Free Joy and Josephine by Monica Dickens

minded anything he said, lest he should nag on at it, like toothache.
    ‘Not that I’m saying it was her fault, mind,’ he said generously, ‘but you’ve got to be born with a gift for these things, same as any other art.’ He was leaning back against the counter now, his starched apron bib standing squarely away from his waistcoat, his eyes glazing with the inward look of the unstoppable bore.
    ‘Well, you might as well serve me, as stand there and talk,’ said the customer, who knew him well.
    ‘I don’t know what trade is coming to these days,’ he sighed, ‘when a man can’t do as he likes in his own shop. It’s get this, get that, all day long, till I sometimes feel like chucking up the whole business. It’s a mug’s game, I can tell you.’ He pushed himself upright and went back to the window, helping himself to a ginger biscuit from one of the glass-topped tins along the front of the counter.
    Mrs Abinger laughed again. ‘Did you ever hear such a man?’ You could never be quite sure whether George were joking or not, so she always tried to make it a joke, in case he really meant to be rude.
    ‘He’ll lose you your goodwill one of these days, Ellie,’ said the woman who wanted the cheese and pickles. ‘As it is, I always say, if it wasn’t for you, there wouldn’t be nothing at all sold in this shop.’
    ‘Get along,’ said Mrs Abinger. ‘I only do the donkey work. George is the brains of this establishment, that’s where it is. He’s got a real head for commerce. You want to see him doing the accounts. Speed? Ready reckoner isn’t in it. I’ll get your cheese, dear.’
    In the back-room, she found Mrs Moore mooning over Josephine’s pram, tickling the baby’s face with the tails of the martens which hung round her long white neck.
    ‘Ah, so you’ve found my Jo,’ she said, and rocked the pram,as she did every time she came in here. She could not keep her hands off it.
    ‘That’s why I came down,’ said Mrs Moore. ‘Nanny and the children told me. You are a dark horse, Mrs Ab.’ She had a habit of lazily curtailing people’s names. ‘Where did you have her?’
    ‘In the hospital.’ Mrs Abinger bent over the cliff of cheese to hide her reddening face. However many lies it meant, she was determined that people should not know the baby was adopted.
    ‘I wish you’d have told me. I could have brought you some flowers or something.’
    ‘There’s no call to make a song and dance about lying-in.’ Mrs Abinger bore down on the cheese wire and put the cut triangle on the scales as a formality, for she could guess to a fraction of an ounce after all these years.
    ‘She’s a lovely baby,’ sighed Mrs Moore. ‘Much prettier than any of mine. How on earth did you and Mr Ab. manage it? I mean – ’ Realizing she had said the wrong thing again, she changed the subject, raising her head to sniff the spicy, ham-charged air of the store room. ‘Bit stuffy for her in here, isn’t it?’
    ‘I’m afraid of not hearing her if she were to cry upstairs,’ explained Mrs Abinger, who really brought Josephine down because she could not bear to be a yard away from her. Each time she came out here for anything, a warm glow welled inside her, just as if she really were the baby’s mother. It made a treat out of those tiresome trips backwards and forwards between the shop and the store.
    ‘Oh I see,’ said Margery Moore vaguely. She often forgot to listen to the answer to a question. ‘Well, I suppose I’d better get my things. I wonder where I put my list?’ She picked a mouthful of cheese off the lump, bent to kiss the baby, and went through to the shop, saying: ‘When she’s older, you must bring her up to play with mine.’
    Mrs Abinger pounced on the suggestion with disconcerting eagerness. ‘I’ll certainly do that, Madam,’ she said. ‘That will be ever so nice. Just as soon as she can toddle.’ She handed down May Brewer’s pickles triumphantly, pleased that May