Lemon Sherbet and Dolly Blue (18 page)

Eva introduced a system of cash books for customers wanting groceries on tick, each purchase recorded in a small red book and totted up at the end of the week. Her command of mental arithmetic enabled her to calculate running totals and grant or withhold credit without keeping customers waiting, not that many would have been embarrassed by the wait. When the sum owing became risky and the ledger overfull, neighbours attempted different tactics. Requests that strained credulity mostly came from children sent in their mother's stead. Mrs Vine was a particular caution, always contriving to get that bit extra, stretching ingenuity to barefaced cheek.

They made a good team, Betsy and Eva. With Eva doing all the writing connected with the shop, Betsy probably did more fetching and carrying, so there was no sense of her being in charge. If Mrs Parks wanted soap, suet, tea and yeast, Eva started jotting down the quantities while Betsy put the items on to the counter. By the time she reached for the tea, Eva would be weighing out the yeast. If Mrs Tissington came in with an order to be collected later – Lyon's Jam Roll, Jacob's Rich Tea, 3 Gunstons' loaves, 6lbs potatoes, a bottle of lemonade, 2lbs Bourneville Cocoa, 1 packet Sankey's Soda – Betsy was as likely as Eva to stand on the steps to reach for the lemonade, or dig deep into the sack of potatoes. She was in her fifties when Eva started working with her, but even well into her seventies had no desire to reduce her working hours. Betsy liked hard work and preferred vigorous tasks, like scrubbing floors and fettling corners, to shining brasses, washing china or the other fiddly jobs Eva enjoyed.

Whatever else was happening, great or small, they were always
behind their counter. Neighbours moved into and out of the area; the corner shop stayed put, and Betsy and Eva with it. Their constant presence made them available to women who were otherwise alone all day or to children whose mothers had no time to chat. It was easy to tell Eva, when you came for a licorice stick, that you were swinging on the rope by the canal, or were wearing a new hair ribbon that day. My great-grandma and great-aunt were as permanent a fixture as the shop.

Women came to Betsy for advice, but if someone was in a panic or needed practical help, they turned to Eva. Young men joked
with her when they called for their bootlaces and cigs. Her easy manner meant Eva was well liked; there was a fearlessness about her too. She was proficient at lighting fires, and reckless with it (or so it seemed to me during my childhood). She could force a blaze out of any fire with the aid of a taut sheet of newspaper and would cast quantities of sugar on to recalcitrant coals with a casualness shared only by those who had lived at a grocery store and knew there was more sugar in the jar. Close neighbours presented her with lids they struggled to unfasten. This slim, small woman had surprising strength.

It was probably this combination of strength and unflap pability that gave Eva her distinctive role. The same young men who showed off and joked with Eva, came to her with splinters in their fingers and even allowed themselves to wince while she dug at the blighter with a sewing needle. Most surprisingly, she pulled teeth. Few at Wheeldon Mill could afford the dentist.

My great-aunt, thin as a sprite and barely five foot nought, extracted teeth from colliers who could handle several hundred-weights of coal. She pulled teeth for women and children too, but that was less remarkable than the burly men who needed her help. Thick-set miners who had just sloughed off their pit-muck came moaning to the house, ‘Oh Eva, can you help me?' And she'd tackle the offending tooth with her fingers or else tie a piece of string around it and the nearest door handle, then slam the door.

It was impossible to look your best standing behind a counter in an apron dusty with grain and flour, and your hair coming loose from its pins (Eva's hair was constantly shedding pins; there was always a handful behind the counter and two or three on the mantelpiece) but, on gala days, Eva swapped her pinny for a dress
and jewellery – a brooch for formal moods, her long French beads (a homecoming gift from George on his safe return from the Front) if she felt like cutting a dash.

Galas were occasions to hear the colliery band, guess the number of split peas in a jar and cheer on an egg-and-spoon race – once won by Eva aged ten. On gala days, she picked her way across the hummocky grass of the Brimington field, selling sweets from a tray suspended from her shoulders. Walking daintily so as not to soil her shoes, Eva looked as stately as an usherette, but could move just as fast as any youngster tempted to grab a chocolate bar and run. While she walked, her fine French beads clacked against the edge of her tray, shiny clusters of blackcurrant and purple, and a crimson as rich as Cherry Lips. Plenty of people stopped to chat; everyone in the neighbourhood knew Eva.

It wasn't long before young men came calling, joshingly at first, although one or two were brave enough to ask her out. Eva agreed to meet one young hopeful ‘neath the clock' on Whittington Moor, the usual rendezvous for courting couples. Come eight o'clock, however, it was not Eva who walked towards him, but Dick. He and Betsy were firmly of the view that this puppy-faced swain was nowhere near good enough for their daughter. Eva was persuaded to stay at home while Dick walked down to the Moor and advised her admirer to clear off.

My great-aunt was merely curious about this suitor; he was not someone she was particularly sweet on, so it was not too hard for Eva to do as she was told. Dick and Betsy knew more about the world than she did; far better stay at home with Mam and Dad and play the piano beside a crackling fire than traipse off with some gangly lad.

*

The gap between Annie and Eva narrowed over the years, the differences in their ages becoming irrelevant once they were both adults and had interests in common. They each liked clothes and dressed as well as their purses allowed. Both sisters sewed, but Annie's dressmaking skills were an additional boon. My grandma had taken a course in tailoring towards the end of the war and learned to make full dress suits for men as well as women; what Annie couldn't do with a needle was not worth knowing. She and Eva looked out sewing patterns in the
Daily Express
, ‘How to Make Your Summer Frock for 3/6,' and discussed the latest shades: apricot fizz, tango, mole or almond green?

In some working-class districts, shopkeepers' daughters (having more money than most of their neighbours) set the fashion. I doubt that Annie and Eva's clothes were ever the latest word, but
they liked to keep abreast of the times. They enjoyed shopping together, visiting Chesterfield's town-centre emporiums, Swallow's and Turner's, and Eyres' brand-new arcade. Occasionally, they duplicated their purchases or chose complementary styles – the same handbags but with different clasps; necklaces in mother-of-pearl (Annie's, pale discs; Eva's, leaves). They each bought a brooch saying ‘Carolina Moon', slivers of lemon enamel, celebrating the popular tune; and, copying a fashion in Bohemian circles (not that Bohemia reached Chesterfield), drew attention to their slim arms by each wearing a slave bangle above their right elbow.

When Annie moved to the cake shop, the sisters saw each other twice a week. Wheeldon Mill and Whittington Moor were half an hour's walk apart. On Tuesday evenings, Eva visited Annie; on Sundays, Annie returned the visit. For the next thirty years, until her parents died, my grandma spent her Sundays with the family and, for a few years, at least, Willie generally appeared at teatime.

Typically, Annie arrived mid-morning to find Dick in the yard, cleaning and repairing his weekday boots, Eva preparing vegetables for dinner or mixing a sponge cake for tea (this was another division of labour: Betsy baked bread and pastry; Eva, cakes); and her mother grating nutmeg over a milk pudding, Dick's staple request. The smell of dubbing caught up with that of stewing meat and nutmeg; a hint of Brasso in the background suggested an earlier chore.

Dinner over, Betsy settled to patch Dick's heavy work trousers – by the 1920s, my great-grandfather was tending industrial engines at Sheepbridge; he was still in charge of several men, and still a collar-and-tie man. While Betsy sewed, Annie and Eva rolled small sheets of white waxy paper into the cones in which the shop sold sweets, and selected advertisements to stand in the
sunny window. Betsy favoured sheaves of corn: in her estimation, drawings of golden wheat fields made the most attractive display. Jobs like these, or stripping newspaper into squares for the you-know-what (making sure to avoid the King and Queen), passed quickly while the sisters talked.

They were riveted by the trial of Annie's namesake, Mrs Thompson, and followed each development as closely as those who queued round the block at the Old Bailey. Had she plotted with her young lover to kill her husband, or was his murder the terrible shock she maintained? Throughout the trial, and for some time after she and Frederick Bywaters were sentenced to hang, people commented on the fact that she and my grandma shared a name. Men, in particular, liked to speak of that ‘temptress' and jest: ‘No connection with
the
Mrs Thompson, I trust?' though Annie couldn't see that there was anything amusing in Edith Thompson's plight. Jim's wife, poor Edith, shared a first name as well as a surname: even more remarks were made to her, though no one could have dreamt any resemblance between the two women.

If ever a daughter was like her mam, it was Annie, and although that was evident in all kinds of ways, an obvious one was her enjoyment of the cake shop. Annie liked being her own boss and took pride in her appearance: you had to look presentable if you were handling bread and cakes. Annie always wore a dress and was never without a string of beads (even when doing the housework). She took care arranging the cakes on doilies to make an attractive display, but, most of all, she enjoyed dealing with customers, especially those who stopped for a cup of tea.

The decision to serve tea and cakes was Annie's. Tea was served on a lace cloth whose scalloped edges dipped and rose around a
small table tucked behind a painted screen shielding the tea drinker from view. Women who shopped on Whittington Moor might pause for a cup of tea and a walnut slice after visiting the milliner's or haberdashery, but Annie's regular tea drinkers were commercial travellers. Men who spent their days tramping from one store to the next were grateful for the chance to take the weight off their feet. Some told Annie about the wife and kiddies; the Singer salesman, hearing of her liking for sewing, showed her how, with a pair of sharp scissors and a confident hand, six yards of voile could be transformed into a Paris Mode.

Though things were going well at the cake shop, they were not looking good at Wheeldon Mill. One foggy night, walking back from work along what was colloquially known as the Coal Road, my great-grandfather was hit by a car. Few cars travelled through that neighbourhood in the evening; it was Dick's great mis fortune to meet one, although the accident was not his fault. Someone at
the scene was dispatched to run up to the shop and tell Betsy. At the sight of this unknown man standing in the doorway, struggling over his words, my great-grandma's thoughts went straight back to 1901 and the grey-faced lad who'd stood before her, describing Dick's head injury. And, even with all the terror she had felt on that occasion, Dick had been a much younger man then, and Betsy a much younger woman.