Shilling a Pound Pears

by Claire Rayner

  “That we’d better get to the pitch,” Richard said. “Never mind what it looks like—if we don’t get moving, we’ll be too late to sell any of it, and we owe that Higgins bloke twenty quid, remember. Come on!”

  Richard went to the front of the stall, and Stephen and Philip to the back, Hilary and Barbara placed themselves at the customers’ side of the stall, and Jane and Jojo and John went behind it, and slowly, the heavy stall started to move under the combined pull and push efforts of the three bigger boys. Hilary and Barbara fielded any fruit that tumbled off as they moved and ran alongside to put it back, and the little procession was off.

  As they emerged from the cul-de-sac where the shed was, into the rush and noise of the market itself, Hilary felt a sudden sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. It had all seemed so easy when Yossell talked about it, but now, as the stall creaked on its erratic way between the other stalls that were busily setting themselves up along the street, she was frightened. Suppose they didn’t get any customers? Suppose the money they had borrowed was never replaced? Suppose someone came along and told them they couldn’t have the pitch? What on earth would they do then? For a moment, she wished she hadn’t ever thought of helping Yossell out.

  Fortunately, there wasn’t time to think, for they arrived alongside the pitch. With a great deal of jockeying and twisting, they managed to push the stall into line, and with a sigh of relief Richard put on the brake which prevented the stall from moving inadvertently.

  Under his instructions, the spare boxes of fruit were piled on each side of the stall, and scales were set up at the back, alongside the strings of paper bags Jojo had prepared.

  All round them other stallholders were bustling about, setting their stocks out, calling cheerfully to each other across the street, while a few early customers began to wander between the rows of stalls. Hilary kept her head well down, tidying her pile of fruit, suddenly as she as Jane, who was patently scared stiff, both of them determined not to catch any stranger’s eye

  And then the first customer arrived.

  “'Ow much the Beauty Baths?” a voice demanded behind Hilary, making her jump almost out of her skin.

  A fat old woman in a rusty black overcoat was glaring at her from behind a pair of round horn-rimmed glasses. Hilary looked round wildly for Richard. His tousled red head popped up from behind the stall, where he had been trying to stow a box of apples, and she hissed at him urgently, “How much are the Beauty of Bath? And which ones are they, for Pete’s sake?”

  “Beauty of Bath? They’re those little red and yellow apples there. How much?” He looked at the woman standing behind Hilary, and smiled widely.

  “Good morning, Madam!” he said cheerfully, and came round the stall to stand beside her, wiping his hands on the seat of his trousers. “Lovely morning, isn’t it? Beauty of Bath apples? Sixpence a pound to you, Madam. How many can I give you?”

  The far woman looked up into his smiling face and suddenly creased her forbidding visage into a toothy grin of her own.

  “Ho! Madam, is it? Smart we are, all of a sudden. Well, sir, make if four pounds—and make 'em good. None of your specked stuff for me!”

  Richard bowed smartly, and turned to the stall. As though to the manner born, he grabbed a couple of weights from the pile beside the scale, tossed them on to the weight pan, and began to fill the scoop with the little sweet-smelling apples from the pile in front of the stall. When the balance swung level he tipped them into the paper bag Stephen immediately gave him, and dropped the lot into the string bag the customer held out to him.

  “Two shillings, Madam, if you please—many thanks, Madam! Anything else this morning? Got some lovely pears here—-shilling a pound, to you. They’re fresh from the country this morning!”

  “This’ll do, ta,” the woman said, and put a florin into his outstretched hand. “I’ll be back for the rest come Friday—Sir,” and crackling with laughter, she turned and waddled off.

  Hilary and Jane were staring at Richard with their mouths open.

  “Well , I’ll be blowed,” Hilary said at last. “Get you! You’d think you’d worked in a market all your life!”

  “Nothing to it!” Richard said airily, tossing the florin in his hand. “Nothing at all! You’ve just got to be friendly, that’s all,” and laughed at Hilary’s gaping face.

  Philip had been peering at the scales. “Maybe there’s nothing to it,” he said dryly, “but we’ll be broke if you go on selling like that.”

  Richard turned and stared at him. “Why? I made a sale, didn’t I?”

  “Oh, yes!” Philip said lazily. “You certainly did. Five pounds of apples for two bob—marvellous!”

  Richard squinted at the two weights Philip was holding out for his inspection, the weights that had been on the scales when he put the apples in the scoop.

  “Oh, no!?” he said, and his dismay was ludicrous. “I’m a Grade A twit—look at that!” The others came and peered over is shoulder at the two weights, clearly marked three pounds and two pounds, respectively.

  They collapsed into gales of laughter, renewing their gasps of hilarity every time they looked at Richard’s crestfallen face.

  “No wonder she laughed! Hilary managed, through the tears of joy that ran down her cheeks. “And I’ll bet she’ll be back, for bargains like that!”

  Jane was the first to recover. “We’d better mark up the prices of the stuff,” she said, wiping her eyes, as the others subsided at last, “or we’ll be giving the stuff away.”

  Hilary fished a box of price tickets out of the shelf at the back of the stall, and they began to sort out the various markers for their produce. They priced Worcester apples at one-and-three a pound, and the Granny Smiths at two-and-three, for John, who had wondered off to look at the prices other fruit stalls were charging, reported that everyone else was selling Granny Smiths at two-and-six a pound. As he said, “We’ll get two-and-three as easily as two bob, and we need to make up profits on things like that. Everyone else’s bananas are very cheap, so we’ll have to make less on them. Right Jane?”

  Jane nodded. “Mmm. Look John, you keep an eye on what the other people are charging, and we’ll price our stuff accordingly. What we lose on one line we’ll be able to make up on another that way.”

  Not for the first time, Hilary marvelled a little at the way the quiet John seemed to think of the important things. She would never have thought of comparing prices like that, she told herself honestly, and smiled at her silent cousin gratefully.

  Barbara and John were still looking through the box of markers as the others put the last price ticket on the lemons, which they needed to sell at fourpence each—a good price, because they were big juicy ones.

  “Look at these!” Barbara said, giggling. “Can we use them, Hilary?”

  She held out some markers, made of the same stiff plastic as the price markers, and with same black printing. They bore various messages: Don’t squeeze me till I’m yours. If you don’t want the stuff, don’t muck it about. Sweeter than love. Bags of juice.

  “These are fun? Richard said. “Let’s put 'em out.” They struck the signs on the piles of fruit, pushing the spikes into the top of the pile. The pears read. Don’t squeeze me till I’m yours and the oranges announced they were Bags of juice. The grapes were labelled Sweeter than love, while the last notice of all about not mucking the stuff about they put right at the front of the stall, sticking the spike into the artificial green grass sheet.

  Now, suddenly, customers came thick and fast. Richard served the first two, smartly dressed women clearly shopping on their way to work in West End offices. Then Hilary and Jane joined in, coping with the housewives, the school-children buying cheap apples for their school lunches, the men buying for their wives.

  John and Stephen and Philip, without being told to, replenished the rapidly diminishing piles of fruit on the stall from the boxes at the side, while Barbara and Jojo kept the Sales Staff provided with paper bags, and put the
weights on the scale pan for them carefully making sure the were the right ones.

  Gradually, the cigar box beside the scales, which served as the till, began to fill up with sixpences and shillings and half-crowns, and then, to their intense joy, with ten-shilling and pound notes. Barbara, who had a passion for arithmetic, gradually took over the money leaving Jojo to the bags and scales, while she counted out change for the customers, and arranged the various coins into neat heaps.

  Hilary and Richard were thoroughly enjoying themselves. As their confidence grew, they began to call out their wares, just as the other stallholders did. “Shilling a pound pears, they’re lovely!” shrilled Hilary. The passers-by smiled back at her pretty, flushed face, enjoying her young enthusiasm, and stopped very often to buy.

  Richard joined in, shouting the slogans from the markers, which had taken his fancy.

  “Bags of juice—Sweeter than love!” he roared, throwing oranges on to the scales for a pretty young housewife in a gay summer dress. “Sweet as you, Madam,” he added, winking wickedly at her, so that she bridled and giggled, adding a request for a pound of grapes that she hadn’t really intended to buy but could not resist.

  The shoppers began to notice the stall. There was no doubt that the staff looked different from the other stall-holders. Hilary and Richard were looking particularly alike, both in brown slacks and vivid yellow sweaters, their red hair blazing brightly against the background of fruit. Jojo, busily putting weights on the scales and handing paper bags to his cousins, his thatch of hair on end, brought sympathetic grins from the older women, who cooed over him, and kept giving him sweets, all of which he accepted cheerfully, so that his mouth was sticky and always full.

  Even quiet dumpy Jane got her share of attention, with some of the men who bought making jokes with her, partly to see her blush a fiery red as she did every time anyone spoke to her. One passer-by stopped and looked at the absorbed Barbara counting out change, and shouted “Wotcha, Rockefeller!” which made Richard laugh, and call out, “Then help her make her fortune! Granny Smiths —two-and-three a pound!” The man stopped and bought some.

  Hilary began to act now, as she really fell into the way of the job. She had a particular gift for imitating accents, and very soon there was a small crowd standing listening as she adroitly put on a new accent for each customer she served. She sold one woman oranges, using a broad Scots burr as she did so, changed to a deep French Romanic accent for the next one, then cockney, then Irish, then a fair imitation of Yossell’s middle European accent. Richard, realising that a crowd always attracted other people, even if the crowd itself wasn’t buying, began to join in, and then Stephen did too, and soon the stall was surrounded by people who laughed and shouted at the young people, egging them on, making jokes, and generally enjoying themselves.

  By lunch-time, when the crowd in the market slacked off, they were hoarse from shouting, very thirsty and very dirty. Hilary’s hands were stained a sticky red from grapes, and Jojo’s face was filthy from dust that had stuck to the stickiness of the sweets he had been eating. Barbara’s hands were blackened from handling money, and Richard had a black smear across his face where he had rubbed it with dirty hands.

  Barbara was counting busily, and then looked up at the others who were taking a breather, as for the first time there were no customers to serve. She looked at them with something like awe on her face.

  “Guess how much money we’ve taken?” she breathed. “Just guess.”

  Richard stretched and sighed. “I don’t know,” he said. “How much stock have we got left, John?”

  John peered under the stall, and at the pile of boxes beside it, counting as he went.

  “There’s only one box of Worcesters left, and two of the Beauty of Bath. All the Granny Smiths have gone, and all but one box of pears—and the only grapes and bananas that are left are those on the stall,” he reported.

  They looked at the stall, and grinned happily at each other, for it was a wreck of its former self. Very little fruit at all was left, and only row of oranges remained of the pile they had started with.

  “Have we made enough to pay Mr Higgins back yet?” Jane asked. “I mean—making sure we’ve enough to buy with tomorrow.”

  Barbara threw back her head and laughed triumphantly.

  “We’ve taken forty-three pounds, seven and tenpence!” she announced. “And it’s only lunch-time!”

  “Yippee!” Stephen shouted, and threw a mock punch at Philip, his own way of showing great delight. “We’ll make a fortune like this!”

  And Jojo jumped up and down, bawling “Forty pounds—forty pounds!” at the top of his voice while the others thumped each other on the back in congratulation.

  “Forty pounds, eh?” A voice behind Hilary made her whirl round sharply. A man in an expensive looking overcoat, with velvet collar, was leaning against the side of their stall, a matchstick held between his yellowing broken teeth, as he looked at them all with an extremely unpleasant look on his face.

  “Forty Pounds?” he repeated. You’d better make the most of it then, baby-faces. You won’t be makin’ any more like that, take it from me.”

  Chapter Seven

  THEY stared at him, frozen with surprise. Then Richard frowned, and pulled himself up to his not inconsiderable height. “I beg your pardon?” he said frigidly. “Were you taking to us?”

  “Damn' right I was.” The man in the black overcoat looked insolently at Richard, and then turned to stare at Hilary, letting his eyes roam over her in a way that made her face flame.

  Then he turned back to Richard, “And who said you could work this pitch, matey? There’s rules in this market, y'know. We don’t like strangers horning in on what doesn’t concern them.”

  “We’re not horning in,” Hilary said sharply. “We’re holding this pitch for Yossell - he’s gone away for a few days.” She had meant to say a month, but she caught Jane’s warning eye.

  The man sniffed horribly, and shifted the matchstick to the other side of his mouth. “Gone away, has he? To bad for him. Loses his pitch, he does, if he’s gone away. So you’d better pack up, hadn’t you? Like I said, there’s rules in this market. So get going, baby-faces. We don’t want strangers.”

  “They’re not going anywhere.”

  Hilary and Richard whirled, to see Peter Minsky leaning negligently against the side of the stall, still wearing the grubby white coat he had on while he worked at the supermarket. He grinned reassuringly at them, and then came over to stand in front of the man in the overcoat.

  “You know as well as I do Yossell had every right to transfer his licence for a while if he wants to. And that means he doesn’t lose the pitch. So get going yourself.”

  The man stared at Peter, and the spat on the ground, missing Peter’s shoes by inches.

  “Well well,” he drawled. Copper Minsky, the white hope of Camden Town. You’re not a copper yet, big boy - so don’t try coming the old acid with me.”

  “Look, Barker,” Peter said angrily. “You may be the biggest stallholder in this market, but it doesn’t give you the right to push other people around and I know quite well I’m not a policeman yet - but there are other men who are, and we’ll have one of them here on the double if you try to interfere with Yossell’s friends. So get going.”

  The man looked at him silently for a moment, then spat again.

  “All right, Minsky. We’ll have to see what we can do, then, won’t we? There’s more than one way to skin a cat, you know?” He leaned over, picked up an apple from the stall, and turned to go, taking a bite out of the apple as he did so. “We’ll have to see what we can do,” he repeated, and threw the apple back on the stall before lounging off towards the end of the market.

  “What a nasty man,” Stephen murmured, picking up the bitten apple in disdainful fingers and tossing it into the gutter. “Who is he?”

  “He’s got the stall next to this one, and another at the end of the market— an extremely unpleasant type,
as you say.” Peter smiled diffidently at Richard. “I hope you don’t mind my cutting in like that. it’s just that I know him— he’s a right so-and-so when he wants to be. I reckon he’s trying to get enough pitches on this street to run the market his way.”

  Richard looked at him. “Very good of you,” he said gruffly.

  Hilary put a hand on Peter’s arm and smiled up at him. “We’re very grateful, Peter. You’ve got a gift for turning up when you’re needed, haven’t you?”

  Peter reddened, and said in a voice thick with embarrassment, “I wasn’t trying to watch you, or anything—I just came down to buy some apples for my lunch.”

  “Don’t they sell apples at the supermarket?” Philip asked innocently, and grinned at Stephen broadly as Peter’s face got redder than ever.

  Jane cut in at this point, bridging an uncomfortable silence as Hilary glared furiously at her brothers.

  “What did he mean about seeing what he could do, Peter? Can he do anything to make us go away?”

  “I don’t think so—you’ve got Yossell’s licence, haven’t you?”

  Richard nodded and patted his back trouser pocket. “Yes. He gave it to us just before he went. It’s legal for us to be here, isn’t it?”

  “If you got a street traders’ licence, then it is. So I don’t think he can do much.” Peter frowned briefly, looking away down the market towards the pub on the corner, where the figure of Barker had disappeared into the saloon bar. “You could ask the market inspector, I suppose— though I rather think he’s a bit scared of Barker, and would be more likely to try to keep out of any rows Barker tried to start.”

  “Inspector?” Jane asked.

  “The council have a man who has to watch the market,” Peter explained. “He has to see it’s property run, and that no one infringes the law. He’s not a policeman, but he can get a copper along to enforce his rules, if he has to— but as I said, he’s bit wet, really.”

  “No point in worrying,” Richard said bracingly. “We’ve got as much right to be here as anyone else, so that’s that. He’s just trying to scare us, and we won’t be scared—right?”