Brooklyn Read Free Page A

Sunday.”
    Soon, two or three people came into the shop to buy cigarettes. Even though Eilis had already put her shop coat on, Miss Kelly ordered Mary to deal with them. When they had gone, MissKelly told Mary to go upstairs and make a pot of tea, which she then delivered to the newspaper kiosk in exchange for what Eilis learned was a free copy of the Sunday Press, which Miss Kelly folded and put aside. Eilis noticed that neither Miss Kelly nor Mary had anything to eat or drink. Miss Kelly ushered her into a back room.
    “That bread there,” she said, pointing to a table, “is the freshest. It came yesterday evening all the way from Stafford’s, but it is only for special customers. So you don’t touch that bread whatever you do. The other bread’ll do fine for most people. And we have no tomatoes. Those ones there are not for anybody unless I give precise instructions.”
    After nine o’clock mass the first crowd came. People who wanted cigarettes and sweets seemed to know to approach Mary. Miss Kelly stood back, her attention divided between the door and Eilis. She checked every price Eilis wrote down, informed her briskly of the price when she could not remember, and wrote down and added up the figures herself after Eilis had done so, not letting her give the customer the change until she had also been shown the original payment. As well as doing this, she greeted certain customers by name, motioning them forward and insisting that Eilis break off whatever she was doing to serve them.
    “Oh, Mrs. Prendergast now,” she said, “the new girl will look after you now and Mary will carry everything out to the car for you.”
    “I need to finish this first,” Eilis said, as she was only a few items away from completing another order.
    “Oh, Mary will do that,” Miss Kelly said.
    By this time people were five deep at the counter. “I’m next,” a man shouted as Miss Kelly came back to the counter with more bread.
    “Now, we are very busy and you will have to wait your turn.”
    “But I was next,” the man said, “and that woman was served before me.”
    “So what is it you want?”
    The man had a list of groceries in his hand.
    “Eilis will deal with you now,” Miss Kelly said, “but only after Mrs. Murphy here.”
    “I was before her too,” the man said.
    “I’m afraid you are mistaken,” Miss Kelly said. “Eilis, hurry up now, this man is waiting. No one has all day, so he’s next, after Mrs. Murphy. What price did you charge for that tea?”
    It was like this until almost one o’clock. There was no break and nothing to eat or drink and Eilis was starving. No one was served in turn. Miss Kelly informed some of her customers, including two who, being friends of Rose, greeted Eilis familiarly, that she had lovely fresh tomatoes. She weighed them herself, seeming to be impressed that Eilis knew these customers, telling others firmly, however, that she had no tomatoes that day, none at all. For favoured customers she openly, almost proudly, produced the fresh bread. The problem was, Eilis realized, that there was no other shop in the town that was as well stocked as Miss Kelly’s and open on a Sunday morning, but she also had a sense that people came here out of habit and they did not mind waiting, they enjoyed the crush and the crowd.
     
    Although she had planned not to mention her new job in Miss Kelly’s over dinner at home that day unless Rose raised the matter first, Eilis could not contain herself and began as soon as they sat down to describe her morning.
    “I went into that shop once,” Rose said, “on my way home from mass and she served Mary Delahunt before me. I turned and walked out. And there was a smell of something. I can’t thinkwhat it was. She has a little slave, doesn’t she? She took her out of a convent.”
    “Her father was a nice enough man,” her mother said, “but she had no chance because her mother was, as I told you, Eilis, evil incarnate. I heard that when one