The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald Page B

Florence, whose feet were almost as small as her assistant’s, lent a pair of shoes. They were crocodile courts, the buckles also covered with crocodile. Christine, who had never seen them before, although she had had a good poke round upstairs, wondered if they were by Christian Dior.
    ‘You know that Dior met a gipsy who told him he’d have ten years of good fortune and then meet his death,’ she said. Florence felt she could hardly afford to speak lightly of the supernatural.
    ‘That’d be a French gipsy, of course,’ said Christine consolingly, slopping about in the crocodile courts.
    The patroness of the Fancy Dress Parade was Mrs Gamart, from The Stead. The judge, in deference to his connection with the BBC, and therefore with the Arts, was Milo North, who protested amiably that he should never have been asked, as he tried to avoid definite judgments on every occasion. His remarks were greeted with roars of laughter. The Parade was held in the Coronation Hall, never quite completed as Hardborough had intended, so that the roof was still of corrugated iron. The rain pounded down, only quietening as it turned to drizzleor sleet. Christine Gipping, wheeling Melody in a pram decorated with barbed wire, which had been sent down to publicize Escape or Die , was an easy winner of the most original costume. Discussion on the point was hardly possible.
    The Nativity Play, which followed a week later, was on a Saturday afternoon, when the shop was too busy with the Christmas trade for Florence to take time off. She heard about the performance, however, from Wally and Raven, who dropped in, and Mrs Traill, who had come to see about her orders for next term.
    The critical reception of the play had been mixed. Too much realism, perhaps, had been attempted when Raven had brought a small flock of sheep off the marshes on to the stage. On the other hand, no one had forgotten their parts, and Christine’s dancing had been the success of the evening. As a result of her success in the Fancy Dress she had been awarded the coveted part of Salome, which meant that she was entitled to appear in her eldest sister’s bikini.
    ‘She had to dance, to get the head of John the Baptist,’ Wally explained.
    ‘What music did you have?’ asked Florence.
    ‘That was a Lonnie Donegan recording, Putting on the Agony, Putting on the Style. I don’t know that you cared for it very much, Mrs Traill.’
    Mrs Traill replied that after many years at the Primaryshe had become accustomed to everything. ‘Mrs Gamart, I’m afraid, didn’t look as though she approved.’
    ‘If she didn’t, there was nothing she could do about it,’ Raven said. ‘She was powerless.’ He exuded a warm glow of well-being, having had one or two at the Anchor on the way over.
    Florence was still anxious about Christine’s prospects in the eleven plus. ‘She is such a good little assistant, I can’t help feeling that after she’s been through grammar school she might make it her career. She has the ability to classify, and that can’t be taught.’
    The glance that flashed through Mrs Traill’s spectacles suggested that everything could be taught. Nevertheless, a sense of responsibility weighed on Florence. She felt she ought to have done more. Granted that the child didn’t like reading, with the exception of Bunty , or being read to, mightn’t there be other opportunities? She kept Wally back after the others had gone and said that she had been interested to hear about the play, but had he or his friends or Christine ever been to a real theatre? They might go over to the Maddermarket, at Norwich, if something good came on.
    ‘We’ve none of us ever been there,’ Wally replied doubtfully, ‘but we did go over from the school to Flintmarket last year, to see a travelling company. That was quite interesting, to see how they fixed up the amplification.’
    ‘What play did they put on?’ asked Florence.
    ‘The day we went it was Hansel and Gretel .