The little Hunter girls squeezed their way through the Brownies, held up their handful of pocket money, and asked, ‘Do we have enough for a pretty box of toffees?’
‘Yes, yes, just a moment, you two, I’ll come and help you choose one.’ Then he returned to his conversation with the Brownie Leader. ‘Not Mrs Kirkby, she’s dressing the shop in emerald green for the Empire, and we’re going to have a window display telling the story of the family business and the town.’
The little Hunter girls, having already chosen their box of confections and not needing any help choosing another, left their pocket money on the side of the counter near the till and wriggled through the throng back to their brother. They were very pleased with the pretty casket because they had been saving up to buy a thank you gift for someone who had been very kind to them both.
Steven Hunter noticed his sisters by his side and did his best to tear his eyes away from the lovely Marylin. ‘Have you two got what you wanted?’ he asked them.
The little girls nodded and followed him out of the shop with their purchase neatly tucked away in their basket. They called out a farewell to Mr Kirkby and he, assuming that they were coming back later when the shop was less busy, waved the little girls away, unaware that in their basket they carried the casket of deadly sweets.
It was late, and the illuminated windows of Reenie’s boarding house acted as a beacon to her young man, her cheerfully drunken father, and his long-suffering, peculiarly ugly horse.
‘Reenie!’ Her father called in a whisper loud enough to wake half the street. ‘Reenie! Ruffian’s thrown a shoe, Reenie.’ Mr Calder hiccupped loudly and then sneezed. He was a little man and the force of both actions seemed enough to knock him off balance, but his nag, who waited with a martyr’s expression, righted him with a light, well-timed head-butt. Ruffian was the master of the light, well-timed head-butt. ‘Reenie! Can you come and take Ruffian?’
There was a rattling of locks, bolts, and chains before the front door of Mrs Garner’s boarding house opened onto the balmy June night, heavy with the scent of lime tree blossom. It was Mrs Garner herself who opened the door; bleary-eyed, and tightly wrapped in as many layers of coats and dressing gowns as she thought appropriate for a respectable Yorkshire widow of advancing years when opening her front door at midnight. ‘Peter McKenzie, whatever are you doing out of doors without a coat after dark? You’ll catch your death of cold.’ Mrs Garner knew Peter, of course, but she was used to seeing him call for Reenie in his smartest clothes, with his hair neatly combed. This sorry specimen was not in keeping with the Peter McKenzie she knew.
Peter looked at his sleeves in confusion, the knowledge that he had no coat only just dawning on him. ‘I don’t feel very well.’ His lost expression made him look much younger than his nineteen years.
‘You my Reenie’s landlady?’ Mr Calder was taking his cloth cap off his balding head and smiling politely in the general direction of the stone-fronted boarding house while leaning slowly away from it.
‘Yes, but she’s not home yet, Mr Calder. She’s working a night shift down at the factory.’ Jane Garner tried to keep her voice to a genuine whisper in consideration of the neighbours, who thought her far too lax with her boarders as it was.
‘Oh.’ Reenie’s father’s expression of disappointment was almost comical ‘But I’ve got an ’orse, see.’ He jerked up the hand which was holding Ruffian’s makeshift bridle, in the manner of a marionette whose string had been pulled suddenly. Then he let it drop with a glum sigh.
Mrs Garner was a respectable woman, but she was no stranger to tipsiness. She could see that Mr Calder and young Peter wouldn’t get much further that night and Mrs Garner had never in her life hardened her heart. ‘You give that to me, Mr Calder.’ She shuffled down the steps from her front door to the pavement in her flapping slippers, gently prised the rope from his hand and tied it around the railing above the cellar steps. ‘Ruffian can bide here while you wait in the parlour.’
‘No, I got a friend, see?’ Mr Calder was telling his daughter’s landlady as she pushed him awkwardly up the steps. ‘I got a friend I know’ll stand us a drink. Good old boy.’ Mrs Garner didn’t know if he was talking to the horse or about the friend. ‘I just wanted Reenie to mind the ’orse.’
‘Very wise, Mr Calder, very wise. Up the stairs now; you too, Peter.’
When Reenie arrived home an hour later she was confused to see a coat she recognized draped neatly over a hedge at the top of the hill, her father’s horse in the street and the parlour lights lit down below the level of the street. Something was afoot.
‘Don’t wake them.’ Mrs Garner intercepted Reenie as she came through the front door. ‘You’ll never guess who’s sleeping on the parlour table.’
‘Is it Peter and me dad?’
‘How did you know?’ Mrs Garner was helping Reenie out of her coat and hanging it up along with the coat Reenie had rescued from the hedge as she passed.
‘Well, I’ve just found Peter’s ulster in the bushes, which I thought might indicate he’d been passin’ this way, and as for me dad, I can’t help but feel the presence of his massive great workhorse in the middle of the street was a bit of a giveaway.’
‘They said he’d thrown a shoe.’ Mrs Garner was all concern and Reenie couldn’t help but feel she was very lucky to have such a caring landlady.
‘Thrown a strop more like – Ruffian kicks his front shoes off if he doesn’t fancy a job; he thinks he’s too good for farm life.’ Rennie saw her father sitting at a chair in her landlady’s kitchen parlour with his mouth hanging open and his cheek pressed against the tabletop. ‘Come on, you.’ She patted him on the shoulder. ‘Time to go home to Mother. You can’t sleep like that, you’ll do your neck in.’
Reenie’s father snorted awake for a moment, fixed his eyes on his daughter, squinted, rubbed his face, and then smiled. ‘They made my daughter a manager.’ He wobbled upright and proudly jabbed his finger into his own chest. ‘My daughter. Junior Manager.’
‘Yes, Dad, I’m well aware of it. Now it’s time to go home.’ Reenie could see why girls whose fathers were in this state every night tired of it, but as it was only once or twice a year in her own father’s case she couldn’t help but find it comical. ‘What have you done to my young man?’ She waved an arm at Peter, who was snoring gently with his head on his folded arms and his straw-coloured, floppy hair a disorderly mop. ‘I told you to bring him back in one piece.’
Mr Calder beamed with pride and told his daughter in a conspiratorial whisper, ‘He’s a cracking lad, he is. Cracking lad.’ Then sighed contentedly back to sleep.
‘Did I do the right thing?’ Reenie’s landlady asked with concern. ‘Bringing them in to the parlour, I mean. I didn’t like to let your Peter catch cold without a coat. And Mr Calder was ever so wobbly.’
‘No, you did right. They’re in no fit state to go home.’
At this, Peter’s shoulders moved and he lifted his head very, very slowly. ‘Please don’t make me drink again. Reenie, I don’t want to drink again.’ He looked sad and lost and put his head back on the cool, comfortingly stable kitchen tabletop.
‘You were meant to be a good influence on m’dad! “I’ll go with him”, you said. “He’ll only have a couple this year,” you said. Now look at the pair of you. And what am I meant to do with the ’orse?’ Reenie’s questions were in vain as Peter had already begun to snore and Mrs Garner’s cat was looking daggers at him from her place by the stove for making a noise while her kittens were trying to sleep.
‘I didn’t