12. A SHOPKEEPER'S DEMISE

Another year has passed and disaster strikes the little village shop.

Somehow Old Aunty Emmett had struggled against arthritic limbs that confined her to her two upstairs rooms, and found her way down the stairs rather than call Ursula up to help her. Descending those stairs was something she never did, hadn’t for months, she left everything to do with the shop for Ursula to attend to and just checked the accounts every so often from her comfy armchair in her living quarters which were just about her whole world.

It was a year since the Squire’s chauffeur, the male version rather than his twinkling female opposite number who the drove the larger and flashier limousine, had smashed his car and shattered his body as a consequence, at speed, into a brick wall. So it was a year since he had died and she, Angela Tightbottom, had become the sole chauffeur of Snootnose cars.

Yet throughout that year rumours had become rife.

And all because of the silver watch on Ursula’s wrist, because the dead man had presented it to Ursula and that must have meant a great deal of something. People didn’t buy such trinkets for strangers, did they? Nor ordinary social friends either, did they? Those days weren’t like that at all, money always being in short supply and silver too precious to be cast around casually. Watches like that were only given to special friends, and that rarely. So it that could only mean one thing. Then another, perhaps if tongues wagged enough.

In the end it meant they were as good as married. And then a whisper that they were secretly wed.

The next leap was obvious. There were a few bright sparks with vivid imaginations who maintained that rather than spend a well-earned seven days at the seaside with her parents Ursula must surely have visited Old Ma Pumpkin and had a rough time having an abortion. That particular rumour was given credence by the refusal of Old Ma Pumpkin to deny it, a refusal which she made vehemently because her memory wasn’t what it had been and one day, one month, even one year, merged into other days, months and years until they became a blur of time, and maybe Ursula had been one of her clients last week, last month, some time when.

It was confusing. Old Ma Pumpkin was confused, anyway, and confusion always helps in the establishing of rumours.

The real truth was a seaside holiday while the village store was shut for a week because that particular week was Swanspottle’s holiday week. Those who had saved during the year took themselves off to the seaside for a day or two or three, and those who hadn’t saved moaned about others wasting money. Even Old Ma Emmett was taken for a ride by a well-wishing friend, fed fish and chips followed by ice-creams and candy floss and made to sit in a deckchair facing the crashing waves and an occasionally mischievous East wind.

Anyway, that had been the year and Old Aunty Emmett, despite severe difficulties, had found her way down the steep stairs once again, and into the shop.

“Aunty Emmett!” declared a surprised Ursula, “whatever do you want?”

“You’re a good girl,” The old woman’s voice wibbled and wobbled though lack of use. “I wanted to tell you that before...”

“Yes, Aunty?” asked a curious Ursula.

“It’s a long way down them there stairs,” sighed Auntie Emmett, “it fair takes an old woman’s breath away...”

“I’ll help you back up,” volunteered Ursula. “You should be listening to your wireless upstairs, not wasting your time down here.”

“I came...” The old woman frowned slightly as if trying to recall some vital thing she needed to say, then she nodded and continued, “I came to tell you you’ve done so well, the shop, you know, so well with the shop, and I’ve decided, I’ve arranged it, the papers...”

“That’s kind of you,” murmured Ursula, “it’s a lovely shop and I like working here. Better than Harrods I dare say!”

But the old woman said no more. She smiled the prettiest smile ever seen on a grizzled old face and closed her eyes and sunk onto the creaky old chair that was kept behind the counter, and was so painfully still Ursula knew for certain and with a chilled heart that she had passed to the great beyond, wherever that may be.

And she chose the very moment to cast off her mortal coil and seek the angels as Squire Snootnose’s delicious chauffeur Angela Tightbottom majestically pulled the Squire’s car to a standstill outside the shop door, and that very aristocrat walked in with a jangle of the shop bell and a scowl on his face.

“I’m shutting you down,” he said to the dead old woman without any polite preliminaries, and was offended when she didn’t reply.

“But sir...” began Ursula, who despite being in floods of tears was about to explain that she believed her employer had just passed away, though being young enough not to have witnessed the demise of a human being before she wasn’t one hundred per cent certain.

“I have come to speak with the owner of this tawdry establishment and not a scruffy ill-educated shop-girl!” the Squire barked. “I have come to warn you, old woman that I can’t have a shop of this low quality in Swanspottle when my son wishes to open a much finer establishment with a sideline of etchings on sale for the discerning.”

It was clear from his attitude that he had yet to forgive Ursula for what he saw as a rejection of a flirtatious advance a year or two earlier. Since then their paths hadn’t crossed, he being the Squire and she being a shop girl who made quite sure she never wandered anywhere near Snooty Manor out of an earned contempt for its occupants.

The Squire was clearly in a hurry, but then his sort always were when in the company of those they saw as lesser mortals.

“The senile old creature is sleeping!” he bellowed, hoping that his personal decibels would waken the shop owner, “I cannot tolerate it when silly old women ignore me and go to sleep! I can use this, I can, in the courts, her senility, her refusal to look her betters in the eye.”

He stepped as close to the counter as he could and poked the deceased Old Aunty Emmett on one shoulder.

It was enough.

With dreadful and dire slow motion the body of the old woman started sliding, slowly, painfully slowly, until she reached a point beyond which there could be no equilibrium, nothing to balance her old bones and keep her upright, and she slid like a rumpled sack downwards, obeying the dictates of gravity, off the creaking chair (which actually creaked) until she was a lifeless shape on the floor, and Ursula, frightened and horrified at the same time, started weeping.

“Now what’s the stupid old creature doing?” demanded the Squire.

“I was trying to tell you, but you shut me up...” began Ursula.

“Shut up, then!” barked the Squire, flexing his mistaken awareness of superiority and threatening to strike her, such was his manly gentility.

“She’s dead,” said Ursula flatly, “and you must be more stupid than people say you are if you couldn’t see that the moment you walked into this shop!”

“I rather fancied you, once upon a time, a pretty piece of rough...” stammered the Squire to Ursula as if a man fancying a woman because he liked someone rough was all that mattered, and he leaned over the counter and peered to where Old Aunty Emmett lay, her face gazing sightlessly upwards through grey eyes that would never see again.

“Dead, eh?” he sighed,

© Peter Rogerson 21.07.18