Joy and Josephine by Monica Dickens

of the shop without it.’
    ‘Well, he hadn’t had his tea,’ defended Mrs Abinger. ‘You’d be offhand if you’d been called away from your tea, I don’t doubt.’
    ‘You know I hardly ever trouble about tea.’
    ‘It was wrong of me to go off and leave him with a shop full, enough to fluster anybody on a Friday. If it hadn’t been for this young monkey – ’ She fished about for Jo, who was still hidden behind her skirts. ‘Don’t pull at my legs like that, Jo. Did you ever know such a child?’
    ‘Nor want to!’ barked Mrs Loscoe suddenly. ‘Why must we have them to tea on Sunday, Dorothy?’
    ‘Ha, ha, Mother, you really are a card!’ Miss Loscoe leaned forward to tuck in a rug and hid her mother’s face until it should have sweetened a little. ‘You know you’re looking forward to your birthday party. Quite a little gathering we shall be, shan’t we? Won’t it be fun, Jo? I’m going to make such a scrumptious cake – ’
    ‘Jo.’ Mrs Abinger shook her. ‘Auntie Dot’s talking to you.’
    Josephine kicked at the chair wheel and jumped back in fright as the old lady suddenly lunged at her with a cackle of abuse.
    ‘Now, Mother, don’t get excited. I’d better go on,’ Miss Loscoe mouthed behind her mother’s back. ‘She get’s nervy if we hang about. We’re taking our constitutional as far as the cemetery and back, aren’t we, Mother?’
    ‘Yes, yes, yes!’ cried Mrs Loscoe testily, slumping back with a jerk that rocked the chair. ‘Push on, push on. No need to loiter jabbering here, if we’ve got to jabber to them all over again on Sunday. Push on!’ She rapped twice on the arm of the chair, like a bus conductor signalling to the driver.
    ‘No peace for the wicked!’ cried Miss Loscoe, and pushed the chair off the pavement with a jolt that caused her mother to turn round and chatter at her like a monkey.
    ‘Oh Mum,’ said Josephine, as they turned away, ‘need we go?’
    ‘Yes,’ said Mrs Abinger decidedly. ‘We need go. I might have let you off if you hadn’t been naughty to-day, but you’re having too much of your own way.’
    ‘Oh, Mu-um!’
    “If you don’t mend your ways, young lady, I’ll tell Mrs Loscoe what a bad little girl you are. Then you’ll catch it.’ Mrs Abinger used Mrs Loscoe as a bogeyman, as mothers once used Boney.
    Josephine began to cry again. Sometimes in bed in her little cupboard of a room, she knew Mrs Loscoe was behind the corner curtain where her clothes hung, trying to get out.
    It was not quite six o’clock, but Mr Arbinger had reversed the
‘Early Closing Thursdays’
notice so that it said
‘Closed’,
and gone up to his tea. When his wife came in with the grizzling child, he put his hands over his ears and went on reading the paper. He did not speak to them.
    Mrs Abinger gave his back an experienced look. ‘Come straight through and don’t bother Dad,’ she said. ‘Quickly to bed; that’s the place for you.’
    ‘What about my supper?’ Jo lingered by the table, and stopped crying when she saw the fruit cake. ‘Can I have a piece of cake, Mum?’ She moved her hand towards it watching her father. She did not trust him when he did not talk. His lengthy scoldings ran off her like water from a duck’s back; his rare silences made her feel uneasy.
    ‘Cut us a piece, Dad,’ she wheedled. She laid a finger on the cake, and he suddenly lowered the paper with a crackle that made her jump.
    ‘Take your hands off the food, child! Can’t a man sit down to his tea in peace after a day like I’ve had without women and children buzzing round him like bluebottles? I tell you, Ellie, I’ve had just about enough of it, what with you haring off like a maniac after that kid, who’s so spoiled she deserves to be sent back where she came from.’
    ‘I wouldn’t mind,’ said Josephine, reassured by the familiar grumble of his voice. ‘I wouldn’t mind going back to heaven.’
    ‘Heaven be damned. Who’s been stuffing you up