Read At My Mother's Knee for Free Online

crawled
across the shop floor, causing more than a little fuss among
the women waiting to be served. Mrs Profitt, however, was as
cool as ice and calmly covered the spider with an upturned washing-up bowl and called the police. The spider was later
identified by Chester Zoo as relatively harmless but it rocketed
Mrs Profitt to fame. She ended up in the Birkenhead News , photographed outside her shop holding a big bunch of
Fyffes bananas in one hand and a meat and potato pie in
the other, under the headline SHOPKEEPER CATCHES DEADLY TARANTULA .
    Mrs Profitt was a real lady, not some jumped-up trollop who
didn't have an arse in her trousers, a pot to piss in or a window
to chuck it out of until she married that old nit, George Henshaw . . . My ma had a pretty low opinion of
Eileen Henshaw.
    Eileen had a nasty habit of 'shouting your business' across a
packed shop. For my mother, if anyone, let alone a scandalmonger
like Eileen Henshaw, aired her private affairs in public
it was a crime punishable by death. She'd have been knitting a
noose if she'd heard Eileen spouting her venom at me.
    'Can you tell your mother please, Paul, that she's overdue six
weeks now with her papers and if she doesn't pay by the end
of this week we'll have to cancel her Echo . It's getting beyond
a joke. Tell her I'm not a charity.'
    Oh, the shame of it all. Ground, open up and swallow me,
let the Tardis appear and whisk me away to another dimension
where there are no mothers who make their kids go into shops
because they owe money and are too embarrassed to go in
themselves. Oh please, baby Jesus, let Eileen Henshaw fall
on her own bacon slicer and have her forked tongue sliced
from her wicked mouth and thrown to the dogs in the street.
In short, I was mortified. My only satisfaction was the knowledge
that my mother would go apeshit when I related this
message to her with a few exaggerations for inflammatory
effect, thrown in to stoke her furnace.
    'Cheeky cow, who does she think she is, shouting me
business all over the bloody shop? I'll give her six weeks.'
    She'd dip into either the rent money or one of the Prudential
Club books that were hidden against burglars underneath the
sofa cushion and pay up, worrying about how she'd balance
the books later on.
    'Here, give her this,' she'd hiss, pushing the precious pound
into my hand. 'That's the club money short now, so when the
Rediffusion man calls don't answer the door.' We rented a
television from Rediffusion, everyone in Birkenhead did.
    Reluctantly I shuffled off, dragging my feet, dreading the
humiliation that I was bound to endure at the hands of Eileen
Henshaw.
    'Tell her to stuff her bloody Echo ' was my mother's Parthian
shot as I slunk out of the back door. I'd hang about outside the
shop, trying to appear casual, waiting until it was empty of
customers and it was safe to go in. Typically, as soon as I
opened the door ten people appeared from nowhere and
followed me in.
    'Don't tell me your mother's finally decided to pay her bill!'
Eileen would shriek in mock surprise, looking around the
shop at her audience and clapping her hands to her face. 'This
is a great day for the Henshaws, we'll be able to shut up shop
and go on holiday to Spain with the proceeds from your
mother's paper bill.' With what she probably considered a
refined laugh, the sort she imagined one heard in smart
drawing rooms all over Heswall, she tore the tickets out of the
big red order book that recorded the names of who owed what
and when.
    Her husband George came in from the living quarters behind
the shop. He always wore a white overall with a pencil in his
top pocket as well as a permanent scowl. He took his
profession very seriously and that's why I was so surprised at
what came next.
    'You've had experience as a paper lad, haven't you?' he said,
plonking a large freshly cooked ham on the counter. He prided himself on his boiled ham. 'Do you want a temporary job?'
    Eileen's eyebrows shot up into her hairline along with