The Sweet-Shop Owner

by Graham Swift

  It was cram full – not one of those shops where there was plenty of space and an air of fluorescent-lit efficiency. Behind him, stacked in columns, rose cigarettes; tipped, plain; above, cigars, below, loose tobacco. To the right, along the polished, uneven shelves towards the Briar Street window, were the jars – drops, lumps, fruits, toffees, jellies, mixtures – and the boxes, milk and plain, hard and soft centres, with on the top shelf, bordered with ribbons and embellished with puppy-dogs, waterfalls, sunset har-bours, the luxury two- and three-pound boxes. On the counter in front, and beneath, behind sliding glass doors, were the bars and sticks, chews and tubes, sherbet dabs and banana-splits – the things the kids chose coming home at four – wrapped in sickly colour. And to his right – beyond the till, along the remaining counter towards the ice-cream fridge and the crates of lemonade and Coca-Cola – the magazines and papers, spread, overlapping like roof tiles: tense headlines, pop-stars, orchids in flower, fashion, footballers, naked girls.

  It thronged, it bulged.

  And none of it – that was the beauty of it – was either useful or permanent.

  Beyond the sweet counter, taking up most of the Briar Street window, was his own addition. Toys. Dolls, teddy-bears, jigsaw puzzles, model cars, rockets, cowboy hats, plastic soldiers, and, hanging from the framework over his head, three clockwork monkeys each with a fez and a musical instrument which played if you wound it up: a drum, a pipe, a pair of cymbals.

  All that was his work. Coming home, twelve years ago, he’d said to her, ‘I have a plan.’ And her face had pricked up, beside the french window, as at some rumour of rebellion. ‘Toys. I will sell toys in the shop.’ She had looked, and repeated slowly the word – ‘Toys’ – as if rolling round her mouth a morsel of something whose taste she hadn’t fixed. And then – the identification was made – the wry smile touched her lips. He’d known it would please her. Her eyes widened (matchless, grey-blue eyes) and had looked into him, through him, as if they sent out swift, invisible cords to seize and sweep him up. ‘Yes. Why not?’

  And then she’d added: ‘You will make sure, won’t you, there’s a profit in this?’

  He looked at his smudged hands clasped on the counter. He must wash. It was ten past seven. Traffic was building up on the High Street, making the shop windows vibrate gently.

  As he twisted himself from the stool he felt the pain grip suddenly his left side and shoulder. It was always there, but sometimes it attacked in earnest. Angina pectoris. It sounded like the name of a flower or a rare species of butterfly. Dorry had read Latin. He knew what to do. There were trinitrin tablets in his breast pocket, next to her letter, and there were more in a drawer beneath the till. Mrs Cooper knew and was instructed. Irene had used them too, along with all her other pills. With both of them it was heart trouble.

  He paused. No stress, no excitement. No, he wouldn’t reach for the tablets – it would mean pulling out her letter. He hung on. Not now. The body is a machine, Doctor Field had said. And there – it went.

  He padded, slowly, through the doorway hung like an oriental arch with coloured strips of plastic, into the stock room to wash his hands and slick his hair with water.

  Mrs Cooper was due at any moment – with her basket, her amber horn-rims, her hair permed rigid as wire and her look of steely dedication. Sixteen years his assistant. She had been a plump blonde once. Besides himself, only she had a key. And she said, ‘I’ll get it,’ thrusting out her bosom, when there was something to be fetched: ‘You mustn’t strain yourself.’ And she said, ‘I’ll manage,’ that time when he had to go off and leave the shop, chasms opening beneath him, because she was in hospital, stricken but unfrightened, tubes and wires plugged into her. Dorry had come – that time.

  ‘You don’t have to begin so early, Mrs Cooper,’ he’d said. And she’d said, ‘Oh, call me Janet.’ But he didn’t.

  Mrs Cooper would come. She’d put her basket with her handbag against the wall in the stock room; take off her cardigan, pat her hair, put on her blue nylon shop coat, pick up the kettle with one hand while she did up her buttons with the other, and ask, as if every time it were a novel suggestion, ‘Tea, Mr Chapman?’ She’d make the tea and bring it to him, vigorously stirring in the sugar. He’d sip it as she filled up spaces on the counter with fresh stock, and he’d say, glancing out of the window, ‘Warm, Mrs Cooper, warm. Any plans for the weekend?’ And she’d say, as she always did, ‘Weekend, Mr Chapman? I’m surprised you know what a weekend is.’

  But, sooner or later, there’s a last time.

  He dried his hands, drew the comb through his thin hair. Passing back into the shop, he took from a box on one of the shelves a fat, half-corona cigar, undid the cellophane and lit it.

  And Mrs Cooper would say, coming in and seeing him puffing smoke, ‘Mr Chapman! You know you shouldn’t smoke them.’ And he would say, laconically enough, ‘But I sell ’em.’

  He perched himself on his stool and puffed hard. So Mrs Cooper would view him, peering in for a moment through the shop door as she rummaged for her key – behind glass, behind the undergrowth of display stands, wrappers and dangling toys – peering back at her, lastly, from behind blue fumes, his face red, swollen, like an overripe fruit, his eyes wide, impenetrable.

  3

  ‘There is a place on the corner of Briar Street. It’s a good site. I’ve already seen Joyce and we have the first option.’

  She put down the cup and saucer on the table – the blue cup and saucer with the thin scrolls and the pink moss-roses. A wedding present. Her lips drew inward; they were shrewd, circumspect, even then. And he thought, Yes, of course – seeing it fall into place – I will be a shop-owner.

  ‘Do you approve?’ And she waited. For she wouldn’t overbear, insist – that wasn’t her way. She would let him consider and judge and say ‘I approve’ – that was the man’s role and the husband’s, and she wouldn’t deny it him.

  ‘Why not?’ he said, with a cautious grin. ‘Well why not?’

  ‘You will need to look it over,’ she nodded, ‘and see Joyce yourself. And you will have to know the prospects and get to learn the business. My brothers can help you there.’

  ‘Of course,’ he said.

  ‘Good. Then it’s settled.’

  She smiled. A lovely smile, like a shining seal upon a contract.

  And what she really meant, reaching again for her cup, sitting back and crossing her legs, smooth, perfect legs, under her beige skirt, was: I will buy you a shop, I’ll get you a shop. I will install you in it and see that you have all you need. Then I’ll watch. I’ll see what you can do. That will content me. I’ll send you out each morning and watch you come home each night and I shall want to know how you are doing. I shall want return for my investment. But I shan’t interfere, only watch. You will be free, absolved; for the responsibility – don’t you see? – will be mine.

  Her lips hovered over the rim of her cup. Her face had this way of seeming to float.

  And all I ask in return for this is that there be no question of love.

  She fingered the pearls at her neck, drawing in her shoulders. And only for an instant had there flickered in her eyes that other look which he could never reach, never touch, never quite rescue: ‘Save me.’

  The blue and pink tea service glimmered on the table, and she cut the cake – a Dundee – with the ivory handled slicer on the cut-glass cake stand. So many presents. You ate off them, sat on them, slept between them. That lavish family of hers. Furniture, china, glass, bed-linen; not to mention the house itself, the garden, with the lilac tree and hydrangea bushes, or her furs and jewels, most of which she kept locked in cupboards and drawers and never brought out, as if condemning them. But it was all for her, the only daughter. Not for him. She liked fine, fragile, precious things, things which you couldn’t use. And he had the podgy hands of one who would let slip such things and break them. And, besides, (he’d overheard what her brothers had said, at the wedding reception) he was ‘only somethin
g to occupy her with’.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘don’t worry about the nonsense that family talks.’

  They posed for photographs. June, 1937. There was a marquee in the garden, smoked salmon, turkey and champagne; and the feeling you get on a journey when some landmark looms into view, soon to be passed by. A scent of cut grass; red and white carnations. The chatter rustled like a breeze through the hats and flowers. Her brothers were there, Paul and Jack, with wing-collars, moving smoothly among the guests, as if their sister made a habit of getting married and they had done it all many, many times before. His parents sat, along the table, looking flushed and attentive. They would be dead soon, one after the other, as if by mutual arrangement, in a space of months. But tonight, when it was all over, they would have the neighbours round and, amidst bottles of gin and beer, they would dance, that quiet pair, on the worn carpet in the back room. Yes, better do it now, better rejoice; our son’s wedding night, that is something to celebrate. They had scraped every penny, in those stringent times, so as not to be outdone, to give the set of silver cutlery which stood on the damask tablecloth on the trestle table amongst the other gifts. But what they most gave, silently, generously, was their thanks.

  Her parents whispered gravely to each other, as if the event were for them the completion of some shrewd act of diplomacy. And should he cast his eyes a moment their way, they would break off their discussion, in deference to his place of honour, and give him wide, immaculate, approving smiles. They had made their money out of immaculacy; out of little laundries dotted about the streets of south-east London. They had contracts with hotels, shipping lines. And they’d won their custom on the promise of whiteness: white sheets and white shirts, white pillow-slips; as white as the white wedding cake that rose in icy tiers before them. And the brothers, who had partnerships, investments, interests of their own, smiled too, the same smile, approving, not friendly. Yes, he’d do. He’d do for a bride-groom. To have a wedding you needed a bride-groom.

  He felt like someone borrowed for the occasion.

  But he didn’t mind. That condescension. Not when, with his head growing lighter, he’d stood up to make his speech and said simply, gawping: ‘Thank you, thank you … thank you really, thank you all.’ That was all that was expected of him, and they’d clapped and cheered as at masterly oratory. Nor when, after more champagne and words with relatives he didn’t know and wouldn’t meet again, he had wandered through the house like a stranger, and heard her mother say to another – he caught no more – ‘a difficult girl’, and had glimpsed afterwards, upstairs, through the half open door, Paul on the bed and Jack in a chair, their waistcoats undone and their grey ties pulled loose from their collars, like weary gamblers, and eavesdropped on those words that passed between them. No, he didn’t mind. Landmarks were like that. They slipped by. They did not belong to you. And if you put out your hand to touch them, they parted and dissolved and grew flimsy like the world after champagne. And he didn’t care. For in the night now, his body sprawled like a toy’s, the world receded, he could reach out and touch her.

  ‘Don’t listen to all that nonsense, Willy.’

  ‘Something to occupy her with.’

  So why then? Why him?

  He watched the cigar smoke drifting through the beams of sunlight over the counter.

  He had planned nothing. Not for himself. And yet he knew: plans emerged. You stepped into them.

  That was why he liked it at Ellis’s. The print-works. Setting up the type so that there was correctness of spacing, the letter size graded according to the importance of the words; an overall effect of regularity and order. The content was unimportant. It was the layout that mattered. And just to show it was not a mere exercise, a playing with shapes, you had to roll up your sleeves and get your fingers covered in ink or machine grease. There was always a little mess, if there were patterns. Old Ellis called him ‘my lad’. He had a bald head and a thick, drooping, melan-choly moustache. They were disappointed, of course, Mother and Father. Had they got him to grammar school just for that? (‘Lacks talent and initiative,’ his reports had said.) Where was the return for their scrimping and pushing? But he liked the daily routine, the taking of orders, the clattering machine room at the back with the grille-like window overlooking the Surrey canal, and almost jaunted to work, on and off the tram, with a concealed laugh inside him.

  He planned nothing, though every day had its pattern and was spent in making patterns. Until she came in that day – Mr Ellis was at lunch and he had temporary charge – to place her order.

  ‘Laundry lists,’ she said. ‘The laundry lists and other material for our new branch. Mr Ellis was phoned, and I’d hoped …’

  She looked peeved at not being able to see the proprietor; annoyed at the grubby little print-works and him in his shirt sleeves with inky fingers; and annoyed too at having been sent out like an errand girl on this mission. For that showed. Someone who might have sent an assistant, an office boy, had deliberately sent her and she didn’t like it. She was meant to command, not obey.

  ‘You had better attend to it.’ And she did command, and he obliged. ‘This is what we want.’

  He took the typed-out sheets and scanned them through, his pencil poised. It was only the simplest of things, a laundry list, but as if to show, since she was to command, that he was slow, had no initiative, he read aloud the words in front of him:

  ‘… Waistcoats, Men’s Shirts, Collars (stiff), Collars (semi-stiff), Vests (long-sleeved) –’

  But she stopped him. ‘That’s a fine little rag-doll.’ It was meant to be peremptory. Her lips drew inwards. But he grinned as though at a quite good-humoured remark. And no, he wouldn’t be bothered by her cuttingness. It wasn’t what it seemed.

  He took the papers and showed her the samples of lettering and layout, explaining slowly, for that was his way. And she listened, never for one moment losing that air of authority, yet held, perhaps, by his simpleton’s manner, by his ungrudging deference. Her hand drew in her collar. ‘Yes,’ she said curtly, ‘Yes, yes.’ And through his labouring words, as through a little mesh of visible dull print, he looked at her beauty.

  When he saw her a second time, three days later, walking on the common, it was different. Twice. That was pattern, that had the feel about it of something meant to be. She was leaning on the railings overlooking the space where the children played on swings, roundabouts and see-saws, and she had the same look of someone sent unwillingly on an errand, loitering resentfully. So he must stop (a plan would emerge) and say, ‘Miss Harrison? How do you do?’ and, as she looked up, half in annoyance, half with the look of a girl caught playing truant, continue in his dumb way, ‘Passing by … er, lunch-time … couldn’t help … laundry lists are ready.’ And she, recognizing who he was, recovering that old command, must nod, say, ‘Ah yes,’ and turn her head away to look over the railings. She would let him linger, if he must, but she wouldn’t welcome him.

  She wore a straw-coloured outfit; heavy, unnecessary make-up, as if to mask her face.

  ‘Cheerful bunch,’ he’d said, eyeing the children, mouthing the words in the blunt, crass way he’d read the items on the laundry list. Her face didn’t move. ‘Hey, look at that!’ – as a boy swung higher and higher till it seemed he would either fly off or turn full circle. And he’d pulled from his pocket, in a greaseproof bag, four cheese sandwiches which he extended to her in a gesture at once bluff and chivalrous, like a knight laying down arms.

  ‘Oh – no thanks,’ she said, slightly ruffled – for it was not like her to be lingering in parks, to be watching children on swings, to be speaking with strangers. Yet she was.

  They stood in silence, thinking of things to say.

  ‘You like watching children …?’ Her tone seemed to say: ‘You’re a child yourself.’

  ‘Yes. Don’t you?’ His cheek was full of cheese sandwich.

  She didn’t answer; only looked at the swings with anxiety.

  ‘I som
etimes wish,’ he said, trying hard to empty his mouth, ‘I could join in myself.’

  ‘But you wouldn’t?’

  ‘Why not?’

  He saw the sudden challenge in her eyes. And was that a smile somewhere in that held-aloft face?

  ‘Well, if you feel that way …?’

  ‘It’s Chapman. Willy Chapman.’

  ‘– why don’t you?’

  ‘Why don’t I?’

  Her head seemed to wobble on her neck.

  And he hadn’t hesitated. He gave back her look (did she think he was stupid?). He knew it was a test. He crushed up the grease-proof bag with the remainder of his sandwiches inside and stuffed it in his pocket. He walked to the end of the railings and across the patch of asphalt. Children stared at him. And looking back at her, very straight, defensive, he knew that was how it would be. She would stay, always, behind the railings, watching his readiness, his simplicity, his taking things at face value. She wouldn’t join in. She would watch; he would do. For he did it now, went up and did it, the man from the audience taking the stage. He climbed the steps of the kiddies’ slide, hitched up his jacket and slid down. And as he did so he knew he was hers.

  *

  Yes, that was pattern. That was not adventuring. She had said, Why don’t you? And he did. And afterwards it was precisely the predictable formula that pleased him: meeting in parks, sitting on benches, his being the humble suitor, buffing his shoes, scrubbing his nails before seeing her, being spruced and set-to by obsequious parents who saw the chance of a fortune.

  And there it was – a fortune – duly made over to him by the proper forms and ceremonies, in the corner of a railway compartment, bound for Dorset, while the golden light of a late June afternoon flickered through the gaps in passing roof-tops. And it was saying, ‘Don’t worry. Don’t worry, Willy, about all that nonsense.’