Pure as the Lily by Catherine Cookson Read Free Book Online Page A

concerned about her mother and her leg, but the only thing she could say to herself was, “You’d think she had done it on purpose, you would, you would.” She had known what was going to happen before her mother laid down her demands; oh yes, she knew what was going to happen. She didn’t want to go to Mr. Tollett’s, not that she had anything against him, in fact she thought he was a nice man, a kind man, but she just didn’t want to work at Mr.
    Tollett’s, she wanted to get that job at Crofton’s. And her da would stand by her, yes he would.
    There were four customers in the shop and Mr. Tollett was very busy.
    She stood at the side watching him. She could see why her mother liked him, he was nice-looking. She knew he was thirty-five, only a year younger than her da, but he looked so much younger. He had a tanned skin and dark brown eyes and black hair his grandfather was Italian.
    They said his grandfather had gone round with a hokey—pokey cart selling ice-cream. He had a nice smile. He was making Mrs. Foggerty laugh.
    “Salty?” he was saying; “I’ve never sold a bit of salty bacon in me life. Briny, but not salty.”
    “Go on with you!” Mrs. Foggerty was pushing her thick arm towards him across the counter in a playfully menacing fashion. Don’t tell me I don’t know when bacon’s salty, it stuck to the pan. “
    “You don’t know how to fry it.”
    “Eeh, did you ever!” Mrs. Foggerty turned for support to the other three women, and they all laughed, and when one of them said, “There might be something in that,” Mrs. Foggerty’s face lost its grin. But her tart reply was checked by the sound of a child calling: “Dada!
    Dada! “
    “Oh dear, dear, here we go. Just a minute, ladies.” As he moved along the counter he caught sight of Mary, and he said brightly, “Oh, hello.
    Hello there, Mary! “ Then he opened the door of the storeroom, and, looking down at the small boy, exclaimed, ‘how on earth did you get down here?

    Now go on, be a good lad and get back upstairs. Alice’ll be here in a minute. “
    ‘. Mr. Tollett me ma’s hurt her leg, broken it I think. She sent me to. to see to him in the meantime.
    Will I take him up? “
    He stared at her across the counter.
    “Alice hurt her leg? Oh dear me.
    Where? “
    “When she was going back home she slipped on a slide.”
    They want brainin’ that lot,” one of the women put in.
    “I nearly had me bloody feet whipped from under me me self Something should be done about those hairns, or the lazy bitches up street should clear their fronts “ Why should they when there’s enough men to do it? “ said another woman primly.
    “God knows they’ve got little enough to do; but clear the fronts, will they? Not them. Beneath the dignity of some of them to take a brush in their hands. The young ‘uns are the worst. Boxin’ matches or their pitch-’n-toss, they can find coppers for that. Oh aye.” Mary now passed Benjamin Tollett and stooped down to the child and picked him up in her arms, then went through the storeroom, out into the yard and up the other staircase, and entered a new world.
    As angry as she was against her mother, she couldn’t help but be impressed with what she saw.
    Everything was shining. She stood in the long room bouncing the child up and down in her arms and looked about her. There was a window at one end looking on to Cornice Street. It had a fine net curtain close to the panes, and at the sides hung green chenille curtains. At the other end of the room, along the side wall, was another window, and it had the same kind of drapery. There was a three-piece suite covered in chintz; and the fire place was even better than the one in Mrs. Turner’s, it was modern, very modern, all tiled with a raised hearth. She had never seen anything like it. And on each side of the fireplace, in the alcoves, were bookcases with glass fronts. One held books, the other pieces of pretty china. Set in the far corner of the