The Sweet-Shop Owner

by Graham Swift

  ‘He wants to open an office in Lewisham. The idea’s to move Joyce out there so he can rule the roost here. Head Office. Joyce won’t have any of it, and I don’t blame him – they’re supposed to be equal partners. They’re not exactly friends at the moment – I got that from Schofield. Cocky’s looking for a third partner so as to play things off.’

  ‘Lewisham?’

  ‘Empires start somewhere. He’s on the make. But he’s got wife trouble. Got this from Joyce. She does all right: everything on a plate. Schofield was describing their place. But she’s getting tired of being just one of the furnishings. Joyce says she’d do a flit on him if he didn’t buy her off.’

  ‘Stories.’

  ‘Who’s to say? Schofield says something could happen. She’s no longer exactly the belle of Sydenham Hill. We’re all getting on, pal.’

  The clippers and the scissors snipped in silence. The barber’s pole twirled outside. Then Smithy said, picking up the comb, in a surer, routine voice as if the previous topic had never been raised: ‘Business all right?’ He nodded. ‘Irene?’ ‘No better.’ The fingers gripped his head and tilted it to one side: ‘Keep still now. Don’t you worry. Those doctors’ll come up with something. And Dorothy?’

  He put the comb and scissors in his breast pocket and held the wooden handled mirror up to the back of his neck.

  ‘There. That’s you neat and trim for your customers.’ He put the mirror back on the hook on the wall. ‘I see Mrs Cooper’s having a nice little jaw about you to one of them.’ He cocked his eye towards the Briar Street window, where, across the wet road, through the gleam and clutter of the window display, Mrs Cooper could be seen, arms folded, talking to a woman in a navy coat.

  ‘Better go and live up to your publicity.’

  Smithy took the towel from his collar and removed the sheet, scattering hair clippings to the floor. He got up from his seat. Then Smithy threw the sheet into the bin and, taking a brush from beside the sink, began brushing his jacket, twisting him slowly round on the floor with a slight pressure from his fingers, until he slipped the brush under his arm, put both his bloodless hands on his customer’s shoulders, and the two of them stared at their reflections in the mirror.

  ‘Know what I heard?’

  There were five suits in the wardrobe. Five suits for a man who worked six and a half days out of seven. And he might have done his work in a shirt and a pullover or an old cardigan like Powell. But she insisted, bought him suits for Christmas and birthdays – what else should he need? – chose the material herself. So he hoisted on the red braces, in the dim, early-morning bedroom, tucked in his shirt – his stomach had begun to press against the line of his buttons – and tightened the maroon tie.

  ‘Know what Smithy told me?’

  The tray with the tea cups was on the bedside table, next to her medicines and inhaler. The bedside lamp was on and she lay propped up against the pillows. In a little while, when he’d gone, she’d lie back; for often, after a restless night, she would only sleep in the early morning, in between his departure and Dorothy’s rising. But that was not before she’d got up, slipped on her dressing-gown and breakfasted with him at the kitchen table.

  ‘Hancock’s opening a new branch. In Lewisham. He’s looking for a third partner.’

  ‘Oh,’ she answered, as if she’d already had the information, noted it as she did those predictable columns in the newspapers. But she looked up, suddenly wary, so that he didn’t add at first, as Smithy had done, that all was not well between Hancock and Helen. Supposing she took that as a veiled allusion to themselves?

  ‘Empire building,’ he said and twanged the red elastic of his braces, like a clown, against his shirt. ‘Only a story, I expect.’

  Every morning the tea, the hard light of the bedside lamp which showed the lines in her face; the electric fire in winter. Every morning he would dress and go down to prepare the breakfast – the shadowy forms of the garden would stare at him beyond the kitchen window – and he would scarcely need to glance at a clock or his watch to know whether he was on time. Up at five-thirty; out at six-fifteen. Put the cash books in the briefcase; polish shoes; warm the car engine. ‘Smithy says Hancock and Helen aren’t so hand in glove.’ And if he’d faltered once – sat down on the edge of the bed, torn the maroon tie from his neck that he’d tied so diligently – ? But such mutinies could never have occurred, for her glance would have caught him before he slipped and fell: ‘Play your part.’ In the mirror his hair was thinning above the brow, it ran in black streaks over the scalp, and his face had assumed the moulded fleshiness of men – you saw them in the shop, asking for cigarettes, and lingering outside the Prince William – who carry their bodies around like so much ballast.

  ‘Only a story,’ he said, twanging his braces like catapults – and was that a smile at the corners of her lips?

  He took the toast from the grill and the boiled egg from the bubbling pan. She did not eat breakfast, only drank the tea, but the table was laid, the blue and white crockery, the pale blue napkins – even at six in the morning. Darkness pressed against the window-pane, where in summer they could see the dewy lawn, the lilac tree, its stem grown thick after twenty-five years. The house was still, save for the tap-tap of his spoon against the egg and the ‘heee … heee’ of her breath, and you would scarcely have known that in the room above Dorothy lay asleep, books on the shelf over the bed where once they had propped the striped woollen doll and the jig-saws. Every morning as he went down to make the tea he paused to listen at her door – why did he listen? – and sometimes he heard her stir, wakened by his own movements. But stillness usually. Stillness: so that sometimes, far from complaining, he pitied the seven and eight o’clock risers who did not know the early morning calm, before the traffic began, before the world jerked into action. Her breath hissed in the chair opposite his. There were wrinkles in the cleft of her breasts. But she drank her tea deliberately, holding the cup between her hands, dipping her head forward rhythmically to sip; and as she drank she seemed to be saying too: ‘Yes, this is the best hour. You will go, to your old place, and return. Dorothy is still in bed. And I can sleep now. The day is poised; for an hour or so there is peace.’

  He checked his pocket for the keys, his wallet, picked up his briefcase. She helped him on with his oatmeal scarf. It might have been he who commanded, as he drew the dressing-gown about that wheezing throat and said, ‘Stay in the warm’; were it not for her answering eyes: ‘Go on, go on.’ Past the hall mirror, the umbrella-stand and out into the dark morning – a frosty ring as his feet struck the front path – where sometimes it seemed he was quite alone in a world which had suspended its activity. Under the amber sodium lamps. And even in the shop, after he had sent off the paper boys (they were a different bunch then but their careless loyalty was the same) there was still a calm. Those minutes before he opened. A few cars in the High Street, footsteps, scuttling on the pavement. Soon they would be coming in their droves, summoned by trains, clocks, streaming to their work, bustling in at the shop door for their daily purchases. And he would be there, bobbing at the counter to receive them. ‘Morning Mr Casey, morning Mr Saville, Mr King.’ All was ready. But he would listen, for a few minutes, to the crinkling of the shelves, the hum and tick of the fridge, and sniff – it was still there but no one but he perhaps could smell it – that faint whiff of coconut he had first sniffed when the shelves were bare and dust lay on the counter and old Jones had stood in his black coat. Stillness. And while he waited, hands resting on the morning’s headlines, he laughed inwardly, not the old laugh – a dry laugh, thin like her breath, which didn’t change the look on his face. But a laugh.

  And that same year, when he was fifty and the shop twenty-five years old, he said to her one night, closing the maroon books – her smile had lit her face then – ‘Toys, I will sell toys.’

  21

  Dorothy. Why did you have to come into the shop? To disturb those patterns? To see my look of disguised excitement,
faint apology, as I greeted you from behind the counter? To hear the catch in my voice as I said, ‘Mrs Cooper, my daughter Dorothy’? You could have got the bus as far as the Common Road, but you got off in the High Street, in your blue uniform and your blue beret, a satchel under your arm, and walked down to the corner of Briar Street. To see me without Irene? To see if I was any different without her?

  Half-past four, five o’clock. Under the brightening lights, through the deepening dusk, other children were going home from school, in groups, in reckless gaggles, but you always seemed alone. Even when you came in flanked by your friends – Sally Lyle and Susan Dean – you stood apart, untouched by their boisterousness and their forwardness, watching them giggle at the counter and say, ‘Oh, Mr Chapman!’ as I slipped them free chocolates. Though anyone could see, of those three, you were the prettiest, the one who most deserved to be to the fore.

  You watched me arrange the toys in the Briar Street window. For they were arriving now, picked from the wholesalers’ catalogues, in boxes that rattled and squeaked and threatened to jerk into imitation life. Meccano and Lego, Yogi Bear dolls and model kits of the Lone Ranger. There was a frown on your face as I clambered into the window with them. A man of fifty fussing over toys? But it was my job to sell them. You stood with your arms holding that satchel in front of you and your fingers tapping restlessly on the leather, for you never quite knew what to do with those long, delicate hands. You’d let them fall awkwardly by your side and sometimes one of them would reach up, just like her, to your throat, but you’d remember suddenly and let it drop quickly again. ‘Here,’ I said, ‘put that satchel down, you can help.’ And you were in two minds whether you ought to or not. I got out from the box the set of three little clockwork chimpanzees. Each wore a hat like a fez. One had a pipe, another a tambourine, another a pair of bongos, and when you turned the key in their backs their heads swivelled and their arms moved. ‘Where should they go?’ I said. And you said, hesitating at first, and then with a little sharp decision, ‘Why not there?’ – and pointed to the display rack over the counter above my head. I hung them there, Dorry (you see, I didn’t question, didn’t hesitate). And later, when I’d sold three sets of those monkeys and people pointed to the ones above me, I said, ‘No, they’re not for sale.’ ‘There,’ I said, fixing them, ‘like that?’ But you looked away.

  For you’d finished with your own toys. You thought we’d thrown them out, but I merely put them, to be kept, in the trunk in the spare bedroom. You no longer wanted to play or be thought of as a child. You’d got a place at the High School; you were going to make your mark, and it wasn’t games you looked for any more. Was that why you walked uneasily between your breezier friends? Why you buried your face behind books? And why you threw those little fits and sulks at home, picking quarrels over the dinner table – for that was a way of creating a little drama, of making your mark, without ever having to leave familiar ground?

  ‘Doesn’t it bother you?’

  You raised your head and spoke urgently, so that we stopped and looked at you, our spoons half-way between plate and lips.

  ‘Doesn’t it bother you – that there might be a war?’

  On the leather foot-rest by her chair were the papers she’d been reading. Their headlines said: ‘Ships Move Towards Cuba’, ‘Britain Urges Removal of Missiles’.

  You looked at her first and then, when her lips tightened in annoyance, to me, to see if I would move to her defence or yours.

  ‘There won’t be a war, nothing will happen,’ she said.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I don’t. It’s what I think.’

  She resumed eating. You watched, not eating, your face trembling. I thought: thirteen, and talking of war. And then you flung down your spoon and pushed aside your plate.

  ‘Neither of you care! What do you read the papers for if you don’t care what happens? It’s not something you can just ignore –’

  ‘No – nor is it something to make a scene over when we’re eating. If you want an argument, have it with one of your fancy teachers at school, don’t be clever with us at the dinner table!’ She began suddenly to gasp for air.

  Your cheeks burned. There was that little hard furrow in your brow. You looked at me, to test me.

  ‘Dorry, don’t upset your mother,’ I said. And I knew that would send you up out of your chair, out of the door (how many times did we hear that door slam behind you after something she’d said or I’d said, or something we hadn’t said?), up the stairs, your steps heavy on the landing, into the refuge of your bedroom.

  And I knew it would make me come up to you to make my truce.

  ‘Why does she do it?’ she said, her gasps subsiding, ‘Why does she do it?’ She sat with her elbows on the table, her own plate pushed away. She put the napkin which you’d dropped back in its silver ring. ‘She’ll do something stupid one of these days, don’t you think Willy?’ She got up, moved to her seat by the window and looked at the headlines on the papers. Then she said at last, searching my face: ‘All right, go to her.’

  There were pictures of Kennedy over your bed. Photographs out of Time and Life and the Illustrated London News which I got from the shop. Kennedy in Vienna. Kennedy beneath the white statue of Lincoln. Other girls pinned up the grinning faces of pop-stars: Billy Fury, Adam Faith; centre-spreads from the fan magazines I sold. Too simple and trivial for you, Dorry?

  ‘She didn’t mean to be unkind.’

  You lay with your head pressed to the pillow, to hide your tears.

  ‘She’s ill, remember.’

  But you didn’t answer.

  Then you turned at last.

  ‘You always take her side.’

  ‘It’s not like that. There aren’t “sides”. It’s not a fight.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  You fell back again on the pillow. Your left leg, in a white school sock, swung over the edge of the bed; a silvery down at the knee. How still that room was, how familiar. Yet it would become soon ‘your’ room exclusively; the room of a young woman, at which I would pause and knock before entering.

  I stroked your shoulder.

  ‘Don’t make an enemy of her, Dorry.’

  You looked at me as if I’d already been defeated.

  ‘What does she want?’

  ‘I think what she wants is peace.’

  22

  The Saturday crowds in the High Street grew bigger and bigger. They bobbed like figures carried in water past the cluttered port-hole of the shop window. Eighteen, nineteen pounds a day. And was it just my imagination or were there more youngsters among those crowds, with money to spend and little looks, as they walked, of arrogance and temerity? They drew out notes from their pockets to buy clothes that were made solely for them. Blue jeans that hugged their hips; skirts that got shorter and shorter. I saw them look at me across the counter as if I’d never been young. And was there really once a William Chapman, aged eighteen or nineteen, who’d taken the tram every morning to work, dressed in a grey waistcoat and a stiff collar, as if he were already old?

  ‘You’ve got competition, old man,’ said Hancock. There were creases under his eyes and his movements had lost their athlete’s jauntiness, but he still wore the air – with that crisp, thick-striped shirt, those long side-burns and the way he lit his cigar, in the shop now, not waiting till he had gone, peeling off the roll of cellophane and crushing it in his hand – of a contestant anxious to prove he can win.

  ‘It’s not on my books, but that site opposite Samuel Road – going to be a newsagent’s. One of those groups.’

  His brown eyes gave a little dart as he crackled the cellophane.

  ‘Thought you should know. Not so hot for the one-man business, is it, these days?’

  But as if I cared. Competition? Had I ever competed? The shop was a gift, I’d got it for nothing. Rivals didn’t bother me. (Besides, I saw it when it opened that October: a clean, functional establishment; swing glass doors, stainless steel,
rubber matting by the entrance, and a staff that changed every six weeks. Magazines spread loosely to look more numerous than they were, a mere sampling of sweets: no toys. And after a year it closed.)

  ‘They’re the newcomers,’ I said. ‘It’s me they’ll have to compete with.’

  ‘That’s the style.’ Hancock’s eyes narrowed concedingly as if they’d really hoped for some expression of dismay.

  ‘While we’re on the subject’ – he removed the cigar, still unlit, from his mouth – ‘you might have heard already, we’re opening this new office in Lewisham. In about a month. Having a little party to celebrate. Just Joyce, Ted Schofield, a few people from the golf club. I’d, er, invite you old man, but of course, with Irene –’ he struck a match. ‘How is she?’

  ‘No change really. Helen?’

  ‘Oh fine, fine.’ He pulled the match away from the end of his cigar and waved it furiously, flapping his hand long after the flame was out. ‘Something Irene might be interested to know, by the by. Been meaning to tell you. I’ve been seeing a bit of her brother – Paul. Been a bit down on his luck recently. I’m thinking of letting him in on the firm. He needs some sort of break and we need someone new, now we’re expanding.’

  ‘We haven’t seen Paul for years.’

  ‘Really? Is that so? Well, tell Irene. She’ll remember when we used to be great buddies before the war – me, Paul and –’

  He held his cigar a few inches from his mouth. ‘But I mustn’t chatter.’ One eye was cocked as if gauging an effect. ‘I’ve got business.’

  He rubbed his hands together, puffing blue fumes and strode to the door. As he opened it he took the cigar from his mouth again, turned and said – was there a sly note in his voice? – ‘Was that Dorothy I saw popping in here last night? Growing up, isn’t she?’

  The shoppers swirled along the High Street. I read the headlines in the mornings, under my print-stained fingers: ‘Kennedy to Tour Europe’, ‘Kennedy Acclaimed in Berlin’, ‘Kennedy Shot Dead’.