Shilling a Pound Pears

by Claire Rayner

  “Right,” the three younger boys said together. And Stephen added, pushing his glasses more firmly on his nose, “And if he tries any rough stuff, I’ll be ready for him—” a remark that brought rude guffaws from Philip and John.

  “I’m hungry,” Jojo said plaintively, looking at the half-eaten apple he was holding.

  “You’ve been eating all morning,” Barbara said, “greedy pig.”

  “Hungry for real food,” Jojo said, looking at his older sister pathetically. “Can we have lunch please, Jane?”

  “Oh, Lord,” Jane said, contritely. “I’d forgotten lunch. Look, I’ll nip back and make something quickly. Will you stay here, Hilary, while I feed the others? Then you can come and eat yourself.”

  “O.K.,” Hilary said cheerfully. “The market’s pretty slack now— I dare say I can cope for half an hour or so.”

  “It’s my lunch-hour till two,” Peter said. “I could stay if you like.”

  “I bet he could,” Stephen murmured under his breath to Philip, while Hilary, who unfortunately hadn’t heard him, smiled gratefully at Peter.

  “Thank you, Peter.” she said. “I don’t suppose that man’ll come back, but I’d feel safer if you did stay.”

  The rest of the day passed without any unusual events, except that they sold out every bit of stock by four o'clock that afternoon. Peter had returned to his supermarket at two o'clock, when the others came back, after promising to come and help them pack up at six, a promise even Richard seemed to appreciate. His original distrust of Peter seemed to have evaporated, and although he wasn’t exactly behaving like the fair boy’s best friend, he seemed to have accepted the way he had joined them, and the fact that he seemed to like Hilary in particular.

  As they had sold out so early, the younger boys and Barbara went off swimming, leaving the three older ones to hold the fort. Hilary looked after them a little wistfully as they went, for the afternoon had become very hot, and a swim would have been heaven, she felt so dirty and sticky. But as Jane said in her practical way, “It’d be silly to leave the pitch too early—especially as that Barker man is trying to get us off the pitch anyway. We’d better say till six o'clock.”

  And stay they did, using the time to scrub the stall, with brushes and buckets of water begged from Mrs Minsky’s shop across the street.

  The following morning they woke to pouring rain, ad dragged themselves out of bed at the crack of dawn with rather less willingness than they had shown the previous day. But they got themselves organised in plenty of time to get to the wholesale market and began to wrap themselves in raincoats and headscarves, ready to set out.

  “We’d better buy plenty this morning,” Richard grunted as he pulled huge wellington boots on to his feet. “We haven’t s scrap of stock.”

  “I think we’d better spend thirty pounds today,” Jane said. “We’ll put in ten pounds aside for paying back Mr Higgins.”

  “We still owe Peter some money too,” Hilary reminded her, a little embarrassed, for she had felt she must admit Peter had lent her more than two pounds.

  “But we won’t get it back if we don’t have plenty of stock to sell. Another day like yesterday, and we should be able to clear our debts—then we can start seeing what sort of profits we can make for Yossell when he gets back.”

  They decided to leave Hilary and Barbara behind this morning, much to Barbara’s disgust, so that they could pack sandwiches fill vacuum flasks with coffee. “It’s silly to waste time rushing back for lunch,” Hilary pointed out. “We can have a proper meal in the evening. We’ll meet you at the shed at half-past seven, Richie. O.K.?”

  So while the others rattled off in Richard’s beloved car, Barbara cut mounds of sandwiches, opening tins of corned beef and slicing tomatoes busily, while Hilary, who was a pretty good cook, quickly made a trayful of scones to be split and buttered and spread with raspberry jam while they were hot, and eaten as a pudding after the sandwiches.

  They packed the food into a big straw shopping bag that Hilary’s mother used for picnics, and filled up the corners with flasks of coffee and a bottle of milk for Jojo, who was considered by his parents to be too young to drink coffee, and were ready to go to the shed in plenty of time.

  The rain was still coming down in sheets. They arrived dripping wet, and stood shivering a little, miserably huddled together as they waited for the car to arrive. Too late, they had discovered that Richard had the key to the shed.

  “If they don’t get here soon, I shall float away,” Hilary said crossly, staring up at the grey sky, pouring sky. “And I don’t suppose we’ll sell much today, anyway. Who goes shopping in this rain?”

  But at this point, a loud rattling announced the arrival of the car, and Hilary cheered up.

  As the car turned into the little alleyway, Barbara waved eagerly and stepped forward to meet them— only to slip on a wet piece of wrapping paper. Her arms flailing wildly, she fell backwards against the door of the shed, and landed heavily. As she fell, the door which was supposed to be locked gave way and swung open.

  As Hilary pulled her to her feet, and tried to brush some of the mud from her coat, the other tumbled out of the car and came running over.

  “What happened?” Richard shouted. “Why’s the door open? Didn’t you lock it last night, Hilary?”

  “Of course I did,” Hilary said angrily. “You saw me.” She turned to peer into the shed, pushing the other half of the double doors open as she did so, and then she stood stock still, horror written all over her face.

  “Oh, no!” she breathed. “It can’t be—What happened?”

  The others came to peer over her shoulder, and they too looked horrified at what they saw. The stall that had stood so neatly stacked against the side of the shed was now lying all over the floor, each well-scrubbed piece daubed with great splashes of red paint. The green artificial grass apron lay in shreds in one corner, while the floor itself was covered with piles of dirt.

  Richard was the first to move. He picked his way over the piles of dirt and the strewn parts of the stall to have a closer look. The others followed him in, and silently inspected the damage.

  “It must be that Barker bloke,” Richard said at length. “Now what do we do?”

  “Call the police,” John said practically. “This is breaking and entering, isn’t it? We should report it.”

  Richard thought for a moment, then shook his head. “If we do that, we’ll have to lose a lot of time while they investigate, and we’ll probably not get the stall out today—and that’s what Barker wants to happen. If we don’t take up the pitch, he can say it’s vacant, and move in. I think we’d better just try to clean up, and get out just the same.”

  “We can’t!” Philip said. “It’ll take us hours to get that paint off, and put the stall up, and get it ready. We’ll never get out on the pitch today if we did it that way.”

  “Yes we can,” Richard snapped. “But not if we stand here gassing. Stephen, nip off home. There’s a big can of turps in the garage, and a pile of rags in the corner—bring it here, fast. And—yes, Philip, you go too. We’ll need buckets of water and scrubbing brushes—get moving now.” As the boys obediently turned and hared off down the cul-de-sac Richard started to pull the pieces of the stall out into the alleyway, grunting instructions to the others as he did so.

  Now they had a chance to look at the mess, they could see it wasn’t as bad as it looked at first. There were no structural damage to the stall, so Hilary and Richard started to put it together, getting smeared with the red paint as they worked.

  “It’ll be easier to clean it, once it’s set up.” Richard panted as he worked. “Barbara, Jojo—have a look at the grass sheet, and see if it can be repaired. There are some reels of sticky plaster in the front glove compartment of the car—use that.”

  For the first time, Richard was glad that his car was so old and battered, for he kept the plaster to make running repairs as necessary.

  By the time the younger boys
came back laden with buckets, rags and turpentine, the stall was set up, and together the four boys and the two girls set to work, sluicing turpentine over the red paint, scrubbing hard at the wood with the cold water that Stephen and Philip had brought in the buckets. By half-past eight the stall looked a little better. There were still red stains here and there, but at least they could use it, and when the roughly patched grass sheet was in position, they felt a little happier. It wasn’t anything like as spick and span as Yossell usually kept it, but it was usable.

  In silence, for they hadn’t time or breath to talk, they unloaded the fruit they had bought, and began to pile it on to the stall, not bothering to make pretty piles this morning—there would be time for that once they got the stall on to the pitch.

  And at a quarter-past nine, they at last pushed and pulled their stall out of the alleyway, and dragged it to the pitch. Every other pitch was already filled, and the stallholders watched them go by, covertly peering round their own stalls.

  As the arrived at their pitch, a couple of men from the other side of the market lounged over.

  “What’s up? Why you so late?” one of them asked, a short fat man in a cloth cap and a huge raincoat.

  Richard dragged the stall into position, and said curtly, “Someone broke into our shed and mucked the stall up. We’ve been cleaning up.”

  He straightened up, and looked along towards the next pitch, where the black overcoat of Barker could be seen leaning against one side of the shabby stall. Barker grinned widely, showing his yellow teeth in a ferocious grimace.

  “Flippin’ amateurs,” he said loudly, winking at the short man in the cloth cap, and at the taller one beside him, who also come over the street to see what happened. “Can’t even get on the pitch at a decent hour, can they? What’s the matter, baby-faces? Didn’t your Mummy call you early enough this mornin’?”

  The cloth-capped man looked uneasily at Barker. “Not their fault their stall got bashed in, is it?” he muttered. “'Ere—just a minute kid.” He went over to Richard who was hauling boxes of apples out from under the stall, ready to load heir contents on to the front. “I’ll give you a hand.”

  Barker straightened up, and took a few menacing steps forward. “You’ll be losing your customers, Fred, if you don’t watch out—there’s someone over there looking at your cucumbers.”

  The cloth-capped man stopped, and looked over his shoulder at his own stall where a woman stood peering at the piles of salad vegetables on it. He looked back at Barker’s face, and then shuffled his feet a little and shrugged his shoulders before turning to go.

  “Yeah—yeah, I’d better go. Sorry, kid.” He looked apologetically at the young people who were still busily stacking the fruit on the front of their stall, and shuffled back across the road. The taller man, too, turned away, together with two or three other stallholders who had come over to listen to what was going on. In less than a minute, the eight “amateurs” were alone again, silently working their stall under Barker’s sneering stare.

  That they were decidedly frightened of Barker was certain. Richard, as he worked, bit hard on the words he would have like to say, afraid that if he did start an argument the girls and the younger children would get involved in a nasty incident. The older girls, too, kept quiet, keeping their heads down as they worked, even Hilary, terrified of the menacing black-coated figure that watched them.

  But after a few minutes, he turned away, and away off down the market, leaving his stall to the care of the lanky youth who stood silently cutting the green leaves off the cauliflowers during the whole time the others had been there, apparently quite unaware of what was going on around him.

  Richard stared after Barker, his face quite glum.

  “Ye Gods, what a bully! Seems everyone in the market’s scared of him.” He looked across the street to where the cloth-capped man and the taller one stood with their heads together talking busily, carefully avoiding looking across the street towards Barker and the young people’s stalls. “Did you see they way that other chap— Fred—went off when Barker told him to? Not a peep out of him.”

  Jane looked worried. “What can we do, Richard? Shouldn’t we call the police? We can’t let him push us around like this—and if he did do this—”

  “Who else do you suppose did?” Richard snapped.

  “—if he did, won’t he do something else?”

  Hilary wiped her wet face miserably, and hitched her soaking wet head-scarf over her head from where it had slipped.

  “She’s right, Richie, we’ll have to do something.”

  Jojo sneezed suddenly, and Jane looked anxiously at him. “Don’t go getting a cold, Jojo, for heaven’s sale,” she said. “We’ve got enough troubles!”

  Hilary looked round at them all, and almost laughed, worried as she was. They were all soaking wet from the rain which still came down, though rather less hard now, as the grey clouds began to break up, letting the first hints of watery sunshine through. The boys were smeared with red paint, Barbara’s coat was covered in mud from her fall, and Richard’s trousers had a rip on one leg that showed his knee every time he moved.

  “Look,” she said. “If we three stay here to hold the pitch, the others can go home and get cleaned up. Barbara, can you see Jojo gets really dry, and make him some hot chocolate or something? Don’t come back till it stops raining, will you? I think it’ll stop soon. We can take it in turns, us three, to nip over to Mrs Minsky’s shop to get tidied up—she won’t mind, I’m sure.”

  “Mmm,” Richard said. “There isn’t much trade about yet.” He looked down the market at the handful of customers who were scuttling from stall to stall, doing their hurried shopping before disappearing back up the road to warm, dry homes. “Once we’re all cleaned up, and all get back here, we can decide what do to about this mess. In the meantime, Hilary, you go over to Mrs Minsky’s and see if she’ll let you clean up there. I won’t bother—I don’t think I ought to leave the stall at all this morning, somehow.”

  So they disbanded, the younger children making their dejected way home, Jojo sneezing violently as he went, while Hilary hurried across to Mrs Minsky’s warm little shop. That something would have to be done about the situation was sure—but right now they were all too wet, exhausted and miserable to think about it.

  Chapter Eight

  BY TWELVE o’clock the rain had at last stopped, and the strengthening sunshine brought a few more shoppers to the market. By the time the boys and Barbara returned, dry and clean, and Jane and Hilary had made themselves look more respectable at Mrs Minsky’s —the old lady chuckled sympathetically over them as they did so— their collective spirits were a little brighter than they had been. Even Richard felt better. The boys promised to keep a sharp lookout for trouble while he went home and changed his ripped trousers.

  When they counted the morning’s takings, however, their mood took a sharp downward plunge again.

  “Just over six pounds!” Jane said worriedly. “We’ll never get out of debt at this rate.”

  “It’s early yet,” Hilary said optimistically. “Now the weather’s a bit better, p'r'aps there’ll be a few more customers around. I’m more worried about this Barker business than that, right now.”

  “I still think we ought to tell the police,” John said. “That’s what police are for.”

  “But it’s too late for that now,” Philip pointed out. “They’ll be a bit suspicious, won’t they, when they find out we didn’t tell them right away? And anyway, we’ve cleaned up the mess— there’ll only be our word for it that there was a break-in.”

  “I’m not very keen on bringing the police into this,” Richard said slowly. “I suppose it is all right for us to be doing this— running the stall, I mean— but it might be a bit dicey. Better to keep out of the police eye, I should think.”

  Stephen said sarcastically, “So what do we do? Form our own police force? We’ll have to do something—that man’s obviously gunning for us. I don’t suppose f
or one moment we’ve had the last word from him.”

  A couple of women with shopping bags interrupted them, and while Richard served them with quite a lot of fruit, taking a total of seventeen shillings from them (which cheered Jane immensely) the other leaned against the back of the stall, trying to think of a way out of the situation they found themselves in. Hilary, looking covertly at the next stall, was relieved to see that only the taciturn youth was there, biting his nails as he read a comic paper.

  “Where’s Barker? she asked Richard in a low voice, as the two women departed, laden with their shopping.

  “I’ve been watching for him,” Richard said. “As far as I can see, he spends most of his time either in the pub on the corner, or in that café over the road. There’s another chap on his stall at the other end of the market. Between him and this bloke next door, Barker seems to have it pretty easy. He certainly doesn’t seem to do any work himself.”

  They lapsed into silence again, none of them having the heart to do any of the things they had done the previous day, calling their wares, or putting on a show to attract customers. Then, suddenly, there was a soft scuttle from underneath the stall, and Philip and Stephen, with a loud whoop, shot underneath the grass sheet.

  “What on earth—?” Hilary began, whirling round to peer at them.

  The two boys reappeared almost as suddenly as they had vanished, dragging with them a very small boy, a boy with tightly curling black hair, huge black eyes, and the largest pair of ill-fitting trousers round his thin legs that Hilary had ever seen. His face was smeared with dirt, and as he struggled to get away from the iron grip Philip and Stephen had on each of his scrawny arms, he muttered viciously under his breath.

  “I thought there was someone under there,” Philip panted as he struggled to hold on to the wriggling child. “I don’t know what he was up to.”