Farewell To The East End

formidable frontage, and Fred was undersized even by Cockney standards, but he stood his ground and fought his corner manfully. The exchanges between them were rich, but Mrs B knew that the Sisters couldn’t do without him, so reluctantly they settled down to another period of truce.
    Mrs B certainly had a point. Fred certainly was messy. The main problem was his squint, the most spectacular you have ever seen. One eye pointed north-east, the other south-west, so he could see in both directions at once, but not in the middle. Not infrequently, when he was shovelling his ash, or tipping his coke, it would go in the wrong direction, but he would sweep it up willy-nilly, and often whatever he was sweeping, particularly the ash, would go the wrong way also. Ash could be flying all over the place, at which point Mrs B … well, I need not go on!
    We settled down to our bread with cheese and chutney, and dates and apples, with a few pots of lemon curd, jam or marmalade. We really appreciated our food because we had all been war-time children, brought up amid strict rationing. None of us had seen a banana or chocolate until we were in our mid to late teens, and had been brought up on one egg and a tiny bit of cheese that was to last a whole week. Bread, along with everything else, had been strictly rationed, so Mrs B’s delectable provender brought murmurs of delight.
    ‘Bagsie the crust.’
    ‘Not fair, you had it last time.’
    ‘Well, we’ll split it, then.’
    ‘How about cutting the crust off the other end, as well?’
    ‘No, it would go stale in the middle.’
    ‘Let’s toss for it.’
    I can’t remember who won the toss, but we settled down.
    ‘What do you make of Fred’s puzzle?’ I asked.
    ‘Don’t know,’ said Chummy, her mouth full. She sighed with contentment.
    ‘It’s a load of rubbish if you ask me,’ said Trixie.
    ‘It can’t be rubbish, it’s a question of arithmetic,’ I replied, cutting another wedge of cheese.
    ‘Well, you can think of arithmetic, old sport, I’ve got better things to think about. Pass the chutney.’ Chummy had a large frame to fill.
    ‘Leave some for Cynthia,’ I said. ‘She’ll be coming in any minute, and that’s her favourite.’
    ‘Whoops, sorry,’ said Chummy, spooning half back into the jar. ‘Greedy of me. Where is she, by the way? She should have been back an hour ago.’
    ‘Must have been held up somewhere,’ said Trixie. ‘No, it’s not arithmetic. I passed my School Certificate with merit, and I can assure you it’s not arithmetic.’
    ‘It is. Three nines are twenty-seven – that’s what they taught me at school – plus two makes twenty-nine.’
    ‘Correct. So what?’
    ‘So where’s the other shilling?’
    Trixie looked dubious. She didn’t have a quick answer, and she was a girl who liked quick-fire repartee. Eventually she said, ‘It’s a trick, that’s what it is. One of Fred’s low-down, wide-boy Cockney tricks.’
    ‘Nah ven, nah ven, oo’s callin’ me a low-down Cockney wide-boy, I wants to know?’
    Fred entered the kitchen, coke-hod in one hand, ash bucket in the other. His voice was friendly, and his toothless grin cheerful (well, not quite toothless, because he had one tooth, a huge yellow fang right in the centre). From his lower lip hung the remains of a soggy Woodbine.
    Trixie didn’t look abashed at having insulted the good fellow; she looked indignant.
    ‘Well, it is a trick. It must be. You and your “three men went into a restaurant” yarn.’
    Fred looked at her with his north-east eye and rubbed the side of his nose. He rolled the Woodbine from one side of his mouth to the other and sucked his tooth, then gave a sly wink.
    ‘Oh yeah? You reckons as ’ow it’s a trick. Well you work i’ ou’ Miss Trick – see? You jest work it out.’
    Fred slowly kneeled down at the stove and opened the flue. Trixie was furious, but Chummy came to the rescue.
    ‘I say, old sport, go and look in the big tin, see if there’s any of that cake left. She’s a gem, that woman Mrs B, a jewel. I wasted two years at the Cordon Bleu School of Cookery, fiddling about stuffing prunes with bacon and filling figs with fish, soppy things like that. But no one there could come up with a fruit cake like Mrs B’s.’
    Trixie calmed down as we tackled the cake.
    ‘Leave some for Cynthia,’ said Chummy. ‘She’ll be here in a minute.’
    ‘Aint she come back yet? Ve quiet one? She should be ’ere by now.’
    Fred, as