Sons and Daughters (3 page)

‘That peasant? Our supplier of fine cabbages?’

‘Yes, and because she’s a chatterer, she’ll tell him about both of us as a Polish couple,’ said Mrs Kloytski. ‘Listen, when I asked her who he was, she said his name was Adams, and that he’d been a high-ranking officer in the British Army.’

‘So? Adams, you say?’ Kloytski mused on the name. ‘Adams, yes. Well, if he does ask questions about you, we’ll have to consider how to deal with his curiosity and his memory.’

‘Meaning how to silence him?’

‘If he really is the swine in question, and any confrontation becomes as serious as you suspect, it’ll be a pleasure to silence him permanently,’ said Kloytski.

‘You and I will share that pleasure,’ said Mrs Kloytski, the reincarnation of Jezebel in the eyes of the man called Victor.

Sammy arrived home at his house on Denmark Hill. It had been built following the end of the war, on the site of the house completely destroyed by a bomb.

He spoke to his wife Susie in their well-appointed kitchen.

‘Susie, before we head off to Cornwall for our holiday next Saturday, I’ve got to find time to go to a warehouse in Edmonton. It’s in North London—’

‘Pardon me,’ said Susie, fronting a working top on which she was mixing a bowl of salad. Close to
forty-five, she was admirably well-preserved. Like Boots’s wife Polly, she was fighting the good fight against the little spoiling devils of middle age. ‘Is that you talking to the back of my head, Sammy Adams?’

‘Yes, it’s me, Susie, just back from the outing to the old Walworth market, and—’

‘Excuse me,’ said Susie, turning, ‘but would you mind saying hello to your wife?’

‘Eh?’ said Sammy. ‘Oh, right, yes, hello, Susie, how’s your Saturday bib and tucker?’

‘Never mind my apron,’ said Susie, ‘you’ve been out all morning at the office and the market, and you’re not supposed when you come in to talk to the back of my head about going somewhere else.’

‘Susie, I like the back of your head, I’m genuine admiring of it—’

‘No soft soap,’ said Susie, so Sammy gave her a kiss as a peace offering. Susie smiled. She always enjoyed keeping Sammy in order. Sammy, energetically involved with business, was inclined to live in leaps and bounds. ‘Where are the girls?’ she asked.

‘Outside, talking to friends they bumped into,’ said Sammy. ‘They’ll be here in a tick. Look, about going up to this place Edmonton—’

‘Never been there,’ said Susie, ‘so tell me what it’s got that Camberwell hasn’t.’

‘A warehouse, Susie, which a business friend I happened to bump into says is chockful of bales of nylon, which is that man-made material that could be considerably valuable for our garments
factory, especially if Eli Greenberg can point me at a stocking-making machine that’s not doing anything—’

‘It’s black market,’ said Susie.

‘Well, a new one might be,’ said Sammy, ‘but with Eli’s help I’ll settle for a reconditioned one.’

‘I’m suspicious about the stocking-making machine, the warehouse and the nylon,’ said Susie, ‘and I bet the business friend you bumped into is a spiv.’

‘On me honour, Susie.’

‘You sure about that?’ said Susie.

‘No spiv, Susie, give you my word,’ said Sammy. ‘Mind, the info about the warehouse is sort of confidential.’

‘Meaning black market,’ said Susie.

‘No, just confidential,’ said Sammy, ‘and listen, Ben Ford, the Fat Man, has risen from the dead and I hear he means to give me the kind of competition I can do without.’

‘That’s a fib,’ said Susie.

‘Eh?’

‘Sammy, you’ve left the Fat Man far behind,’ said Susie. ‘You’ve got Adams Enterprises and its garments factory, you’ve got Adams Fashions and all its shops, you’ve got the thriving property company with its houses, block of flats and still some bomb sites ready to be sold for development, you’ve got the new store in Walworth and happy bank balances for each company. And what has the Fat Man got? His one grotty shop in Camberwell New Road, an oversized paunch and some loose change.’

‘Susie, that’s what I call a handsome inventory of our assets,’ said Sammy, ‘but what’s the Fat Man going to do with his loose change? He’s going to carry it up to Edmonton with crafty ideas of outbidding me. It’s against me strictest business principles, Susie, to let anyone outbid me, especially the Fat Man. D’you know, I think I’ve still got bruises from what his heavies did to me when they once jumped me.’

‘Show me,’ said Susie.

‘Eh?’

‘The bruises, Sammy. Show me.’ Susie shook her head at him. ‘You daft ha’porth, that must have been over twenty years ago.’

‘Well, I won’t say it wasn’t, Susie, but I will say that whenever I hear mention of his monicker, I can still feel painful twinges in various places all at once.’

Susie laughed. There was always something comically likeable about Sammy and what was known as his own kind of wordage.

‘You’ll do, Sammy,’ she said. ‘Go up to Edmonton, then, and sit on the Fat Man.’

‘I think I’ll go first thing Monday with Eli Greenberg, and be there to catch the start of the auction at ten,’ said Sammy.

‘Take Jimmy with you as well as Mr Greenberg, why don’t you?’ said Susie. ‘You’ll have useful company then, and you can all sit on the Fat Man together.’

Jimmy, their younger son, was nineteen and worked at Sammy’s new Walworth store as assistant
to the manager, Freddy Brown, Susie’s younger brother.

‘Good idea,’ said Sammy. ‘It’ll be another step on learning him what business is all about. What we’ve got to do, Susie, is some kind of wangle that’ll stop him being conscripted for his National Service stint next year.’

‘Sammy, I don’t do wangling,’ said Susie. ‘Now bring the girls in and we’ll have lunch.’

Sammy’s Walworth store, where his son Jimmy worked, was a large replica of his original shop at Camberwell Green. It sold Army, Navy and Air Force surplus, as well as reconditioned domestic appliances and kitchenware. Jimmy was taking ten minutes off to eat his lunchtime sandwiches, while manager Freddy Brown and his other assistant, Mrs Ruby Turner, attended to the customers.

Jimmy, like all the Adams males, was long-limbed and personable. It made his notable grandmother, called Chinese Lady, feel quite proud that her sons and grandsons had all inherited the physical traits of her handsome first husband, Corporal Daniel Adams of the Royal West Kent Regiment. She didn’t show too proud, however, because too much pride was a sort of vanity, and the Bible was against vanity.

Ruby popped into the little room used as a staff retreat. Thirty-six, she was a rosy, round-faced, plump and jolly woman, looking more like a Devonshire farmer’s wife than a female cockney of smoky old Walworth. Her husband was a postman,
and she’d taken the job as a store assistant so that they could better themselves. Neighbours asked them what they wanted to better themselves for. Well, for a garden, like, instead of a back yard, they said. Daft, said their neighbours, what’s wrong with your back yard? Well, for one thing, Ruby said, we still keep finding bits of shrapnel in it, and for another me hubby says an unexploded bomb might pop up one night and go off bang. ‘Crikey, the customers we’ve ’ad today,’ she said to Jimmy, ‘but it’s gone a bit quiet now. Enjoying your sandwiches, are you? I’ll ’ave mine when your break’s up. What kind of sandwiches you eating?’ Ruby liked to collect information, a typical hobby of Walworth housewives.

‘My sandwiches,’ said Jimmy, ‘are constituted of pulverized boiled egg and delicately sliced cucumber.’

‘You don’t half use big words,’ said Ruby, ‘you must’ve been born with a dictionary in your north and south.’

‘True, I was,’ said Jimmy, ‘and my dear mother informed me years later that it would have choked me if the midwife hadn’t taken it out.’

‘Your dear mother?’ Ruby let a plump smile show. ‘Why can’t you just say your mum?’

‘Why?’ said Jimmy, munching. ‘Because my mother has always been dear to me.’

‘Oh, me tonsils,’ said Ruby, ‘you slay me, you do.’

‘Shout if it hurts,’ said Jimmy, ‘and I’ll call an ambulance. Might I ask what kind of sandwiches you’ve got?’

‘No sandwiches,’ said Ruby, sighing, ‘just a couple of lettuce leaves and a slice of bread with a smear of marge.’

‘Who’s being hard on you?’ asked Jimmy, still munching.

‘Me hubby. He says if I don’t lose a bit of weight, he’ll bounce me up and down on the pavement all the way along the Old Kent Road every Sunday. That’ll do the trick, he says.’

‘Well, watch how you rebound,’ said Jimmy, ‘or you’ll disappear over the wall of Marshall’s freight yard.’

‘That ain’t funny,’ said Ruby, but she laughed, all the same.

‘Ruby, service!’ called Freddy Brown.

‘Oh, that’s me demanding manager,’ said Ruby.

‘I’ll go,’ said Jimmy. ‘You take your own break. Enjoy your lettuce.’ He disappeared to attend to the wants of a chatty young housewife who was after a mincer. It had to be a good one, mind, no bit of old rubbish. Don’t stock old rubbish, said Jimmy, and went to work on her. By the time he’d successfully extolled the merits of a reconditioned model, she looked as if she fancied him more than her purchase. Or even her husband, perhaps. Well, Jimmy was already decidedly masculine. Further, he had a good baritone, like his brother Daniel. Still, on account of her marriage vows, no doubt, the chatty lady left without inviting him to meet her at the witching hour for a surreptitious tryst.

Then, with Ruby back from her frugal repast, it
was Freddy’s turn to take a break. Saturday afternoon shoppers began to arrive, and Jimmy and Ruby were kept busy. Jimmy sold six pairs of RAF socks to a bloke who only wanted a couple. Look ahead, said Jimmy, you’ve got years in front of you, and wrapped up six pairs while the bloke was scratching his head. Jimmy, as a salesman, was a chip off the old block.

When Freddy returned from his break the influx of customers had increased. It was a fact that civilian clothes, generally, were suffering from the limitations of post-war austerity. Prime Minister Attlee’s Labour government was having a tough time trying to improve Britain’s balance of payments. The country, well and truly broke at the end of the war, was still in a parlous economic state. While Germany and Japan were rebuilding their industries with generously massive American help, Britain’s factories were having to make do with machinery rapidly becoming out of date. Garment manufacturers were beginning to order man-made materials, treading on each other to obtain what they could of limited supplies. Hence, good business for Sammy’s Walworth store, since there were always people ready to opt for surplus military wear. The stocks and the bargains were Sammy’s way of offsetting shortages, much as his original shop had been after the First World War. Both profitable, of course, and he had a long-term view in mind for the Walworth Road place, that of turning it into a quality store once austerity had been given the boot. Wages, after all, were much
better than pre-war, and the people of Walworth were never hoarders. They liked having money to spend. Sammy felt everyone ought to be prosperous. Prosperous people were very good for business.

Jimmy was aware that his job as assistant to Freddy Brown meant his dad was starting him at the bottom of the ladder, but he knew his dad, and accordingly he knew he had prospects. His brother Daniel and his cousin Tim managed the firm’s property company under Sammy’s eye, and their prospects were firmly on the positive side by now.

A peach of a girl, entering the store on crisp, clicking heels, made straight for Jimmy as he said goodbye to a customer.

‘Hello, are you serving?’ she asked.

‘Well, yes, I won’t get paid if I don’t,’ said Jimmy, noting her stylish dress, her stunning looks and her auburn hair. Auburn hair struck a chord with the family, mainly because his late and well-remembered Aunt Emily had owned a wealth of it, and cousin David’s wife Kate owned the same kind. ‘Can I help you, miss?’

‘You’ll disappoint me if you can’t,’ said the girl, her voice belonging to the well-bred. ‘I want two RAF shirts.’

‘For your dad?’ said Jimmy.

‘Don’t be funny,’ said the girl.

‘Your boyfriend, then?’

‘My friends of the male gender can all shop for their own shirts,’ said the girl. ‘These are for me.’

‘Pardon?’ said Jimmy.

‘For me,’ said the girl. ‘You’re not deaf, are you?’

‘No, surprised,’ said Jimmy, who felt certain she was slumming it, since her dress looked like an unusually rich post-war Mayfair creation. ‘Unless you mean women’s shirts. The Waafs?’

‘Men’s, the RAF, so get a move on,’ she said.

‘At once, miss,’ said Jimmy. ‘What size?’

‘My size.’

‘Ah,’ said Jimmy, and took a look at her height, which was about five feet eight, and her figure, which was proud. She went haughty.

‘D’you mind?’ she said.

‘Um – men’s 36, I think,’ said Jimmy, and led the way to the stocks of boxed RAF shirts.

‘If you must know, I want them for my Cornish holiday,’ said the girl. ‘For the beach. I also want them because an uncle of mine was a Battle of Britain pilot. So it’s a matter of beachwear and family pride. I adore the pilots of the RAF.’

‘One in particular?’ said Jimmy, extracting a box of shirts.

‘You’re interested in my personal life?’ said the girl, about eighteen, he thought.

‘The fact is,’ he said, taking out one shirt, ‘the management here insists on promoting a happy relationship with our customers.’

‘Yuk,’ said the girl.

‘Will this suit your ladyship?’ asked Jimmy, offering the shirt. She didn’t take it, she gave him a look.

‘Are you related to Max Miller?’ she asked. ‘If so, you’re not as funny as he is.’

‘Oh, I’ll go along with that,’ said Jimmy. ‘I’m
chiefly related to my parents and I’m not aiming to be a comic all my life.’

‘Really? How ducky.’ The girl took the shirt. ‘Where can I try it on?’

Jimmy showed her. She disappeared. Ruby sidled up.

‘Bless me corsets, Jimmy,’ she said, ‘you’ve found a looker. Getting off with her, are you?’

‘Well, frankly, no, I’m not, Ruby, being fairly sure that if I tried it on I’d carry a black eye home with me.’