The Mothers of Quality Street. Penny Thorpe

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      Kirkby’s Fancy Goods was suddenly very busy; along with the Brownies and their leader several other customers vied for the attention of the staff. Three old matrons had come in with their list of weekly orders; a harassed-looking mother was searching for a birthday gift for her daughter; and Steven Hunter, the handsome teenaged son of the wealthy Hunter family, had ostensibly come in to supervise his much younger sisters, Gracie and Lara, while they spent their pocket money, but in reality he was just there to make eyes at pretty Marilyn Parkin across the counter when she was supposed to be serving customers.

      Mr Kirkby didn’t mind letting Marilyn enjoy the attentions of the Hunter lad; he remembered only too well what it had been like to be young and in love, and rather than call her away to help serve customers, he himself climbed out of the window to deal with the flood of Brownies. They had brought pocket money to buy sweets, which they all wanted to pay for at the same time, and some of them wanted to take the children’s toys down off the shelves to take them apart and investigate them while they waited for their leader to walk them all back to the church hall for their meeting.

      In amongst the busy, noisy, happy throng, six-year-old Lara Hunter and her newly adopted sister, Gracie, both a year too young as yet to be Brownies, had seen the gold embossed lid of a casket of sweets glinting in the summer sunlight. The box had slipped from the top of the rubbish sack onto the floor and the little girls hoped they could buy it with their pocket money. They lifted it carefully into the shopping basket they were carrying together, and held out their pocket money, ready to offer it to the harassed shopkeeper behind the counter.

      Most of the little girls didn’t know enough maths to work out whether or not they could afford the items they wanted to buy and were calling out ‘Do I have enough for this?’ or ‘Do I have enough for a quarter of Strawberry Creams?’ The shopkeeper was attempting to carry on a conversation with the Brownie leader while also operating the till hurriedly, and he accepted that he might have given away a few free sweets by attempting to run the pocket money through the till without really checking who had paid for what and whether in fact they did have the right money.

      ‘My wife is that excited about the visit,’ Mr Kirkby told the Brownie Leader. ‘I said we could just leave up the old decorations, but no, she won’t have it. She says if the King passes by our window she wants him to see something fresh – she doesn’t want him thinking that we’ve just kept up our coronation decorations.’

      The Brownie Leader, delighted to be getting so much material for her own banners, thought it was too good to be true. ‘But surely she’ll want red, white and blue, the same as before?’

      The little Hunter girls squeezed their way through the Brownies, held up their handful of pocket money, and asked, ‘Do we have enough for a pretty box of toffees?’

      ‘Yes, yes, just a moment, you two, I’ll come and help you choose one.’ Then he returned to his conversation with the Brownie Leader. ‘Not Mrs Kirkby, she’s dressing the shop in emerald green for the Empire, and we’re going to have a window display telling the story of the family business and the town.’

      The little Hunter girls, having already chosen their box of confections and not needing any help choosing another, left their pocket money on the side of the counter near the till and wriggled through the throng back to their brother. They were very pleased with the pretty casket because they had been saving up to buy a thank you gift for someone who had been very kind to them both.

      Steven Hunter noticed his sisters by his side and did his best to tear his eyes away from the lovely Marylin. ‘Have you two got what you wanted?’ he asked them.

      The little girls nodded and followed him out of the shop with their purchase neatly tucked away in their basket. They called out a farewell to Mr Kirkby and he, assuming that they were coming back later when the shop was less busy, waved the little girls away, unaware that in their basket they carried the casket of deadly sweets.

       Chapter Two

      It was late, and the illuminated windows of Reenie’s boarding house acted as a beacon to her young man, her cheerfully drunken father, and his long-suffering, peculiarly ugly horse.

      ‘Reenie!’ Her father called in a whisper loud enough to wake half the street. ‘Reenie! Ruffian’s thrown a shoe, Reenie.’ Mr Calder hiccupped loudly and then sneezed. He was a little man and the force of both actions seemed enough to knock him off balance, but his nag, who waited with a martyr’s expression, righted him with a light, well-timed head-butt. Ruffian was the master of the light, well-timed head-butt. ‘Reenie! Can you come and take Ruffian?’

      There was a rattling of locks, bolts, and chains before the front door of Mrs Garner’s boarding house opened onto the balmy June night, heavy with the scent of lime tree blossom. It was Mrs Garner herself who opened the door; bleary-eyed, and tightly wrapped in as many layers of coats and dressing gowns as she thought appropriate for a respectable Yorkshire widow of advancing years when opening her front door at midnight. ‘Peter McKenzie, whatever are you doing out of doors without a coat after dark? You’ll catch your death of cold.’ Mrs Garner knew Peter, of course, but she was used to seeing him call for Reenie in his smartest clothes, with his hair neatly combed. This sorry specimen was not in keeping with the Peter McKenzie she knew.

      Peter looked at his sleeves in confusion, the knowledge that he had no coat only just dawning on him. ‘I don’t feel very well.’ His lost expression made him look much younger than his nineteen years.

      ‘You my Reenie’s landlady?’ Mr Calder was taking his cloth cap off his balding head and smiling politely in the general direction of the stone-fronted boarding house while leaning slowly away from it.

      ‘Yes, but she’s not home yet, Mr Calder. She’s working a night shift down at the factory.’ Jane Garner tried to keep her voice to a genuine whisper in consideration of the neighbours, who thought her far too lax with her boarders as it was.

      ‘Oh.’ Reenie’s father’s expression of disappointment was almost comical ‘But I’ve got an ’orse, see.’ He jerked up the hand which was holding Ruffian’s makeshift bridle, in the manner of a marionette whose string had been pulled suddenly. Then he let it drop with a glum sigh.

      Mrs Garner was a respectable woman, but she was no stranger to tipsiness. She could see that Mr Calder and young Peter wouldn’t get much further that night and Mrs Garner had never in her life hardened her heart. ‘You give that to me, Mr Calder.’ She shuffled down the steps from her front door to the pavement in her flapping slippers, gently prised the rope from his hand and tied it around the railing above the cellar steps. ‘Ruffian can bide here while you wait in the parlour.’

      ‘No, I got a friend, see?’ Mr Calder was telling his daughter’s landlady as she pushed him awkwardly up the steps. ‘I got a friend I know’ll stand us a drink. Good old boy.’ Mrs Garner didn’t know if he was talking to the horse or about the friend. ‘I just wanted Reenie to mind the ’orse.’

      ‘Very wise, Mr Calder, very wise. Up the stairs now; you too, Peter.’

      When Reenie arrived home an hour later she was confused to see a coat she recognized draped neatly over a hedge at the top of the hill, her father’s horse in the street and the parlour lights lit down below the level of the street. Something was afoot.

      ‘Don’t wake them.’ Mrs Garner intercepted Reenie as she came through the front door. ‘You’ll never guess who’s sleeping on the parlour table.’

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