“Bargain hunter,” said a familiar voice close behind Flo. Turning quickly, she found Jack Knight there. He grinned. “Enjoyin’ yourself?”
She took a step back and her place was at once taken by a woman in navy blue serge who pushed unceremoniously against her shoulder.
“Have you paid up?” asked Jack.
Flo was shocked to find the velvet still in her hand. She turned confusedly to put it back, but found the way blocked.
“Dunna bother,” said Jack, grasping the velvet in a far-from-clean hand. Flo let go, and he tossed it in a ball over the head of the woman in serge.
“I don’t know whatever I was doing!” exclaimed Flo. “She’ll think I was trying to steal.”
“I’ve seen it done before; but the right way is to have a handbag to stuff it in. They’re a rum lot that get round this stall. I come specially to watch ’em sometimes.” He chuckled. Flo thought that he might be kidding, but though his lips curved humorously, his light blue eyes were serious. “I get more entertainment out of watching folk like that than I do at the pictures,” he said in his curious flat assertive way; rather suggesting that he expected her to doubt it, but didn’t care if she did.
Flo did not know what to say.
“It’s like honey to bees; they can’t keep away,” he went on.
Flo felt that she ought to stick up for herself. “I don’t know,” she said. “If you don’t look, you don’t know what bargains you might miss; there might be something ever so cheap.”
“I bet there is; I bet what old Miss Bamber got,” slightly tilting his head towards the Rolls Royce, “was cheap. She can afford it, anyway. But there’s lots as sees stuff as is cheap, an’ buy it ’cause of that, an’ don’t really want it. However cheap it is, if they dunna need it, it’s dear.”
“It might come in sometime.”
“Yes, but some of them can’t afford it even for that. They’re just tempted and can’t help it . . . on’y they never think.”
Flo had not expected him to talk like this. She remembered what Mr. Nadin had told her. “Anyway, you’re always buying, so they say. Do you always know what you’re going to do with things?”
“That’s my job,” he retorted. “If I canna sell a thing again, or make something out of it, it’s my own fault.”
“And isn’t it just their own fault if they buy something that they don’t need?”
He smiled. “That isn’t an argument. It’s my job to buy; it isn’t their’s. They buy ’cause they can’t help it . . . like a youngster taking a toffee off a counter. He doesn’t mean to steal. He just sees it and wants it. When they go to the stall they don’t mean to buy. But they just see something, and that’s that.”
“You seem to think you know,” said Flo unconvinced.
“I’ve watched ’em,” he said, a teasing gleam in his eyes. “You can sell a woman anything if you go about it right.”
“You seem to think you know,” Flo repeated. “I don’t think you could sell me anything I didn’t want.”
“No; but before I tried to sell, I’d get you to want it. That’s the trick.”
“Oh,” said Flo. “I should call that deceit.”
“Pretty nearly all business is,” he said, his high cheek-boned features set. “Only folk don’t think of it that way.” He turned away and asked if she had seen the cheese stall. “It makes my mouth water. There’s nothin’ better than cheese. I sometimes feel I could buy a whole one . . . whether I need it or not,” he added with a sly smile.
Under the awning were five cheeses in a row, the left-hand marker a marigold yellow, the rest creamy or nearly white. Behind them was a tall, pink-cheeked man in a pure-white long linen slop. “Hello,” said Jack, “owt any good, Amos?”
Amos unfolded his arms. “Aa didna see yo’ last week?” he said in a slow satisfying drawl. “What yo’ bin buyin’ lately? Bedsteads or barrels or buckets; or is it poultry this week?”
“Nay, I’ve had a thin week,” Jack replied. “Been gettin’ on with a bit o’ work. If I don’t get the stuff in, it’ll be too late.”
“Got your greenhouse up yet?”
“I’ve started; be able to let you have some tomatoes this back-end.”
“My favourite fruit. Try that; a bit of the best.” To Jack he held over on the two-inch blade of his knife a cube of the creamiest cheese.
“Go on, take it,” Jack told Flo. Amos nodded. There was scarcely any need to bite; the cheese melted. But it was rather strong.
“Try that, then. Ladies usually prefer that.”
This time it was a sliver, not as crumbly or creamy, but very much milder.
“No, the other’s the cheese,” said Jack. “Put me up a couple of that.”
“Grand stuff for toasting,” Amos commented, cutting the triangular section with his pink slim palm flat against it to stop breakage. “Two pounds and an ounce for luck. When are you gettin’ wed, Jack?”
“When I find a woman as is worth it,” answered Jack soberly. “Most of them think too much about lip-paint and flour-powder for my liking. There’s nothing prettier than things that are natural; flowers don’t titivate up and all that. That’s the sort I want.”
The stall-man winked at Flo. “Save you a lot of cookin’ and house-work, you know.”
“I can do that,” said Jack. “There’s a thing or two I could show one or two of them. Thanks. How much? Right. I’ll be seein’ you.”
“Do you live alone?” asked Flo as they walked between the stalls.
“Not quite,” he answered enigmatically. “But I mostly look after myself.”
“Do . . . do you get lonely?”
“You’re on’y lonely when you think you are. It’s nothing to do with other folk; it’s yourself.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she protested, trying to think it out.
“Everything’s yourself. You can be lonely in a crowd . . . if you want. I know I’ve never felt less lonely than on Moss Edge yonder, or up Adam’s Pike.”
“There’s not many like that,” Flo said slowly.
“If we all thought of things as we ought, perhaps things ’ud be different. On’y most of us just go on and let things happen an’ don’t think. Look at them kids.”
His voice became alert, and Flo saw three boys of not more than four jumping out of the back of the dilapidated float which she recognized. On the cobbles they collapsed and rolled about with laughter, but after a second or so they were up again and scrambling into the float for another jump.
“Hi!” called Jack without anger. “What d’you think you’re doing? If the horse sets off yo’d break your necks.” The youngsters abruptly went quiet and stared with wide sober eyes.
“Why aren’t you at school?” he asked.
“Dunna go,” said one with full cheeks and a black smear like an immense Victorian moustache under his pink snub nose.
“You’re young Tim Backhouse, aren’t you?” The urchin nodded. “Ay, I thought you were. And you’re Sal Morgan’s lad; and you’re Peter Binks.” Neither of them gave the slightest sign. “Wait till I see your mothers.”