The Sweet-Shop Owner

by Graham Swift

  The eyebrows lifted. Mrs Cooper’s smile never worked.

  ‘Really Mr Chapman. I –’

  ‘Now don’t say you shouldn’t.’ He planted the cigar once more between his lips. ‘Sixteen years my assistant. Sixteen. You deserve something now and then.’

  Little spasms rose and fell in her throat.

  ‘My holidays?’ She paused. ‘My holidays. It’s too kind of you, Mr Chapman.’

  But she didn’t look gratitude. Behind her smile her face pleaded, as if she’d expected something else, something more.

  But that was all, Mrs Cooper. Take it. The things you want you never get. You only get the money.

  ‘Keep it. Keep it for me till later.’

  He nodded, blowing out smoke. ‘Very well.’ He cocked his head towards the clock. She gave him back the second envelope, lifted the flap in the counter and passed out, as every morning, to unlock the door, unslip the chain and turn round the little plastic Senior Service sign from ‘Closed’ to ‘Open’. Later, when the shop would be closed again, when she would have left and returned to her flat, she would take out the envelopes from her handbag, having spurned them in his presence, and count their contents, running the notes through her fingers; and she would find in the second envelope not twenty-five but five hundred pounds. That would stop her, that would surprise her. She would not know what to do – to phone up, to say, to do nothing. But by that time, by that time, it would be too late.

  She was paid.

  She returned from the door, straightening the hang of her shop coat, and stood beside him at the counter, awaiting the first customers. He passed his eyes over her vexed, hawkish face, seeing, beyond it, arms lifted in a golden sea. And she, not attempting to return the gaze, stared at the sun, the shaft of sunlight slanting through the shop, falling on the smoke from Mr Chapman’s cigar, on his knotted, tarnished hands which rested on the counter, on the words on the front page of the uppermost paper in the pile between them. ‘PEACE BID FAILS.’

  5

  ‘A gem of a site.’

  It was old Jones who spoke, in his black greatcoat, with his florid cheeks and stoop, and his bunch of dangling keys like a jailer’s. And they were standing, Jones, himself, and his brother-in-law Paul, in that shop that would one day bear the name Chapman.

  Jones sniffed the damp air. He was nearly seventy, they said; had made his pile, but he wouldn’t retire. And young Joyce and Hancock, over in his wood-panelled office, were waiting for him to die so that they could take his place and move the name on the letter head from first to last. ‘Needs going over. But a gem of a site. Corner. Station close by. Good will of previous proprietor. And how many other newsagents along this stretch?’ He ran a finger through the dust on the counter and flicked it away. ‘You’ll be all right here.’ The face, sucking its own lips, was almost apologetic. He was old, tired of business, he no longer cared to encourage or discourage; yet he wouldn’t stop working. Perhaps he knew already (one did know): two weeks after his retirement, the fatal stroke. A further week, speechless as a dummy, then he died. And that was a month after he’d wheezed to him, coming in to buy chocolates for his wife, ‘If you sell, watch Hancock.’

  They shivered and their voices echoed in the bare interior. It was November, 1937. Drizzle fell in the High Street. The sea and the cliffs were gone, and he didn’t feel much at all, neither encouragement nor discouragement, standing there in that empty place – there were only some old sweet jars and a faint smell of coconut – that would be his. Brother Paul, with his long, clean fingers, took from his inside pocket a silver cigarette case, tapped a cigarette on the initialled lid, and said to Jones, ‘You understand of course it will be in my sister’s name. In the name of Mr Chapman’s wife?’

  They trooped through the rain across the road to Jones’ office – it was just Jones and Partners in those days – while Jones held the umbrella so that Paul wouldn’t get wet. They mustn’t get wet, the Harrisons; they had little white laundries all over the suburbs: Jones had secured them all. A dust cart was grinding down Briar Street. In the office, sombre as an undertaker’s, with the gas fire fizzing in the corner, were Hancock, lean and suave (without his moustache then) and Joyce, chubby and pert, as though to complement him. They looked up, obliging to Paul, suspicious of him. And already, no doubt, they were spreading the word: ‘That is what’s-his-name, married to the Harrison girl – the laundry Harrisons – God knows how. House in Leigh Drive. Shop in the High Street. Sheer fluke. None of it his.’ And already he could see his legend being shaped. ‘You’ll act then for Mrs Chapman, Mr Chapman?’ said Jones drily, as if he knew a secret. ‘Of course, she will have to sign when the time comes.’ And as they departed – Paul was ahead at the door, raising his coat collar, anxious to report to brother Jack – the estate agent caught his arm and said, ‘A lovely woman, your wife.’

  Jones let slip nothing. His face was full of dour discretion. But later when he told her (it was dark by then, the fire was bright and her face was mirrored in the dripping window) that it was done, and she must sign, she said promptly, turning, as if she’d only been waiting for the moment: ‘No, you must sign. The solicitors know, Jones knows. Only Paul and Jack don’t know. The shop will be yours.’ And over her lips had passed – was it? you couldn’t tell in the firelight – for the first time without its seeming like an act of charity, a smile.

  ‘You mean –?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He had wanted to laugh. So she could play a trick, after all, for all that coolness. She might say next, ‘See, I was only pretending,’ and melt completely. On the table was a vase, empty of flowers, which they’d bought in Dorset. Was she laughing too, behind the shadows from the fire? Her skin was flickering. He bent forward to find out, lifting his hands. And then he’d seen, through the flames, a blankness, like the blankness in old Jones’ face: No, that doesn’t mean there is any question. He’d dropped his hands; they were still cold from walking home in the rain. It was as if he’d mistaken the reward and so appeared ungrateful. He had had to look – for it seemed he couldn’t look at her – at that reflection, thin and inaccessible, in the dark. And she’d repeated, unsmiling, as if offering a bribe: ‘The shop will be yours.’

  She got up, smoothing her skirt, to make tea.

  ‘Don’t say you don’t want it.’

  She stood looking down at him as if she’d found her balance. He must obey, perform while she watched, or she’d fall.

  ‘They’ll find out in time – the family I mean – but so what?’

  She seemed to wobble again.

  ‘You’ll manage, Willy. Won’t you?’

  But he had no fears for the shop. To do what was fixed for you, that was easy. The shelves were empty, the counter was laden with dust. But he would clean them, and he would buy the stock (she would give him the money) to fill them. Sweets, newspapers, cigarettes. And though he’d stood there like a dummy with Paul and old Jones, though he knew nothing of shop-keeping, he would get a shop-keeper’s coat and adopt a shop-keeper’s manner. And in time it would be wholly plausible.

  ‘Yes, I’ll manage.’

  ‘W. Chapman, Newsagent, Confectioner, Licensed to sell Tobacco.’ A sign would go up like an official stamp. He’d leave every day at six-fifteen, she’d watch him, hand at throat, from the doorway, and he’d return at seven-thirty, bearing in a briefcase the little red and black books which recorded the progress of trade and which now and then she’d open and inspect to make sure there was a healthy margin between outlay and takings. And if he should ever feel, what sham, what play-acting, she would say – how neatly she set out the table, bringing in the tea tray, the china cups, the glass sugar-bowl – Let me bear that. Let me absolve you of that. The responsibility is mine.

  She put down the tea pot. She looked relieved. Perhaps they were both safe.

  So nothing would happen? She poured milk, spooned sugar. That is what it meant perhaps. The shop is yours: let nothing happen. The dancing foliage of the fire
light dappled her face. For one moment he wanted to sweep aside the tea cups, to catch her like some wild thing glimpsed in a forest. But her eyes sharpened, held him, as though to save him from stumbling headlong. She balanced her plate on her knee. Let nothing happen.

  Though something did happen. He was fixing the name-board over the shop door; the sign-painter had finished it and he had only to fit it in its brackets. That was two weeks before he was due to open. But he wasn’t thinking of what he was doing. He was thinking of the creature disappearing into the forest. He reached out; ‘W. Chapman, Newsagent’; he toppled from the step-ladder, the name-board clutched still in his hands; broke a bone in his leg and displaced another in his back. And there he was, when the shop should have been open, lying in St Helen’s, unable to move, his leg in plaster, having tests done on his back. She came in with detective novels, grapes or bananas, first eyeing him reproachfully, as if he’d let her down perhaps, done it deliberately. Then, as she sat by the bed, her look would soften, as if in some way his accident consoled her and she meant to say: ‘See, you too are helpless. When you fall your bones break. How easily you forget how fragile you are.’

  Did she foresee then, how intimately she would know that hospital?

  ‘Do what the doctors tell you.’ She patted his wrist. How commanding she looked, there at the bedside. And if only she would say, not that she loved him, but …

  All through the visiting hours the man in the next bed, a hernia case who had no visitors, kept his eyes on her.

  How auspicious. To fall and half break your back, when the shop was almost ready to open. He had to sit at home, still trussed and plastered, while she nursed and attended. She never complained. She was the soul of patience. And did her attentiveness then spring from a sense of another bargain struck? (It would be her turn, later, to be the invalid, his the nurse.) Or did it spring perhaps from her having proved her point? There was that knowing look as she helped him manoeuvre his crutches. That is what you get for adventuring, that is what you get for wanting things to happen.

  So he would play his part. With a permanent limp. In six or seven years’ time people would inquire about it: Was it in the war? And he would say: What war? – I fell off a ladder.

  It was summer again, summer 1938. Powell was sprinkling his watercress and lettuce. Smithy’s barber’s pole was twirling, endlessly, upwards. And the shop was open. Its coloured frontage adorned the High Street. And, sure enough, the customers came, without needing to be asked, for their cigarettes and dailies. He sold out, for the sun shone hot and bright, of lemonade and ice-cream. And not one of them doubted that he was the sweetshop owner, that he was in his rightful place behind the counter. He would play his part. What was easier? To step inside it like a bubble, to feel it buoy you up over the passing days, so that though you moved and gestured and the grime of loose change came off on your hands, you were really intact. Nothing touches you, you touch nothing.

  That was what he’d believed at Ellis’s, before she’d walked in that lunch-time. And what he’d believed, that far-off afternoon, seated by the window in the history lesson. His head was pressed against the dusty glass. He was a shop-keeper in a schoolboy’s outfit. The history master was speaking as if his words were turning into print. Henry VIII and his wives were like characters in costume. They weren’t real, but they didn’t know it. History fitted them into patterns. He was looking out at the still rows of chestnuts, the asphalt, the footballers on their marked-out pitches. You touch nothing, nothing touches you. All the rest is wild adventure. See how the football players turn their game into grim earnest. Their shouts sound like the screams of fighters. And see them still, unappeased by their fervour, trailing home down the path by the iron railings, restless, greedy for something to happen, for the real thing …

  ‘Chapman! Are you with us?’

  He had laughed then, unheard. And at Ellis’s. He’d carried round inside him a little hidden laugh. So that he didn’t mind about his school reports (he was only good at woodwork and distance running) or that his parents were disappointed, or that those others around him in that chalky class-room would get on better than him. Let them go to meet history. History would come anyway. Nothing touches you, you touch nothing.

  Sunshine slanted through the striped awning. Over the road, outside Powell’s, the shadows of the lime trees were black and small. Summer, 1938. Sold out, in only a few days, of lemonade and ices. But he’d learn. He’d make something of it: there, in the night, as he lay sprawled beside her, he pictured it, glimmering in the dark, stuffed with ices, with lemonade, with things with no use.

  Trams were passing in the High Street, full again in the late afternoon. People were going home, faces hot, collars loosened, calling in for their papers and evening cigarettes. ‘No, sorry – sold out of ices.’ But Powell too had sold out of watercress. Trains were unloading. Homegoers were dispersing down the pavements, past the open doors of the Prince William which sent out a cool, inviting waft of beer, and up over the common. The evening sun was making them come alive, and there – was it in the breeze, in the scent of the grass over the common, in the swing perhaps of a summer dress? – a glimpse of something, slipping away, as in the depths of a forest.

  He turned round the sign from ‘Open’ to ‘Closed’. Checked the windows, checked the till, checked the locks. How many times, how many times? He was young then. He carried his jacket over his shoulder. He didn’t need braces to hoist his trousers and his cheeks were not mottled with red. Only the limp to show that he was no longer all that he was. For once he’d been good at running. Over the common, up the Rise, into Leigh Drive. And there she was, opening the front door, ready to take his jacket and case and the evening paper and to give him a smile, like the scattering of coins.

  ‘Good day?’

  This was a sort of code.

  ‘Four pounds. And I sold out of lemonade.’

  Clomp, clomp. Who was that banging into the shop as if he owned it? It was Hancock, ducking his six feet under the door, raising one of his long, elastic arms to fish for his wallet, and leaning forward in a sinuous, confidential way as he asked for cigarettes. ‘Thought you should know. Old Jones died last night. We all knew, didn’t we? Funeral Saturday, already fixed. Shame.’ He pocketed the cigarettes and patted the wallet on his palm. ‘Mrs Chapman all right?’ He looked round the shop. There was a gleam in his eye. ‘Great friend of the Harrisons, old Jones. Poor feller didn’t want to stop work.’ He patted the wallet a second time, turning to go. ‘Thought you ought to know.’

  Clomp, clomp. What was that? Another death? Yes. The noise of the earth falling on his father’s coffin. August, 1938. And again, clomp, a month later, on Mother’s. As if they’d said, All right, that’s enough – you first, I’ll follow. As if they’d done it all in time: lived to see their son come into money and marry a beautiful woman; to dance on his wedding night round the living-room. What rejoicing. She did nothing, Mother, in that final month. Only dug out the will which left it all to her – for a month – and made up her own – which left it all to him. You touch nothing. The sun shone at both their funerals, making the white graves in the cemetery sparkle like wedding cakes. Irene stood beside him with her black gloves and black handbag and a black hat with a veil. She took his arm to steady him. And did she see, behind her veil, standing there so firm, that he was no longer all he was?

  Clomp. What was that? Only the piles of morning papers, tied with string, being dumped at the door by the lad from the van. He lifted the bundles onto the counter, cut the string, and there, on the appropriate page, were the notices: Jones, Arthur Russell, August 2nd; Chapman, George William, August 16th; Chapman, Edith, September 24th. The neatness of the columns. Deaths, marriages. The black and whiteness of memorials. He hadn’t wanted it in the papers. What sham. But she’d said, it was the thing to do: do it.

  Sunlight fell on the piles of papers, on his hands smudged by that same neat print. And what were the headlines then? In September, 1938
?

  ‘WILL GERMANY MARCH?’

  6

  ‘Ah! The ice-cream, Mrs Cooper.’ He looked out through the window. ‘Wouldn’t do to run out on a day like this.’

  The blue and cream company’s van had pulled up at the kerb outside and the driver was emerging with his pad of pink receipts and invoices and his blue carbon paper.

  ‘Let me,’ she said, turning on her heel. But ‘No, I’ll do it,’ he said. ‘You manage here’ (for it was not quite nine and they were coming in thick and fast on their way to work).

  ‘Lovely weather.’

  ‘Gorgeous.’

  And there he went, in his grey nylon jacket, dodging an incoming customer, out onto the pavement to help the man with his smoking, hoary cartons of ice-cream. Sprightly enough, with his limp, and his heart, and his dumb expression. But he shouldn’t do it (she thumped at the till); what would she do if something happened? Couldn’t she help?

  He re-entered bearing three cartons, followed by the delivery man bearing five.

  What a fool he was, bringing in the stuff himself, as if it were some sort of precious treasure, and not ice-cream to sell on a hot summer’s day; opening the black lid of the fridge, making room for the new cartons, taking out two loose choc-ices and juggling them – there, up and down – in his hands. Him and his tricks. He turned to go out for more boxes. And she gave him a stare, with the full vulture-like force of her amber spectacles. You shouldn’t: it’ll kill you. But what was he doing, staring back at her, blindly, wiping the cold moisture from the fridge off his hands? Smiling was it? Though his face never moved. Smiling though he wasn’t smiling, so that she was obliged to offer back a great, snarling flash of her teeth (which were not her own) and to feel stupid for it afterwards.

  He returned and went out again. What a fool he was, prancing about on the pavement, climbing up into the back of the delivery van and hopping down again, as if he were only a kid.