Cutty’s
department store, oldest department store in the country, icon of Wellington
city, epitome of tradition, class, gentility, a bygone age, is shock, gasp, closing.
It’s just a shop you may well think, but no, for Wellington where this novel is
set, Cutty’s is an institution, part of the city’s landscape, a destination,
almost a hallowed space. For those who work there, many of whom have been there
for many, many years, the closure in two short months is a catastrophe. This is
the story of what happens when the rug is quite literally pulled out from under
those who work at Cutty’s, those who take pride and joy in the work they do and
in the place they work.
It
is more than obvious that the fictional Cutty’s is based on the factual Kirkaldie
and Staines which closed last year after 153 years in business. Like the
author, I too grew up in Lower Hutt/Wellington, and have very strong memories
as a child of making school holiday visits to the city, going to the big three
department stores – DIC, James Smiths, and the best of the lot Kirks. My mother
greeted by the smartly attired doorman, stepping with great trepidation onto
the old narrow escalators, a real live lift attendant, afternoon tea with my
Gran. Then as a student and lowly paid worker in the 1980s, after all the
revamps daring to tread the grand spiral staircase with its gold handrails, the
grand piano in the middle of it all, the very posh and beautifully groomed
sales people, intimidating the daylights out of me as I carefully and
delicately trawled my way through the overpriced racks, and avoided the even
scarier make up counters. I remember taking my small daughters to the toy
department, beautiful toys, vastly more sophisticated and delightful to walk
into than the endless shelves at the Warehouse. No matter what my age was, and
my stage in life, it was always a treat to go to Kirks.
Amy
is 34 years old, a relatively newbie to Cutty’s with only four years employment
under her belt. She is a store detective, one of maybe four other D’s, under
the supervision of Trevor, chief of security. She really likes her job, likes
where she works, is probably not as vigilant in her pursuit of shoplifters as
perhaps the management would expect her to be, but still manages to pull in her
fair share of POIs – Persons of Interest. She is married to Steve, they have
just had their first child, Frankie, and she has recently returned to work.
They live in what I am guessing is around top of Newtown/Melrose in Wellington,
as she is close enough to walk to her mother’s place in Kilbirnie. Her mother,
like Cutty’s, is also in decline, suffering from a chronic lung condition,
pulmonary fibrosis. There is plenty going on in Amy’s life then, and to now
have the added stress of losing her place of employment and her job, is piling
on the pressure with no way of stopping the looming crisis.
But
she is not the only one. Many of Amy’s co-workers feature in the closing weeks
of the store’s life – Billy in Luggage, the blind Donal who plays the piano,
his partner Timothy who does window dressing, twins Bert and Dougie who share
the role of doormen and spiral spectacularly out of control, Rupert in
Menswear, Pamela the cosmetic floor manager, Kent in Hardware, and finally
Gertrude Cutty, last surviving Cutty family member now in her nineties who just
cannot accept her reason for living shutting its doors. As with Amy, we follow
how they cope and deal with the shop closing, their search for new jobs,
reassessing their lives. And the customers themselves, who have been coming to
Cutty’s their entire lives, what about them?
The
story opens with Amy sitting in an interview room at the local police station.
We don’t know why she is there, what has happened, who else is being
interviewed; all we know is that it is related in some way to the closure of
the store. She is ambivalent about being there, not sure where things went
wrong that resulted in her being in the interview room. Much of the dialogue
between her and the two police officers seems to revolve around her work
following and apprehending shop lifters. It does become apparent fairly quickly
that Amy herself has an alarming past, and is this why she is being
interviewed? In her youth, she was quite the opposite to the wife/mother role
she is currently inhabiting, reliable and valued employee, successful in her
work, best daughter, and all round good citizen.
She
was once part of a women-only activist gang, going around in the darkness
committing some quite nefarious deeds against property and livelihoods. And
then there is the huge irony of a guard dog being deliberately killed by one of
the activists during a raid. Wonder what PETA and SAFE would say about that. I
did find it a little strange that Amy had undergone some sort of monumental
shift along the political doctrine spectrum from destroying businesses, to now
working in the last bastion of traditionalism in Wellington city. I am not sure
if people change to such an extent and so rapidly.
Even
though Amy quite quickly moves on from this destructive lifestyle, gaining a
criminal conviction as a permanent reminder of her deeds, becoming a paramedic,
and finally a Cutty’s store detective, her compassion for those less fortunate
than her does stay. It is just that now her attention has shifted from caged
pigs and chickens to the POIs she deals with in her work life – “the needy,
greedy or seedy” as defined in Cutty’s security manuals. She will be forever grateful
to Trevor for employing her with her slightly dodgy past, these two in a way
forming their own little team that does not ‘deal’ to every single shoplifter
they come across. Is this why she is being interviewed? Has she not been
vigilant enough in her duties, letting people slip through the shoplifter net?
It would seem she has a social conscience, and is this really what Cutty’s is
looking for in its employees?
But
with only two months left till closure it doesn’t seem to matter anymore. As
the weeks and days pass, standards in the shop slip. By ten days to go, stock
has been strenuously gone through, items moved from one department to another
by customers are not put back at the end of the day, the grand piano has had
its last play, now covered up, the statue of Mercury at the entrance to the
store has mysteriously disappeared as have the fake trees, some staff have
already moved onto other places, jobs. The chaos in Cutty’s directly reflects
on the chaos in the lives of the staff. Amy is also in chaos: she has had a job
interview, but is torn between wanting to be with her baby and ill mother, and
the family’s need for money with a falling down house and ongoing uncertainty
over Steve’s job. Tensions arise between her and Steve.
So,
the end comes, the event that leads to Amy being interviewed by the police.
There will always be a perpetual mystery around this final act – was it
deliberate, was it accidental, or was it in the hands of a third party,
conspiring to get back in some way at Cutty’s management? Of course, in the end
it doesn’t matter, it is just a shop after all, as we know new shops always
arise from the ashes, and life really does go on. As it does for Amy. The doors
close, and new ones open.
Aside
from this being a really good book, well written, great characters, being taken
down unexpected pathways and shop aisles, what I found endlessly fascinating
was the very human condition of shoplifting. According to Amy everyone has a
shop lifting story, either about themselves or about someone they know. For me
three immediately come to mind, the funniest one being in a pharmacy with my
one year old daughter in a push chair, me frantically trying to return all the
nail polishes she was carefully picking off, then getting home, and finding she
had somehow stashed three away into the push chair upholstery. She was one! Now
she has more nail polishes than there are colours to paint your nails.
Goodness
knows where the author got his shoplifting stories from, the acknowledgements
are very sparse, so maybe he does not want to reveal his sources. But he has
clearly done some great research into all this. We see it all through Amy’s
eyes as she goes about her work in the store, trying to behave like a customer,
observing and watching ‘customers’ who are not behaving like customers should. And
then the moral dilemma of whether she should apprehend the POI, give them a
chance to own up and pay, or simply do nothing. Where people put goods they are
stealing will make you squirm, as will the brazenness of the shop lifting – the
elderly lady in the tea rooms quietly dropping teaspoons into her handbag; the
two women dressed as international cabin crew, as if a uniform makes a
difference to how one is perceived. I would be ruining things for the reader if
I disclosed more! Since reading this I have noticed I am much more watchful of
others when in a shop, and also more aware of how I move around a shop, pick
stuff off shelves or go through racks. SO interesting!
I
have read two previous Damien Wilkins’ novels – Chemistry and Max Gate. I
enjoyed the former, and just could not engage with the latter. But this latest
novel, I have enjoyed very, very much. A lot of the enjoyment has to do with
the setting of Wellington, Lower Hutt and the Wairarapa, and being of the same
age/hometown/schooling etc as the author; plus being a fly on the shoplifting
wall is brilliant. The last thirty years have seen much change in New Zealand,
affecting whole communities, people’s jobs and employment prospects, the
resulting pressures on families and social structures. Although we know nothing
lasts forever, the closure of something as banal as a shop can easily become
the last straw, the thing that finally makes people snap. When Kirks closed
last year, it was all over the news, social media, last days’ sales, interviews
with long standing staff and customers. This book is a great exploration of
what may well go on behind the scenes of all that glossy veneer, written with
just the right amount of kindness and compassion, not just for the staff but
also for the loss of a city’s icon.
