World From Rough Stones

by Malcolm Macdonald

  "What, even pork?" Allinson, the Gawks Holm baker had asked.

  "Even pork."

  He scratched his head. "I don't know 'bout that," he said.

  "Only to order," she said. "They'd have to order one day, collect the next."

  "Even so…"

  "You mean to tell me," she chided, "you could not go out now and stand in your shop doorway and cast your eyes on a dozen farms where they keep pigs? And you mean to say Wally Fadden wouldn't go and kill one for you, and deliver it ready butchered down to joints? All you do is take the order, tell Fadden, put't joint on't shelf, an' tak the money."

  But still he sighed. "What if they give the order and don't come back?"

  "Get a deposit, threepence in the shillin' down. They'll come back."

  "Deposit!" His eyes were wide in surprise.

  "Aye. They've gotten money, our navvies, do'st tha know. They're not like your farm labourers an' mill 'ands—every Sat'day black wi' repayin' subs."

  "Deposit!" he repeated.

  At length, after a great deal more persuasion and cajolery of this kind, he agreed. She had never had much of an opinion of shopkeepers and this sort of encounter merely deepened her contempt. One day, she thought, I shall use their petty-minded cupidity to my own much greater advantage. John was right; there were so many fools around—with money—that a clever person could build fortunes that would make the monarchs of history seem mere paupers.

  Thus, she closed the loopholes and insured against the dangers their new venture seemed to offer. Now they could only wait. The six wagons they had rented from the Manchester & Leeds were already being painted over with the name Stevenson. They bought two large, used tents to do duty as storehouses. The shop, clean and spruce inside and out had a new sign, Stevenson's Shop, painted over its doorway. All that could be made ready was ready.

  Then on the Monday, the 30th of December, the handbills came, in time for distribution up and down the line before the shop opened. Tommy helped unpack them. First, of course, he took them out to read.

  "You learn those prices well, Tommy," Nora said. "You're going to have to help me add them up when we start to sell."

  She saw his fingers rubbing the backs of the sheets idly as he read; they had felt the indentations of the letterpress and were tracing around the shapes thus embossed on the back. He had got no farther than the potato prices when his interest in the shapes dominated him. He turned the sheet over and, noticing at once that the indentations read Stevenson's Shop in mirror writing, said:

  "If they printed it with letters the wrong way, blind people could follow it properly."

  Nora laughed. "No one else could read it then," she said. Only later, when he had read the notice and returned to his copying, did it strike her that the idea had been quite a good one and she told him so. "Keep it for when you grow up. There may be some money in it," she said.

  He was pleased. "Even if there isn't," he said, "it could be a great help to them. The blind."

  And his generosity of spirit, though she knew he did not intend it that way, seemed to her like a rebuke.

  There were on the printed bills some further lines, which, Nora hoped, would copper-bottom guarantee the success of this venture.

  When she and John had finished drafting the price list, John looked at it and said: "That should bring them." But he saw that she seemed unhappy still.

  "We need…I feel owt's missing. Something that'll force them to come and again," she said.

  "Why?" He looked at the list in puzzled disbelief. "They look all right to me."

  "They're the same prices as the shops around here."

  "But the quality! Better quality all round."

  "I doubt that's enough," she said. "It's a woman's feeling I have. There's all the other things they can get up the shops." She looked at the list again. "It needs…owt to make folk take notice. To make them talk."

  He relaxed and looked at her in good-humoured accusation. "Come on," he said. "Let's have it. There's something on your mind. You've already thought something out. I know thee."

  She refused to smile back, still playing her previous game. "I want them to say 'Have ye seen?…Did ye hear?…The Stevensons have gone mad up there, but while it lasts I'm usin' yon shop o' theirs.' Something of that sort."

  "You might as well say it straight out," he told her.

  "What if…" She looked at him and slowly bit and released her lip. "What if we were to give food away."

  Jokingly he appeared to consider the idea. "Give food away," he mused. Then he delivered his judgement: "I think we may fairly say that would bring folk flocking to the shop and that they'd say we'd gone mad. It would do all of that."

  She smiled secretively and pulled out another bit of paper.

  "Suppose this was how we gave it away," she said and handed it to him. It read:

  For every 5s spent at the shop this week you may have with next week's purchase, free of charge: 6 lb potatoes

  For every 10s so spent, you may have with next week's purchase, free of charge: 1 lb beef and 3 lb potatoes

  For every 15s so spent, you may have with next week's purchase, free of charge: 2 lb beef and 3 lb potatoes

  She watched him read it. Of course his skepticism had been playful; he knew her too well by now to think any scheme of hers could be even slightly harebrained. He tested it. Read it again. Smiled. Thought again. Looked at her. Smiled again. And then he said. "It's too good. That"—he tapped the paper— "that is sheer genius." He looked at the fire. "We're in the wrong business. When I see this, I think we're in the wrong business."

  "We s'll use it," she affirmed anxiously.

  He looked at her. "No doubt on it. We s'll use it. Eay! But to waste it on yon…shanty-shop!" He read through it yet again. "But, for this handbill now, ye've got to think how it'll look in print. I fancy it needs a name. When Mrs. Slen comes in, she's going to say 'And I want me…me…whatsit, from last week.' We need a name they know. Instead of whatsit."

  "A name they must have heard these weeks past till they're sick of it is bonus," Nora said.

  His eyes lit up at once. "That's it. Lads get their bonus at't working—wives get theirs at shop. 'Wives' bonus' call it."

  She shook her head. "Men'll think it's not for them. There's a lot of single men. 'Shoppers' bonus'? No—we s'll just call it bonus, and have done. Bonus."

  "Right at the top," he said, "we'll get it put in thick black letters, at the top: 'Bonus—free food to loyal customers.' And if that doesn't bring them and keep them, we may as well go to America."

  "And at the bottom," she said, "I s'll put 'shop open every Friday and Saturday from 8.00 m to 8.00 e.' And in thick black letters again, under all, 'No credit.'"

  "Aye," he said. "That's very important."

  The following Wednesday, the first day of the new decade, she returned to the produce mart, scarcely able to contain her excitement. It was almost noon when she arrived and she found only Tony on duty at Coulter's stall.

  "Where's Charley?" she asked.

  "Over the Duke I should think," Tony said. He went on sweeping.

  "Then you'll go and fetch him here."

  "Oh will I?" Tony still did not stop.

  "If you value your job, Tony."

  He gave a scornful snort.

  "Listen, lad," she said. "I know you saved my life last summer, though you probably had no such intention. I don't forget that. But Charley Eade works for me now. Can you find some room for that fact to lodge in that block of wood on your shoulders? Charley Eade is my agent. And if you don't run, run, and fetch him here, toot sweet, today is your very last in this market."

  Tony ran.

  Charley was all goodwill and cloying gallantry; he kept emphasizing whatever he said by opening his arms, as if he was on the point of embracing Nora. She sobered him, however, by saying she hoped all the weights were full. "They've a new German steelyard for the weighbridge at Oldham Road," she said. "It can tell you the weight of a laden wag
on to the nearest pound." His face fell.

  Shortly after, while she was checking the quality of the merchandise, she saw Charley sidle off for a word with the butcher, who came up later with another tub of joints.

  "Right," he said. "That's th' lot."

  She smiled, too, to see that when she returned from lunch, four bags of potatoes had been added to the pile. Later, when the wagons were weighed, the meat proved to be 430 lb overweight and the potatoes almost five hundredweights up. The sloppiness annoyed her. So did the fact that Charley had obviously no idea of how much he had originally intended to cheat her by.

  "Well, Charley," she said. "You invoice me for nine thousand and twenty-six pounds of meat—which looks, on paper, very nicely measured, I must say—and you deliver nine thousand, four hundred and thirty. And the same story with the potatoes. It's not good enough."

  "I'll amend the invoice," he said miserably.

  "You will not. You may unload sooner."

  "I can't do that. That's the half of an ox extra."

  "Well I'm not paying. If we hadn't weighed them here, you'd have been happy to see me steam off with them."

  "Would I buggery! I'd not of…" He stopped, realizing he had already said more than was wise.

  "Aye!" she sneered. "Ye'd not of topped up the meat and potatoes. If I'd not mentioned this weighbridge." She moved close to him and poked her face to within inches of his. "You disgust me!" she shouted. "The one place ye thought ye could still manage to diddle me—the weight. Ye think yourself the king of diddlers and ye don't know B from a bull's balls!"

  Unable to withstand this close-up assault he pulled away from her. "We can't weigh properly down there at St John's."

  "That's your problem. And ye've seven whole days in which to solve it. So let's have this determined now. I will accept and pay for a variation of one per cent either way, two per cent in all. To me that seems generous." He snorted. "But every pound weight above that I s'll take as a free gift from you. And every one per cent ye go below the allowed variation I s'll take it as attempted fraud on your part, Charley, and I s'll knock five bob off what I'm due to pay you."

  He looked at her in unconcealed hatred, and she saw him forcing himself not to utter any of the dozen insults that must have been passing through his mind. At length he said: "I pity yon bloody man o' thine, Mrs. Stevenson. An' I should want to meet whoever put a woman in business. I'd tell 'im 'is name fer nowt."

  "Business!" she sneered. "Ye think what you do could be called 'business'? Petty theft? And bungled, at that! Business? It's not worth the dignity of the name."

  "Ah—go back to your kitchen!" he shouted and walked away.

  "The day the likes of you can pull it over me, I shall an' all!" she shouted after him.

  So she started trade with a good margin—a quarter ton of potatoes and almost four hundredweights of beef, free.

  The supplies came up the following morning and were hauled on from Littleborough by a horse team, making the transit of the tunnel during the break for lunch. After knocking-off time a gang of navvies earned a few shillings bonus between them by carrying everything except the meat up to the store tents. The meat, securely padlocked in the wagon, was left overnight.

  "We'll make a little siding here," John said. "Temporary like. So the wagons may stand without hindering the working."

  "We should've thought of it earlier," she said. "We could have sold straight from the wagons. Put a siding the other end and we could sell down there, too. Friday there, Saturday here." She warmed to it as she spoke. "Why not? We'd do a lot more trade. In fact…." She was so excited now that she seized both arms and shook him as she spoke. "In fact—why not sell as we go, all the way up from Littleborough. Get all the shanty women…Listen!" She had to stop him from laughing. "Get all the shanty women to make up a bulk order, for even if they've only twenty men, there's at least a hundredweight of beef there; get them to make up bulk orders and drop them off into the shanties as we pass by! Eay!" She hit her forehead repeatedly with her fist. "We've not been thinking. We've just not been thinking! We could offer them…threepence or threepence-halfpenny in the pound. They'd jump at the chance."

  Tommy, who had watched and listened with growing dismay, plucked at her sleeve and said: "You're not going to close my shop, ma'm? Please!"

  "Oh be quiet!" she said, brushing a handful of air at him crossly. "We're talking business."

  John shrugged free of her and, clasping her shoulders, held her four-square to him. "Suppose," he suggested, "that we just sell this week's supplies exactly as we planned. And next week, when we shall know everything there is to know about keeping shop and could quite easily retire if we wished, next week, try something different—even this tinker-on-rails notion, if ye haven't had a hundred others by then."

  "D'you think it foolish?"

  "I do not. But I believe we must first touch ground beneath our feet."

  She nodded. "You're right." She smiled at him. "We've work enough to move this."

  "Shall I have any supper tonight?" he asked.

  "Oh you are hard done by, poor man!" she mocked. "I'll lock up now. Where's Tommy? His mother'll be here soon."

  "Back in the shop."

  She found him lying on a bag of potatoes, sobbing his heart out. The sight of it mortified her, for she remembered how sharp she had been. Yet it was also puzzling for she had often been severe with him before—when he had copied letter shapes badly, or done some job in a slovenly way—and he had always taken it well. He did not usually smart under a rebuke or turn resentful; indeed, she had often wondered whether anything would ever discourage him or dim his seemingly irrepressible spirit.

  One jocular remark after another rose to her throat and refused to be uttered. In the end, she simply leaned forward, picked him up—glad to see he did not protest or struggle—and hugged him to her. His sorrow quickly subsided and soon he was shaking himself and her with convulsive gasps as he tried to breathe smoothly.

  "Now listen," she said, almost whispering into his ear as he lay with his head hard pressed into her shoulder. "Be calm and listen. As long as we are working at this site, and as long as there's a Tommy Metcalfe living in Lancashere-nearYorkshere, there will be a shop here."

  "Tommy shop," he said.

  "A tommy shop," she agreed.

  "This one," he pressed.

  She put him down but he clung at once to her with his arm about her hips and his face buried in her petticoats. "Very likely," she said.

  "Yes, yes," he insisted. "It must be."

  Now she was in a quandary. She wanted to pacify him and get him all quiet to go home. But she wasn't going to lie about something so important. She pulled a glum face at John, who shrugged goodnaturedly as if to say, take your time.

  "There's no must about it, Tommy," she said as gently as she could. "A shop, any kind of shop, whatever you may believe, is not just a place—walls, doors, roof, and windows." She took him to the door and pointed uphill to the crown of Moorhey Flat. He, not wanting to be given any reason for abandoning the idea that "his" shop was a permanent feature of the universe, if not, indeed, its actual hub, came only with reluctance. "Look," she persisted. "If we did a very foolish thing; if we built this shop up there, how many folk do you think would take the trouble to clamber all that way up and buy there?"

  He smiled, thinking that argument a very easy one to overcome. "But we built it here," he said proudly.

  She nodded. "So we did. And we think we're right. We think. But we don't know. And if we're wrong, we shall move it. We shall take the shop where folk want it. Because…and listen to this, Tommy, because I don't ever want you to make this mistake again—a shop is, first and above all, its customers. If a shop's got no customers, ye might as well break the rest up for kindling. That's why I want you back here tomorrow wearing your best smile and boots blacked, ready to put the best one forward. And every customer goes out this door is going to say 'I must do me shoppin' there again next time.' Because
they are the shop. Now there's your mother and sister so you'd best be off."

  And she gave him a little dusting on his bottom to send him off and spare him the indignity of being forced to agree with her. She was glad she had explained it to him, though, for even in her own mind the thoughts had never been set out quite so explicitly.

  As she and John walked homeward up the hill she said: "I suppose it was a waste of time to tell the little fellow. He's got that other idea so fixed, about 'his' shop, he can't see anything else."