Stay Where You Are and Then Leave Read Free Page B

women agreed with him about that. (Granny Summerfield said she’d rather have the plague.) He owned a beautiful old clarinet too, and sometimes he sat outside his front door playing it; when he did, Helena Morris from number eighteen would stand in her doorway and stare down the street at him until her mother came out and told her to stop making a show of herself.
    Alfie liked Joe Patience, and he thought it was funny that his name seemed to be the opposite of his character because he was always getting worked up over something. After he painted his front door red, three of the men, Mr. Welton from number five, Mr. Jones from number nineteen, and Georgie Summerfield, Alfie’s dad, went over to have a word with him about it. Georgie didn’t want to go, but the two men insisted, since he was Joe’s oldest friend.
    â€œIt’s not on, Joe,” said Mr. Jones as all the women came out on the street and pretended to wash their windows.
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œWell, take a look around you. It’s out of place.”
    â€œRed is the color of the working man! And we’re all working men here, aren’t we?”
    â€œWe have yellow doors here on Damley Road,” said Mr. Welton.
    â€œWhoever said they had to be yellow?”
    â€œThat’s just the way things have always been. You don’t want to go mucking about with traditional ways.”
    â€œThen how will things ever get better?” asked Joe, raising his voice even though the three men were standing directly in front of him. “For pity’s sake, it’s just a door! What does it matter what color it is?”
    â€œMaybe Joe’s right,” said Georgie, trying to calm everyone’s tempers. “It’s not that important, is it? As long as the paint isn’t chipping off and letting the street down.”
    â€œI might have known you’d be on his side,” said Mr. Jones, sneering at him even though it had been his idea to ask Georgie to join them in the first place. “Old pals together, eh?”
    â€œYes,” said Georgie with a shrug, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “Old pals together. What’s wrong with that?”
    In the end, there was nothing that Mr. Welton or Mr. Jones could do about the red door, and it stayed that way until the following summer, when Joe decided to change it again and painted it green in support of the Irish—who, Joe said, were doing all they could to break off the shackles of their imperial overlords. Alfie’s dad just laughed and said that if he wanted to waste his money on paint, then it was nothing to do with him. Granny Summerfield said that if Joe’s mother were still alive, she’d be ashamed.
    â€œOh, I don’t know,” said Margie. “He has an independent streak, that’s all. I quite like that about him.”
    â€œHe’s not a bad fellow, Joe Patience,” agreed Georgie.
    â€œHe’s his own man,” repeated Old Bill Hemperton.
    â€œHe’s lovely looking, despite everything,” Margie said. “Helena Morris is sweet on him.”
    â€œShe’d be ashamed,” insisted Granny Summerfield.
    But other than that, the people on Damley Road always seemed to get along very well. They were neighbors and friends. And no one seemed more a part of that community than Kalena and her father.
    *   *   *
    Mr. Janá č ek ran the sweet shop at the end of the road. It wasn’t just a sweet shop, of course—he also sold newspapers, string, notepads, pencils, birthday cards, apples, catapults, soccer balls, laces, boot polish, carbolic soap, tea, screwdrivers, purses, shoehorns, and lightbulbs—but as far as Alfie was concerned the most important thing he sold was sweets, so he called it the sweet shop. Behind the counter stood rows of tall clear-glass containers crammed full of sherbet lemons, apple and pear drops, bull’s-eyes, licorice