The Sweet-Shop Owner Read Online Free PDF Page A

for all the world, with triumph, with majesty, and as he bent to her, it smiled quickly and benignly, like a throwing of coins.
    Every night their clothes hung over the chair by the bed, stirred by the breeze through the window. And every day the pieces of the picture fell into place: the boat trips to Weymouth, the little scenes of themselves arm in arm on the beach or at tables for two, about which the nodding onlookers might whisper, ‘honeymooners’; their ‘Mr and Mrs’ in the hotel register. But if only she would say, ‘Ilove you.’ No, not even that, if only she would say – sometimes it seemed she used him like an excuse – ‘I know that you love me.’ But she wouldn’t. Not even when the moment was ripe. When the evening sun burnished the sea and they walked back, in the cool, along the cliff tops. Swallows dived. Cow-parsley frothed in the hollows. Her dress was white with diagonal rows of blue flowers. No, that was not included, not part of the bargain. Wasn’t the rest enough?
    Yes, he would have said, enough, plenty. Were it not for that vision of himself flailing in the current – even in that smooth and molten sea which spread beneath them like a tribute of silk. Unless it was she that he saw – struggling in the gold water, beating her arms to be free of it, though her face was as golden as the waves. He stood there on the cliff top. He couldn’t save her. He owed her eternal service, for he couldn’t save her …
    Every morning she read the papers. She bought them at the hotel or at the little general store in the village, where she also bought post-cards, stamps, cigarettes for him. It was her holiday, her honeymoon, but she kept up with the papers. But only as a kind of safeguard; to keep abreast of the facts, so she would not be seduced by all that sun and sea air. And one day she said, sitting on the tartan rug on the beach, as if they must get up at once and start digging defences: ‘There will be a war, Willy.’
    That was only a few days before they left. They would never holiday again till Dorry was a little girl. ‘There will be a war.’ But even before that, he had noticed, she was predicting, preparing, asking herself what must be done with their future life. So that if, as they sat there on the beach, he should put his arm about her neck or nestle his head in the lap of that blue-flowered dress, she would have to humour him, mask her annoyance at the interruption of her thoughts, like a father, deep in work he has brought home from the office, having to indulge the whim of a child.
    ‘In a few years. You see.’
    ‘Yes,’ he said. He did not dispute her predictions. History came to meet you. ‘Stop reading the paper, Reny.’
    He lowered his head onto her skirt. Her lap smelt of salt and sunshine. But her face turned, out and away, unsmiling, to the horizon, as if warships might loom.
    So what must he do? He never planned. He could only play tricks for her, obedient tricks, as he had when he climbed that children’s slide. He would make her smile at last, with the right trick, like the sad princess in the story. She stroked his hair. He was like a cat in her lap. He would show her as he showed no one else his little stock of laughter. So he’d take the pebble from the sand and make it vanish up his sleeve; and then, twisting his wrist, return again. And he’d flip forwards and stand on his hands and walk ten yards down the beach. No one thought he could do that. Yet no one knew him. He’d been an athlete of sorts once. But she wouldn’t laugh; though he kicked his bare white heels in the sunlight and gulls took off in alarm. Her face watching him (while the blood rushed to his head and his fingers clawed the sand) was tensed and urgent. And he only knew he mustn’t topple, not for his life, topple from that fool’s posture, snapping the little wires that ran between them.
    Was it that same evening, as they clambered up the cliff path, through a little dell with elder