The Sweet-Shop Owner

by Graham Swift

  Dorothy, you thought she didn’t have a heart. You never loved her. You merely suffered each other. And you thought I was her slave; she made a fool of me. But you never saw that look she gave me. How could you? And you never knew how I understood, then, how much she’d done for me. You were a little pink thing in a shawl. I was clicking my tongue at you and making absurd faces, and the nurse was smiling by the window, holding the flowers. There was a board clipped to your basket and a piece of paper with entries which read: Mother’s Name, Sex, Weight at Birth. Five pounds, twelve ounces. Pre-mature; but numbered, listed. When you grew up you wouldn’t go without milk and orange juice. The sun was shining outside on sycamore trees and railings, and a bee was buzzing at a window. You couldn’t have seen how she lay on that bed looking through both you and me as though she could see further than the two of us. But you will see.

  They let me pick you up in your shawl. See, you can touch, take hold, after all. But the nurse looked mindful. ‘Your wife should rest now.’

  Four days later they let you both come home. And that same month her asthma began again.

  16

  Sandra counted out change and shut the till.

  ‘Thirty, forty, fifty – one pound.’

  It was approaching lunch-time and customers were multiplying. Outside, the shadows were heavy. Car-drivers leant against open windows in the slowly moving traffic. The pedestrians walking the hot pavement, jackets slung over shoulders, looked parched, in search of relief.

  What absurdity. This endless succession of customers each after his little titbit. Papers, chocolates, cigarettes. You could remember faces by the things they bought. He was Gold Leaf; he was Hi-Fi News; she was Brazil Nut. Mr Chapman was better at it than she, but then he had had more practice.

  ‘Two, three, four and one makes five pounds.’

  What fools! Sometimes she felt like denying them what they asked and making them beg. Every day at the same time the same faces. And every day the same cravings. Morning papers, evening papers, early, late editions, weeklies, cigarettes, chocolates.

  Sandra chewed gum and tapped her red nails against the side of the till. If it was Sunday she could be at the open-air swimming pool. The Lido. In her new orange bikini. Sun-bathing and being ogled, on the tickly grass. Or at the coast with Dave Mitchell. Dave had a car, and he’d promised. But then – she let out an audible sigh which made Mrs Cooper, along the counter, turn her head – Dave didn’t have much else in his favour apart from his car. It would all lead up to the necessary routine of parking out of sight by some field on the way home. Service rendered; reward given. Things were all rather predictable with Dave Mitchell. Besides – the sea. All those rusty railings and pebbles.

  She was bored. She’d give anything for something new. She’d go to the disco tonight, as she went every Friday, with Judy Bates and Linda Steele, looking for something new. But you could predict it all. Someone would start pawing her. Yes, because (unlike Judy Bates and Linda Steele) she had something to offer. And she’d calculate in return his assets and give, or not give (though, usually, she gave) the appropriate favour. But all this had become a kind of business. All predictable; nothing new. She’d try anything (even tempting an old man like Mr Chapman). But it seemed she’d already tried everything. Begun early. Behind the fence, near the allotments, at fifteen. Walking home with the blood between her legs.

  She looked along the counter and caught Mrs Cooper’s sour gaze. Now there was something predictable. Still fuming with jealousy because Mr Chapman hadn’t been angry, had spoken softly when she was late, then helped her with the birthday cards. Mrs Cooper’s little game was obvious. ‘Yes Mr Chapman, let me Mr Chapman, I’ll do it.’ But Mr Chapman wasn’t interested. That was hardly surprising, was it? One day she’d have it out with that old bag. She’d say: ‘You’ll never have him!’ That would provide some excitement.

  She served a man with cigarettes, who called her ‘darling’ and eyed her unbuttoned T-shirt as she leant forward with the change.

  How hot it was getting! Across the road, up the street, they were sitting outside the Prince William, on the little wall by the pavement, glasses of beer in their hands, shirts off. The little half naked plastic dolls which hung in the Briar Street window looked as if they’d stripped for the heat. If only Mr Chapman would let her do the ice-cream. That was the best job in the hot weather. Lifting the black lid and putting your arm down into the cold, vapoury box. And you served mostly kids. Kids were best. They never seemed absurd, like these men and their eternal cigarettes.

  But Mr Chapman was at the fridge. Relishing it. A small girl had come in asking for two cones, and she watched him plant the wafer cups in his left hand, push up the sleeve from his right, plunge down the metal scoop and with a stylish gesture top each cone and present them to the girl. The girl held out her money, smiling. Mr Chapman didn’t smile. He seldom did. Not actually. And yet somehow you felt he did. That’s why she liked him. He wasn’t obvious. How she’d hated at first that changeless expression, that everlasting blue or dark-grey suit, and how important it had become suddenly for her to change it, challenge it. Why not? An old man – it was something different. But he hadn’t reacted, no. He’d noticed, but his face had remained unmoved. She’d gone on trying to ruffle him; and it was only after a fortnight that she’d realized she did so because she wanted Mr Chapman to like her. She wanted to be liked by this unobvious, red-faced man of sixty.

  And perhaps he did like her; for he’d given her, just now, twenty-five pounds, as a gift.

  She watched him stooping, rearranging the contents of the fridge. His wife had died, not long before she’d started at the shop. What must she have been like?

  ‘Here!’ he suddenly said, producing two choc-ices from the fridge, tossing one, without further warning, to her and making to toss the other, like a juggler, across the full length of the shop to Mrs Cooper. ‘Cool off with these!’

  ‘Oh no Mr Chapman,’ Mrs Cooper protested, staying the throw. ‘Not while I’m busy at the counter.’ And she looked with virtue at Mr Chapman, and with malice at Sandra.

  Sandra returned the stare. She’d never have him. One day she’d tell her.

  Mr Chapman leant back on his stool by the fridge so that he looked along the counter. His face was heavy and weary. He was watching her eat her ice-cream. She bit off a mouthful. Twenty-five pounds, as a gift. Then he turned, suddenly, away. The thin coating of the choc-ice broke up beneath her fingers and slipped awkwardly. A piece fell on her skirt. She didn’t enjoy it.

  ‘Twenty Seniors, darling.’

  She licked her fingers and dabbed at her skirt.

  A new dress he’d said. Yes, she’d buy a new dress. She knew the very one. Deep red, with a black pattern. She’d seen it in Slik-Chiks. Yes, she’d go at lunch-time. It would suit her perfectly. Sexy, they’d say. She’d wear it to the disco tonight, get all the looks, and pretend all the time it was giving her pleasure.

  She’d give anything for something new.

  17

  The stained-glass window in St Stephen’s church was bright with afternoon light. John the Baptist, in brown furs, and Christ, by a blue river Jordan. It shed little quivering patches of colour on the stone floor and the backs of the pews.

  ‘… except he be regenerate and born anew of water …’

  He wore a pale grey suit with a white rose in the button-hole, and beside him he heard, in the silences of the service, her long, husky breaths. How accustomed would he get to that labouring sound?

  Mrs Harrison was not there. Too ill, she said, replying to their dutiful invitation, to make the journey. But Aunt Madeleine was there, in a brown hat with black sequins, a conciliatory ambassador visiting under truce. ‘Will Paul be here?’ she said inquisitively, ‘I’d hoped Paul would be here.’ But no one heard from Paul. He didn’t write or phone. Aunt Madeleine said he was living in the North. Smithy stood beside Aunt Madeleine, in a sagging coat. For who else could he ask? Hancock? ‘Good God, no,�
�� she said, as they discussed arrangements. But it was difficult to deter him. ‘Hear you’re christening the little one,’ he’d said, casting his quick eye round the shop. And how could one say, ‘Don’t come’? So Smithy was there – he gave little looks of concern for Irene’s ragged breathing, and he was the one who opened doors for her, hastened to assist, as if the occasion were one of bereavement – and Hancock was there, sucking his teeth as the vicar spoke. Smithy brought his sister, Grace, thin, delicate and quiet; and Hancock brought – they’d never seen her before – the future Mrs Hancock.

  ‘Irene, Willy, meet my fiancée Helen.’

  He gave Irene a little quick glance.

  She was young, that Helen. No more than twenty-two. And Hancock, then, was thirty-six. She had blonde hair, waved like Lana Turner’s, and prominent breasts.

  ‘Let us pray,’ said the vicar.

  Why St Stephen’s? ‘It’s the local church,’ she’d answered. ‘But they’ll never come,’ (and he meant, without saying, the marble plaque which glimmered, even now, on the far wall, beyond the pulpit; that, and the grave outside). ‘They’ll never come there.’ ‘It’s the best place – we will have it there.’ As if there were some logic. ‘We’d better put flowers on Father’s grave.’ ‘No,’ she said.

  And so they stood, around the carved font, while the colours quivered on the floor, and the vicar spoke, who had spoken over Mr Harrison’s coffin.

  ‘I baptize thee in the name of the Father …’

  (You didn’t cry, Dorry, or flail your arms when I dipped you quickly in the water.)

  ‘Congratulations Mrs Chapman.’ The vicar’s large and black-haired hand was extended. ‘And a very obliging little girl.’ Smithy stepped forward from the church porch holding his hat in one hand and dabbled a plump finger, as in a bowl, over the face wrapped in its white wool, then kissed Irene warily on the cheek. Hancock edged in, stood for a moment looking squarely at Irene, not regarding the baby between them, then laughed suddenly as if at his own joke, bent down and kissed the child. That rough moustache against that soft cheek.

  There had been rain, but the sun gleamed on the pavement and on the wet laurels in the churchyard. The gravel made sucking noises as they walked over it. Helen giggled, holding her hat, picking her way round the puddles. Little orange spots of mud flecked her stockings. The wind was fresh, through the thin laburnums, making the sunlight clean and chill.

  New life. How the past shifted into the background that day, and how the present seemed sharp and clear. New life: held in my hands. ‘Don’t let her catch cold,’ said Aunt Mad. But you were warm, warm to touch, and I held you close in your white shawl while Irene adjusted her hat and straightened the flower in her button-hole. She held a hand over her eyes against the glare of the wet road and frowned. Then I gave you back to her. The car was waiting at the kerb, glistening with drops. We strode over the gravel. Helen was sitting already in Hancock’s new Sunbeam, holding up the mirror of her powder compact to her face, while Hancock stood by the driver’s door. The rest of us were passing through the gateway when he reached inside, produced a camera and said: ‘Hold it there! Out you get, Helen.’ And Helen got out, dabbing her cheeks. Later you saw the picture, in the old album: Uncle Smithy, Auntie Grace, Auntie Mad, Mrs Hancock (though she wasn’t Mrs Hancock then), I, with my trousers flapping, and she holding you with that look (yes, you noticed it, sitting with the album on your knees) as if someone had passed you to her and she didn’t know where to put you.

  ‘Hold it,’ said Hancock. He grinned as the camera clicked.

  Sweet sherry, christening cake, tea in the best cups; little bridge rolls with spreads and sprigs of cress on white doilies on the cake stand … ‘Thank you so much Mrs Chapman.’ Helen’s glassy voice tinkled in the hallway by the barometer clock. ‘Lovely party. And I’m so glad’ – she paused, as if to lay some special emphasis – ‘to have had the chance to meet you.’ There was a crumb of christening cake in the corner of her lips and her face was flushed from the sherry. ‘Bye Mr Chapman.’ Hancock hovered in the doorway and, behind him, the other guests to whom he was offering lifts. ‘Bye!’ How grotesque they looked, bobbing on the doorstep. How awkward Smithy seemed, in his best coat and his Homburg (he worked hard at his social graces), out of his crumpled barber’s jacket. But you had no pretensions, you were wholly yourself, and you didn’t struggle or cry (you’ll never remember it) as they passed you round from one to the other, rocked you and dandled you. ‘What a lovely thing,’ said Helen longingly. ‘Isn’t she gorgeous?’, turning to Hancock; while Auntie Mad cornered Smithy and whispered, ‘Tell me, did you know William before he, er, met Irene?’; and Smithy’s sister sipped her sherry delicately; and Helen, patting her hair, giving quick glances to Hancock, kept letting her eyes drift over the laden sideboard, the silver, the Derby and Worcester in the china cabinet: ‘I’ll come and see you Mr Chapman – if I may – in your shop’; ‘And tell me,’ said Aunt Mad, ‘What do you do?’ ‘Oh – modelling actually – er, photographic work. But I’ll stop when me and Frank …’; and the cake was cut – white icing with pink scrolls – and handed round on the white and blue patterned plates; and Aunt Mad said to Hancock, ‘Well, and how’s business, Frank?’: Hancock said, ‘Can’t go wrong, property market’s got to expand’: and Aunt Mad began again, ‘Pity Paul isn’t here’; and Smithy said, at last, helping me with some things to the kitchen, ‘We’d best be off, old pal – Irene’s looking, er, rather tired.’ ‘You look after that baby now.’ He winked. Though it wasn’t clear from his voice which baby he meant.

  ‘What nonsense,’ she said as the door shut. ‘What a performance! Thank God they’ve gone.’ Her breath heaved. ‘Take the baby, will you?’ She held her forehead as I took you from her. ‘Can you put her to bed? I’m going to get one of my migraines.’ And she sat in the chair by the french window, leaning forward, her head in her hands, breathing heavily, fingers tightening over her brow, but resolutely, uncomplainingly, as if she’d long been prepared to suffer like that.

  It was only when I held you out so that she could say goodnight and as she lifted her face you started to cry, that she winced, as if it were you who made her feel her pains.

  ‘Ssshh. Don’t cry. Mummy’s got a headache.’

  I whisked you upstairs, soothed you (‘There, be quiet for Mummy’), undressed you, bathed you, laid you in your cot, waited till your eyes closed, while she sat below.

  When I came down her head was still in her hands.

  ‘Is she asleep?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good.’ She looked through her fingers. ‘Now I’ll go up and lie down.’ She got up, gingerly, from the armchair. ‘I’m sorry Willy. You’ve been good. Thank you.’ She put her hand on my shoulder. But it wasn’t a leaning for support so much as a gesture of command.

  ‘All right. I’ll be up later.’

  And still the things needed clearing from the table – the plates, the tea service, the glasses, the remnants of the christening cake, the damask table-cloth.

  You thought I slaved for her, didn’t you, Dorry, ran to her beck and call?

  I carried the piled-up tray into the kitchen. Washed and dried. Brushed the crumbs from the chairs. Put away the silver. New life. Your eyes were hers (they all agreed) and the nose; only something in the mouth was mine. ‘Dorothy’: we called you ‘Dorothy’. There it was in the church register, on the iced cake, on the silver napkin ring Aunt Madeleine gave you. But it was only years later that you yourself, coming home from school (how quick you were to learn things) explained what it meant. Dorothea: God’s gift.

  ‘Like it wrapped?’ Mrs Cooper took down the large box of chocolates for the customer and busied herself (a speciality of hers) with the fancy string and the shiny paper.

  ‘Present is it, for someone?’

  She looked aloofly at Sandra wiping ice-cream off her skirt.

  ’50, ’51, ’52. How quickly the years pass when you watch the growth of your child. Fourteen year
s since I first opened the shop and fixed my name, hazardously, over the door; twelve years since the war closed it. Its place was established now. Grey-overcoated City workers on their way to the station spoke of ‘popping into Chapman’s’, and no one remembered the name of the previous owner. And along the façade of the High Street it was other changes that bore witness to novelty. Across the road the ironmonger’s had gone and the home decorators (Hobbes’ Home Supplies) had moved in. Determined young couples, wheeling prams, would frequent it on Saturday mornings, earnestly choosing linoleum and paint and emerging with rolls of wallpaper (muted shades, tiny raised fleurs-de-lis on pale grounds and heavy braided strips for below the picture rail). Beyond the post-office, the electrical shop was stocking televisions, heavy and wooden, ready to bring a Coronation into living-rooms. The bomb-site had been cleared in Briar Street; and behind the Prince William, where the brewers had sold the little walled beer-garden, they were levelling the ground for a garage and a showroom. For petrol rationing had ended and the private car, they said, would boom.

  A café had opened next to the baker’s. It was the Tudor then – high-backed chairs, gingham table-cloths – and it would become the Calypso Espresso Bar before it became the simple Diana. And, two shops along, behind the wooden partitions of their office, sat Hancock and Joyce. The Sunbeam was parked outside, and now and then, in dry weather, Hancock would pull back the hood and drive up in the leather flying jacket he’d procured from his Air Force days. ‘Well didn’t you nab anything,’ he’d explain, ‘working in the stores?’ They’d tried to run that business, he and Joyce, with the panache of young bachelors, relying for dignity and esteem on the memory of old Jones. But now they’d have no need to prove their probity, for the houses would begin to be built (hadn’t he said to Aunt Madeleine, munching his piece of christening cake, ‘Can’t lose, selling houses after a war’?); the market would revive, the little ‘For Sale’ notices would be exchanged ever more rapidly in the window. He was married too (we never went to the wedding because of Irene’s asthma), with a house in Sydenham Hill. The blonde Helen would sit, while Hancock worked, in wifely ease, thumbing the fashion pages and the catalogues, listing the furniture, the carpets, the kitchen appliances she would need to have. Did she know how long all that would suffice her? ’53, ’54. See, the ration books are being withdrawn. Prices have risen, but we are free to spend. And Hancock, coming in with that quick glance round and that competitive twinkle in his eye, said, ‘Not doing so badly yourself, are you? Shall we make it cigars?’