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Palmer’s fags.
    He was already in when I got there. He was ever so old – seemed it to me – fifty-something at least, with half-moon glasses, a paunchy stomach and grey hair greased flat to his head. The whites of his eyes had gone yellow, maybe from smoking, like his fingers. He was a shrewd operator, Mr Palmer, but well capable of kindness.
    ‘Ready for the Friday rush, Genie?’ he said as I walked in, shivering in the dank shop in my cotton dress.
    I liked Fridays. Payday – everyone coming to redeem the Sunday outfits they’d pawned on Monday for a bit of extra to see them through the week, and many would stop for a chat. We’d see them all back in the next Monday.
    ‘’Ere I am again,’ one lady used to say. ‘In out, in out, quick as me old man on a Sat’dy night.’ Took me a minute or two to work out what she was on about.
    ‘You get busy then,’ Mr Palmer said. He was half way through a fag and didn’t seem to be planning on shifting himself. I started tidying bits and bobs, dusting the crocks. He’d told me he’d never seen the place so organized before I came along.
    That was my trouble with jobs. If I wasn’t kept on the run I got bored. And not just a bit yawning bored, but screaming and running round the room sort of bored. I’d done all sorts: sticking Bo-Peep stickers on babies’ cots, taking calls for a taxi firm where I got so fed up I gave the windows a going over in my spare time . . . Soon as it got too slow my head filled with fog and my legs went heavy as brass weights. That was when it was time to look for something else.
    As I was tidying I heard a click, and a voice said, ‘. . . we’re on number twelve platform at Waterloo Station . . .’
    My head jerked up. ‘A wireless!’
    Mr Palmer nodded, pleased with himself. It was at the end of the counter, a little box with a curved top and nothing like as grand as Gloria, but the reception was quite clear.
    ‘Thought I’d bring it in,’ he said, through a cloud of blue smoke. ‘Didn’t want to miss anything. Funny times these.’
    ‘. . . the train’s in,’ the voice was saying, ‘and the children are just arriving . . . the tiny tots in front . . . they’re all merry and bright, we haven’t had a single child crying and I think they’re all looking forward to this little adventure . . . The whistle goes, the children are looking out . . . and in a moment this train moves out to an unknown destination . . .’ We heard the sound of the train chugging hard and loud, finally dying away. I thought of Eric sobbing his little heart out. Was he the only child in England not ‘merry and bright’?
    ‘You all right?’ Mr Palmer asked. He twizzled the knob and the wireless went off.
    I started to fill up a bit then. ‘It’s my brother Eric. He’s eight. He’s gone today.’
    Mr Palmer tutted and shook his head. ‘Terrible,’ he said. ‘They said they had it all sorted out the last time. Mind you, wench, it’s for the best. They say this one’ll start with bombing. If my kids were young I’d want ’em right out of it. Anyhow—’ he winked at me— ‘they reckon if anything happens it’ll be finished by Christmas.’
    The rush started, with all the Sunday best going out again, as if it was going to be just any old normal weekend. Then we heard Mrs Wiles coming. She lived round the corner on Balsall Heath Road and she’d bring in bundles for the neighbours. You could hear her coming from half way up the road, pushing the rottenest old wheelbarrow you’ve ever seen.
    Mr Palmer turned to give me a wink. ‘Oh – ’ere we go.’
    The first we saw of her was her behind because she turned and shoved the door with it, too hard, so it flew open and the bell almost turned itself over ringing. She pulled the barrow down over the step with a loud ‘thunk’ so I wondered if that would be its last time, and stood blinking for a second or two, in her old man’s cloth cap, a sacking apron and man’s boots tied with