Chapter Fifteen

It was Christmas Eve. The thaw had been and gone, and the fall of snow promised for Christmas had not materialised. ‘I can’t say as I’m sorry.’ Mr Bruce, the owner of the corner shop, would complain whether the sun was shining or the heavens had opened. ‘Damned weather, it’s never what you’d call comfortable. Always either too hot or too cold, or raining so bloomin’ hard you can’t see a hand in front of you.’

Granny Arkwright shook her head and tutted. ‘Yer a miserable old git,’ she told him, whistling through the gap in her false teeth. ‘You ain’t never satisfied about nuthin’!’

Even at the back of the queue, Molly and Bertha heard it all. ‘Why is that lady whistling?’ Bertha wanted to know, and Granny Arkwright laughed out loud.

‘’Cos me teeth are falling apart, lass – that’s why. They’re old and bent, just like me.’

‘Right then!’ Having weighed her potatoes in his scale, Mr Bruce told her to hold up her shopping bag. Sliding them into her bag, he asked, ‘Is there owt else?’

Red in the face from holding the bag up, the old woman put it to the ground. ‘I’ll have a cabbage, and not a big one neither. I’m not paying good money to throw ’alf of it in the midden. There’s only me to eat it, as well you know.’

Grumbling under his breath, Mr Bruce sorted out a small round one. ‘How’s that?’

The old woman examined it up and down, then sideways and back to front. ‘Is that the best you’ve got?’

‘It is.’

‘Hmh! Well, I’ve seen better, but it’ll do.’ She wagged a bony finger. ‘And don’t go pushing your hand down on them scales when you weigh it.’ Screwing up one eye, she peered at him through the other. ‘’Cos I’ve got my beady eye on yer.’

With the cabbage safely stowed in her bag, she nagged at him some more. ‘I’ll ’ave a box o’ snuff… oh, and two apples,’ she concluded. ‘Not hard ones neither. They’re no good to me when I can’t chew the blessed things.’

A few minutes and two arguments later, she toddled out the shop. ‘The old Scrooge!’ Mr Bruce was well and truly riled. ‘Two and bloody ninepence, that’s all she ever spends. It’s a mystery to me how she manages to keep it within a farthing every time – unless she does summat to them scales when me back’s turned. That wouldn’t surprise me one bit.’ Granny Arkwright was a thorn in his side. ‘She counts them pennies like they’re never gonna make any more, while everybody knows she’s rolling in money since her husband died.’

‘Aye, an’ he earned it, too!’ said Bert Turner, now at the back of the queue. ‘I miss that shop. I allus used to get me baccy there, and everything.’

Molly’s turn came and it didn’t take her long to spend her few coins. ‘A loaf of bread, a pot of your strawberry jam and some margarine, please.’ Knowing the circumstances, Mr Bruce threw a couple of big taters in as well. ‘You can make some good chips with them,’ he told her with a wink.