Stories of the street - Eight

A is a woman of unknown age who sits in the café from eight until nine thirty every day. She tends to be as close to the counter as possible and seems to thrive more on the hot air circulating around that area of the café than on the two cups of coffee and the plate of bread and butter she consumes each day. This is her “little luxury”, as she calls it. She has lived in the area all her life and her memory extends to well before the Second World War, possibly to before the First, although nobody seems to know or seems to want to find out.

B is an old man who appeared in the area about a year before and, although no one knows where he has been in the last few decades, he seems to have known A many years before and may have lived in the area then.

Both live in sheltered accommodation nearby and spend much of their time pottering around the street and surrounding area…..

A, “There were two stalls on the corner. One sold vegetables and the other sold fruit.”

B, ”I remember. They were brothers but they never spoke to each other. They had stopped talking to each other before their dad died. My father always used to say that their dad died of a broken heart because of them.”

A, “Well, you know what happened, don’t you. You know why they hated each other? I remember as a girl the few times they came to fisticuffs right by where the bus stop is now on the other side of the junction. It used to be a ratty old field full of weeds, holes and rough patches of grass. We used to play over that way and down by where the deep ditch was, close to the canal.”

B, “I remember that place, where they found that boy, dead.”

A, “They were always finding dead bodies down there, either in the canal at that point or in that ditch, yet nobody I can remember ever told us as children not to play in that field or go down there.”

B, “Well, it was always strangers, they found, wasn’t it. What about the brothers, by the way?”

A, “Oh, yes. The brothers. They would sometimes shout abuse at each other from across the street. Or one would spend the whole day repeating the same phrase as he sold things to people. You know. Things like, ‘there’s your potatoes and cauliflower, Mrs Bentows and at least you can know that I have not overcharged you like some stall holders I know about!’” and he would almost shout the last part so that the other brother could hear it. Eventually, he would start to respond in kind and then they would be out there on the scrubland punching it out with their two skinny young assistants looking after the stalls.”

B, “I remember, now. One of them had his arm broken as a result of those fights.”

A, “I can’t remember that but I would not have been surprised.”

B, “So, what started it all? How did they end up hating each other?”

A, “It was one of those things they call sibling rivalry, I think. They used to fight over the same girls and then, when it became serious for one of them and the other stole that girl away from his brother all hell let loose. But even that was not the half of it. The story goes that Ben (he was the older brother) fell in love with this young girl from down Boston Street.”

B, ”You mean that street that was demolished over by where they now have the industrial estate?”

A, “Well, after the place was almost flattened by the bombs during the war it was ear marked for flats but ended up as warehouses.”

B, ”I remember. So she came from there. I can only remember the Harris family from there.”

A, “This girl lived two doors down from them towards the old bakers.”
B, “Yes, I remember their mutton pies, and their coconut fancies, too!”

A, “You would, you were always a one for that sort of food! Anyway, this girl was courted by Ben for some months and there was even an announcement of their engagement. Then, suddenly, the whole thing was off and Sam, the younger brother was walking out with her.

Shortly after that there was an enormous commotion when it was discovered that this poor girl was pregnant and do you know? Each brother accused the other brother of being the father! Neither took responsibility for the child growing in the young girl’s belly and before you know it, she’s gone and drowned herself in the canal.”

B, “Well she would have. It was a pretty grim thing to be in that situation back then. She would have been beaten senseless for it by her father and the whole street would have looked upon her as a jezebel. There was one girl down our street who faced the same sort of blight and gassed herself in her mother’s kitchen. Sadly, the whole family were killed in the process as the gas filled the other room, too. I remember my mother crying about that as a boy.”

A, “Yes, well, those two brothers never cried about the girl. They were too busy fighting each other – the girl was just like a prized bit of property rather than a person. That’s how they seemed to see it and of course they blamed each other for the girl’s death as well. Neither ever saw that they were both responsible. I remember my mother never wanted to buy anything from either of them again. She would rather walk all the way down to Hillside than buy her fruit and vegetables from those two.”

B, “Funny. I remember the same thing, too. My mother suddenly stopped buying stuff from them, too. I always assumed it was because they were a couple of crooks who over-price their things, though I must confess I could never see the benefits of shopping so far away.”

A, “They may have been mean little crooks, too but that was not why. Now you know. Ben and Sam were two nasty, selfish toe-rags and my family never liked them. It used to be funny watching them knock seven bells out of each other – you know both were rubbish at fighting. Even as a young girl I could see that.”

B, “So, that’s why their father went to his grave with a broken heart?”

A, “Heavens, no. He was upset because they refused to set up together in a shop, which is what he always wanted to have. They could have run a very nice grocers shop on the high street and would have become established tradesmen but their hatred for each other stopped that and their dad went to his grave impoverished and with his dreams in tatters. He was just as mean as his two sons.”

B, "True. True."