Shop Girl Read online

  About the Book

  Young Mary Newton, born into a large Irish family in a small Watford semi, was always getting into trouble. When she wasn’t choking back fits of giggles at Holy Communion or eating Chappie dog food for a bet, she was accidentally setting fire to the local school. Mary was a trouble magnet. And, unlike her brothers, somehow she always got caught . . .

  Britain in the 1970s was a world where R White’s lemonade was drunk in secret, curry came in a cardboard box marked Vesta and Beanz meant Heinz. In Mary’s family, money was scarce. Clothes were hand-me-downs, holidays a church day out to Hastings and meals were variations on the potato. But these were also good times which revolved around the force of nature that was Theresa, Mary’s mum.

  When tragedy unexpectedly blows this world apart, a new chapter in Mary’s life opens up. She takes to the camp and glamour of Harrods window dressing like a duck to water, and Mary, Queen of Shops is born . . .

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Jamboree bag

  Coty L’Aimant

  Chappie Dog Food

  Ladybird coat

  Austin Reed brogues

  Player’s No. 6

  Heinz Beanz

  Bush record player

  Statue of the Virgin Mary

  Bic biro 1

  Crayola crayons

  Shamrock and ribbons

  99 Flake

  Bronnley soap

  Quality Street

  Kerrygold butter 1

  Caramac

  Kodak cine camera

  Bryant & May’s matches 1

  Sugared almonds

  R White’s lemonade 1

  ‘Ride A White Swan’ by Marc Bolan

  Chopper bike

  Blazers and boaters

  Bryant & May’s matches 2

  Parker pen

  Racing Pigeon magazine

  Oxford bags

  Philips cassette tape

  GPO telephone

  Bic biro 2

  Aladdin Sane by David Bowie

  Wimpy burger

  Maybelline lip gloss

  Price’s candles

  Vesta curry

  Boots 17 mascara

  Embassy Number 1

  Granny Smith apples

  Mills & Boon

  Anne French cleansing milk

  Pernod and black

  Bird’s Eye Super Mousse

  Careers advice

  Bell’s whisky

  ‘Dancing Queen’

  Sex Pistols

  BaByliss hot brush

  Kerrygold butter 2

  R White’s lemonade 2

  Camel coat

  Milk of Magnesia

  A hospital room

  Robertson’s raspberry jam

  Head tennis racquet

  Mushroom vol au vents

  Jonelle wash bag

  Lamb with leeks

  Condolences

  Atrixo hand cream

  Glade air freshener

  Dettol

  Mother’s Pride

  ‘Boogie Nights’ by Heatwave

  ‘Baker Street’ by Gerry Rafferty

  Leg-warmers and Mary Janes

  Scotch eggs

  Aramis

  Angel Delight

  Bosch radio

  Mr Kipling French Fancies

  Moving on

  ‘Y.M.C.A.’ by the Village People

  Fiat 500

  Creosote

  Brillo pads

  Habitat

  Unexpected news

  Hotpoint fridge

  Harvey Nichols

  Hermès scarf

  Clearasil cleanser

  Cookery In Colour by Marguerite Patten

  Youth Dew

  Lord John jumper

  Yale key

  Mink, macaroons and alligators

  The Face magazine

  N. Peal cashmere socks

  Sobranie cigarettes

  Blitz kids

  Sinclair ZX80

  An unexpected visit

  A funeral

  Hovis crumpets

  Pierrot dolls and Baileys

  Ferragamo belt

  Levi 501’s

  The boxer

  Big Bertha

  Chanel No 5

  The Emmanuels

  Love Hearts and tartan

  Joseph pumps

  Buffalo hat

  Spitfire

  Acknowledgements

  Index

  About the Author

  Copyright

  SHOP GIRL

  A Memoir

  Mary Portas

  To Mum.

  How lucky was I getting you.

  Jamboree bag

  The smells of petrol, tea and leather fill Dad’s work van as I sit beside him watching concrete streets give way to leafy greenness.

  ‘Now you’ll be polite to the auld fella, won’t you, Mary?’ Dad asks.

  ‘Yes, Dad.’

  ‘Be a good girl and I might take you to Mr Tite’s if we’re not too late back.’

  Sweets start dancing before my eyes: rhubarb and custards, humbugs and pear drops; flying saucers, coconut snow and milk bottles. The shelves in Mr Tite’s shop are lined with jars that make my heart race. Acid drops and aniseed balls. Black Jacks and traffic-light lollipops. Jelly beans and lemon sherbets.

  Then I think of the pink-and-white candy stripe of the Jamboree bag.

  I must be polite to the auld fella if I want one. But I don’t like visiting his shop. The shelves are almost empty and the air is dead, so different from all the other places I visit with Dad.

  ‘Surely you’ll be wanting to order a bit more than that?’ my father says, to men in aprons and women in brightly coloured nylon coats standing behind counters topped with shiny glass. ‘There’s a cold snap coming. People will be needing more cuppas this week, won’t they?’

  ‘Oh, go on, then, Sammy! I’ll take another twenty packets.’

  ‘Why not make it thirty?’

  Peals of laughter greet my dad’s patter. He is so good at selling tea that he’s had his picture taken for the front of the Brooke Bond staff magazine. ‘SAMMY’S FLAIR’ said the headline, and my mother roared with laughter when she saw it.

  ‘Look at you, Sam Newton!’ she exclaimed. ‘You’ll be selling ice to the Eskimos next.’

  As my father talks to the shopkeepers, I gaze at the shelves full of neat repetition and colour: bright yellow labels on Chappie dog food and tomato red on Heinz soups; the green, yellow, white and red Kellogg’s Corn Flakes packets standing next to little baker men etched black against the crisp white of Homepride flour bags. I like the smells too: the sharp tang of cheese, warm aroma of just-baked bread and snap of fresh newspaper ink. These shops are places where the bell always pings as you open the door, the air hits you warm as you walk inside and a smile greets you.

  Most of all, they are places where people chat and collect news, exchange gossip and advice, meet, greet and love – or sometimes hate – their neighbours. Even as a six-year-old, I know there is a world enclosed in the four tiny letters of the word ‘shop’.

  Coty L’Aimant

  My mother stands in front of the hallway mirror as my brothers and sister run around her, scrambling to get on their coats. Patch is barking, Joe is looking for a lost shoe and Lawrence has started to wail.

  Mum stops for a few seconds. Unscrewing her lipstick, she slicks it on with the few practised strokes of a woman used to never having enough time to spend too much on herself.

  ‘All buttoned up?’ she asks, as she bends down to Lawrence, and the smell of lipstick blended with the faintest hint of Coty L’Aimant fills the air around me.

&nb
sp; Mum always wears lipstick but each Sunday she dabs on a couple of delicate strokes of perfume for good measure. Not a lot, though. She wouldn’t want Father Bussey to think that Theresa Newton spends too much time dolling herself up. Besides, the bottle has to last. Too expensive to waste.

  Dad, who smells of Brylcreem, is holding my brothers’ faces steady as he pulls a comb through hair that sticks up in uncontrollable tufts the rest of the week. Then he wraps his silk scarf around his neck as Mum slips on her white gloves and gives her best shoes a final glance to make sure there are no scuffmarks on the chocolate brown suede.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Dad shouts, as he opens the front door.

  Michael, Joe and Tish run out in front, with Lawrence and Mum following behind. I’m somewhere in the middle and have to run to keep up with Dad. Thrusting my tiny hand into his huge one, I wriggle it into a comfortable resting place as the seven of us troop out of the front gate and down the road past the terraced houses that jostle for space on our street.

  ‘Don’t forget to look at your egg face in the chalice,’ Joe whispers, as he walks beside me.

  ‘Shut uuuuuuuuuuuuup, Joe,’ I wail back at him, trying to push the image from my mind, knowing I never will.

  ‘Leave your sister alone! Don’t go making her laugh during mass, now, do you hear me?’

  We blend into the stream of other families making their way towards St Helen’s: the Maguires, the Walshes and the Quinns; the Brennans, the Newnhams and the Healeys. Gaggles of children follow in their parents’ wake, knowing that nothing but the best behaviour is expected during the most important hour of the week.

  Mum, Dad, Tish, Lawrence and I walk into the church and towards our pew – third from the front on the right-hand side, the Newnhams in the front pew and the Quinns in the second – as Joe and Michael go to the sacristy to put on their robes. Lawrence will also be an altar boy when he is old enough, and I envy my brothers taking part in the drama of mass while I can only watch it: the rustle of starched white surplices with frills around the collar, the smell of the incense as Father Bussey intones the prayers, the feel of velvet carpet underneath their feet at the altar instead of stone.

  Meanwhile I am left to sit on a hard pew every week, knowing that for me and all the other children here, Sunday mass will be one long battle against laughing and getting a clip round the ear. The day that Mr O’Riordan put a pound on the collection plate and took back change has never been forgotten – nor the sight of Mr O’Sullivan clenching and unclenching his buttocks for an hour each week as he concentrates on praying harder.

  Try as I might, Joe’s words ring in my ears as I wait for the moment when I go up to the altar to be blessed while Mum and Dad take communion. Laughter and fear twist inside my stomach as I kneel beside them and try to concentrate on my prayer.

  ‘Lamb of God, You take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us,’ I whisper to myself.

  ‘Lamb of God, You take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.

  ‘Lamb of God, You take away the sins of the world, grant us peace.’

  But the moment Father Bussey reaches my parents with the altar boys following him, I look up to see Joe staring at me – a tuft of curls on his head and a wicked gleam in his eyes. Then my gaze is inexorably drawn towards the chalice where I see my egg face staring back at me from the rounded side of the silver cup that holds the blood of Christ. As my brother quashes his laughter to save for later, I start to giggle.

  Chappie Dog Food

  Michael is holding the spoon in his hand. He digs it into the tin of Chappie and pulls it out with a plop. The dog food quivers on the spoon. There’s a bit of brown jelly covering it but I can see something awful sticking out. It looks like a bit of gizzard or something. But I can’t think about it. Mustn’t think about it.

  ‘I’ll give you thruppence if you eat it all,’ Michael says.

  He’s five years my senior and the eldest of us all so he gets to decide what comics and sweets we spend our money on when we pool it. It’s the rule between Michael, Tish, Joe, Lawrence and me. Whoever gets their hands on a bit of spare change usually has to divvy it up with everyone else so that we can buy special things.

  As much as we share, though, we don’t resent it when one of us gets extra. After Dad took us on the annual Brooke Bond family outing to the panto at Watford Palace Theatre last year, we all trooped off to visit Father Christmas at Clements in the high street. As children thronged, fathers disappeared outside for a smoke and mothers gossiped, Santa handed me a doll and Dad could see the disappointment on my face.

  ‘Come on, Mary love,’ he said. ‘Give that to Tish and I’ll buy you something else.’

  Dad bought me a moneybox that looked like a red telephone box. It wasn’t quite as good as Joe’s, which was shaped like a coffin and had a skeleton hand that popped out to take the money. But still I liked my moneybox and none of my brothers and sisters begrudged me getting it. It’s the survival of the fittest in our family from who gets the most food at the dinner table to who manages to be given a treat that the others don’t.

  But this is different. Michael is daring me to do something he thinks I’ll never agree to. It’s a chance to prove myself, to stake a claim in the sibling pecking order that continually frustrates me: not the eldest, or the first-born daughter, or the youngest of the family. I’m just Mary. Fourth-born. No special place at all.

  ‘Come on, Mary,’ Michael says. ‘Do you want to eat this or not?’

  I think of the money and the sherbet fountain I can buy at Mr Tite’s sweet shop, the fact that Michael will be impressed if I do this.

  I eat the dog food in one mouthful.

  Ladybird coat

  I loved and hated my winter coat in equal measure. Just like all my clothes, it was a hand-me-down from Tish or Aunty Cathy’s daughter, Caroline, and I loved the cherry red wool and black shiny buttons. My feelings, though, could soon turn to hate when my coat was hung up in the cupboard under the stairs because then it could be used as a threat against me if I played up. Which was often.

  I could never sleep if Michael, Tish and Joe were allowed to stay up to watch television after Lawrence and I were packed off to bed. Mum would come up, sit on the landing between the bedrooms to read to us and kiss us goodnight before going downstairs, but I could never settle. Lying there, I’d wait impatiently for my brothers and sister to come up in ascending sibling order: first Joe, then Tish, with Michael last. How could I go to sleep when I could hear the sound of It’s A Knockout filtering up the stairs?

  As I wriggled and turned, trying to find a cool spot to sleep in, I hated that I was missing out. Lawrence didn’t count because he always fell straight to sleep in the room he shared next door with Michael and Joe. So eventually I’d get up and creep downstairs towards the living room where I knew they’d all be huddled around the TV.

  The house would be dark as I went down but I never needed to turn on a light because I knew every inch of our stairs. The third one made the loudest creak and I’d stretch my skinny leg downwards as my Bri-nylon nightie crackled with static until my foot hit the next step. Once I’d made contact, I’d heave my other leg down and carry on silently.

  The hallway floor would be cold against my feet, just a crack of light filtering around the edges of the living-room door as I walked silently towards it before poking my head around. The room was always warm and cosy: Dad would be smoking a fag as he read the Evening Echo, Joe and Michael were usually sprawled across the brown velour sofa while Tish would be snuggled into Mum on her armchair.

  First my head would go around the door, then a foot followed by the rest of my body, inch by careful inch. Hardly daring to breathe, I’d sneak a look at what was on telly. Why Mum never turned her head towards me, I’m not sure. Maybe it was because she wanted to let me in quietly on their evening or maybe she was just too tired to show that she’d noticed me because it would mean getting up to take me back to bed.

  But Michael or Joe would
always catch on.

  ‘Mareeeeeeeeeeeeee,’ one of my brothers would shout. ‘What are you doing up again?’

  ‘Can’t sleep.’

  ‘Well, go back to bed.’

  ‘Don’t want to.’

  ‘Dad! Tell her to go back to bed. She’s not supposed to be up.’

  With a sigh, my mother would get up, take me by the hand and lead me back to bed. ‘You’ve got to go to sleep,’ she’d say, as she tucked me up.

  ‘But I can’t.’

  ‘Yes, you can. Just think of something nice.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Well, try, Mary.’

  As she walked towards the door, I’d call out to her, ‘Do you love me, Mum?’

  ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘I mean really love me? Do you love me as much as Dad?’

  ‘What a thing to ask, Mary Newton! You’re my blood. Of course I love you.’

  But however much I was reassured, I could never do as I was told and it was then, when I’d pushed my luck once too many times, that my father would use the coat as a threat that was sure to keep me in line.

  ‘Do you see that envelope, Mary?’ he’d ask, when I crept into the living room yet again.

  Sitting on the mantelpiece was a white envelope with the words ‘Gisborne House’ written on it in black letters. I’d been told that Gisborne House was the place where wayward children were sent.

  ‘That’s the letter to take you there,’ Dad would tell me.

  ‘Nooooooooo!’ I’d cry.

  ‘Well, go back to bed and I won’t need to take you, will I?’

  ‘Please let me watch, Daddy!’

  ‘No, Mary. Do you hear? You’ve to do as you’re told and go back to bed.’

  ‘But I can’t sleep.’

  His head would turn towards the letter.

  ‘Please, Daddy!’

  Anger would snap in his eyes as he looked at me defying him.

  ‘Theresa,’ he’d bark at my mother. ‘Get Mary’s coat, will you? I’m taking her to Gisborne House.’

  He didn’t need to utter another word.

  Austin Reed brogues

  I was always a little afraid of my father. At six foot two, he seemed like a giant but it was more than his height that made him such a commanding man to be around. Dad would muck in with all of us and sing along to the big band and crooner records that he and Mum continually played. He also loved to joke, and every so often I’d get into bed only to feel it rising up off the floor as Dad – who must have been hiding underneath it for the best part of half an hour – lifted it into the air with me in it.