, His Own Boss orman icholson It was not until my father was an old man that I began to understand something of his quiet contentment. As a boy, I saw the shop merely as small, dark and stuffy, a place I was expected to keep out of Later, I began to see it as my father must have seen it. For, small as it was, it, too, was made to measure. Everything was in its place. My father claimed that he could walk into the shop in the dark, and 'put his hand on' any article required, almost to the precise colour and size. The two sides of the shop were fitted with shelves, all of them packed with labelled boxes, tight and neat as a beehive. Not one cubic foot of space was wasted. There were green boxes for the shirts; deep brown boxes for the caps; narrow boxes for the ties; shallow, square, white boxes for the collars-plain, high, starched collars, butterfly collars, pointed turn-downs and rounded turndowns, and even a few clerical collars. The hats were kept separately in ovalshaped boxes which, piled one on the other, made a fine Solomon's temple pillar from floor to ceiling, while overcoats and raincoats and ready-made jackets hung in a tall showcase on the wall opposite the counter. When a customer wanted to try on a suit or a pair of trousers, my father would snap the lock and hang a green paper blind over the glass window of the door, turning the shop temporarily into a private fitting room. By the time I had reached my teens, the old rolls of cloth for suitings and the old-fashioned tailor's dummies, which my father had inherited from his days with Seth Slater, had all been thrown out at my mother's persuasion. She was responsible, too, for the new, lighter, less cluttered and, as she would have said, 'more artistic' appearance of the shop window. And how greatly my father came to rely on her, in such things, became clear when she was ill and went into hospital for three months. My father was seventy-five at the time, still reluctant to give up the shop, but he now found himself needing to dress the window without her help for the first time for many years. He went upstairs to the storeroom and there dug out three or four old mufflers of a 14
type which had not been worn for at least a quarter of a century. These he carefully folded into a kind of Chinese lantern shape, which he had learned from Mr. Slater around the turn of the century, and hung them confidently along the back of the shop window. The date was 1953. My father's daily routine was as methodical as the lay-out of his shop. He used to keep open from eight-fifteen to seven o'clock in his early days, and from nine to five-thirty after 1945. And the shop really was open throughout those hours: no closing for lunch, except, again, in later years. When he came into the house at meal-times, he would switch on a little battery-worked bell, which rang when the door opened, and when the bell rang, he would drop his knife and fork and go immediately to the shop. Often, he had taken only a couple of mouthfuls when the bell rang, and by the time he had served his customer, the meal was cold. During the Christmas shopping week, it was almost impossible to eat at all. The blessed respite from all this came on Sundays and Wednesday Early Closing. Sunday, of course, was everybody's day off, but Wednesday afternoon was the tradesmen's own privilege. I learned, as a very young child, to look forward to the peace which came over the house on Wednesday afternoon. To other boys, holiday times meant bustle and stir, the shops lit up and the streets crowded; to me they meant quietness. Even today, when I visit a town for the first time, I prefer to on an Early Closing Day. I enjoy seeing the shops empty, the shop doors shut, the streets uncrowded. In later years, when I was lying ill in the bedroom two storeys above the shop, I would often start up with a little thrill of pleasure when I heard the yale lock click into place at twelve-thirty on Wednesday. 'Early Closing', I would say to myself, and lie back on the pillow, determined to enjoy it. After my father died, in 1954, the shop was let to various tenants for a period of nearly twenty years, and when the last tenant left, and the shop became once more part of the house-which, after all, is what was intended when it was built in 1880- I felt as if the week had become a perpetual Bank Holiday. I used often to go and sit in the old empty shop-space, just for the pleasure of thinking that the room was now my own, and that people would not crowd it up for the Christmas Eve or walk in at any time of the day to ask the price of a handkerchief. For Wednesday seemed to be a quite special kind of Red Letter Day-one not shared by the public, but private and peculiar to my father and me. If Sunday was the Lord's Day, Wednesday was our day. I could not, of course, foresee that many of my adult years were to be a succession of Early Closing Days, a life on short-time, but my father and his eager anticipation of 15
Wednesday afternoon had already begun to prepare me for it. He taught me to enjoy the quiet. ot many one-man shops remain today, even in the small towns, and few tradesmen still live above or behind their own shop. Economically, my father was an anachronism, belonging to the tail-end of a tradition which went back right to the time of The Shoemaker's Holiday. The independence he prided himself on was always precarious and, perhaps, even an illusion, but it seemed real enough to him. He could do as he liked in his own shop. He had to kowtow to nobody. And he had his own way of running the business which not even my mother understood. No article on the counter or in the window had a price tag, except in code, and I fancy that my father often adjusted the price to suit the customer, charging a country gentleman more than one of his fellow tradesmen. There is a story-which I can scarcely believe!-of three men, a bank manager, a local industrialist and a shopkeeper, who once met in a pub and found that each had bought exactly the same kind of hat from my father but at three quite different prices. I do know, however, that he would sometimes enter less in his ledger than the amount he had actually received, and that the extra unaccounted five or ten shillings gradually added up to enough to pay for our week at Blackpool in the summer. I think he managed to persuade himself that the holiday cost him nothing! One moment is engraved deeply on my memory because I know it was engraved on his. It was when I was still quite a young boy, and a plump, cocksure commercial traveller blustered into the shop. "I want to see the boss," he said. My father tilted back his head, peering condescendingly over his pince-nez. "I'm the boss," he said. "I'm my own boss." He had disciplined his life for fifty years in order to be able to make that reply. He had worked ten and sometimes twelve hours a day as a young man, Saturdays included; he had refused the offers of a multiple firm; he had run all the financial risks of the Depression and the two wars. And he had no doubt that it had been well worth it. At one time, when she wanted to move to the south of England, my mother tried to persuade him to ask her wealthy cousin to find him a situation in the large Bournemouth shop of which he was part owner, but my father would not hear of it. He wanted to be his own boss. If it comes to that, so do I. VVords stu ffy snap to VVatch dummies cluttered to dress (the window) mufflers 16
lantern anachronism plump layout precarious cocksure respite kowtow peer bustle to charge someone pmce-riez th rill engraved condescendingly anticipation bluster Understanding the Writer's Ideas 1. What is the narrator's feeling toward his father's shop? 2. In what way was the shop 'made to measure'? Why was this appropriate? 3. What would the father do when a customer wanted to try on a suit? 4. What influence did the narrator's mother have on the shop? 5. Why does the narrator say 'the date was 1953'? 6. In what way did the narrator feel differently about holidays? Why? 7. Why did the narrator's father look forward to Wednesday with eager anticipation? 8. In what ways was the narrator's father an anachronism? 9. Explain what this 'independence' meant that the narrator's father could have. 10. Why did the narrator's father 'sometimes enter less in his ledger than the amount he had actually received'? 11. In your opinion, what did the narrator's father feel when he said "I'm my own boss"? 12. In what ways do you think the narrator was influenced by his father in his attitude toward life? Building Up Vocabulary Rewrite the following statements in your own words: 1. It was made to measure. 2. The independence he prided himself on was always precarious and, perhaps, even an illusion, but it seemed real enough to him. 3. He had disciplined himself for fifty years to be able to make that reply. 4. To other boys holiday times meant bustle and stir. 5. He has his own way of running the business. Understanding the Writer's Techniques 1. What impression is intended by the comparison 'tight and neat as a beehive'? 17
2. How can you tell from the description in the second paragraph that this was not a modern shop? 3. What does the account given tell you about the attitude of the narrator's father toward his work? Give reasons for your answer. 4. What image of the commercial traveller is created by the use of the words 'plump', 'cocksure', and 'blustered'? Writing Projects 1. Write down the thoughts and feeling of someone in his or her retirement looking back over his or her working life. 2. Write about the pleasure of retirement and old age. 3. Can you account for the fact that grandparents can sometimes be more understanding toward young people than parents? 18