Shilling a Pound Pears

by Claire Rayner

  “What’s the matter, Yossell?” Hilary leaned against the side of the stall and settled herself for a long gossip. “What trouble?”

  “I tell you—”

  He broke off to serve a little boy with a pound of oranges, returning to Hilary and Jane as he finished, tossing the money the boy had given him in his hand. “This,” he said, nodding at the money, “this is my trouble.”

  “You’re short of cash?” Hilary’s sympathy was immediate. She knew what shortage of cash could do.

  “Nah—” Yossell had a wealth of scorn in his voice. “Money—shmoney. What I 'ave trouble with is the business.”

  “How do you mean?” Jane was intrigued. “This looks a very nice stall—aren’t you getting enough customers?”

  Before he could answer, a woman arrived at the stall, and Yossell served her with a great deal of fruit, taking more than fifteen shillings from her before she had finished,

  “Customers, I got plenty,” he said when he returned to the girls. “Plenty—like that one. Every week, she comes, and more like her. Me, I got a marvellous reputation for good stuff, eh, 'Ilary?”

  Hilary nodded. “We wouldn’t buy fruit anywhere else, Yossell,” she said loyally, smiling down at the little man.

  “So I tell you. Five years I’ve 'ad this business of mine. Before that I work for a long time. I work in a hospital—a porter yet. And for why I work in a hospital? So I can make money to 'ave my own business!” He looked at his neat stall with pride shining out of his round face.

  “For four years, I am at the bad end of the market. I make a living—but it’s the wrong end. Always, I want this pitch. Then, only one year ago, I get it! The old lady, she had it before—your remember 'Ilary?” Hilary nodded. “So she retired—and I get 'er pitch, I am 'appy. One year, tree years—'oo knows? Soon, with such a pitch, I make enough I can bring my granddaughter to England from Austria, and we—we are family again.” His eyes suddenly misted, and, absurd little man though he looked, Jane could feel his dignity, and the sadness under this funny appearance.

  Hilary spoke softly. “Yossell got out of Europe just in time, Jane, at the beginning of the war. His wife and daughter should have come too, but—”

  “My wife—” Yossell nodded gently. “My wife—they caught her. My daughter they left alone, thank God. All these years, she live with my sister. A good woman, my sister. And then, my daughter, she gets married—is right— every girl should get married—but this man she marries—sss!” He made a noise that indicated disapproval far more clearly than words could have done. “This lowlife—three weeks before my granddaughter is born—he goes—ptt!—like that. Just walks out. No one 'as seen 'im since, and I tell you, is not so bad he goes. He gives my poor daughter a terrible like.” He looked grim as he thought about his defecting son-in-law. “Anyway—my granddaughter is born, and all that time, I think, I plan—one day, I think, I bring them to London. My daughter, my granddaughter.” He suddenly wiped his nose with a big white handkerchief, pulled from his capacious pocket. “But my daughter she dies, God rest her sweet soul—consumption, you know? So many people they get consumption in bad days in Germany—and only my granddaughter is left—my little Gitty.”

  Jane wanted to cry suddenly. She knew nothing of the full story, obviously, but what Yossell had said so far was enough to show how little she knew of other people’s sadness.

  Once again, Yossell stopped talking to serve a customer. Then he came back and smiled at Hilary.

  “No I tell you. My granddaughter, my Gitty—you know what she writes and tells me?” He pulled a crumpled letter from his pocket. “Listen. She wants always she should be a singer. All these years, I send money to my sister, so Gitty can go to music school. And now—she is to sing!” He swelled with pride. “She is to sing in the Vienna Opera House! What you think of that, hey? Is she marvellous, or isn’t she? Vienna Opera House—chee!”

  “Yossell,” Hilary cried delightedly. “Yossell, that’s wonderful. She must be a marvellous singer! The opera at Vienna—oh Yossell, congratulations!” The two of them beamed joyfully at each other.

  Jane, practical as ever, said, “But what’s that got to do with the business? Why are you worried?”

  The round face fell again. “She wants I should come and hear her. Naturally! And me—I want to go.”

  “Can’t you afford it?” Hilary asked.

  “I can—sure I can. I’ve saved a lot of money this last year—I tell you, this is a marvellous pitch.”

  “Passport trouble?” Hilary persisted.

  “Not any more!” Yossell smiled widely, through his worry. “Me, I got me a British passport now. No one can touch me—I’m British! Nah—it’s the business.” He looked at the stall again, “I go away for a month, what happens? Someone takes my pitch—like that—that lowlife there—” With a jerk of his head he indicated the next stall, the dirty one.

  “That feller—he wants my pitch. He wants his son should have it. Naturally he wants his son should be with him, but this is my pitch—I wait a long time for it, and I’m here before he even gets this one next to me. This son—if he was a nice feller it wouldn’t be so bad, but he’s a great lazy no-good!” Yossell blew expressively through pursed lips. “He could get any sort of job, anywhere, a big feller like this son—but me? Without my business what I got? I’m too old for even hospital porter now. Who wants a porter with bad feet and is nearly seventy? I ask you!”

  “So you can’t just shut shop for a month?” Jane said.

  “Like I’m telling you: if I did—no business. No business. Not Gitty an me living together No Gitty here—what I got to look forward to? I tell you, I got reason to be worried.”

  Hilary looked at him thoughtfully. “Yossell—look. Is there no one who could run the business for you while you’re away? Just for a few days?”

  “So you think old Yossell is too stupid to think of this? Of course, I think of it. I tell you. I have one friend—not young; like me, he is an old man—and we arrange all. He look after my stall for one month. I explain. If I go, is no good goin’ only for few days. I spends all that money for the journey, and I stay only for few days? Nah—must be for one month. There’s my sister, see. She’s an old lady now. All these years, she looks after my girl, and then my girls’ girl. I—I like to see her before she isn’t there to see—or I die myself.”

  “You?” Hilary cried. “You’ll be around or years yet, Yossell.”

  He grinned suddenly. “Yah—I know. But my sister, she hasn’t so easy a life like me. Maybe she not so good in herself, hey? So, like I say, I arrange all with my friend. He come for one month—I go to Vienna. And what happens?” He spread his fat hands wide. “I tell you what happens. He breaks a leg! All is arranged, and this silly old man, he breaks a leg! I ask you. So what can I do? No visit to Vienna for me. No opera house go hear my clever Gitty. Can’t be done! So…” Once again he spreads his arms wide. “No more talk of such things. We forget old Yossell and his troubles, ha? What you buy today?”

  “Apples, please, Yossell—the big red ones.” Hilary was abstracted as the old man weighed the fruit and piled it into Jane’s shopping basket. Then, with an almost guilty look at Jane, she said, “Yossell—do you like fish and chips?”

  “Fish and chips? Who doesn’t? Sure I do.”

  “We’re having it for supper tonight. Look, come and have supper with us, and maybe we can think of some way out of your problem—my brother might have an idea. What do you say?”

  Yossell beamed. “That’s very nice of you, 'Ilary—very nice. You sure I won’t be a nuisance?”

  “I wouldn’t ask you if I weren’t sure,” Hilary said. “About half-past seven, then? You know where we live?”

  Yossell bowed with unselfconscious grace. “Half-past seven. I know where, I look forward to this very much. I thank you.”

  As they crossed the main road on their way home, the potatoes that were their last purchase weighing the shopping baskets down so that they
had to keep changing hands to cope with the weight, Jane said suddenly:

  “Hilary, are you thinking what I think you’re thinking?”

  Hilary flashed a wicket look at her. “I might be—and why not, after all?”

  “Mmm.” Jane said doubtful. “Will the others agree?”

  “We’ll have to wait and see. I hope so.”

  Jane stopped at the flight of the steps up to the Cooper front door, balancing the heavy basket on one hip as the looked up at Hilary.

  “Well, if you are thinking what I think you are, I’m with you.”

  “Right! Between us, we might persuade the others. Now let’s unload this lot and make the picnic and get going. If we hang around much longer it’ll be too late to bother to go swimming and the boys will be livid.”

  They ran up the steps together.

  Chapter Three

  THEY say round the table in the bemused state that a day of swimming always created. They felt clean and fresh, their noses still full of the soft clearness the blue chlorinated water of the pool had left there, their hair, damp and curling in wild tendrils, their faces reddened with the hot sun. They had eaten themselves to a standstill, demolished the piles of golden chips Hilary had produced, as fast as they appeared on the table, disposing of every scrap of the crisp fish she had fried so well. Now they were finishing the big sweet melon that Yossell had brought as his contribution to their supper.

  It was Hilary who stirred herself first, leaning forward to push her plate to one side and rest her elbows on the table.

  “Listen,” she said firmly. “I’ve got something I specially want to talk to you about. No interruption, now—just listen,” and as succinctly as she could she told them about Yossell’s problem, while the little man sat nodding in agreement, his eyes bright under his thick white eyebrows.

  “Now, have any of you any ideas that might help?” Hilary asked when she had finished. “Richard?”

  “Ideas?” Richard repeated. “Can’t say anything exactly leaps to mind.” He was clearly not particularly interested. “If Yossell doesn’t have anyone to take over for him while he goes away, and these other types can be depended on to pinch his pitch if he does go, I suppose there' noting for it. You’ll just have to give the trip a miss, Yossell. Seems a shame.”

  Stephen with a characteristic gesture pushed his glasses up his nose to a firmer position and smiled at Yossell sympathetically.

  “It’s stinking luck, though, isn’t it? Mind you, I’d never go so far to listen to an opera, but seeing it’s your grand-daughter—”

  “Me, I like opera,” Yossell said.

  “I do too,” John said unexpectedly. “Well worth the trip, I’d say. What’s she going to sing, Kossel?”

  “Micaela in Carmen.” Yossell became very animated. “You know that aria she has?—da-da-da-da-da—” And he began to sing in a cracked voice, his head swaying gently from side to side, his eyes a little glazed as he concentrated on the melody. Then his voice faltered and stopped. He sighed deeply and let his shoulders slump.

  They looked at him in embarrassment for a moment, then Stephen said again. “It is stinking luck, Yossell. I wish we could help somehow.”

  “Sure,” Philip jeered. “I can see you running a stall, Stee. Shilling a pound pears! Shilling a pound pears! They’re luvly!” And he produced a recognisable market call in a fair imitation of Yossell’s own, the cry they had heard him make so often when they had shopped in the market with their mother.

  Hilary said softly, her own eyes on Richard, “Maybe Stephen couldn’t run a stall on his own, Philip. But how about eight of us doing it?”

  Richard’s head jerked up, and he stared across the table at his sister in something like horror.

  “Here, hang about a bit, Hilary! What crack-brained notion are you hatching now? Go easy, girl! I remember what happened the time you though we could build our own theatre here in Camden Town, what happened—”

  “Never mind that now.” Hilary was impatient. “That was ages ago. We’re older now, and this is something quite different.” She jumped to her feet to run round the table and put her arms round his neck, leaning over his shoulder to look into his face.

  “Look, Richie. We’re on our own, with nothing much to do for the next month. We can’t go swimming every day, can we? Even if we did, we’d get fed up with it after a bit. Why shouldn’t we help Yossell and take care over his business for him while he goes to Vienna? It’d be great fun, and keep the kids out of trouble.”

  Very firmly, Richard untwined her arms from his neck and pushed her away. “Include me out, ducky,” he said, his voice final. “You must be bats. What do you know what running a stall? What do any of us know?”

  “Yossell could show us, couldn’t you, Yossell?” Hilary turned to the little man who was sitting silently, his face a mixture of hope and disappointment.

  “Your brother is a wise boy, Hilary,” he said, after a moment. “You are a kind girl—a very kind girl. But such a thing can’t be done. Eight children—I beg your pardon,” he said bowed towards Richard and the silent Jane, “five children and three not so children—to work in a market? What would your Momma say? Nah—nah. Like your brother says, Hilary, such a thing can’t be.”

  “I don’t see why not.” It was Jane who spoke now. “Listen, Richard. I’m starting at L.S.E. next term. It’d be marvellous for me if I could spend a bit of time learning how a retail business works. I know a bit about it already, and I think I could run the finances of it, once Yossell explains his ways. We three are old enough to work—I mean, Richard, you’d have worked in a garage all summer, wouldn’t you, if you could have? The three big boys could help with the selling, and I’m sure we’d find work for the two little ones. And you’d have to do all the fetching and carrying—with your car. You buy your stuff at one of the big wholesale markets, Yossell?” Yossell nodded. “Right, then. If you were willing to come in on this, Richard and do the buying, I’d look after the money. Hilary could be in charge of the staff itself— with her acting, she could easily be a saleswoman, couldn’t you, Hilary? I mean you’re not scared of talking to people, not like me. I think it’s a marvellous idea …” her voice trailed away, the flush of unusual enthusiasm dying on her cheeks a she looked at Richard’s unresponsive face.

  “All the apples you could eat,” Jojo said dreamily. “Just think, Bar. Apples and pears and bananas …”

  “Greedy pig,” Barbara said briefly. “But it would be fun, Richie.” She turned to her silent brother, her dark hair swinging round her suddenly bright eyes. “It’s so dull without Mummy and Daddy, Richie. Couldn’t we? I’d love to weigh things on the scales, and put all the fruit in pretty piles.”

  It was Jane who pulled the master stroke. “I dare say we could come to some sort of financial arrangement with Yossell,” she said. “We ought to be able to earn enough to buy extra petrol for your car, and maybe even have some over for some of the spare parts you’re always on about.”

  Richard, for the first time, looked interested. While no one could accuse him of being mercenary, the car that was his pride and joy certainly needed a great many parts replaced, and finding the money to run it was one of his biggest headaches.

  “I suppose that is a point…” he said slowly.

  “Nah.” It was Yossell who stood up now, shaking his white head firmly. “Like I said. You are all very nice people you should think to help old Yossell like this, but I can’t let you. What would your Momma say?”

  “Nothing at all,” Philip and Stephen said together. “She’d want to come to the stall too, if she was here,” Stephen went on. “We wouldn’t get a look in. She’d have a marvellous time acting a market woman.”

  Richard laughed. “That true,” he said. “The folks wouldn’t mind a bit. How about Uncle Joseph, though?”

  John looked straight ahead, his usually closed face set in a firm expression. “He isn’t here, so we can’t ask him. Jane is in charge of us, and as far as I’m con
cerned, what she says goes.”

  Jojo, half asleep as he leaned against his older sister, blinked up at her and smiled. “Jane’s in charge. John said so. Can I have lots of apples and pears, Jane?”

  Jane’s fair head came up, and she looked across the table at Richard. “I’m in charge of the Jackson’s,” she repeated slowly, “and I think it is an excellent idea.” the overtones of her father’s pompous voice made Richard grin briefly. “I think it would be very good for the children. Educational.”

  “But—” Yossell began.

  “No buts.” Hilary bounced back to her chair, and leaned towards the old man. “Look, Yossell, how old is the boy that wants your pitch—the son of the man at the next stall to you?”

  “Him? From where should I know? Seventeen, eighteen… ”

  “Richard is nineteen. Jane and I are seventeen. If we weren’t students, we’d be out at work, wouldn’t we? Well, then. If a boy of seventeen can run a stall, so can we. And there’s three of us— and the others, too. Lots of boys of fourteen have jobs in holidays. Why not Stephen and Philip and John? Stephen’s nearly fifteen, and the others’ll be sixteen soon. Why not let us. You do want to go to Vienna, don’t you? Here’s your chance.”

  Yossell was wavering. “Sure I want to go. Didn’t I tell you? But why should you do this? It is nice, sure it’s nice you should want to. But—”

  “Put it down to self-interest, if you like.” Richard had capitulated completely now, catching the others’ enthusiasm. “You want to go away, we want something to do. And if we can earn a bit a bit while we enjoy ourselves. I’m all for it. Money isn’t everything but it’s damned useful.”

  “Don’t swear,” Hilary said automatically. “Look, Yossell, it’s settled. When do you want to go?”

  “A plane I can get a cheap flight tomorrow,” Yossell said unwillingly, “But—”

  “I tell you, it’s settled! Can you get a seat on the plane at such short notice? And is your passport all right—visas and things? And can you get the money all right?”