AT THE JUMBLE SALE
AT THE JUMBLE SALE..
The eager crowd started to form outside the Mission hall at least half an hour before opening time.
‘What time is it now?’
‘Only quarter past….I hope the rain keeps off.”
The first one in the hall got the best buys. All the locals were there, including two neighbours of ours, Mrs Quinn and Mrs Benson. We all lived only fifty yards from the Mission door but I was never first in line. Mrs Quinn was always first. I was usually at the back next to Mrs Benson.
They were next door neighbours, but I almost never saw Mrs Benson and Mrs Quinn talking together en tete-a-tete. We lived in 3-storey Tyneside flats which had the usual double front doors, but there was an extra flat with a front door in a cellar. Widow Quinn, with her black hair in tight bun, lived down in the murky dark cellar, with her grown-up bachelor son George. Mrs Benson and husband Nicol lived in the upstairs flat with sunlit view over miles of country and they had a black and white border collie called Jim and I played with him a lot. They had lost their son in on D-Day, and ever since had lavished affection on Jim as a kind of inadequate substitute. We lived in the middle flat just up the street from Quinn and Benson. Somehow, Violet Benson liked me, even though she wasn’t gushing or chatty. I only once went into her flat. It was very sunny and smelled fresh. She and mum were very civilized when they met, although not really close or gossipy.
“Hello, Violet - how’s Nicol?”
“Well, Nelly, he’s much better after his cold…and how are you keeping yourself? “
“Oh, can’t complain, you know.”
It was only ten years after the war, in which many neighbourhood families had been fractured. They had lost fathers or sons, or they had menfolk with only one leg or arm. Fathers and mothers used to lend a hand with other families. My own mum constantly looked after my little cousin Martin whose mother had been killed in the bombing. It was as if parts of broken families were cobbled together into something almost resembling normal. It was a close-knit neighbourhood with front doors left open all the time, dogs and cats in the street, and kids playing football between makeshift goals. The kids had to be careful to not leave their coats on the ground as goal-markers. Dogs would take a piss on them quickly before someone aimed a kick at them.
As 2:30 approached, the bulky form of Mrs Quinn’s black dress with her voluminous bags at the ready was always there at the Mission hall before everybody. She would look back down the line and say,
“Come on up here with me, bonny lad, and you can get in ahead of the crowd.”
As trained, I would not reply and would hang back away from the invitation, looking away from her gaze. Mrs Quinn’s fat, wrinkled face and craggy glasses framed eyes expressing disdain verging on idle curiosity, and forever on the look out for something else. When she and mum passed in the street neither one caught the eye of the other. I was never told what the reason was but they had never spoken for many years.
“Don’t speak to her,” mum always hissed at me as we were about to pass
“Why?”
“Never mind - just keep away from her - don’t look at her.”
Nevertheless, Mrs Quinn would often try to inveigle herself into my life. From the top of her cellar steps where she often stood watching the street passing by, she would say to me,
“Want an apple pet? I’ve got some nice ones here.”
It reminded me of the stage show of Snow White at school last christmas. I would smile faintly as I passed and shake my head and keep walking. I had only once gone into her flat a couple of years ago - and it was dark, dampish, spooky. I couldn’t wait to get out. Mum was very annoyed when I told her of course.
At 2;30 on the dot the door was opened and each customer shuffled up to pay their thre’pence to get in.
“Now don’t all rush please, I’ve got no change for anything bigger than a shilling right now.”
At this, Mrs Quinn slipped her thre’penny bit back in her purse and pulled out a half-crown, knowing she would be allowed to dodge the admission fee “till later”.
She pushed ahead into the doorway of the Mission hall. I was at the back of the line outside the jumble sale door next to Mrs Benson, who gradually managed to ease her way in to the heaped stalls but missed most of the “best” items. In a jumble sale crowd she was not a “pusher”.
The Bensons kept themselves to themselves, but I had heard uncle John say he had great respect for the husband, Nicol . He and his wife were both thin in their build, and somewhat reserved characters, suggesting a better class of behavior from the past. They played bridge, unlike the majority of local families who played rummy, They seemed to have come down in the world but were making the best of it. I had read all about ‘playing bridge’ in BOA-CON. Mrs Benson never smiled, not overly friendly - rather distant. But she was very decent and from time to time helped me somewhat.
Smiling and showing her big shiny coin Quinn mumbled, “I’ve only got a half a crown - I’ll pay you later.”
As the queue moved forward, people exchanged coppers to make the exact admission fee.
“Have you got a tanner and I’ll give ye two thre’penny bits?”
“No, I’ve only got a shilling and three ha’pennies.”
The Mission hall was old, with dusty wooden trestles and chairs, cracked windows and some yellowing paper notices years out of date. Around the walls some framed religious texts were the sole decoration. The stage had been used for byegone religious revival events but not now, with its bare boards and old dark curtains. I’d found ‘revivalism’ in NAV-SCA. Benson and Jim climbed up on stage, for she liked books, which were on sale among statues of angels and pictures of saints. The dog sniffed excitedly at everything on the stall. Me and Mrs Benson occasionally exchanged a few words about books. Up on the stage I told her that last year I had found “Parks Travels In Africa”. It had been my tenth birthday and I told her it was like an unexpected present. In that book I discovered that mumbo jumbo was actually an African native god and told her,
“It’s old - it says inside the first page ‘published in 1799’ - do you think it might be valuable?”
‘I am afraid I have no idea but I’d like to read it if you could lend me it please. I never knew that about mumbo jumbo, it’s very interesting.”
I added excitedly, “One of my favorite book buys, at an earlier jumble sale, is a seven-volume encyclopedia in alphabetic order which I often read in bed. The books are called A-BOA, BOA-CON, COO-FLO, FLO-ISIS, ISIS-NAV, NAV-SKA, SKA-ZWI. My favorite is A – BOA because almost every continent as well as several countries began with these letters.”
‘That sounds very good,” she said.
While we book-hounds were on the stage, Jim kept whimpering to his mistress to go home - he had had enough of books and other junk for one day. Everybody else headed for their favorite dusty tables groaning under piles of old cast-offs. The items for sale were so widely varied as to be beyond description but the sale in general was of second-hand or broken junk which could be adapted and made to replace normal stuff.
Simply by going to so many jumble sales over the years, I was adept at finding useful clothing bargains. Under mum’s tuition, I was skilled at sorting quickly through piles of clothes, especially shirts - easy to wash and also a good source of something constantly in demand, spare buttons. I had to avoid rips in material, but seams coming apart were ok because mum was a dab hand with a sewing machine.
“And I want you to look for a good jacket, which could be washed and pressed like new. But don’t ever buy shoes, socks or pants.” she would say.
After I’d finished with the books, I would soon be heading for the clothing trestles. After the clothing, It would be toys. I always went for trestles with piles of old meccano, or bits of toy railroad track. At an earier jumble sale, when I had found a treasure trove of four sections of curved track which I promptly paid for, Mrs benson congratulated me when we met on the street. So today, I was heading home happy, and Mrs Benson spotted another piece of track I had missed and shoved it across the messy table for me to grab.
“Here’s another piece,” she said. I was pleased, for it made a complete circle of tracks.
But for now I headed straight for the clothing, and In no time I had found a knitted two-piece, just the sort mum would like. So I grabbed it and started to fish in my pocket for my money, but could only find a shilling.
I put my hand heavily on the beige two-piece.
I said, “How much?”
“One and six,” came the answer.
I put all my coins in her hand. It was a shilling altogether.
The stall holder said, “Ok, son, go and find another sixpence and I’ll keep this here for you.”
Meanwhile, Mrs Quinn had of course come in first at 2:30, and she had quickly bought much of the best stuff. Mrs Quinn was a hustler - with a practised technique of filling her own large bag and offering “two bob for this bagful” in the middle of a pressing crowd. This combination of pressure and ready cash always worked. Too many people pushing and asking was what Quinn liked. Now, with my heavy hand on the two-piece, there at the clothing table was me almost next to the hustler.
Her surveying eye looked down at me with my hand on the two-piece and whispered, “Go on and get the money. I’ll look after it for you, son.”
I decided to ignore mum’s advice just this once, and said thanks to Quinn. I ran back home for the sixpence, told mum I’d got her a beige two-piece which she’d always wanted, and returned breathless to the stall.
“Here you are - I got me money. Where’s the two-piece?” I asked the woman on the stall as I held out the coins.
“Oh yes, where is it now?” she said thoughfully, “It was just here a minute ago. . . “
We began looking under several likely piles of clothes. It was gone. We hunted in all the piles and on the floor.
“Oh I think I remember now. Mrs Quinn flopped her big bag down here and said I’ll take all this for two bob. She must’ve accidentally stuffed your beige things in with it all. But I’m not sure at all because there were too many people all asking and grabbing at the same time. Mrs Quinn said you’d gone - so she bought it. Then she seemed to be in a great hurry to get home with her heavy bags. Said she wanted to get George to help her.”
“But I was only away for a minute - to get the shilling. . . “
“I’m sorry, son.”
The two-piece was gone “accidentally” and so was Mrs Quinn - no doubt it had gone home in her overstuffed bags. Through the innocent fog of childhood it slowly began to dawn on me what might have happened years ago between mum and Quinn.
Nothing for it but to go home with no beige two-piece. From up on the stage, Mrs Benson had spotted my predicament. Catching me by the shoulder as I was pushing through the crowd on my way to the door to go home, she pulled me to one side and stuffed in my bag a brown two-piece she had already bought for herself. Then she shoved some more books on top of the books I’d already bought.
“Just tell your mum you found her this nice two-piece. She might like it, I think. Go home now with Jim - he wants to go. I’m going back to get another jumper for meself. Ta ta ! “
In surprise I mumbled, “Oh, thank you, Mrs Benson.”
The crowed was thick and it took a couple of minutes as I pushed between some other boys and out of the door, heading home with jim at my heels. Mrs Benson had gone back for her jumper, and stuffing those items into my bag had delayed her going home, so Jim ran out of the Mission hall ahead of me.
Mrs Quinn had already got home and placed her bags on the pavement corner near her cellar stairs for a moment while she went downstairs to see if George was there to come up and help carry her heavy bags before the rain started. While she was down in her flat calling for George to get out of the armchair, those overstuffed bags got well and truly pissed on. Desperate for a toilet, Jim had run fast from the Mission hall and put his leg up at the same pavement corner - his favorite corner - for twenty long-awaited and much-enjoyed seconds. The relieved Jim then immediately ran off into his own flat out of the rain to sleep, leaving no indication of which canine was responsible.
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