Shilling a Pound Pears

by Claire Rayner

  Richard grabbed the child by the collar of his shabby jacket and lifted him clear of the ground, while the small boy kicked helplessly, and tried to get his head round to bite Richard’s hand.

  “And what are you doing under our stall?” Richard asked grimly. “Come on!” He shook him slightly. “What are you doing? And who are you”

  The child peered up at him, and said, between clenched teeth. “Put me down—can’t talk up 'ere, can I?”

  “If I put you down, will you tell me what you were up to?” Richard said, still holding the child above ground level.

  “If yer don’t I’ll choke you.” And indeed the child did look as though he might choke at any minute, so tightly was Richard holding him.

  The other four boys made a tight circle round them, so that the child wouldn’t be able to get away even if Richard did let him go, so Richard dropped him and stood, hands on hips, staring down at the diminutive figure as with small dirty hands the urchin pulled his misshapen clothes back into some semblance of order.

  “Right. Now,” Philip said, in his deceptive drawl, “tell this nice gentleman what he wants to know—or we’ll do something nasty indeed.”

  The little boy peered up at them under incredibly long, curly eyelashes, and wiped his hand across his runny nose.

  “Only after some wood,” he muttered. “Didn’t have to get all aerated about that did yer? Not doing you no 'arm, was I.”

  “Wood?” Jane said, puzzled. “What wood?”

  The child jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

  “Boxes,” he said succinctly. “Made o’ wood, ain’t they?”

  “The fruit boxes?” Hilary said. “What do you want them for?”

  “Firewood,” the child said sulkily.

  “At this time of the year? Who want firewood in the summer?” Stephen was frankly unbelieving.

  “Cor!” the child said disgustingly. “Don’t you know nothin'? We collects all the year, chops it and ties it, and sells it in the winter.” He grinned suddenly, revealing even white teeth that sparkled in his dirty brown face. “Nice little business we got,” he said with satisfaction. “Makes more'n a couple quid a week each we does, when the weather’s right.”

  “We?” Richard asked.

  “Me an' my mates. Five of us. We sells firewood, does a bit of errandin'. We got a good set-up, we 'ave. 'Ere, look, Guv—” and he looked up into Richard’s face appealingly. “I wasn’t doin' no 'arm. You want to keep your boxes? All right— I won’t come 'ere no more, s’welp me I won’t. Let me 'op it now, eh?”

  “I don’t believe you,” Richard said flatly. “You’re one of Barker’s little friends, aren’t you? He sent you to make some trouble for us, didn’t he?”

  The child stared at him for a moment, and then laughed, throwing his head back. “Barker?” he spluttered. “Are you bonkers? I'd 'ave to be a proper charlie to start with 'im! That one'd 'ave me guts for garters as soon as look at me, 'e would. I never goes near 'im, believe me I doesn’t.” He stopped laughing, and looked round at them all shrewdly.”Wotsa matter? You 'avin trouble with that ole basket?”

  “He broke into our shed,” Barbara said. “He tried to spoil our stall.”

  “That shed at the end of the alley?” The child jerked his head in the direction of the shed.

  “That’s right,” Philip said eagerly. “You know it?”

  “I ought to. Lives right opposite. See it from my place, I can. Last night, was it? Thought I 'eard somethin'”

  “Do you mean you heard them breaking in, and did nothing about it?” Philip said incredulously. “Why didn’t you call the police?”

  “Ts!” the child looked at him with disgust written all over his small face. “You’re right green, aren’t yer? When you lives in these part you don’t go around bein' a copper’s nark. I goes back to sleep and mind me own business, I does.”

  “What’s your name?” Richard asked suddenly.

  The child looked suspicious. “Wot’s to do with you wot my name is?”

  “Oh, noting much,” Richard asked casually. “It’s just that I’ve got an idea— a proposition— to put to you. If your interested, that is. But I don’t do business with people whose names I don’t know.”

  “Business?” The child looked sharply at him. “Money business?”

  “Could be.”

  The child rubbed his dirty hand against his baggy trousers, and held it out to him.

  “Gregory Popodopoulous. 'Oo’re you?”

  “Cooper and Jackson Incorporated,” said Richard promptly, holding out his own hand, and shaking Gregory’s .

  “Popo—what?” Jojo said, staring interestedly at Gregory.

  Popodopoulous,” Gregory said briefly. “Greek. My old man comes from Cyprus—ain’t yer never seen a Cypriot before?”

  “But—you don’t talk like a foreigner,” Jane said wonderingly.

  “I ain’t no foreigner,” Gregory said, bristling. “British as wot you are— and anyway, I was born 'ere. it’s only my old man comes from Cyprus. Me Mum came from Scotland.”

  “Came?” Hilary said, immediately sympathetic.

  “Died when me little sister was a baby,” Gregory said in a matter-of-fact tone. “Got a big sister—looks after us, she does— when she ain’t at work. Me old man’s on the road.”

  “On the road?” Barbara was immediately interested. “Like ours? They’re actors,” she added importantly.

  Gregory looked at her with a grin. “Sort of. 'E’s with a fair. Don’t see much of 'im in the summer.” He turned to Richard, businesslike suddenly. “What’s this proposition you got.”

  Richard chewed his lower lip, and stared at the boy. Then he said, “These friends of yours—are they around?”

  Gregory nodded. “Around.” He waved his hand vaguely in the direction of the other stalls. “Why?”

  “This idea of mine’ll involve all of you. Get 'em here, and then we can talk.”

  Gregory looked at him for a moment, then shrugged, put two fingers into his mouth, and let out an ear-piercing whistle.

  Within a minute, four small boys suddenly appeared, to stand a few yards off, looking suspiciously at the eight young people round the stall. Gregory looked over his shoulder, and with a jerk of his head, beckoned them closer.

  There was a black-skinned boy, dressed in extremely tight blue jeans and a huge shirt with the tails flapping outside, two others as curly headed and black-eyed as Gregory, dressed in similarly shabby clothes, and a very small Indian child, with smooth black hair, and the most beautiful melting brown eyes in a delicate coffee-coloured, pointed face.

  “This’ere is Winston.” Gregory indicated the boy in blue jeans, “Comes from Jamaica, his folks do. And these two is Tony and George Antoniou—cousins of mine. And this one is Krishna.” He turned to the four little boys. “These geezers copped me pinchin' their boxes.” Aving trouble with old Barker they are. Says they got a proposition. O.K.?”

  The four children stared round at eight Coopers and Jacksons, then looked at each other for a moment. Without bothering to talk they seemed to come to some sort of agreement, and then nodded at Gregory.

  Gregory looked satisfied. “Right, shoot.” He squatted down on his narrow haunches, and looked up at Richard, the other fours boys coming to stand close behind him.

  “Philip—Stephen watch the stall, will you?” Richard said. “Now, you lot—come back here.” He led them to the front of the sweet shop immediately behind the stall, and as the group clustered round, began to talk in a low voice.

  “Suppose we gave you all our wooden boxes—every one of them. Would they be worth much to you?”

  “Just a minute, Richard,” Jane said anxiously. “We can get threepence back on each of those boxes…”

  “This is worth it, believe me,” Richard said impatiently. “Listen, Gregory—we’ll give you all our boxes in exchange or a bit of help from you.”

  “ 'Ow many boxes a week?” Gregory asked practically.
/>   “Oh—around fifty or so, I suppose.”

  Gregory’s eyes glistened. “Not bad. Don’t get that much between us, some weeks,” he said. “Wot do you want for them?”

  “You live opposite our shed, you say. Suppose I asked you to keep an eye on things for us—could you do that?”

  “Suppose so,” Gregory looked dubious. “But I don’t go calling no cops for you, if that’s what you mean.”

  “I don’t want you to. I just want you to keep an eye on things,” Richard said. “Can you throw straight?”

  Gregory flexed a skinny arm. “Hit a cat at fifty feet, I can,” he said proudly.

  “Right, then,” Richard said. “We give you plenty of buckets of dirty water and what have you, and get some rotten fruit, and if anyone turns up, you let 'em have it. Is it a deal?”

  “Not 'arf!” Gregory grinned hugely. “I'd like to have a pot shot at old Barker—specially when he couldn’t see me.”

  “For what do you need us?” Krishna’s soft lilting voice said suddenly. “I don’t live with Gregory. None of us do.”

  “I thought you'd better take it in turns to watch. Gregory can’t sit up all night and watch every night—he’ll need his sleep. Couldn’t you take it in turns to stay at his place at night? Would your families mind?”

  Winston laughed richly. “My Maw— she don' know what I do come dark time. I could come to Gregory any ole time. Huh, Gregory?”

  George and toy grinned too. “Us too, we does sleep over at Greg’s, anyway, when we fancies. Our Mum, she don’t mind—s’long as we don’t bother 'er,” Tony said simply. “If it’s O.K. with your Anna, it’s O.K. by me, Greg.”

  “Anna?” Richard asked.

  “My sister,” Gregory explained. “Nah, that’s all right. What she don’t know won’t 'urt 'er. We’ll work it out. Mind you, they don’t throw as good as me.”

  “Speak as you know, Gregory,” Krishna said softy. “Who broke old Fred’s window last week—and on the run, hmm?”

  Gregory laughed. “They ain’t so bad.” he conceded, then he stretched.”O.K., mate. Got yourself a deal, you 'ave. Startin' tonight. You see we 'as the ammunition, and we’ll do the job.”

  John said suddenly, “Richard—how about getting some really strong-smelling disinfectant? Then we could give it to the boys to mix with water— it’ll be easier than trying to get dirty water to throw—and if someone does come, and gets hit, maybe we’ll be able to spot 'em around the market. They’ll smell pretty high, won’t they? I remember how long I stank of pine well I fell over a bucket of water with disinfectant our daily was using at home.”

  “Good idea.” Gregory looked at John with respect. “And look, don’t you bother about rotten fruit— we can get plenty of tomatoes. Got a mate up the market sells’em. 'E’ll be glad to let me shift any dud stock. Can we take some boxes of yours now, we wasted enough time today already.”

  “Right.” Richard held out his hand, and gravely shook the small right hands of each of the five. “We’re in business. Take all there are. You’ll find abut ten there, I think. “Bye now.”

  They watched the five small figures melt away into the crowds and then Hilary turned to Richard and squeezed his arm impulsively.

  “Attaboy, Richie! I feel a lot happier now. Well done.”

  “Oh, just luck,” Richard said modestly. “Fortunate for us he chose our stall to rob of boxes, and very fortunate indeed he lives where he does.”

  Jane laughed suddenly. “Stephen said we’ve have to form our own police force—and that’s what we’ve done!”

  “And now we’ve done it. p'r'aps we'd better get to work again,” Hilary said. “We’ve an awful lot of money to make up today, if we’re going to match yesterday’s takings.”

  They returned to the stall to find Stephen and Philip had been doing quite well. They had already trebled the morning’s takings, and there was close on twenty pounds in the cigar box.

  With new vigour, they set about selling their stock, using the same tactics as they had used the day before, with Hilary and Richard clowning as they called their wares, Stephen coming a strong third. They ate their sandwiches and grabbed their cups of coffee as they worked, not stopping until nearly half-past five, when they had sold out again. They were hot, tired but happy, for this time of the day’s takings were nearly fifty pounds.

  “That’s nearly a two-thirds mark-up. Jane said happily, after doing a few sums on the back of a paper bag. “Almost sounds like profiteering, doesn’t it? But as far as I can see, everyone else’s prices are about the same—in fact, some of ours are lower— so we can’t be cheating.”

  “Of course we aren’t,” Hilary said stoutly. “And even if we do get two-thirds more than we paid for our stock, it isn’t all profit. There’s overheads—whatever they are.” Jane laughed and agreed, as together the eight of them set about dismantling the stall for the night.

  After they had packed up, John guarded the shed while Richard went home to get the materials for mending the broken lock, and the others hurriedly prepared a supper of eggs and chips, all they could manage since no one had thought to do any shopping for food that day. But they are it greedily, and spent the rest of the evening watching television before an early departure for bed. They were all exhausted by the day’s events.

  Richard, stopping outside the bathroom for a private word with Hilary, said “I suppose it’ll be all right— leaving those five boys to watch, I mean. What do you think.”

  “I’m sure it will be, Richie,” Hilary said comfortably. “it’s all we can do, anyway. And I trust that little lot, somehow. They seem—honest, if you know what I mean.”

  Richard nodded. “They may be willing to pinch anything that isn’t nailed down,” he said, “but I don’t think they’re the sort to go back on their word. Anyway, all we can do is wait and see. 'Night, Hilary. See you at the crack of dawn, Gawdelpus!”

  Chapter Nine

  THEY sat around the table, their faces bright with expectancy as they watched Jane’s neat figures growing under her pen, and she filled yet another page of her little notebook with calculations. When at last she put her pen down and stretched her cramped fingers her face was smooth with satisfaction.

  “Well?” Stephen asked impatiently. “Have we made enough to retire on yet?”

  Jane laughed. “Not quite—but it’s pretty good. Auditor’s accounts—here goes,” and she bent her head to look at her book again.

  “Oh, never mind the details, Jane.” Philip begged. “Just give us the facts.” The others nodded eagerly.

  “Well, briefly then,” Jane frowned as she concentrated, “we’ve paid back our debts—including everything we borrowed from Peter.” She looked up at Hilary with a glint of wickedness in her eye. “Not that he was very willing to take it.” Hilary blushed. “And we’ve got a float of forty pounds to buy stock with on Monday. That leaves a net profit of—seventeen pounds, eleven shillings, and threepence! Hows that!”

  “Whee!” John whistled through his teeth elatedly. “That’s marvellous, isn’t it Richard?”

  Richard was doing some sums too, and after a moment of thinking with his eyes closed, he opened them and said slowly, “Is it all that good? I mean, if that’s a total week’s profits, we aren’t going to make a big total for Yossell when he gets back, are we?”

  “Don’t forget we paid back close on twenty-five pounds in debts, Richie,” Jane said. “At that rate, this week’s profits were in the region of forty odd pounds—and if you multiply that by four, it’s pretty good. I mean, Yossell ought to be pleased.”

  “Forty-odd pounds a week?” Hilary said in some awe. “My word—if Yossell takes that much every week, he ought to be very rich.”

  “I don’t think he does do quite as well as we’ve done this week, Hilary,” Philip said. “I mean, we’ve got a— a sort of novelty appeal, haven’t we? We get more customers than he usually does because they come to watch you and Richard and Stephen makes cakes of yourselves. You
play the fool, and they buy.”

  Richard looked a little uncomfortable. “I suppose we do make rather a lot of noise,” he said. “But it does make it more fun—and if it gets us customers I reckon it’s worth it.”

  “Of course it is,” Jane said soothingly. “Shut up, Philip. You’re jealous just because you can’t act like the others.”

  Philip grinned and subsided.

  It had been a busy and long week. Much to their relief, they had seen no more of Barker at all, and Gregory reported that there had been no suspicious sounds round the shed in the alleyway, so they had been able to relax their worries and concentrate on the business of running the stall. Peter had been as good as his word, and taken it in turns with Richard to make the early-morning trek to the wholesale market, so Richard had no cause to complain of lack of sleep.

  With practice, Hilary and Richard and Stephen had worked out a sort of comedy routine, with lots of backchat between them, that attracted a crowd and put them in a buying humour as Philip had said; this had a lot to do with their financial success.

  Perhaps it was because they were all so relaxed and happy, enjoying their spell as stallholders, that Jojo took it into his head to make his own private effort to increase sales. At least, that was what he said he wanted to do, though Jane suspected that it was his own personal tastes that led to the coconut episode.

  It was the following Tuesday morning that the whole thing started. Richard had gone to the wholesale market with only John and Jojo, because Philip and Stephen had gone to see a film the night before, and just couldn’t get out of bed in time in the morning to go with them. It was arranged that the three buyers should meet the other five at the shed in time to set up the stall for the day’s trading.

  The girls, together with Philip and Stephen, arrived at the shed at seven, lugging the huge bag of lunch the girls had packed—they found that they ate enormously at lunch-time, what with the hard work and the open air—gay and lighthearted in the early-morning sunshine that carried a promise of real heat later in the day.

  They were busy putting up the stall when the car came chugging into the alley, and Hilary looked up in surprise as she heard, above the rattle of the old engine, loud howls of anguish coming in Jojo’s unmistakable voice.