It wasn’t a fight, we might have made peace.
Sunshine gleamed in the hall. He picked up his hat and briefcase. Only then did he remember. The keys. The keys to the house, to Briar Street, to the till, to the safe in the stock room, to Pond Street. They were on the bedside table, by Dorry’s letter. He went to fetch them. He paused by the sheet of notepaper, breathed heavily, then folded it into his breast pocket.
She’d come.
2
They pressed round in ragged fashion to take their money. Andy, Dave, Phil, Stephen, Bob. T-shirts, jeans, tennis shoes, uncombed mops of hair. By eight they would have changed into school clothes: uncomfortable figures in uniform. They held out their hands while he jingled money.
They could be slightly in awe of him. But they knew his weaknesses, his fondness for children, for childishness, his enjoyment of their laughter (for he didn’t laugh himself, no one ever saw Mr Chapman actually laugh), and his way of winking, or seeming to wink — perhaps it was only with them — at his own solemnity. So they knew he would frown at their pranks — when one of them hid behind the icecream fridge and popped up with a shriek — yet wouldn’t forbid them. And what of his own pranks? That way he made a coin disappear up his sleeve (you never saw it) or the way he slipped into their newspaper bags, when they weren’t looking, a bar of chocolate, a stick of toffee. Yes, he liked his tricks; he had a clown’s face, glum and top-heavy. Though that old bag, Mrs Cooper, would have none of it. She called them louts — she called all boys louts. ‘Don’t excite Mr Chapman, with his heart. Don’t upset Mr Chapman, with his poor wife dead.’ But who had ever seen Mr Chapman’s wife? Though Phil said he had once, passing the house on his round — she was standing at the window, looking as if she were sinking in a pool. Yet what did it matter? If they played their pranks, if he liked it, if it cheered him, if they got out of him just once at least (they knew it was there) that laugh he never actually showed; before his heart stopped ticking right there in the shop.
They watched him as they watched all adults, as if they were life-size models at work, but with a suspicion, in this case, that that was just how Mr Chapman regarded himself.
‘One pound. One pound twenty-five. One pound fifty.’
He distributed the notes and coins. His fingers were soiled with newsprint, which made them look as though they were moulded from lead.
‘One pound fifty. One pound seventy-five.’
Once they did it for half a crown. Now it was nothing less than a pound. Their hands closed. He wouldn’t see them again.
Six-thirty. But already the sun through the plate glass window was warm. He switched on the little electric fan over the door into the stock room.
‘Which one of you’s going to pull down the awning?’
That was something he could no longer do. No exertion. And they vied, when the weather made it likely, for the honour of getting their hands on that long, murderous pole, flexing their muscles on the pavement and pulling at the catch above the name-board.
‘Phil, you do it. And don’t smash the window in the process.’
They sniggered, shouldering their bags. But he hadn’t finished.
‘Before you go —’ he hesitated, thinking of a suitable pretext. In his left hand was a black tin box labelled ‘Paper Boys’, with the lid open so they couldn’t see in. They thought he had emptied it. ‘As it’ll soon be the summer holidays —’ he fished in the box and drew out a column of fifty pence pieces which he let slip, three at a time, into each palm — ‘a little bonus. A little surprise.’ He looked severe. ‘Not a word to your Mums and Dads’ (but they weren’t stupid), ‘and if you’re late once in the next fortnight,’ he paused — they wouldn’t appreciate this prank — ‘I’ll ask for it back.’
They looked up, duly surprised, thankful, puzzled. A good bunch, a cheerful bunch. They did what he asked and they earned their money. They came every morning by six-thirty, sleepy-eyed, rising before their parents, muffled in the winter in little anoraks and scarves. And there was a sense of constancy and devotion in watching them, through the glass of the shop door, riding off with their sacks, pedalling their bikes to appointed streets; so that he would think, ‘Don’t swing like that into the main road: there are lorries,’ and ‘Don’t get caught by a policeman, cycling without lights.’ But you had to take note of that little glint in their eyes which spied out extra ten-pences; and you heard them mutter under their breath: ‘Henderson across the common pays his boys two quid.’ They were wise to it already. You had to watch out.
He scanned their faces sternly, like a commander his best men. And they knew perhaps, grinning back at him, that if he didn’t laugh it wasn’t because he couldn’t.
‘Right, now you’ve got your money. Before you go, take something each from the sweet counter. Only one thing, mind you.’ He wagged a finger. This was necessary. If you didn’t give them things they pinched them anyway.
‘Thanks Mr Chapman.’
Fifteen thousand pounds.
At a clap of his hands, as if they were performing animals, they were off, swinging their bags over their heads, chattering over their new-gained wealth, making off with it, racing each other on their bikes round the corner of Briar Street.
And they were gone, leaving only Phil on the pavement, with his flop of blond hair, locked in battle with the pole and the awning. Would he do it? There, it went. And there he was, standing grinning in his mauve T-shirt with ‘YAMAHA’ across the front, like a knight-at-arms with that pole under his arm, almost demolishing a display in the window as he bore it back through the door.
‘Bye Mr Chapman. Thanks for the money.’
‘Bye Phil.’
And Mr Chapman laughed — was that really a laugh that crossed his face? Phil would go and tell the others, speeding after them with the news: Mr Chapman laughed. But they wouldn’t believe him, Phil was always telling stories they’d say.
‘Bye. Take care now.’
They were paid.
The sunshine slanted through the glass over the door on to the counter and the piles of remaining morning papers which lay before him. He never read the papers. Years of marking them up, stacking them, and taking them, flicking them into a fold with the wrist and holding them out between two fingers, palm cupped for the coins, had blunted his curiosity for their contents. But he still glanced each morning, and kept through the day in a little catalogue at the back of his mind so that if it was mentioned he would know, items like ‘Plane Crash in Brazil’, ‘Drama at Embassy’, ‘Worst Ever Trade Figures’. And there it was, this morning, on the page his eyes scanned:
‘PEACE BID FAILS.’
She had always read her papers. He had them delivered (that had been Phil’s round, number three, Leigh Drive and Clifford Rise) and he brought home in the evening copies that weren’t sold. She’d read them, sitting in her armchair, beneath the tall standard lamp with its twisting wooden stem. Oh not because she liked news. It was only to take stock, to acquaint herself, to hold sway over the array of facts and regard them all with cold passivity. And sometimes, indeed, it was as if she didn’t read at all, her head hidden behind the outspread page, but peered through it, as through a veil, at a world which might default or run amok if it once suspected her gaze was not upon it. And he’d wait, stirring his tea, the clock ticking, not daring even to rattle his cup, until at last she would cast aside the paper in a weary gesture, her eyes moving wanly to the french windows. So predictable, these papers.