All That Glitters by Catrin Collier Read Free Book Online Page B

It was simply a matter of perseverance and effort, just like the teacher had said.
    Jane walked quickly down Taff Street, sticking to the shadows of the shuttered shops. A clock chimed. She stopped and listened, but it couldn’t have been the hour because there was only one peal. A tantalising smell of roasting meat wafted in the air, teasing her taste buds and knotting her empty stomach into tight, hungry spasms. She clutched her handkerchief until the edges of the coins bit into her palm. A penny or two spent on food wouldn’t make that much difference, and she couldn’t very well go to an interview starving. What if she fainted?
    A sign over a shop alongside the fountain proclaimed CHARLIE’S COOKED MEATS. It was the only one in the row with a light burning in its windows. She crept closer. It was definitely the source of the mouthwatering smell. The window was steamed up, but through the mist she could make out the counter, and behind it trays of food. Hunger overcoming wariness, she lingered for only a few seconds then pushed open the door, jumping nervously as the bell above it shrilled loudly.
    ‘Good morning.’ A young man stood behind the counter. Skilfully wielding a fish slice, he whisked steaming hot pasties into china display trays at bewildering speed. ‘You’re an early bird.’
    ‘I couldn’t sleep.’
    ‘You after something? Most of our meats are still cooking and won’t be ready for slicing for another hour.’
    ‘How much are those?’ She pointed at the pasties.
    ‘Well, seeing as how you’re our first customer of the day …’ Used to serving the ladies of the town, Eddie Powell didn’t even think about what he was saying any more, let alone consider the effect his banter might have on a workhouse girl. ‘... I can let them go for two shillings a dozen. But if you want just one, it’ll be two pence halfpenny’
    ‘Two pence halfpenny. But if I took a dozen they’d be two pence each,’ she protested indignantly.
    ‘Everything comes cheaper by the dozen.’
    ‘Sixpence on a dozen pasties is downright criminal.’
    ‘All right, tell you what I’ll do,’ he gave her the benefit of his most dazzling smile. ‘I’ll give you six for a shilling.’
    Jane was hungry enough to eat six, but there was no way she was going to part with more than half of her life savings. She was also beginning to worry about the cost of an outfit. If one pasty cost two pence halfpenny, what was a second-hand dress going to set her back? And that was without a hat, shoes, stockings and underclothes.
    ‘I only want one.’
    ‘To eat now?’
    She nodded.
    ‘Well why didn’t you say so? You can have this one.’ He scooped one from the end of the tray on to a paper bag, and handed it to her.
    Her mouth was already watering, but she held back to ask, ‘How much?’
    ‘It’s misshapen,’ he lied, glad that Charlie who owned the shop was down at the slaughterhouse, and Charlie’s wife Alma was upstairs seeing to her mother who’d managed to catch bronchitis at the first sign of spring. ‘We wouldn’t be able to sell that one. The crimping on the edge is all crooked.’
    ‘Are you sure?’
    ‘It would go in the bin.’
    She halved it with her first bite.
    ‘You working round here then?’ he asked, setting the fish slice to work again.
    She shook her head, her mouth too full to talk. She swallowed the last mouthful and ran her tongue around her teeth in search of crumbs. ‘I hope to, though. I’m going to apply for a job in the Town Hall this morning.’
    ‘The usherette’s position?’ He emptied one tray and turned to another. She was ambitious, he’d give her that much. But in those clogs and that grey flannel dress she didn’t stand a chance.
    ‘I know what you’re thinking.’ She set about the other half of the pasty.
    ‘Do you now?’
    ‘You think no one will take me on looking the way I do? Well, I’ve money.’ She lifted the handkerchief containing her precious pennies close to