Free The Sweet-Shop Owner by Graham Swift

heroes, writing from the field of action – ‘I love you.’
    Should they rent out the shop, he wrote (for she wouldn’t run it herself – she’d made that quite clear). Someone might take it. Perhaps Smithy knew of someone. It was only gathering dust there, wasn’t it, with its shelves cleared and its windows shuttered up? Besidesthere was the question of income. You got two shillings a day as a soldier. But she wrote – it was as if he’d slighted her – No, that wouldn’t be a good plan at all. So that he found himself asking – guessing how many years the war would last – How much money did she really have?
    He picked up the grey-green helmets for the Quartermaster and stacked them in piles like dishes.
    And yet she’d been to the shop; she wrote so. She’d been to Smithy opposite to thank him for his help and sending on the mail. So she must have gone over to look inside the shop.
    Yes, though he would never learn (she had paused over her letter wondering how much to mention) how she’d stood alone by the empty counter – Father was waiting, drumming his fingers, at the office and at any moment the sirens might go – how she had run her hand over the rows of empty jars and the bare shelves and sniffed the air. It smelt of coconut.
    ‘3640 helmets.’
    ‘Back to Aylesbury, for the weekend, with Father – and it looks as though I shan’t be returning to London with him. Mother says I shouldn’t vex him. He has responsibilities and misses Jack and Paul. For the business, I wonder, or because they’ll soon be fighting for their country? Mother waits for letters from them. She prays. I have actually seen her, with her hands clasped in the bedroom. And Jack and Paul haven’t even left England. I don’t give her your news and she doesn’t ask for it. I haven’t told you, but Mother had three brothers in the army in the last war and they were all killed. I think that’s why Jack and Paul volunteered for the navy.’
    *
    The trucks with the canvas tops lumbered in past the guard house, wheeled round and stopped beside the gravel, and then the new conscripts got out. Some of them tried to vault over the tail-board and sometimes they fell.
    He wrote: ‘I never knew about your uncles.’
    ‘Letter from Paul. Mother glows. He and Jack are still at Portsmouth though they leave soon for the Mediterranean. Father up for the weekend again. He says to me, “I’m proud of those boys.” I think he might have meant this as a dig at you, because he made some sort of apology afterwards. But don’t you mind him. Be a good soldier.’
    The blond-haired recruit made a soft thrust at Rees, which, perhaps unintendedly, flipped his glasses into his plate. ‘You’ll need them,’ the recruit said, pointing, ‘so you can see to frig yourself in the stores.’ Rees clenched his fork and held it vertically against the table. ‘Bugger off,’ he said, ‘Willy, tell them to bugger off.’ The sergeant entered with two corporals and the men in the mess hall stood up. Rees had a splash of gravy on his cheek and was without his glasses. He was slow to find his feet. ‘Getting jealous of the new boys again, Rees?’ said the sergeant, stepping close. The blond lad smirked. ‘Don’t you laugh sonny,’ the sergeant snapped, ‘you’ll be stopping bullets soon.’
    ‘We are planting the vegetables for this winter. Four rows of cabbages and four of sprouts. One of the laundries has been bombed. No casualties, just machinery. Considering there are three all within five miles of the docks this was likely to have happened sooner or later. But Father’s mad. It’ll mean re-organizing and he’ll have to send some things at the shops back to customers. I don’t want to be roped in. I’m thinking of getting a job here. They want women as insurance collectors. Mother, Father and AuntMad disapprove, naturally, but I say to Father, “One must do one’s bit”.’
    Rees, in the top bunk, leaned over to watch him fold up