The Fancy
Authors: Monica Dickens
*
THE FANCY
*
His name was Edward Ledward and he was going home to his tea. He was spare and sandy, with the bony, burning look that makes people rap their chests and say : “T.B., poor chap,” but it was nothing like that. He simply happened to have deeply sunk eyes and jutting cheekbones, and he had never had enough fresh air.
He walked briskly, but not because tomorrow night.”pu dressing-gownhe was looking forward to getting home—or to his tea. Today was Thursday and Connie’s family would be there playing cards. Connie’s mother, Mrs. Munroe, never fancied food until after the Nine O’Clock News and you couldn’t expect Connie to interrupt the game before that to get Edward’s tea. Equally, a man who had been working since half-past seven could not be expected to wait until nine o’clock, so Edward foraged for himself on Thursdays, and ate either in the narrow, untidy kitchen or with his legs cramped under the little bamboo table in the living-room window.
He always walked home from the factory, conscientiously breathing through his nose and expanding his narrow chest to make up for having been indoors all day. All through the winter, while other people queued for steamy buses, Edward walked, in a heavy, waistless Burberry with his old football club scarf wound twice round his neck and crossed into his waistcoat.
It was mild tonight though, a late September evening, with gold on the flat spreading clouds and the air only just cool enough to feel. The road than ran through the Factory Estate was a stream of hurrying people, mostly Edward’s crowd, but diluted every fifty yards or so by tributaries from the factories on either side. Canning Kyle’s which serviced aero engines was the only big factory on the Estate; the others were hardly more than glorified sheds that made ignition parts and unobtrusive bakelite fittings.
Edward with his brisk step weaved his way among groups and dawdlers, glancing at headlines on the paper of anyone who hadn’t turned it over to see the greyhound results.
The concrete Estate road emerged between high wire fencing on to the main road, which used to go to Oxford and Bath and Bristol, and now went, even more romantically, just “To the WEST.” There were queues already at the trolley-bus stops. Most people turned right to the station, but Edward went straight on, crossing at his own particular spot where there was a foot-shaped dent in the kerb. He wondered idly about the people in cars. How did they get the petrol, he’d like to know? They couldn’t all be doctors or Key Personnel.
Not that he grudged it them, because he hadn’t got a car anyway, but he was interested in how other people managed their lives and what it felt like to be astute.
“’Night, Wilf!” he called, as a creaking bicycle passed him halfway up the opposite side road. Old Wilf was always one of the last out because he took such a time putting away his things, haunted by the fear that the Night Shift would pinch his magnifying glass. Old Wilf’s legs, spindling in bicycle clips, pedalled earnestly into the sunset, his mulberry beret butting him up the slight hill.
Edward had about twenty minutes’ walk before he turned into his own road. Church Avenue, where the Lipmanns’ grocery stood slantwise across the corner. The blackout was up but the door was still open. David Lipmann’s bicycle was lying on the edge of the pavement with its wheels spinning. Edward picked up the bicycle, propped it against the kerb and went into the shop. He was canny now about Thursdays, having foraged unsuccessfully too often in Connie’s larder.
For no particular reason, there had always been a Jewish colony in the little streets that ran in and out of the legs of the railway viaduct, and since the War there were stranger accents and even wilder children. Next to the Synagogue, the Lipmanns’ shop was the focal point, a refugees’ haven in this land of plain food and drab colours. There were usually one or two chatting on the bench under the spiced sausages, or leaning lovingly on a crate of Matzos, arguing with Ruth and Mrs. Lipmann to kiss her goodnight, W b over the heads of customers. On Mr. Lipmann’s baking day, when he and David worked miracles underground with war-time supplies, there was always a crowd sublimating their nostalgia in the smells that came up the hatch from the bakehouse. And when the fragrant trays appeared—
Apfelstrudel
and
Linzetorte
and plaited loaves sprinkled with poppy seeds—there would be smacking lips and sentimental gasps. Mrs. Greening’s eyes would fill with tears, because poppy seeds reminded her of when she was a girl. She was there tonight, sitting on a sack of split peas, dry-eyed, because there was nothing left of Monday’s abundance but a tray of broken
Honigkücher
. Edward wondered what would happen if anyone wanted split peas, because she looked as though only a crane could move her.
“Hullo, my dear!” called Ruth, over the head of the customer she was serving : a flushed woman with a cavernous shopping bag and stout shoes. “Shan’t keep you a moment.” There were two or three customers waiting, members of the colony, who were peering at the labels on pickle jars and sounding the depths of the
sauerkraut
barrel.
“David!” yelled Ruth over her shoulder.
“Oh I can’t!” came back a bellow from the parlour beyond the shop. No Lipmann ever spoke lower than the top of its voice.
“David! Come out and serve!” Through the half-open door Edward could see David sprawling at the table, supple and insolent
in a white shirt and blue belted trousers, a lock of dark hair over his face. The rest of the family spent their energy in cheerfulness ; his ran to the precocious passions of Mediterranean adolescence, although he was born and raised in Collis Park, W.20. He was a throw-back to Mrs. Lipmann’s grandmother, who had kept a fruit stall at Palermo.
“I’m working!” he shouted, and Ruth roared with laughter, flashing her big white teeth. “He—he working!” she called to Mrs. Greening on the split-pea sack, and Mrs. Greening’s eyes disappeared as she laughed, too, shaking like a badly-set blancmange.
“Momma and Pop are at the market,” laughed Ruth to the shop in general, and the woman she was serving nodded her sensible hat and said : “You young things—don’t tell me. I’ve got three kids of my own. Two girls and a boy, all at home, a gastric husband
and
the W.V.S. Wednesday and Fridays. I always say only our generation know what work really is.” She glanced round the shop for approval, passing over Edward as being too young to know what work was, but too old to be classed with her kids, but the two women came up out of the
sauerkraut
barrel to nod and smile socrally and Mrs. Greening became gelatinous again.
“Two pounds of prunes, was it, dear?” said Ruth unperturbed.
“
One
pound. I’m not
made
of points,” said the red-faced woman.
“They don’t go far, do they?” said Ruth gaily.
“Far!” She raised her eyes to heaven. “You ought to have my family. Talk about terrors for figs!” She settled in to tell them how she Managed. Edward leaned over the barrier of biscuit tins and cereal packets that made the backcloth of the window display and picked himself out a long crusty loaf. “May I?” He waved it in the air.
“Threepence halfpenny,” called Ruth. “No—not your prunes, dear, they’re eightpence. H definitely blyhave you got a bag?”
“I’m sorry,” said the flushed woman, not looking it.
“Well, I’ll let you have one this once, but please bring it back next time you’re this way. We’re wickedly short.”
“But of course,” said the other, although as the prunes were no bigger at the price than in her own district, she did not expect to be this way again. She combed a wide range of food shops ; that was why her shoes were so stout.
With the bread, Edward bought a short length of garlic sausage and some pickled cucumber. “I’ve got something for you,” whispered Ruth, leaning close to him over the counter, so that he could see the marks where she had plucked her strong eyebrows. She smelt very feminine.
“It’s ever so kind of you,” said Edward as she smuggled a sack from behind the oatmeal barrel. “Look,” she opened it a little under cover of the counter, “not only outside leaves—there’s some hearts
in there. And-ssh! a bit of bran at the bottom. How are the darling rabbits?”
“Fine thanks. Queenie, er—she should be any day now.”
“Ah, bless her,” said Ruth. “I hope they’re all champions.”
“They will be. Thanks awfully.” Edward tucked the sack under his arm and went out. The flushed woman was outside, reading the advertisements in the glass case. You never knew what you might not pick up these days. She shot a glance at Edward’s sack. Black Market of course. All these Jew shops were in it.
The houses in Church Avenue were of brown gravel stucco, with slate roofs and a bow window to left or right of the peaked porch. They all had a little square of front garden and the same low wall, mostly topped by privet. A stretch of wall, two gaps together where gates had been and another stretch of wall, all down the road.
Edward turned up the black and white tiled path running alongside the Dowlinsons’, which was identical in pattern but broken and weed-grown. They had taken away the railing in between for salvage and Connie had made him put up some posts and wire netting. Old Mrs. Dowlinson had watched him round the curtain while he was doing it, which was very embarrassing. It seemed unnecessary anyway, because the old couple never went out, living apparently on bread and milk and the
News of the World
, because nothing else was ever delivered. Connie said it was a waste of their ration cards.
The hall of Edward’s house was narrow and lit only by a dim blue light, as the curtain over the coloured glass of the front door was thin. There was a coat rack with a tin base and a rail for umbrellas and a mirror with a clothes brush hanging below and a hook where Bob’s lead had hung when they had a dog. All round the wall and up the stairs ran a green embossed dado which you could dent with your thumbnail.
Connie and her family were in the living-room. The sound of their voices made Edward feel suddenly tired. He wondered what it would be like to have enough vitality to breeze in and greet them heartily instead of having to screw himself up to go in and be polite at all. He went up to the bathroom first and while he was washing, tried to settle the question he had been debating all day. Should he or should he not tell them about his new job? He might throw it out casually : “Oh, by the way, I’m being switched from the Fitting Shop to the Inspection Shop tomorrow ; charge hand on one of the girls’ benches. Make a change anyway.” Or he might start straight inI’ll tell you what an along with : “Got a rise in the world. Thirty bob a week more in the Inspection Shop”, or he might say something funny, like : “Hullo, Mrs. Charge Hand!” to Connie, or “Charge Hand to you!” when Don greeted him: “Hiya, Ted?”
In any case, they would talk about it all evening and question him, although he knew hardly anything about the job himself yet. He
could hear them already : “What a cheek—taking you out of the Fitting Shop just when Mr. Arnold was going and you might have got his job!” “Female labour, eh? You’re in for some trouble there, my boy.” “You in charge of ten girls? Boy, what a break!” “Don’t be silly, Don. He daren’t speak to one girl, let alone ten.”
Perhaps he should wait to tell Connie until they were alone. But then she would say : “Why ever didn’t you say so when Mum and the rest of them were here? Aren’t you funny? Now I’ll have to go round to the Buildings tomorrow and tell them. They’ll wonder why you didn’t say. You
are
queer!”
He dried his hands carefully, pushing down the cuticles of his nails. After all, it was a rise, and it would be gratifying to be able to surprise them with something interesting for once ; to be able to answer Mr. Munroe’s : “How’s the factory, boy? “with something more than: “Oh, mustn’t grumble.” Yes, he would tell them. They’d got to know sometime anyway.