The end of an era: memories of John Lewis
Shopping in the haberdashery with my mum. Some fabric for her and a ribbon for Teddy. Red, blue and gingham, they had them all. The lady would stretch them out in front of my nose, lining them up with the gold tape measure. I can still remember the snip of the scissors, can imagine the feel of my mother’s hand in mine and the folded green and white paper bag between playdough fingers.
Buttons and zips, sewing needles, patterns and threads. Carrying the rolls of fabric like jousting lances across the shop. Watching the swish and fold of material piled high on the counter. Satin for ballet dresses and dancing costumes, floral patterns for summer frocks with smocked bodices, the spotty ra ra skirt for the school disco.
Up and down the escalators, trying not to catch my skirt or sandalled toes. Leaving it until the last second to jump on or off, watching the world of colour and light open up beneath me, like I was flying.
Christmas Eve with Dad, scouring the shop floor for bargains, his eyes drawn to anything with a red knock-down label, my mind wondering why he always left it so late, why she wasn’t worth paying full-price. He’d seek out items that were slightly scratched and ask for a discount and I’d stand shuffling awkwardly by his side while the manager was called. The annual rigmarole that always happened in Coles.
The first time I went Christmas shopping alone, I stood for an hour on the wrong side of the road, waiting for the bus into town. A scarf for Grandma, a handerchief for Dad. I hadn’t got enough money, stood for another hour at the bottom of the escalator until some kind stranger gave me the fifty pence I needed.
My grandparents grew up in this town. Coles and Walshes peppered Grandma’s stories like wartime bullets. She fell in love with a telegram boy at the Thorntons shop she ran on Fitzallen Square. I imagine they met for dates like Richard Hawley’s lovers on Coles Corner; she had a painting of it on the living room wall. I keep the glass beaded necklace that he gave her for her seventeeth birthday in a box and remember how he saved up his wages to take her to the pictures on a Friday and how they were spared the bombs that fateful night though they spent the next day hiking across town, checking to see which loved ones survived. Thorntons is closing now too. The cornerstones of her memories are becoming High Street ghosts.
I kitted out the nursery on the first floor, remember breaking the Bugaboo into pieces to see if it could fit in the boot of a Mini. The plush babygrow of a firstborn child, breast pumps and baby bowls. It all came from Coles.
Wedding outfits, interview suits, party dresses, clothes for book launches and award ceremonies. Summer clothes for holidays long gone.
When the children were small, I gradually grew accustomed to the name change. John Lewis was a regular stop on the child-friendly trip to town: a quick dash to buy some essential, non-essential item followed by a trip to the library and the Winter Gardens. Maybe a spot of lunch. At Christmas, a ride on the merry-go-round.
Like a person grieving the sudden death of a loved one, I remember the last time I was there: picking out stationery and lunch boxes for the children’s Christmas presents, browsing through board games in search of anything that they would play. ‘Meet you by the entrance,’ I said to them the last time we went to town.
I’m not a materialistic person. I don’t even like shopping. I am aware of my privilege. And yet somehow I am a person who is sentimental about a department store, whose demise feels more poignant because it is leaving quietly when the memories of shopping trips to town are already infused with nostalgia. It is a building full of memories and the end of an era. A reminder that Covid is not something that everyone and everything will recover from.