must have broken and cut one of your arteries!”
“No, no!” I insisted. “The top came loose, that’s all!” Delving a hand into my pocket, I retrieved the inkbottle and then showed it to her. However, still unconvinced that I was not mortally wounded, she passed out again…
“Hello, hello, now what have we got here, then?” constable Plod asked a few minutes later, when he stumbled across us.
Hiding my red covered hand behind my back, I told him, “She collapsed, so she did.”
“I think it’s best if you leave this to me, sonny,” he said to me. “Go home and get into some dry clothes, lest you catch your death from this terrible weather.”
Having no intention of staying there a second longer than was absolutely necessary, I accepted his advice and left the scene of my crime.
From a distance away I could hear the hysterical woman saying, “There was blood – everywhere, constable! It was all over him, the poor child!”
“Whatever you say, madam,” constable Plod said condescendingly. “Take it easy. I think you are suffering from concussion. You need an ambulance, to take you to hospital, so you do.”
“But...I’m not sick,” she protested. “Really, constable, I am quite fine...except...except for all of that blood...” That was the first and last time I saw that woman. I hope she is okay, now.
Arriving at Bennett’s shop, I looked like a drowned rat, a drowned rat in a school blazer. I pushed the rickety door open and entered the wonderful shop. The bell over the door welcomed me.
Hearing the bell ring, Mrs Bennett peered across the glass fronted counter to see who had come in. Her eyes weren’t the best; I think she was suffering from cataracts. Despite this affliction, however, she refused to wear glasses or have them seen to. Hospitals are for sick people,” she said whenever someone pressured her about them. “And I’m not sick. I might be a tad blind, but I’m definitely not sick.”
Seeing me, she said, “Hello, Gerrard. It’s a bad day to be out and about. You should get yourself home as quickly as possible.”
“I am going home” I answered. “I was running so fast I ran out of breath.” Showing her my money, I said, “I have thruppence to spend!”
“That makes the world your oyster,” she said encouragingly.
I had absolutely no idea what oysters had to do with buying sweets, but didn’t bother to ask her. Suddenly, I yawned. It took me completely by surprise; perhaps the heat of the shop had something to do with it, I thought.
Tapping the glass counter, Mrs Bennett said, “You are tired, Gerrard. Take your time, choosing.”
I gazed at the tantalising array of sweets on offer behind the glass fronted counter. I loved that shop; it was a treasure trove of all things sugary and sweet. Everyone told me that sweet, sugary things were bad for me.
I never understood why they said this, because sweets, be they blackjacks or sherbet fountains, liquorice or gobstoppers, made me feel SO GOOD whenever I ate them. I truly believed that whoever started the rumour was seriously mistaken.
In the end, I bought what I always bought each Thursday, pocket money day, a Lucky Bag. And why not – they were great! It was so exciting, wondering, and then finding out what it contained. Each and every bag was an Aladdin’s Cave in miniature.
Having paid for my Lucky Bag, I stashed it into my trouser pocket, the one devoid of red ink, and then I opened the shop door, ready to brave the elements once again. “Bye,” Mrs Bennett said to me as I exited the shop.
Outside, it was utterly miserable. The rain was pouring down in bucketfuls. Yet another flash of lightning streaked its way across the angry sky. The road was a river. The path was a river. It seemed to me that Sunbury was being immersed, drowned in a sea of water.
Further along the road, I spotted Mr Swan and his lollipop sign. The old man was like a beacon of hope in front of me. I aimed for that beacon; the man who, with the aid of his lollipop sign, had helped children and adults alike to cross the busy street for many a long year.
“Hello, Gerrard,” he said to me. “It’s a tricky day, isn’t it?”
Mr Swan’s observation was the understatement of the year as far as I was concerned. “Tricky, it most certainly is!” I answered.
“Tricky – and then some,” he said, laughing with me.
“Are you on your own today?” he asked.
“Yes,” I explained. “Mum and Tony are somewhere ahead of me, I think.”
“Hmm,” he said warily. “I never saw them pass by me.”
As Mr Swan walked to the centre of the rain drenched road, struggling to keep lollipop sign erect in the high wind, I wondered about his age.
I thought he had to be at least a hundred years old, because he had been a lollipop man as far back as I could remember. Waving him goodbye, I stepped onto the path at the far side.
Because the rain was getting heavier and heavier, I was in a quandary as to what I should do next; go into the Wooden Shop, where I could rest for a while, or continue on my way home? Decisions, decisions…
Suddenly, a tremendous, double thunderclap, exploding overhead, made my mind up for me. The Wooden Shop, it was.
Another bell, perched precariously over another door, jangled its welcome. I entered the shop; it was even older than Bennett’s and, like its name suggested, it was made entirely of wood.
“Hello, Gerrard,” Greengrocer Jack said to me. “What brings you here – and on such a terrible day?”
Before I had a chance to reply, to explain how I had ‘mislaid’ Mum and Tony, the roof groaned and moaned and creaked, under the fierce onslaught the wind and rain was pitching against it.
“Don’t fret for this shop,” Greengrocer Jack assured, “it will take more than some wind and rain to see it away!”
“Really?”
“Yes,” he insisted. “It will be here long after I am pushing up daisies!”
I gazed curiously at the timbered roof.
Tapping the shop counter, he said, “This place is tougher than it looks. I daresay it will outlast even you!”
Hearing that, I imagined myself and the old man pushing up daisies, and then I began laughing at the silliness of such a thing. Greengrocer Jack always cheered me up, no matter how low I was feeling.
“An apple, Gerrard?” he said to me.
“No thank you,” I replied, “I have already spent my pocket money. I bought a Lucky bag.”
“Sweets are bad for your teeth, you know.”
“Mum tells me the exact same thing.”
“Take the apple, anyhow. It’s on the house,” he said, throwing it to me.
“Thanks, thanks very much,” I said gratefully. Wiping the apple of my wet sleeve, I brought up a good shine. I bit into the juicy fruit. It was wonderful.
When I had finished the apple, I bid Greengrocer Jack goodbye. Exiting the Wooden Shop, I braved the elements yet again. It was still pouring down, cats and dogs. “I am fed up of this rain!” I grizzled.
On this, the last leg of my journey home, I ran like the wind. I ran through puddles so deep I wondered if they had a bottom at all. Suddenly, after jumping across the umpteenth puddle, the words of a poem entered my head:
Doctor Foster went to Gloucester in a shower of rain,
He stepped in a puddle right up to his middle,
And he never went there again.
I arrived home; when I finally arrived home I knocked the front door, ready to go inside and dry myself off, then change into some warm, dry clothes.
I waited, I waited and then I waited some more, but nobody answered it. “Where is mum?” I asked. The angry sky, disgorging yet more thunder and lightning crackled, rumbled, lit up above me.
The rain began to ease; slowly, slowly, ever so slowly it began to ease. Far away, on the horizon, I saw a patch of blue sky. I heard a few more rumbles of thunder, somewhere in the distance, but it was nothing compared to what I had heard earlier. The rain stopped. The wind died away. Close by me, on a fence post, a
blackbird began to sing. It sang sweetly, like the First Bird. It was wonderful. I felt happy; incredibly happy that I was alive on so glorious a day, sharing a moment of eternity with my God.
A note:
Mum and Tony arrived home almost an hour later. She asked me why I had left school without Tony, but I was still so caught up in the wonder of the day, the reason I offered made little or no sense to her.
It’s a funny old life, isn’t it?
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