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Beaumont believed that, ideally, sales assistants should only be seen standing at their counters, ready and politely waiting to be of help, not tripping about as if they owned the place. But unlike the grand marble public stairs that ran from the ground floor to the second floor on the south-western side of the building, and had views of Wyndham Street below, the staff stairs were narrow, wooden and somewhat rickety. And as customers never went up to the third floor anyway, and Mr Max and Mr Beaumont had their offices on the firstfloor just off the foyer outside the White Room, the staff stairs had never been refurbished. They did make a very satisfying, echoey racket, however, if you ran down them fast enough.
    Allie loved the store at Christmas. Last year, her first Christmas at Dunbar & Jones, had been an exciting and magical time, not least because of the magnificent decorations that went up halfway through December. She adored their glittering promise of everything to come. At home they always had a real tree with a handful of shiny shop-bought balls, stars and tinsel, plus the decorations she and her sisters had made when they were little. The latter were getting very tatty now—Allie’s cotton-wool Santa had lost one of his eyes and the paint was flaking off his red hat—but they were the most cherished of the lot, unpacked every year with squeals of delight and cries of ‘Oh, look, remember this one?’, and put carefully away again when the tree came down. Allie always felt sorry for the tree, lying outside on the back lawn, unloved and unwanted, going brown with its needles falling off until her father got around to disposing of it.
    But Dunbar & Jones’s Christmas decorations, many imported from overseas, were in a class of their own. There were the miles of red, green and gold swags of organza intertwined with Christmas lights, caught up every twelve feet with red velvet bows and suspended from the ceilings of all three shopping floors. Then around the walls were dozens of enormous wreaths, their glossy green-painted leaves, gold bows and red holly berries reflected in the hanging mirrored balls.
    On the ground floor, just inside the main front door, was a huge artificial tree that twinkled and gleamedwith glass and tinsel and coloured electric lights, though these wouldn’t be turned on until the weekend before Christmas. Surrounding the tree’s base were piles of beautifully wrapped parcels, which almost every child who entered the store picked up and shook, then dropped disappointedly because the boxes were empty. In the end, Mr Beaumont had a velvet rope erected around the display. The children weren’t completely discouraged, however, as in the furniture department on the second floor the bedroom suites had been moved over to make room for Santa’s Magic Grotto, a cave made of papier mâché over chicken-wire, decorated with artificial ferns and rows of tiny electric ‘glow-worms’. Santa Claus (not Mr Max, but a bloke hired especially) sat in the cave from nine until five each day, with morning and afternoon tea breaks and forty minutes off for lunch so he could go for a smoke, dispensing yuletide cheer and the exhortation that, if children were good, Santa might bring them something from the wonderful selection of toys Dunbar & Jones had stocked especially for Christmas.
    But most impressive of all, as far as Allie was concerned, was the massive model of Santa, his sleigh and his four reindeer, which usually sat above the verandah extending over the footpaths on both the Queen Street and Wyndham Street frontages. This year, however, because of the royal tour, Santa had been relegated to the Wyndham Street side, and an equally enormous crown flanked by a huge kiwi holding the New Zealand flag and a giant lion waving the Union Jack had pride of place above the front door on Queen Street.
    Coming a close second were the Christmas window displays, an annual spectacular showcasing the skills