giggle, as much out of nervousness as awe. I do not care if they take me for an empty-headed boy, all hot air and nothing else. I’ll not be outdone by a midget like Cyril. There’s room for only one Caesar and I wear those laurels.
We plough on, avoiding the slip and slide around the cow-heel stall. Drawn like wasps to jam, our promenade carries us past a confectionery stand. I eye the jars of wine gums, slab toffee, liquorice, Pontefract cakes and coltsfoot rock. The ground crunches with sugar. The girl weighing out the sweets has a starved look: chewed-down nails, hair draggled in sticky ringlets.
‘How about a lollipop, miss?’ says Cyril, poking his tongue against the inside of his cheek in a suggestive fashion.
I groan and roll my eyes. That’s not how to get a handful of mint balls without paying. Her cheeks flush and she fiddles with the bun on the back of her head, where some tendrils of hair have worked loose.
‘You look sweet,’ I say. That’s the way to do it.
Cyril throws me a pitying look. ‘I’ve got a stick of rock if you fancy a gobble,’ he adds, louder.
‘Ooh,’ says one of the younger boys.
‘Now there’s a thing,’ says another.
‘Hur, hur,’ a third.
‘You buying, or wasting my time?’ the girl trills pertly. ‘No money, no service.’
She serves half an ounce of coloured sugar to an urchin who looks too young to be out, and a quarter-pound of cough candy to a fellow in a leather apron who calls her Maggie.
Cyril makes a snorting noise. ‘Name as plain as her face.’
‘You’ll get nothing if you talk to her like that,’ I say.
‘Who says I want to get my hands on her pear drops?’ He shakes his head. ‘You young ’uns don’t know the first thing—’
‘Young! I’m twice your age.’
‘Nah,’ he says with an appraising glance. ‘You’ll understand when your balls have dropped.’
‘Better than being a short-arse.’
He yawns and stretches his arms. ‘You lot can stay here and spoon with ugly lasses if you want. I’m getting bored.’
He saunters off, shooting a wily grin over his shoulder. His sheep follow, one by one. Maggie watches his cock-of-the-walk strut with something approaching wistfulness. The last lad to desert me tugs my arm.
‘You coming?’
‘I’ll follow when I’m ready,’ I declare.
I’ll be damned if I’ll be a rat trundling after that particular piper. I’ll show him. I’ll get half a pound of humbugs out of Maggie, so I will, and share it with them all, except ruddy Cyril. Then we’ll see what’s what and who’s who. Maggie weighs out an ounce of monkey nuts for a pair of lovebirds. I take off my cap and, hugging it to my chest, furnish her with my nicest smile.
‘What a rude boy,’ I chirp with a virtuous expression that’d shame the angel Gabriel. ‘I wouldn’t address a young lady so.’
‘You still here?’ she says with a glare that could curdle milk.
It’s Cyril she ought to be angry with, not me. Female thinking. It’s got me stumped. I gear up to give her a piece of my mind when my eye is drawn to a lady hovering over the table.
It may have been months and months ago, but I recognise Jessie, the woman who tipped the scales in my favour over that nasty business with Reg. She’s dressed in fusty taffeta and on her feet are velvet slippers trimmed with beads around the toe. They’ll last a couple of weeks, I muse; if she steps into a puddle, a lot less.
I buck up considerably. I draw closer, full to bursting with tales of my new cronies, when I notice how queerly she is behaving. She points at a dish of treacle toffee, yet as soon as Maggie prepares to weigh a portion, she interrupts.
‘No, not that!’ she says. ‘Here now!’
She indicates the sugared almonds, as if they’re what she meant all along. When the jar is lifted for approval she shakes her head.
‘Dear me, no,’ she says. ‘Not the almonds.’
She waggles her fingers in the direction of a canister of humbugs. As she does so, the long tippets of her muff dangle across the table and obscure what she’s doing with her other hand. Calm as you like, she is plucking chocolates from the shelf and sliding them into the side of her skirt, secreting them in what must be a hidden pocket. With a grunt, Maggie hefts the humbugs.
‘No, no!’ pouts Jessie, tossing her head. The flowers on her hat tremble with indignation.
Now she wants the barley sugar. What a pretty glove she wears on her right hand: crimson leather with emerald stitching, bright as a banner. Only a philistine would pay attention to her light-fingered left hand when distracted by the display of the right.
Maggie scowls at this tiresome female who can’t make up her mind. She remains polite, for the customer is always right, even if they spend an age choosing between an ounce of Everton mints and an ounce of liquorice. Jar after jar is proffered, to pretty shakes of the head. All the while, Jessie fills her pocket with steady grace, stealing the sweets as if she has a claim to them.
Finally, she decides upon the treacle toffee, the very thing she started with. While Maggie weighs out two ounces, Jessie extracts pennies from the embroidered purse hanging on her arm. She accepts the twist of paper and inclines her head in thanks before gliding away. She cocks her elbow and turns out her toes, kicking them to each side so that passers-by may glance down and remark on the trimness of her ankles. I follow her along the line of tables and draw up alongside.
‘Give us a toffee, missus,’ I say, just loud enough for her to hear.
She looks down her nose. ‘In your dreams. Hop it, you little twerp.’
‘Give us one of those chocolates, then.’
‘What chocolates?’ she says with a dangerous tilt of her eyebrow.
I slide closer and pat her skirt, which crackles with something very like brown paper. She must’ve lined the pocket.
‘That’s clever,’ I say. ‘So they don’t melt.’
‘Shut up,’ she hisses.
‘You must have quarter of a pound in there,’ I continue. ‘You won’t miss one.’ I jerk my chin in the direction of the confectionery stand. ‘Maggie will, though. Sooner or later. Specially if I tell her.’
She looks me up and down, swinging her purse on its chain. ‘You’re a cheeky toad. I’ll give you one and no more. Not here, though.’
‘Course not,’ I say with a grin. ‘I’ll stand you a cup of tea. Fair exchange is no robbery.’
She brays laughter. ‘Charmed, sir. Quite charmed.’
I
