CHAPTER IV: TRADESMEN
The story of Mr. Jones’s sin, and how he failed to send the meat in time for luncheon, has been told. But it must not be supposed that this was the one sin of a lifetime, standing out clear and black against a white background of habitual punctuality. Nor was he a lonely serpent in an otherwise spotless Eden of tradesmen who walked with God. They were all Sons of Belial. If I could turn the whole lot of them into pillars of salt, and cheese, and mutton, and cabbage, and all the other dilatory and perverse ingredients of my daily life I would do it, and they might go on “never coming” as much as they liked. They might stay there all day making apologies and it would not matter to me. I should simply come and hack off the pieces I wanted and not listen to a word they said.
Of course, in one way, a shop answersthe same purpose. But there is not the same pleasure in asking for a thing as there would be in hewing it off the person of one’s enemy. And, besides, the shops are always full of women who want to look at everything they buy.
Sometimes I have waited quite a long time while some silly creature with a long upper lip and a badly balanced hat fiddles about with two tins of mustard and explains why neither will do. When it comes to my turn and the shopman says: “Pepper, m’m; yes, m’m; I’ll just show it you,” and rushes off before I can catch him, it makes me so angry that I forget all the other things I wanted. I know all that there is to be said on the other side about the advantages of shopping oneself. It is not for nothing that I have encountered the efficient female on our own ground. But if I have been flattered she has had exercise, that is one thing! Some are born housekeepers, some achieve housekeeping, and some have the horrid thing thrust upon them.
They say seeing is believing, but somehow I find it impossible to believe in a tradesman even after I have seen him, and the few things I do believe about him I don’t like. The ego of the fishmonger, as well as that of his representative imp who scribbles his name daily on every available wall-space near the back door, is to me wholly uncongenial, and I dislike the exaggerated value he puts on the creatures whom he conjures from the deep.
“Nice plaice,” he says, handing me a thing all face, like a certain type of person who frequents concerts and goes on deputations and boards. It has a deep frill of some scaly substance round its small body, and at one end the frill becomes a regular flounce. “Eightpence a pound. I’ll fillet it nicely for you, m’m.”
By the time he has filleted away the face, and the frill, and the flounce, and half a square foot of backbone I am left with four elusive little rags that no amount of heavy breadcrumbing on Ruth’s part will makeinto a serviceable dish for a hungry man.
“I don’t think you are right in calling plaice a nice fish,” I said the first time this happened. “Haven’t you got anything with a little more body to it?”
He offered me turbot at two shillings a pound. There was certainly more of it, but it looked thoroughly wet through and uncomfortable, and he told me that the oily skin was the best part! There are all the smaller fish of course, but I cannot help watching James when he has anything with bones, it makes me as nervous as if I saw him eating a wet handkerchief full of pins.
And there is nothing like fish for “never coming.” If my own grandfather were a fishmonger and I saw him being chased up the street by a mad bull I should refuse to believe that he would “be there as soon as I was.” With butchers, too, I find that we pay for more than we either ask or desire. A leg of mutton with a hairy cloven hoof on the end (I still live in the hope of Mr. Joneslacing a neat boot on it some day when he thinks I am not looking and then saying it is a mistake he cannot account for) is an insult both to the living and to the dead. And there are tongues with a ton of salt in them. Mr. Jones weighs the tongue as it comes soaking from the tub and charges me for the heavy dripping mass of salt. He sends it to the house by the hands of a little boy who is fond of marbles, a keen spectator of football, and popular with his young associates. By the time Ruth gets the tongue on to her weighing machine it differs by several pounds from the little blood-stained hieroglyphic pinned to it. Mr. Jones explains this by the theory that it has “shrunk on the way from the shop.”
If I might bear a few of Mr. Jones’s misdeeds to the Judgment Seat they should lose none of their full weight by my loitering on the errand!
I think Ananias the greengrocer became prosperous and has such a nice large clean shop because he is so resourceful. I have neverasked him any question which he could not answer satisfactorily, and the matter I speak of always seems to be one which he has already gone into very carefully on his own account. I asked him once why his potatoes were dark purple and full of holes, and he said that it was the time of year. But I was prepared for that and brought in a neat rejoinder.
“Yes,” I said, “that is the proper answer, I know, but how is it that I can get excellent ones in the shops lower down?”
“Ah, yes, m’m,those,” he replied; “of course we can get youthatsort of potato if you wish it, but I hardly think, if you knew the sort of places they come from, you’d fancy them. A very nice, cheap potato for the price, and has a nice appearance, but——”
He shook his head with an expression of such dark mystery that I let the potatoes alone. In fact, I had a moment’s vague wonder whether the other kind were grown in the hospitals or whether white slaves withmaimed hands dug unceasingly for them in a distant rubber plantation.
Another day I asked him why his lettuces were a penny more than anyone else’s and whether he charged for the caterpillars sandwiched in them. He said that it was quite a mistake my having had the one with the caterpillar. He had noticed it at once when they were brought in, and had particularly told the young lady to destroy the lot. He was very glad I had mentioned it, and he could give me the best lettuces in the market for a penny halfpenny if I did not object to their having no hearts. He always sent those with hearts unless he was specially told otherwise by ladies who were obliged to consider trifles.