Love Me Tender. Anne Bennett
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cries of the vendors, mixed with the voices of those bartering with customers and the general crush of people, made a clamorous noise everywhere, but there was a buzz about the whole place that most of the shoppers seemed to feel. It had a special smell too, as the aromas of all the different things for sale rose on the air. Over all the bustle, one voice rang out loud and clear, and that was the bag lady chanting ‘’Andy carriers, ’andy carriers.’ She was very old, toothless and blind, and had a label round her neck saying so and she’d been there as long as Lizzie and Maura could remember, selling her paper carrier bags in all weathers.
Maura was holding Pete’s hand tightly as he’d made more than one dash for freedom as they looked around the stalls. ‘Hello, ducks, what you after then?’ the stall holders would enquire, but Maura and Lizzie would just smile and shake their heads. They passed Solly’s fish cart and greeted him, but he hadn’t reduced the fish yet so Maura kept her money in her pocket.
Peacock’s store beckoned, and they took the children to gaze in wonder at the wide array of toys. There were dolls of all shapes and sizes from the cheap to the dear, and beautiful prams and cribs for them like those for a real baby, but Lizzie noted with satisfaction that none of the dolls was as beautiful as her dear Daisy. Pete was more interested in the railway made of tin, and the metal cars, and the little lead soldiers in the fort. None of the children had toys like these and to them it was like an Aladdin’s cave. Eventually Lizzie turned the pram and they went on to Woolworth’s, where nothing cost more than sixpence. Maura said, ‘Bit of a swizz, though, my mammy says.’
‘Why?’
‘’Cos they sell a teapot for sixpence and then the lid for another sixpence. I mean, a lid’s no good on its own, is it?’
‘Well, no,’ Lizzie agreed, but added, ‘Though it’s useful to be able to buy another lid if you break one, and anyway Woolworth’s sells lots of other things.’
Maura couldn’t argue with that. The two girls particularly liked the counters with the jewellery, rings with sparkling diamonds, or red glass stones that shone like rubies. There were necklaces of pearl, and a wide variety of brooches, earrings and bracelets, and all for sixpence. ‘I’m going to buy some of this jewellery when I’m working,’ Maura said, and Lizzie thought she might too. Then there was the counter with the pretty hairslides and bands and silver-backed brushes and matching combs, and all manner of other items to make their hair beautiful. Lizzie sighed and said, ‘I wish I had bands like this, don’t you?’
‘Oh aye, and some pretty ribbons,’ Maura said wistfully.
‘Let me see,’ Pete demanded.
Lizzie laughed at him. ‘What do you need to see for, Pete? Choosing a ribbon for your own hair, are you?’
Pete stuck out his bottom lip obstinately. He hated being made fun of and he aimed a kick at Lizzie’s shins, which she side-stepped neatly. She grasped her young cousin by the shoulders and gave him a shake. ‘If you don’t behave, I won’t take you to see the clock.’
‘What clock?’
‘You’ll never know unless you’re good.’
‘Put him back up on the pram,’ Maura suggested. ‘He’ll see all he wants then.’
Lizzie saw the sense of that and dumped Pete at the bottom end of the pram again, and they all stopped to drool longingly over the sweet counter. ‘How much have we got altogether?’ Maura asked.
‘Eleven pence,’ Lizzie said. ‘Sixpence from Gran, threepence from Mrs Morcroft and tuppence from your mammy.’
‘Not enough, is it?’
‘It might be, but we’d better save it, ’cos we’ll be hungry later,’ Lizzie said.
Regretfully they turned away from the beautiful array of sweets, out into the thronging market again. Next door to Woolworth’s was the plywood model shop, Hobbies, and they stood for a minute to let the little ones see the model yachts, trains and cars arranged in the window before crossing the market to the bottom of the steps leading to the Market Hall.
To one side of the steps stood an ex-serviceman from the Great War selling razor blades from a tray around his neck, and on the other side another ex-army man, who was also blind, sold shoelaces. ‘Black or brown, best in town!’ he’d cry, over and over. Lizzie always felt sorry for the old soldiers – her daddy said there were many like them, just thrown on to the scrap heap – but she hadn’t money spare to buy things she didn’t need, so she averted her eyes and brought her mind back to the problem in hand.
‘How we going to get up there?’ Maura asked.
‘I suppose if our Pete walks up we could carry the pram,’ Lizzie suggested.
‘Are you kidding?’ Maura said. She thought a minute and said, ‘You could leave the pram at the bottom.’
‘I’d have to carry Nuala everywhere then,’ Lizzie complained. ‘And what if someone walked off with the pram while we’re inside?’
‘What’s up, duck?’ said a man at a nearby stall. ‘You want to go up the market?’
‘Um, yes,’ Lizzie said. ‘Yes please, but the pram…’
‘No trouble,’ the man said. He lifted Pete off the pram and called to his mate. ‘Come on, Fred, these two lasses want to get up the steps with the pram and the babby. Give us a hand.’
They lifted the pram, Nuala and all, and carried the whole lot up the steps, while Pete ran up alongside holding Maura and Lizzie’s hands. Once inside the Market Hall he stood and stared wide-eyed. The ceilings were high and criss-crossed with beams, and long metal poles led down from the beams to hold up the roof. High arched windows lined the sides of the hall, with lower ones at the ends, and stalls of every description lay before them. The noise was incredible.
They hadn’t gone very far when the clock began to strike. Until that moment, neither Pete nor Nuala had noticed the clock, but now they watched it spellbound. Lizzie noticed that most people did, even grown-ups, and the hubbub around them died down as the figures of three knights and a lady struck the bell twelve times. ‘Is that the clock you said about?’ Pete asked when it was all over.
‘That’s it,’ Lizzie said, ‘and if you keep being a good boy, I’ll take you to see the animals.’
Pete beamed. ‘There’s animals?’ he cried disbelievingly.
Maura laughed at the little boy’s amazed face. ‘You wait and see,’ she said. ‘My mammy used to bring me here for a treat when I was about your age.’
There were stalls for everything in the Market Hall, and although the smell of fish lingered, it didn’t seem to matter and even added a little to the atmosphere of the place. There were flower stalls, clothes stalls and material stalls, and the junk stalls sold a wide array of interesting objects. There were stalls selling fruit and vegetables, fresh fish and meat and cheese. There were people setting pots and pans and other kitchen utensils, and there were stalls piled with sweets, toys, haberdashery and knick-knacks.
Pimm’s pet shop drew the children like a magnet, for none of them owned pets of their own. The canaries twittered around them in their cages as the children stared, and even Nuala clamoured to be let down. There were mewing kittens and boisterous puppies that nipped their fingers playfully as they tumbled about the large box that held them. They saw fish swimming endlessly around their bowls, and baby rabbits and guinea pigs in their cages, and they stopped by the budgies to try and teach them to talk. Pete didn’t believe they could, and although Maura and Lizzie repeated over and over, ‘Who’s a pretty boy then?’ none of the birds co-operated and copied them. In the end they gave up and Pete said triumphantly, ‘See, told you they couldn’t talk. You must think I’m stupid.’
Lizzie laughed and cuffed Pete lightly around the head, and he yelled, ‘Gerroff!’ but any further protests were stopped by the clock striking again.
‘Two