Authors: Gil McNeil
Bloody hell.
‘That’s kind of you, Elsie, but we need so many things knitted up, for samples and the window and everything, I was sort of counting on you for that.’
I’m very pleased with myself with this diplomatic answer,
and I can tell Gran’s impressed, too, because she gives me a surreptitious wink.
‘Well, you just let me know, because I like to have a few things on the go, and I can do pretty much any pattern, if I say so myself. I could always do you one in between anything else that needs doing.’
Bugger. I’ll have to think of something, and quick, because I’m getting visions of myself stuck behind the counter looking like a loony. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
‘I’ve been thinking about doing a new display for the window, for the Best Seaside competition, and I’d like to knit some fish shapes, in cotton, in some of the new colours, so maybe you could help me with that?’
She purses her lips and looks annoyed.
‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea, it all sounds very modern to me.’
Bang goes my cardigan, hopefully. Elsie hates change, and anything Modern is to be avoided at all costs as far as she’s concerned, since it tends to involve Bad Manners, or Sex. Or both. Often at the same time.
Gran’s trying to hide a smile. ‘Well, I think it sounds lovely and Jo’s always been clever with things like that, you know, she used to do me lovely shell pictures when she was little.’
Elsie gives me a rather sneering look.
‘Yes, but a window’s a bit bigger than a picture, you know, and our ladies like a nice tidy window.’
I think I should probably step in now, before they go into one of their bickers. They’ve been bickering for years, and Gran usually loses, which, come to think of it, is probably why she didn’t give up the shop ages ago: she couldn’t face telling Elsie.
‘I’ll do the window, Elsie, if you’re not sure, but maybe you could do a shawl for me. There’s a nice pattern in one of the Rowan books, which looks quite fiddly, but I’m sure it won’t be
a problem for an advanced knitter like you. And I’d like to have a few things in the new colours to encourage people.’
I’ve already knitted one in silvery grey, with tiny silver beads knitted in round the edges, which took me ages but was worth it. Ellen’s tried to ‘borrow’ it twice, which is always a good sign.
Archie opens the shop door, keen to be off to the beach.
‘I’ll take these two off, then, and see you later back at the house?’
‘Thanks, Gran.’
She’s humming as she goes out, but Elsie’s still looking pretty ruffled.
‘Shall I make us a cup of tea, Elsie?’
‘No, I’ll do it, it’s no trouble.’
Elsie loves making tea; it’s one of her favourite things.
‘Did you bring the kettle in with you? Only your gran borrowed it yesterday.’
Damn. I knew there was something I meant to bring.
‘Sorry, I forgot, but I can go back and get it.’
‘There’s no need for that, I brought mine in from home. I thought you might forget, what with moving in and everything. I won’t be a minute.’
She’s looking slightly happier as she goes upstairs, having scored points on the kettle front, which is good, because I’d really like to avoid upsetting her if I possibly can. She’s worked here for years, and having her walk out in my first week would be a disaster because apart from anything else she’s the only one who knows how to open the till; you have to wiggle the number eight and press the TOTAL key at the same time, and I still haven’t got the hang of it. And she’s completely reliable, and happy to come in at short notice, because she likes to be out of the house and away from her husband Jeffrey, who’s recently retired, and who’s been a source of constant disappointment to her. They live two streets up from the shop; she’d like one of the new bungalows up by Gran, but Jeffrey’s not
keen, actually he’s not that keen on anything except his allotment, where he grows giant onions that have to be taken to the local shows in his wheelbarrow. They’ve got one of those silent marriages where people seethe away for years never saying anything, like living inside a pressure cooker on a very low heat, where everything goes soft and pulpy, simmering away for ages, forgotten, until the lid finally blows off and you end up with bits of turnip all over your kitchen ceiling.
I’ve always had a soft spot for Jeffrey, because he made a sledge for me and Vin when we were little, and he used to play cricket with us on the beach with their son, Martin, who was a couple of years older than us, and once chased Vin right along the sea front, wearing his cowboy hat and firing at him with his cap gun. Martin moved to Cheltenham after he got married, but he’s back at home now, and going through a very messy divorce, according to Gran; he works in computers and his wife, Patricia, left him for the UK sales manager and now insists on being called Patsy and drives a Mercedes sports car. Gran says Elsie’s thrilled because she never liked the wife, who once bought her a satin nightdress with a matching dressing gown for Christmas, which wasn’t from M&S so she couldn’t take it back, and now she’s got Martin back home she’s cooking all his old favourites for him, which must be rather mortifying for him, now he’s over forty. But I bet he daren’t tell her to lay off the eggy soldiers, because she’s not the kind of woman you’d want to cross, especially if she happens to be your mother.
I’m standing looking at the shelves while Elsie’s upstairs, and planning how I’m going to move everything around, with all the nasty pastels in the back room, along with all the white baby wool and the multicoloured acrylic double knitting. Although I think I might wait until Vin gets here, and maybe do it on a Sunday when Elsie’s safely at home boiling sprouts and battling with her Yorkshires. The back room has got the same dark wooden shelving as the front, divided into squares, and the same dark
wood floor, but there are quite a few spaces with not very much stock, and a table with a couple of chairs, and all the patterns in an assortment of old cracked plastic folders next to the door to the stairs. The kitchen and loo are upstairs, and the storeroom, packed with old display units that used to twirl round but don’t any more, and boxes full of oddments of material and tinsel, along with all the clutter Gran’s collected over the years. I’d like to try to open it up as a workroom and more shop space, if I can ever work out how to get rid of all the rubbish.
I’m wondering how much it would cost to hire a skip, and where on earth I’d put one if I did since it would pretty much block the road, when Mrs Davis comes in from next door, with a big bunch of sunflowers.
‘I just wanted to say a proper welcome, love.’
‘Oh, how lovely. Thank you.’
Elsie barrels down the stairs to see what’s going on.
‘Look, Elsie, aren’t they lovely?’
‘Very nice.’ She gives Mrs Davis a hostile look.
‘I can’t stop, but pop in any time if you need change or anything. It’s amazing how you run out if you get busy. See you later.’
Elsie’s standing back behind the counter with her arms crossed, still looking hostile; there was a mini-drama last year when they fell out over change, I think, something to do with pound coins.
‘Wasn’t that kind of her?’
‘Oh, yes, very generous, but you’ve got to watch her, you know, or she’ll be in and out all day wanting change for ten-pound notes, although why she can’t go to the bank like the rest of us is beyond me. And anyway, we haven’t got any vases so I don’t know where she thinks you’re going to put them.’
‘Yes, we have. There’s one in the window, isn’t there?’
I open the door in the partition and reach through to pick up the glass vase with the faded plastic tulips.
Elsie tuts.
‘I spent quite a long time arranging them, actually, but never mind. I’ll go and get the tea shall I? Only there aren’t any biscuits, I’m afraid. We used to have biscuits a while back, but your gran stopped buying them.’
She’s looking seriously put out now. Bugger. I think this might be the perfect time for an olive branch.
‘I could get some, if you like.’
‘I don’t like bourbons.’
‘Okay.’
‘Or ginger snaps – your gran’s very partial to those but they repeat on me. I quite like digestives, though. Or custard creams.’
The way she says custard creams makes it fairly clear they’re the top choice.
‘Right, well I won’t be a minute.’
Bloody hell. From television news producer to biscuit girl; I think I’d better get a few packets, because it looks like I may be needing them.
Elsie’s got a mouth full of custard cream when our first customer of the morning, Mrs Stebbing, comes in. She buys three balls of lemon four-ply and a pattern for a matinée coat for her goddaughter’s new baby, who looks like a fairly chunky boy when she shows us the photographs, and not an obvious choice for a delicate lemon jacket with a lace design on the front. Then old Mrs Marwell comes in, or tries to, but she can’t get her wheelie trolley through the door. By the time we’ve got her in there’s a slightly awkward moment when she can’t remember what she wanted, but then it comes back to her, with a bit of prompting from Elsie. She’s knitting another jumper for the church, for the orphans in Africa, and she wants to look in the bargain basket, where we put any odd balls left over from different dye lots; usually the cheaper things with a high percentage of man-made fibre which wash well if you
don’t mind a jumper that builds up static. Quite a few of our old ladies knit things for the church, and they’re quite happy using up odd balls of wool, so the jumpers often have one yellow sleeve, and one red, with a bright blue middle, like weird versions of Mondrian paintings, only warmer. I think this might be a good time to launch another one of my Top New Ideas, now I’ve got the custard creams as back-up.
‘Mrs Marwell, do you think it would be useful if I started a charity basket? I was thinking we could ask people to bring in any leftover wool from home, and we’d put in our spare stock, like we do now, and it would all be free, for people to use for charity things like blankets or jumpers?’
‘Oh I think that would be wonderful, dear, really wonderful, because it does add up, you know, and my pension doesn’t go as far as it used to.’
‘Right, well let’s start now then, so that’ll be no charge, since it’s for charity, so put your purse away, and if you’ve got any spare wool left bring it in next time, and put it in the basket. Someone’s bound to be able to use it for something.’
She’s thrilled, and goes off promising to tell all the ladies at the church about my marvellous new idea.
Elsie’s looking thin-lipped again. Oh dear.
‘I meant to talk to you about that first, Elsie, but it doesn’t seem right charging them, does it, not when it’s for charity? And we’ve got so much stuff just sitting upstairs.’
‘Well that’s as may be, but I hope you know what you’re doing, because they’ll all be bringing in all sorts now, stuff they’ve had in their cupboards for years.’
‘We can always throw it out if it’s too manky.’
She sniffs; I think she’s trying to decide if manky is a rude word.
‘Have you got any more ideas, any more things you want to change? Only I’d quite like to know beforehand, and that way I can help you avoid making too many mistakes. Because it’s not
as simple as it seems sometimes, you know. When you’ve been doing it for as long as I have.’
‘Nothing major, moving things around a little bit, and putting the newer stock in the front, and new window dispalys. I’d like to start a group, invite people in for a glass of wine – people are starting them all over the place, and they’re really popular. Not just in wool shops, people meet in pubs and cafés, too. They call them Stitch and Bitch groups.’
‘I’m not sure that sounds very nice; I don’t think our ladies would like anything like that. Couldn’t you call it something nicer?’
‘Yes, but that’s the whole point, Elsie. We need to attract new ladies – I mean women – into the shop.’
‘I know, what about Knit and Natter? That’s much nicer.’
‘It doesn’t sound so much fun, though, does it?’
‘Would you want me to work on any of these evenings, because I do have to get Jeffrey’s supper, and what with my Martin being home too, and in at all hours with his work, I sometimes end up cooking twice of an evening. And he can be quite a fussy eater, you know. It’s all salads and sandwiches, and he won’t touch fish fingers any more, and he used to love them when he was little.’
I think maybe Martin’s been Making A Stand after all, which is rather impressive of him.
‘No, I’ll do them. Gran says she’ll have the boys and it’ll only be one night a week, but we need to try new things, we really do, otherwise the shop will never make any money and we’ll have to close, like so many of the other small shops have. Anyway, I think it’ll be fun. Now then, shall we have another cup of tea and get started on the stock check? Only Gran will be back with the boys soon and I still need to look through these orders.’
‘I’ll go up and make a fresh pot. Would you like another biscuit?’
‘Please.’
Christ, I’ll end up completely spherical if she carries on at this rate.
I know Elsie’s nervous of change, and I’m feeling pretty nervous about it myself, but the shop only made two thousand pounds profit last year, which according to the books I got from the business section in the library is the retail equivalent of being in the kind of coma where they either start playing your favourite music and sticking pins in your legs, or else turn the machines off. And the books say the vital thing you need in a shop is a detailed profile of your core customers, like the supermarkets do when they send you money-off vouchers for couscous with your clubcard statement, even though you only bought it once, by mistake, and your children refused to eat it because they said it looked like sick. At the moment my core customer is called Doris, and she’s a hundred and eight, and she may not be able to remember where she’s put her front-door key, but she knows the price of four-ply down to the last penny within a hundred-mile radius. What I really need is a few more in their mid-thirties, called Tara, or something ending in ee, who like beautiful glossy pattern books, and won’t faint if you ask them to pay eight pounds fifty for them. If they’re buying pastels for a baby they want raspberry or nougat, or duck-egg blue, never peach. Nectarine possibly, and sage greens and caramels and creams, in pure wool or cotton mixes. Or silks and mohair. Tara wouldn’t know how to knit a matinée coat if her life depended on it, but she’ll have a go at a poncho, and I know she’s out there somewhere, because all the reps are saying wool sales have gone through the roof recently, especially for the more expensive ranges. So I just have to find out where she lives round here, and keep Doris and her friends happy at the same time. Bloody hell. Still, it could be worse; I could be wearing a multicoloured zigzag cardigan made entirely of man-made fibre, and getting small jolts of static electricity every time I touch anything vaguely metallic. Although I’ve got a horrible feeling it may be only a matter of time.