The Sweet-Shop Owner by Graham Swift Read Free Book Online Page A

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 needbraces 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 blackhandbag 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