[haned cousin Dulcie, who has come to live with the family, becomes a lift girl, and gets to wear a green suit 'in huntsman style' (comprising breeches and a many collared-coat), as well as top boots and a tricorne hat. I'm not too sure what huntsman style or top boots are, but if you imagine a pantomime principal boy (as traditionally played by a girl) you're probably not too far off the mark.

Like all the other lift girls, Dulcie has to learn the lists of departments on the various floors, which sounds a lot like the voice reciting the goods on offer in the TV show Are You Being Served:

Ground floor: confectionery, cooked meats, hardware, food market, ribbons, flowers, haberdashery, lampshades, linen, lace, handbags. First floor: boyswear, menswear, inexpensive millinery, perfumery, gloves, post office, library, rest rook. Second floor: model millinery, furs, artificial flowers, knitwear, blouses, coats, inexpensive gowns, clothes for misses. Third floor: costumes, gowns, inexpensive coats, skirts, outsize department, juvenile, baby linen, lingerie, beachwear, corsets. Fourth floor: sports, toys, sports-wear, furniture, furnishings. Fifth floor: restaurants only.

The Carsons remind me a lot of the Stevens family in RC Sherriff's The Fortnight in September. George, his wife Janet, and their five children (Beth is the oldest) live in a small, cramped Victorian house, with a narrow garden leading down to the railway embankment. They don't have much money, but they are happy with what they have, and with their place in the world. They are decent, honest, hard-working, and loving, always ready to support each other and to help others. Dulcie's looks, values and character are completely alien to their way of life - and she can't understand them any more than they can understand her. 

Beth is shocked when she meets her blonde-haired cousin at the station:

Dulcie had a black crepe-de-Chine dress with white collars and cuffs; it had a little white lace at the hem to look like a petticoat. On the back of her head was a black straw hat tied under her chin with black ribbons. Her skirt barely covered her knees, her stockings were so sheer her legs looked bare. She had on exaggeratedly high-heeled shoes with no toes. Through her stockings her toenails showed painted with the same enamel as her fingers.

Janet recognises the 'cheap pseudo-smartness' of Dulcie's appearance, and feels nothing but pity for the girl, whose talk is as cheap as her clothes, full of smutty innuendo and 'knowing' glances  She is only interested in men - and herself. And she seems to take pleasure in upsetting other people. Actually, Dulcie seems to be taking over here, when the main protagonist is Beth. We watch her at home, and at work, getting grips with her job, making her first sale, falling victim to a shoplifter... And falling in love with a man she meets at Paddington Station when she trips over his dachshund! 

Then she gets stuck in a lift with him when the lift breaks down between floors. He turns out to be David Babbacombe, son of the owner, who doesn't work but lives off his father. It's a short novel, and the plot, such as it is, is slight and predictable. There are misunderstandings (engineered, of course, by Dulcie), but this is a fairy tale, and all ends happily, just as you know it will.

Although this was published in 1941 there is no mention of the war, and I suspect people relished the opportunity to immerse themselves in a book where there were no bombs, and no shortages, and where life carried on just as it had always done. It begs comparison with Business as Usual, by Jane Oliver and Ann Stafford, which I reviewed here. I have to admit, I rather like books set in shops - they're a bit like novels featuring boarding houses or hotels, where all kinds of disparate people meet and move on. Here, even the bit part characters have some kind of back story, and Streatfeild (writing as Susan Scarlett). brings them to life in very few words. Portraying family dynamics is one of her strengths, and the Carsons and the way they react with each other are utterly credible. 

Streatfeild is also good on clothes. She knew how important they can be, and that you need the right outfit for the right occasion - think about the m'audition dresses in Ballet Shoes. Take Beth's work frock:

It was an amusing yet simple garment. It had about it a faint remembrance of the days of the bustle. It had buttons all down the back, and what seemed to be a sash but was really a length of moire silk let in to the front breadth; the silk finished behind a stiff bow. The moss green suited Beth's colouring, it brought out the lights in her hair, and enhanced the peach-off-the-wall colouring of her cheeks.

And there's Beth's first sale, with a mousy looking girl who has £30 to s[end om clothes so she can stay with her aunt who lives in a castle:

The blue flannel was a success, and so was a grey with a scarlet belt. For the afternoon, in case there were a flower show or anything like that, Beth persuaded the girl into a most becoming patterned crepe-de-Chine, with a coat to tone, For the evening she wanted a bright yellow taffeta. but Beth urged against it. The taffeta was cheap. and she thought it looked it, Instead she pushed the claims of a very simple black chiffon  which had been expensive but was now marked down.

I stole this crepe-de-Chine dress and matching
coat from Moira's Clothes in Books blog because 
it looks like the sort of thing Beth might have sold,
(Pic courtesy of NYPL) 

Beth also recommends gold evening sandals, black high-heeled court shoes, white suede shoes (to go with the flannel dresses), a white hat with two different coloured hat bands, a black hat, a gold bag and a brown net bag. Such riches, and all for £30! Clothes rationing was introduced in June 1941, and the Government urged people to make do and mend, so for many women a spending spree like this must have been something they could only dream of. And what about the women in the book? How would they have survived the vicissitudes of wartime clothing shortages? Dulcie, I am sure, would have found a man to keep her in fashionable garments acquired on the black market. But Beth and her mother Janet would have got the sewing machine out, and considered themselves lucky to have the means of making new garments.