Johnny Swanson - Eleanor Updale [20]
Official Portrait of the King. 1/–.
Johnny had meant to be a little more honest, and to say ‘miniature portrait’, but he wasn’t sure how to spell ‘miniature’, and anyway, it was always good to save a word in an advert. There were no complaints, even though the suckers had at least ended up with a stamp (worth anything from one penny to sixpence) to put on their angry letters. No doubt they agreed with Johnny that they would have looked pretty daft if they’d admitted falling for that trick. But it was a good one. Johnny worked out that once his costs were covered, he was making a profit of anything from 100 to 1100 per cent, depending on the value of the stamps he sent to his patriotic customers. True, the actual amounts that reached the Peace Mug were very small, but he was beginning to dream of bigger projects, with mighty returns.
And there was one unexpected side effect of all the effort. Winnie ran into Johnny’s form teacher, Mrs Stiles, in the street one Saturday morning.
‘Oh, Mrs Swanson,’ said Mrs Stiles. ‘I’m so very pleased with Johnny this term. His work has improved immensely. It’s very neat indeed.’
‘I’m delighted to hear it.’
‘Yes, and it’s not just his presentation. His maths is coming along in leaps and bounds. He’s especially good at money sums.’
Later that day, when Winnie told Johnny what his teacher had said, she thought he was blushing out of proud embarrassment. She knew nothing of the guilty secret that was burning his cheeks.
Chapter 11
UMCKALOABO
Just before half-term, Dr Langford came to school again, to check that everyone was still clear of TB. He got Johnny’s class off Geography this time. He was becoming rather popular. Then, during the week of holiday, Hutch gave Johnny jobs in the shop every day. Johnny saw Hutch at work in the stockroom, behind the counter, and in the post office. They had time to chat, and got to know each other better.
The store was always busy, with customers wanting everything from groceries to knitting patterns. There was a wooden booth near the door with a bench and a telephone inside. People came from all over town to use it. Some stayed inside for ages, and it smelled strongly of stale cigarette smoke. Johnny tried not to listen to the muffled, one-sided conversations seeping out through the sliding door, but sometimes he just couldn’t help it. So he knew all about the deputy headmaster’s attempt to get another job, and the vicar’s daughter’s entanglement with someone called Michael, who appeared to be married. One day he heard Mrs Slack on the phone to some distant relative, droning on about her health and how she couldn’t cope at home. At first he was appalled to find the old lady virtually begging for money, but he felt better about her when she continued:
‘I don’t know what I’d do without Mrs Swanson. She comes in every day to see that I’m all right and never asks for a penny. She’s a marvellous woman. Sometimes I think she’s all that’s keeping me alive.’
He never told his mother what he had heard. He thought she would be angry with him for listening in. In the weeks to come, he was to wish that he had said something. But by then it was too late.
When it was quiet in the shop, Johnny had the chance to study the newspapers, looking at the advertisements for ideas. He knew the best adverts were in the Sunday papers, but he could never get a good look at them on the day, because the shop was shut; he just saw the headlines as he posted each copy through a letter box. To read them properly he had to wait till Hutch threw his own copies away; so when Johnny fished Reynolds’s News out of the bin on the Monday of half-term, it was covered in brown circles from the bottom of Hutch’s teacup.
Johnny