Read Online The Pearly Queen by Mary Jane Staples - Free Book Online Page B

narrow board seat opposite Hetty. She was in white. Her hat, frock, shoes and stockings were all white, and she looked like a kind of angelic Alice in Wonderland, except that she didn’t seem very taken with Wonderland. Joe clucked at Poppy, the pony, and the cart started to run.
    â€˜Nice day,’ said Jimmy to Hetty. She stared sullenly at him. ‘If you like it hot. How’d you feel about August?’
    â€˜Mind yer own bleedin’ business,’ said Alice in Wonderland.
    â€˜Well, I thought I’d ask,’ said Jimmy amiably.
    â€˜No-one asked yer to ask.’
    â€˜All right, I’ll shut up, shall I?’
    â€˜What’s yer name?’
    â€˜No idea,’ said Jimmy who could always play someone else’s game.
    â€˜Yer bloomin’ daft,’ said Hetty.
    â€˜Well, nobody’s perfect,’ said Jimmy. ‘We’ve all got some complaint.’
    Hetty sniffed and gave up. Joe was talking to Aunt Edie. Jimmy listened.
    â€˜Yer a lively one, you are, Edie. Lively as a gel, you always was, and yer still that way. Pearly queen of South Camberwell, you are, and yer got ’igh-falutin’ legs.’
    â€˜High what?’ said Aunt Edie, large hat dancing to the trotting rhythm of the pony.
    â€˜I’m speakin’ frank of them fancy pins o’ yourn,’ said Joe.
    â€˜Well, you watch I don’t pickle that fancy tongue of yours,’ said Aunt Edie.
    Joe grinned, cracked a playful whip and lightly tweaked the reins. The trotting pony overtook a slow-moving cart piled high with sacks of dry-smelling wheat for a flour mill. They ran along the tram track for a brief while before rejoining the stream of Saturday traffic. They passed two little girls trundling their iron hoops over the pavement. A tram clanged loudly past the cart. It had no effect on the pony.
    â€˜Where was I?’ asked Joe, putting his whip into its rest.
    â€˜Doin’ some fancy talk,’ said Aunt Edie.
    â€˜I tell yer, love, I dunno when you wasn’t a real lively sort, and a knockout into the bargain,’ said Joe. ‘’Specially doin’ yer turns at our concerts. I seen other knockouts in me day, but I never seen—’
    â€˜In case you don’t know, Joe Gosling,’ said Aunt Edie, ‘that’s my knee you’ve got ’old of.’
    â€˜Is it?’ said Joe. ‘Well, I never, so it is. Funny, I never knew me ’and get ’old of a knee before, not down the old Walworth Road.’ He took it away. The little cart slowed in thickening traffic. ‘Yer know, Edie, since me reg’lar pearly partner, Ma Rawlins, passed on, God rest ’er, I been thinkin’ about someone to take ’er place. Someone with an ’eart of gold, just like she ’ad. And could she warble, she was still pipin’ away at concerts for kids when she was gone sixty. “I’ve Got A Lovely Bunch Of Coconuts”, that was ’er fav’rite.’
    â€˜I know,’ said Aunt Edie.
    â€˜â€™Ad the figure to go with it, she did,’ said Joe.
    â€˜Don’t look at me,’ said Aunt Edie.
    â€˜Good old pearly queen, Ma Rawlins was,’ reminisced Joe, ‘always takin’ sweets to orphanage kids, and doin’ a knees-up by request. So I been thinkin’, Edie, you still bein’ a single lady and me bein’ a widower, we’d make a rollickin’ good team. You can sing like a bird, and my voice ain’t one that’s ’ad rotten termaters chucked at it yet. So what d’yer think, old gel?’
    â€˜I think that’s my knee you’ve got ’old of again,’ said Aunt Edie.
    â€˜Well, blind me, so it is,’ said Joe. ‘I dunno what’s come over it today, it must ’ave a temperature or something.’ He removed his wayward hand again. In the back of the cart, Jimmy hid a grin and Hetty stared moodily at her flowers. ‘I’m