Johnny Swanson (8 page)

‘I just wish you’d never got involved … not even going to make us any money … scrimping to make ends meet …’

Johnny heard a door slam and the voices disappeared.

He set off down the path, only to find Miss Dangerfield waiting at the gate. After seeing Mrs Langford in her trim clothes, Johnny noticed how Miss Dangerfield’s shapeless old-fashioned layers of black swept along the muddy ground, and how short and stooped she was underneath her funereal fringes and flounces. Even so, her fierce nasal voice was chilling.

‘I’ve been watching you,’ she said. ‘I saw you hovering by that window. Hoping to break in, I shouldn’t wonder.’

‘No, Miss Dangerfield. I wasn’t. I was just listening—’

‘Listening!’ She grasped Johnny’s shirt and pulled him towards her. ‘Eavesdropping – that’s what I call it.’

‘No. Not that,’ said Johnny, shaking. ‘I’d just been inside, talking to Dr Langford.’

Miss Dangerfield was spitting with contempt. ‘You? Inside? Don’t be ridiculous. Why should Dr Langford want to talk to you? What were you talking about?’

Johnny had only just promised to keep quiet. He could see how concerned the Langfords were that no
one should know they had brought the BCG to Britain. He said nothing. But he knew Miss Dangerfield would take his silence as a sign of guilt.

‘I thought as much!’ she said when Johnny failed to speak. ‘You’re a liar as well as a thief.’ She pushed him away. He wanted to run, but his legs wouldn’t move. She grabbed his hair and shook him till his eyes watered with pain. ‘You get away from here, and don’t come back!’ she yelled, turning him round and poking her walking stick into the small of his back. ‘I’m warning you.’

After what the doctor had told him about Miss Dangerfield’s sad past, Johnny had begun to feel a bit sorry for her. But not now. Not after how she had just treated him. To Johnny she was a miserable old woman once again. Instead of walking away, as he knew he should, he did something he’d never done in the presence of an adult. He made a very rude sign and said an even ruder word. Then he ran.

E
very afternoon, a man with a wide moustache came up to the post office counter to ask if he had any mail.

‘Why does he do that?’ asked Johnny. ‘Why doesn’t the postman take him his letters?’

‘Oh, he’s got what we call a private box,’ said Hutch. ‘He has all his letters addressed here, and he collects them himself.’

‘Why would he want to do that?’

‘Well. There could be all sorts of reasons. He might be travelling, and picking up letters from several post offices on his route. Or he might not like the folk he lives with to see what letters he’s getting. Or perhaps he doesn’t want the people who send the letters to know exactly where he lives.’

‘But they could come here and ask you,’ said Johnny.

Hutch stood tall and took a deep breath. ‘They could, Johnny, but I’d never tell them,’ he said in his official ‘post office’ voice. ‘I’m a servant of the Crown,
and a private box is called a private box for a reason. That man’s identity and his address are a confidential matter. The very fact that he has a private box is private. I probably shouldn’t even be talking to you about it now.’

Johnny could instantly see the advantages of a private box at the post office. He wanted one. If the replies to his adverts were delivered to the shop, he wouldn’t have to walk to the newspaper offices so often. He was getting worried about the lady there. She seemed to like him, but that was becoming a problem. He always tried to collect Auntie Ada’s letters just before closing time, but even then she wanted to chat. Once, she had suggested that they should walk to her bus stop together, and recently she’d raised her eyebrows at some of the adverts he took in. How long could he trust himself not to say something that would make her suspicious? What if she herself responded to one of the adverts? She had already seemed rather too interested in
The Answer to Smelly Feet (Wear a clothes peg on your nose)
.

Since her company owned most of the newspapers for miles around, Johnny couldn’t avoid the lady, even when he moved his business from one local paper to another. But if his post could be sent to Hutch’s shop,
he might be able to start advertising in different places – perhaps even the national papers, which had more readers. Now that he had more money, Johnny could send in his advertisements by mail, paying for them with postal orders and stamps he received from his customers. He might even be able to phone the advertising departments. His voice was still high. They would believe he was Ada Fortune.

‘I think Auntie Ada should have a private box,’ he said to Hutch casually. ‘She must worry about the people who buy her needlework knowing our address. The last thing she needs in her state of health is surprise visitors. And if her letters were delivered here in the first place, I could cash her postal orders with you and take the money straight home. She wouldn’t have to wait so long to get it. How much does a private box cost?’

‘Not much,’ said Hutch. ‘But listen, the poor woman’s an invalid, and I know your family’s having a rough time at present. I won’t make her pay. I’ll cover the costs myself.’

Johnny tried to protest. But before he got the words out, he realized that he couldn’t offer to pay the fee himself. He mustn’t let on that he had a stash of money at home.

‘No, I’ll pay,’ said Hutch, interrupting Johnny’s garbled rejection of the offer, which he took as simple politeness. ‘I insist. It will be a pleasure. But it must all be done properly. You take this form home and get your aunt to fill it in.’

So, that night, Johnny created Ada Fortune’s first official document, beautifully signed. The next day, Hutch marked it with his rubber stamp and filed it away.

‘Tell your auntie that her address is now PO Box Nine, Stambleton, Warwickshire. In future I’ll keep her letters aside, and you can take them home with you.’

Even though the new address would add a few pence to the cost of each advertisement, Johnny knew the private box was going to make his life a lot easier, and he spent the rest of half-term dreaming up new projects. When he looked through the national papers he saw that most of the advertisements were about health and self-improvement. It was obviously a lucrative market, and although Dr Langford had struck a nerve with his criticism of quack medicine, Johnny could see that sending out remedies offered a solution to another problem. He needed to convince Hutch that Auntie Ada really
was
doing needlework
in exchange for all those postal orders. It was time to be seen posting parcels on her behalf. But there was no need for Johnny to sew anything. Hutch would never know what was inside the packages, so Johnny could fill them with ‘cures’ for everything from sleeplessness to sore toes.

He had no trouble finding a list of illnesses: years of accompanying his mother on her visits to Mrs Slack had exposed him to the human version of a medical encyclopaedia; and the graveyard on his paper round had everything he needed to fulfil the orders. He pulled the juiciest leaves off the evergreens, and collected the most beautiful fallen autumn foliage from the ground. There were seed husks, conker shells, acorns and twisted pieces of twig.

He was tugging the feathers off the corpse of a pigeon when he heard a rapping noise. It was Miss Dangerfield, bashing her walking stick on top of the wall.

‘Hey! You boy! What do you think you are doing?’

Johnny had to think fast. ‘Oh, hello, madam,’ he said, playing for time. ‘I’m … I’m … It’s Nature Study. I have to collect some specimens for school.’

‘Don’t you “madam” me! And don’t you “Nature Study” me! I know the school is on holiday. Nature Study indeed! You’re up to no good. And where’s my
paper?’ Johnny put his hand into his bag to get it for her. ‘Not here, you fool! I don’t want it here, do I? I want it at home. And you’re late. Mr Hutchinson pays you to deliver the newspaper to my house. And you’re late!’

Somewhere inside himself Johnny knew that it was pointless to argue, but after her unkindness the other day, and with the safety of the graveyard wall between them, he couldn’t resist pointing out the flaw in what Miss Dangerfield was saying. ‘But I’m on my way. And anyway, you’re not there, are you? I mean, you’re here. So you wouldn’t know I was late, would you? If you were there, I mean. Which you’re not.’

‘Don’t you answer me back, boy.’

‘I wasn’t answering back—’

‘Yes you were, and you’re doing it again now. I’ve got a good mind to report you. Now get off up the hill and deliver my paper.’

Johnny placed a few more leaves in the bag.

Miss Dangerfield banged her stick on the wall again. ‘Do it now, I tell you! And if there’s any dirt on that paper, I’m cancelling my order. I’ve got my eye on you, boy. Indeed I have.’

Johnny ran off up the hill and finished his deliveries. He’d enjoyed the brief moment of standing up for
himself, but he was worried about Miss Dangerfield. Suppose she had gone straight from the graveyard to the post office? She might be telling on him now. He might lose his job just when the rent was about to go up. He needed his base at Hutch’s, with its postal orders, stationery and stamps, to keep the money coming in. He had to get back, to talk his way out of trouble.

Hutch was sweeping up, looking stern. ‘I’ve had a complaint.’

‘I know. Miss Dangerfield told me she was going to talk to you.’

‘Talk! She ranted. She raved. Lucky for you, she knocked over the display of sugar with that stick of hers, and she flounced off before I could make her any promises. But I’m warning you, Johnny. Stay on the right side of her. I won’t be able to defend you for ever.’

‘I’ll try,’ said Johnny, meaning it, because he knew his business interests could be smashed by one blow from Miss Dangerfield’s cane.

He had no time to lose. He must make the most of the post office while he still had access to it. So he bought a notepad and some brown paper from Hutch and went home to compose a host of adverts to put in
right away, and to wrap up his stock of ‘cures’ ready for a quick dispatch. He had no idea whether any of the leaves were poisonous, so he put a note in each parcel saying
FOR EXTERNAL USE ONLY
. He’d seen that written on the tin of Dr Sampson’s Patent Ointment for Cuts, Burns and Stings.

According to the nature of the problem, he told his customers to slip the leaves, husks and feathers under their pillows, in their underwear, or down their socks. To his horror, his first victim wrote straight back to say that the ‘cure’ had worked. His heartburn had disappeared as soon as he had put dried potato peelings down his vest.

T
he TB scare had died down by the end of half-term. Normal lessons seemed even more tedious after the brief burst of excitement, but that wasn’t the only reason Johnny was sad to go back. It meant a pay cut from Hutch, and reduced the time he could spend running his business. Even so, he got some profitable ideas at school.

On the first day back, they were studying light waves in Mr Marshall’s Science class. The teacher pointed to Ernest Roberts, who was sitting next to Johnny.

‘Roberts. Take off your glasses.’

‘But I won’t be able to see the blackboard then, sir.’

‘That’s the point, Roberts.’

Ernest took off his specs, and the teacher threw a square of cardboard in his direction. Without his glasses he couldn’t catch it, and it dropped to the floor. Johnny picked it up.

‘Well, Swanson. Tell us what that is.’

Johnny was bemused. ‘It’s just a piece of cardboard, sir.’

‘Look carefully. Do you notice anything special about it?’

Johnny examined it closely. ‘It’s cut from a packet of hair restorer, sir.’ He read out the label. ‘
Vivatone Radio Active Hair Restorer. Grey banished. No dyes. No stains
.’

Everybody laughed.

‘The other side, Swanson. Look at the other side.’

‘It’s just plain, sir. But there is a little hole in the middle.’

‘Exactly, Swanson. A hole. What we call a pinhole. And why do you think it’s called that?’

‘Because you made it with a pin?’ shouted Albert Taylor.

‘Well done, Taylor. I made it with a pin. Now, Roberts. Look through that pinhole and tell me what you can see.’

Ernest Roberts shut one eye and looked through the pinhole with the other.

‘I can see you, sir. Perfectly clearly.’ He read the heading off the blackboard: ‘
Optics
. It’s magic, sir.’

‘No, Roberts, it’s not magic,’ said Mr Marshall. ‘It’s science,’ and he drew a diagram on the board to show
how the pinhole concentrated the light waves so that they hit Roberts’s retina at just the right spot.

‘Cheaper than a pair of glasses, eh, Roberts?’ he said. ‘Someone should put it on the market. Talk about money for old rope.’

Johnny was already devising a new advert in his head:
The Secret of Instant Sight
. There was plenty of old cardboard in the shop. He knew Hutch would let him have it for nothing.

And the remark about ‘money for old rope’ wasn’t lost on Johnny either. He found some twine in the graveyard. He cut it up into short lengths and tied them into bracelets, to be worn on painful wrists and ankles. The potato-vest man bought one, and wrote again, convinced that his arthritic joints were much relieved.

Despite being back at school, Johnny couldn’t stop himself. He saw financial opportunities everywhere.
Reynolds’s News
had a popular feature:

The answers to the questions seemed like downright twaddle to Johnny. He was sure he could do better than Maud Dawson, and charge people for his
advice. He put an advert in the
Saturday Post
(calling himself Ada Ardour), offering advice on anything, in return for a shilling and a stamped addressed envelope. He was overwhelmed with requests for help. Some of the letters were several pages long, and went into embarrassing detail about love affairs. This was typical, if less explicit than most: