Reserved for the Cat

Not that there were artists and musicians thronging the place. But this was not a place where those good little shop girls would come to buy. Safe enough now, it was not a place where she would care to be after dark. There were no houses here, only buildings full of cheap flats that must have been home to enormous families. There was another accent in these streets; not being a native speaker, she couldn’t place it, but there was a veritable horde of red-haired children running about. And though there may not have been artists and musicians, there was music, of drum and fiddle and tin whistle, coming from a public house that was already open.

But the cat paused at a doorway and twitched his tail at her. She pulled the door open to the ringing of a little bell, and the cat slipped inside, under her skirt.

It was a used clothing shop. But the clothing here was more than a mere cut above the neighborhood; it was remarkably good. Some of the gowns she sorted through were several social strata above the shop girls at the boarding house.

She confined herself at first, however, to the merely “good” clothing, buying a skirt and jacket that were identical in color and style to her own but of much better materials and repair, and three shirtwaists. But then, at the cat’s urging, she bought beautiful under-things of the sort she had only seen on the kept etoiles. She asked for, and got, permission to change into these things in a stall at the back of the shop, discarding her old clothing. She scarcely felt like herself in the soft, delicate bloomers, the finely crafted corset, the dainty corset-cover and petticoat, the silk stockings that were tea-stained, but not where anyone would see them. And the new outer clothing . . . it was strange, very strange, because it looked the same but—it was unmended and only a little worn. It felt more substantial.

And, at the cat’s prodding, she bought a sturdy umbrella. You will need it, he told her laconically. There are only two sorts of weather in Blackpool. Raining and about to rain.

Finally, as a girl came in with a bundle while she was looking at cloaks, it dawned on her what this was. Often part of a maidservant’s wages was the cast-off clothing of her mistress. This was where the superior maidservants came to sell their windfalls.

So it was with a little surprise, as she waited for the shopkeeper to bundle up the items she wasn’t wearing, that she heard the cat say from under her skirt, Ask about the cut-up dress!

Too surprised, in fact, to do anything other than stammer, “And would you have a ruined day gown, velvet perhaps, or silk twill, that has been cut up badly?”

The shopkeeper looked at her in astonishment, pausing for a moment, before answering, “Why . . . as a matter of fact . . . I do. But why do you need such a thing?”

Fancywork, hissed the cat. Shoes. You are covering shoes.

“I am re-covering dancing slippers,” she said, and the man nodded with understanding, and pulled a basket from beneath the counter.

There were three gowns in there, but the cat was only interested in the blue velvet one. They were all in rags; it looked as if someone had taken a knife to them and slashed them up.

“The girl works for the most mean-spirited woman I have ever heard of,” the shopkeeper said, shaking his head over the ruins of what had once been a magnificent gown. “Rather than let her maids have her old clothes, because she can’t bear the idea of someone of lower rank than she wearing what she once wore, she slashes the things to rags before throwing them out. The girl brings them here anyway; I generally sell them to the rag and bone man—”

“My great fortune then, that you had not yet,” smiled Ninette as he added that to her purchases. He did them all up in a brown paper parcel, which she carried out, wearing her new clothing and new cloak. The cat led her onwards, back to better neighborhoods, where he directed her purchases of other small items, and then it was time to return to the boarding house for luncheon.