Читать книгу Seven Men Came Back - Warwick Deeping - Страница 12

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In the Essex Road, not far from the Islington Free Library, a man in white overalls mounted on a ladder was painting a name upon a fascia board.

“Tom Kettle—Greengrocer.”

The letters were in white upon a green ground. Meanwhile, the shop itself was very much in action, and exposing to the public view piles of cabbages, brussels sprouts, cauliflowers, and potatoes, boxes of oranges and apples, ropes of bananas, pomegranates, squdgy cubes of dates. Mr. Kettle, wearing a bowler hat on the back of his head, a brown cardigan and black trousers, was offering a cabbage to a lady in an ulster.

“ ‘Eart, mum? It’s all ‘eart. Feel it.”

A voice from above, the voice of the man in the white overalls, warned those below.

“There go the maroons, mate.”

Mr. Kettle, caught in the act of proffering the cabbage to the lady, withdrew it so that the green growth had the appearance of an excrescence protruding from his rather hollow tummy. Kettle remembered to remove his bowler hat. Up above, the painter leaned motionless against his ladder. The lady in the ulster, self-consciously conventional and fighting a cold in her head, sniffed audibly. Her string bag, loaded with a pound of tea, a wedge of cheese, and something wrapped in a piece of newspaper, swayed very gently.

A tram had stopped ten yards away. The people on the top were standing. The sniffings of his customer aroused in Kettle’s long nose sympathetic emotion. No doubt, the lady was a widow, and had reason to regret the Flanders mud. Or had it been a cause for rejoicing?

Most strange silence, the life of that shabby, palpitating street suddenly congealed. It was past. The tram moved on; the painter dipped his brush in the pot; the woman in the ulster gave one final sniff. The sympathetic Kettle once more proffered the cabbage.

“I’ll make yer a present of it, mum. It’s the only cabbidge in my shop that’s taken its ‘at orf.”

“You’re a gen’leman,” said the lady.

“Good for custom—what! Always at your service. I take it you lost somebody over there.”

“My ol’ man. ‘e was in a Labour Company.”

“Ah—I thought you was a bit upset.”

“Me?—I’ve got a cold in m’ead, that’s all.”

And the cabbage went into the string bag.

She departed, and up above someone chuckled.

“Wasted your sympathy, mate, what!”

Mr. Kettle pressed his bowler hat on the back of his head.

“Well, if ‘er ol’ man’s twanging an ‘arp somewhere—‘e ain’t to be pitied.”

Yet another voice hailed Tom Kettle, the cheerful, pragmatical voice of his wife speaking from the doorway of the little room at the back of the shop.

“Tom.”

“ ‘Allo.”

“Come here.”

“ ‘Alf a mo. Lady waitin’—Three bananas, miss. Best bananas in Blighty. Anyfink else? Good morning, miss.”

Mr. Kettle went to the back of the shop and Sarah his wife asked him a question.

“You haven’t got a pair of black boots fit to be seen.”

“I’ve got a pair of brarn ones.”

“You can’t go and dine with gentlemen in brown boots.”

“Why not? It ain’t a crime.”

“Corse you can’t go in brown boots and black trousers. Go and buy yourself a pair of black boots. I’ll mind the shop.”

“O, you’re a bloomin’ oracle, muvver, yer are. Where did yer learn the business?”

“Wasn’t I in service up at Highbury Terrace?”

“ ‘Igh life, what!”

But he went and bought the boots.