The Sweet-Shop Owner Read Free

tightly so that they snicked at her plate like scissors, and refused to be drawn. All this excitement, this nonsense. I won’t have it. I won’t suffer it. You deal with her. And she would look at him: she is
yours
, don’t forget; I gave her to you.
    The floor-boards creaked under the weight of his stool and a faint rustle, like crumpled paper outspreading, came from the lines of shelves behind him. Sometimes, in theearly morning, the shop seemed to speak, as if it wouldn’t let pass the association of years without a whisper, a breath of friendship.
    It was cram full – not one of those shops where there was plenty of space and an air of fluorescent-lit efficiency. Behind him, stacked in columns, rose cigarettes; tipped, plain; above, cigars, below, loose tobacco. To the right, along the polished, uneven shelves towards the Briar Street window, were the jars – drops, lumps, fruits, toffees, jellies, mixtures – and the boxes, milk and plain, hard and soft centres, with on the top shelf, bordered with ribbons and embellished with puppy-dogs, waterfalls, sunset har-bours, the luxury two- and three-pound boxes. On the counter in front, and beneath, behind sliding glass doors, were the bars and sticks, chews and tubes, sherbet dabs and banana-splits – the things the kids chose coming home at four – wrapped in sickly colour. And to his right – beyond the till, along the remaining counter towards the ice-cream fridge and the crates of lemonade and Coca-Cola – the magazines and papers, spread, overlapping like roof tiles: tense headlines, pop-stars, orchids in flower, fashion, footballers, naked girls.
    It thronged, it bulged.
    And none of it – that was the beauty of it – was either useful or permanent.
    Beyond the sweet counter, taking up most of the Briar Street window, was his own addition. Toys. Dolls, teddy-bears, jigsaw puzzles, model cars, rockets, cowboy hats, plastic soldiers, and, hanging from the framework over his head, three clockwork monkeys each with a fez and a musical instrument which played if you wound it up: a drum, a pipe, a pair of cymbals.
    All that was his work. Coming home, twelve years ago, he’d said to her, ‘I have a plan.’ And her face had pricked up, beside the french window, as at some rumour of rebellion. ‘Toys. I will sell toys in the shop.’ She hadlooked, and repeated slowly the word – ‘Toys’ – as if rolling round her mouth a morsel of something whose taste she hadn’t fixed. And then – the identification was made – the wry smile touched her lips. He’d known it would please her. Her eyes widened (matchless, grey-blue eyes) and had looked into him, through him, as if they sent out swift, invisible cords to seize and sweep him up. ‘Yes. Why not?’
    And then she’d added: ‘You will make sure, won’t you, there’s a profit in this?’
    He looked at his smudged hands clasped on the counter. He must wash. It was ten past seven. Traffic was building up on the High Street, making the shop windows vibrate gently.
    As he twisted himself from the stool he felt the pain grip suddenly his left side and shoulder. It was always there, but sometimes it attacked in earnest.
Angina pectoris.
It sounded like the name of a flower or a rare species of butterfly. Dorry had read Latin. He knew what to do. There were trinitrin tablets in his breast pocket, next to her letter, and there were more in a drawer beneath the till. Mrs Cooper knew and was instructed. Irene had used them too, along with all her other pills. With both of them it was heart trouble.
    He paused. No stress, no excitement. No, he wouldn’t reach for the tablets – it would mean pulling out her letter. He hung on. Not now. The body is a machine, Doctor Field had said. And there – it went.
    He padded, slowly, through the doorway hung like an oriental arch with coloured strips of plastic, into the stock room to wash his hands and slick his hair with water.
    Mrs Cooper was due at any moment – with