Read Online The Listeners by Monica Dickens - Free Book Online Page B

company, and he had learned how to take the little ones to the You-know-where. So Muh usually took him with her, leaving Miriam to take care of the shop,and no instant heeling done that morning, unless Dad had time, which was unlikely, with the perpetual pile of soleing and stitching with which he never quite caught up. Butterfields was very hard on shoes. All the walking on pavements which had been made with some kind of hard sparkling stone in them. Very good business for
some
people, the customers joked, drawing shoes from among the boxes of soapflakes and cornflakes in their shopping bags.
    ‘Keep them going for just a bit longer,’ Like taking an old dog to the vet, they brought out dreadful old favourite shoes, and pretended they were only for gardening.
    ‘Yoo hoo – yours truly reporting!’ Miriam had some rather common mannerisms, like shouting up the stairs, but she knew the business of the shop, and Muh did not have to pay her too much, being a cousin. ‘Hello, love!’
    Jackie went clattering down on his big feet which had to go sideways on the stairs, and she hugged him fondly, smelling of armpits and cigarettes.
    ‘Huh-oMim!’
    He went through into the shop with her, and she showed him what she had brought, a marvellous little man on a tricycle, whose bell rang as his legs went round. He was seamed down the middle from front to back. Jackie pulled him apart — ‘Mind what you’re doing, that cost money!’ — and cleverly clipped him back together again, to show Miriam how it could be done.
    ‘Ah well, another day, another deed.’ Miriam began to pull the dust cloths off the permanent displays, and to bring out from under the counter the handbags and the better-quality shoe buckles and bows that were put away each night.
    ‘Good morning, dear.’
    Jackie’s father came through from the workshop in his apron, a beam on his shiny red face, which went right on over the top of his head. He was going to have Miriam here all morning, popping into the workshop for a cigarette when the shop was empty. ‘You got here then.’
    ‘No, I was run over crossing the Broadway. This is myghost.’ Miriam’s laugh was an open-mouthed shriek. Muh frowned as she came in through the front of the shop with her gloves on, rainboots over her shoes, and a top layer of transparent plastic like a cake cover over her orange felt hat. She had gone out at the side entrance and in again at the shop door like a customer, to see what Miriam was up to.
    ‘Aren’t you coming, Jack?’ He was watching the little man tricycle down the counter.
    ‘Yeh.’ He looked up, open-mouthed. Of course he was coming.
    ‘Then put-a on your galoshes.’
    ‘No.’ His mouth closed with the lips tucked in.
    ‘It’s starting to rain.’
    ‘What’s the matter, can’t John put on soles that don’t let water?’ Miriam laughed and so did Jackie and his father, all throwing back their heads, and a customer who pushed open the door at that moment (da-doing on the musical chime) looked embarrassed, as people do coming into a jolly group.
    ‘Have you got any black shoe polish?’ There were stacks of it, but she had to say something. She said it to Jackie’s mother, but because it was Friday and she was in her outdoor things, she pretended she was a customer too and would not answer.
    Miriam began to show black polish, and Dad backed into the workshop like a kitchen hand. He had not shaved the bottom half of his beefy face, because he was not supposed to be seen in his working apron. Only Jackie went in and out between the customers and the workshop, shutting the door on the elves.
    When he came back wearing huge galoshes like rubber life-rafts, the customer had gone and Muh had the little tricycling man on the palm of her hand like a butterfly.
    ‘Malcom is much too old for toys,’ she chided kindly. ‘You shouldn’t spend your money.’
    Miriam winked. ‘It’s for Jackie.’
    He had known it would be a mistake. Although Muh often