‘Excuse me,’ he puffed, standing on tiptoe to see over the high counter that separated the staff from the visiting public. ‘Excuse me, madam. I’ve been sent with a message. My aunt wants to put an advertisement in your paper.’
‘Which paper?’ said the woman impatiently.
Johnny was mystified. ‘The Echo,’ he said.
‘Which Echo? The Hampton, the Balgrave, the Stambleton …’
‘Stambleton,’ said Johnny. ‘I didn’t know you did the others too.’
‘Those, and the Dorford Chronicle, the Mardly Trumpet, the Nethercross Express—’ It sounded as if she was ready to go on for a long time.
Johnny interrupted, ‘They’re all written here?’
‘They’re all printed here. And your aunt can advertise in any or all of them.’
Johnny was ecstatic. He had no idea that his adverts might be seen by so many people. ‘Oh, all of them. I’m sure she’d want that.’
He handed his advertisement to the woman. She put on her glasses and started counting the words. Johnny had already done that several times. He knew that Stop Your Baby Wetting the Bed. Send a postal order for one shilling and a stamped addressed envelope to Box X added up to twenty-one words. It would cost him one shilling and sixpence. He had the money in his pocket. He was slightly worried that it might cost more if the box number was in double figures, like the horrible ‘Box 23’.
‘That will be sixteen shillings and ninepence,’ the lady said, as if it weren’t a small fortune.
‘Oh, I thought it would be one and six,’ said Johnny sheepishly. ‘Twenty-one words. It says so in the paper.’
‘That’s for one advert, for one week, in one paper – and without a box number,’ said the lady.
‘Oh, but Auntie says she must have a box,’ Johnny gulped, on the verge of tears. ‘She doesn’t want strangers to know where she lives. She wants you to collect the replies.’
‘I quite understand,’ said the lady, lifting her glasses to peer down at Johnny. ‘A woman can’t be too careful these days. But a box is sixpence a week.’
‘But I’ve only got one and six,’ said Johnny, putting his coins on the counter. ‘And I have to get the advert in. She told me to run here. I don’t know what to do.’ He could feel his eyes starting to sting.
For once, being small and pale worked wonders for Johnny. The woman smiled sympathetically, put her glasses back on and examined the advert again.
‘Well, you could have twelve words in one newspaper for a shilling,’ she said. ‘Let’s see if we can cut this down.’
She showed Johnny how ‘stamped addressed envelope’ could be abbreviated to ‘SAE’. ‘One shilling postal order’ could be written as ‘1/– PO’. She assured him that everyone would know what that meant. Like the box number, and ‘SAE’, it would count as just one word.
They ended up with: Stop Your Baby Wetting the Bed. Send 1/– PO & SAE to Box 5.
‘I shouldn’t really be showing you that,’ said the lady, who was getting ever more friendly. ‘Strictly speaking, I ought to encourage you to write more, so that we can charge extra. The other week someone came in with a little advert like this, and I persuaded him to spell out everything in full and put in the whole address of the paper. It pumped the price right up. I think I even got him to pay for a border round it. But he wasn’t a nice man. He was really rude. I don’t see why I should have to put up with discourtesy.’
Johnny thought back to the Instant Height advert. He hoped the lady was talking about the person who had tricked him into parting with money for that. ‘Well, my auntie will certainly be very grateful that you have been so helpful to me,’ he said in his best voice. ‘Now I really mustn’t hold you up any longer. Goodbye, madam.’
‘Goodbye,’ said the lady, smiling at his politeness. ‘Tell your aunt she can collect the replies on any weekday during office hours.’
‘She’ll probably send me,’ said Johnny.
He was on his way through the door and the lady was putting on her coat when she added, ‘Oh, how silly of me. I forgot to take your aunt’s name and address.’
Johnny hoped his panic didn’t show as he made up a fictitious address on the spot. Auntie Ada was becoming ever more real. And she had a surname now. It seemed to come to him from nowhere, but afterwards he thought it fitted her rather well. From now on she was Mrs Ada Fortune. She’d have to be married. ‘Miss Fortune’ just didn’t sound right.
Chapter 10
IN BUSINESS
After a week, Johnny returned to the newspaper office. He was late again. There was no way he could deliver all the papers and get there much before five o’clock. As before, the lady was in a hurry to leave.
‘I have quite a journey,’ she said. ‘I live in Mardly. The bus goes at twenty past.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Johnny, concealing his delight that she was not a Stambleton resident. He’d been worrying for days that she would realize he’d given a false address. He turned on the charm again. ‘Do forgive me for coming at this hour. My aunt has sent me to collect the replies to her advertisement. It’s Box Five.’
The woman turned to a rack of pigeonholes and took out a large envelope. She peeped inside, then sealed the flap. ‘Take care of it,’ she said. ‘There are a few letters in there. They might have money in them. Mind how you go.’
Johnny couldn’t wait to get away and open the package. ‘I won’t hold you up any longer, madam,’ he said, nodding politely on his way out. He dashed down to the edge of the canal and hid there until the woman had locked the door and set off for her bus stop. Then he tore open the big envelope. There were four smaller packets inside. Each of them contained a postal order for one shilling and a stamped addressed envelope for Johnny’s reply. Johnny remembered how he had felt, assembling his letter to the people offering the Secret of Instant Height. For a moment he pictured the senders of these letters, desperately hoping for the solution to their babies’ bedwetting, not suspecting that they were being tricked. But then he gathered up the postal orders. Four shillings. It was enough to cover the cost of this first advert, and to fund another, with money to spare to go back in the Peace Mug. He put the image of the anxious parents to the back of his mind, tucked everything back in the big envelope, and stuffed it down his jumper.
Up in his bedroom that night he wrote Make him sleep in a chair on four pieces of paper, and put one in each of the stamped addressed envelopes. Next morning, he popped them in the post box outside Hutch’s shop. All day he checked and rechecked that the postal orders were still in his pocket. After school, when the post office was open, he asked Hutch to cash them on behalf of Auntie Ada. The sound of the four shilling bits jangling together as he ran cheered his journey home through the rain.
Over the next couple of weeks, Johnny had a run of successes with:
Free yourself from rats …
Free yourself from mice …
Free yourself from spiders …
Free yourself from noisy neighbours …
and
Free yourself from nosy neighbours …
All of which had the answer,
Move house.
Not only were there no complaints, but one woman even sent in for the solution to her spider problem when she had already been tricked over the mice. Get into Films did well. There seemed to be a lot of would-be starlets around. For a shilling Johnny told them to Go to the cinema.
It was all very time-consuming. But Johnny had more time on his own now. His mother had found an extra job behind the bar at a run-down pub on the other side of town, and Johnny spent most evenings alone at home, making up adverts and practising Auntie Ada’s flowing handwriting.
There were disappointments. No one seemed to want to know how to scratch itches without leaving unsightly marks (Wear gloves), but there was a huge demand for a way to stop your husband disturbing you with his snoring (Sleep in a different room). That one brought the Peace Mug back to its original level. Hutch seemed to believe
that all the postal orders belonged to Auntie Ada. Johnny had told him that she did needlework in her sickbed, and sold it by post.
Some of the people who answered Johnny’s adverts didn’t send postal orders, but paid with unused postage stamps. At first Johnny was annoyed by that because, despite his growing business, he hardly ever sent any letters of his own. Then he had the brainwave of using the stamps for a different kind of scam. He put in an advert saying:
I will pay your rent for a year.
Send 15/– PO to cover expenses.
Eight people fell for it. They each received their rent for a year. Unfortunately for them, the year was 1066, and all they got was 3d. in stamps, which Johnny reckoned would have been enough for a fairly handsome property in those far-off days. There was one angry letter of complaint, sent to the box number. At first Johnny was worried. What if the disappointed customer told the newspaper what was going on, and they tried to track down Ada Fortune? Then (since he had plenty of stamps) he hit on the idea of writing back, using some of the language he’d seen in the law reports in the papers. He added in one of the best words Dr Langford had taught him: haemoptysis. He thought it sounded important, and he guessed that anyone stupid enough to think that a stranger would pay their rent for a year wouldn’t know that it meant ‘spitting blood’. Johnny used some of his earnings to buy thick paper and envelopes, and in his ever-improving handwriting he concocted a polite but firm letter, from a false address in London, in which he said that his legal advisers, and those of the newspaper, were in agreement (having consulted authorities on the law of haemoptysis) that there had been no deception, since no year had been specifically mentioned in the advertisement. He generously offered not to charge for the administrative costs that had been incurred in responding to the unjustified complaint. Johnny hoped that the angry man wouldn’t try to contact him again. He didn’t.
But, lucrative though it was, Johnny knew he had been lucky to get away with the rent scam. He understood now that people were much more likely to complain if they had paid a lot of money; and fifteen shillings was too much to ask for anything. It was safer to lure twenty people into parting with a shilling than to trick one into paying a pound. So he got rid of the remaining stamps with a cheap – but successful – offer:
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 opened out the huge newspaper. It took up almost the whole counter. He had to move aside the charity collection tin and a jar of Liquorice Allsorts to make room for it. He turned the pages, leafing through news and fashion tips, the sheet music for a popular song, a short story, cartoons, theatre reviews, and display adverts for cars and London department stores. Among the small ads, one entry caught his eye immediately. It was headed: CHEST DISEASES, and it went on:
Johnny read the advert through several times, trying to get his tongue round the strange word ‘Umckaloabo’. It sounded like something from Africa. With his practised eye, he couldn’t help calculating the price of such a wordy advertisement in a high-circulation paper. With all the special layout to make it look like a news story, you wouldn’t get much change from three pounds. Chas. H. Stevens of Wimbledon must have great faith in what he was selling, particularly as he wasn’t asking his customers for any money up front.
Johnny’s heart quickened. Maybe this advertisement was indeed the ‘wonderful news’ it claimed to be. Perhaps Mr Stevens really had found a cure for TB. If that was so, shouldn’t Dr Langford be told? Perhaps he could use Umckaloabo to help Olwen’s family. Johnny knew the Langfords didn’t take Reynolds’s News. They wouldn’t have seen the advertisement themselves. He took out some scissors from the drawer under the counter and carefully cut it out.
*
After work, Johnny went straight up the hill to Dr Langford’s house to tell him about Umckaloabo. Mrs Langford opened the door. She was tall and slim, like her husband, but while his limbs tended to flail around in an ungainly way, hers moved with an effortless grace, even though she sometimes put her hand to her back, as if it hurt to bend. Her steel-grey hair was twisted up at the back in a chignon. Johnny knew that was what it was called because he’d seen a diagram showing how to do it in the paper only that morning. Winnie had often admired Mrs Langford’s clothes, saying how well-made they were, and how well co-ordinated. Johnny had no opinion on how Mrs Langford’s skirt and blouse were constructed, but he could see that they matched. Both were a deep shade of blue.
‘
Hello, Johnny,’ said Mrs Langford. ‘Are you looking for your mother? She went home hours ago.’
‘No. I’ve brought something for Dr Langford,’ said Johnny, pulling the crumpled cutting from his pocket. ‘It’s important. I think Dr Langford ought to know. Someone’s found a cure for TB.’
‘Well, if they really have, he’ll be fascinated. Not to say amazed. Let me have a look at that. You’d better come in.’ She took the cutting and showed Johnny into the drawing room. ‘You sit by the fire and get warm. Now, where are my glasses?’
Johnny watched her search the room, which had more places to lose things than in his entire home. She ran her hand along the bookshelves, shook out plump cushions, dug down the back of the soft sofa and shuffled through piles of newspapers and magazines. ‘I don’t know where they get to. I must have had them just before I came to answer the door. Now, let’s see. What was I doing when you arrived?’ She paused and thought back. ‘That’s it. I was sewing. I was sitting just where you are now.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ said Johnny, jumping up. ‘I didn’t know this was your chair.’
‘Don’t be silly. You’re my guest. You can sit where you like. Just forgive me a moment.’ Johnny heard her knees click as she bent down and scrabbled on the floor behind his feet. She pulled out a work basket. An old sock dangled from under the lid. ‘I remember now. I slid it there when the bell rang – just in case it was the vicar or someone like that. I wouldn’t want him to catch me darning holes!’
Johnny held the basket while Mrs Langford, sighing, hauled herself back up again. Then she took it back, and lifted out her spectacles. ‘If I had sixpence for every time I’ve lost these, I’d be a very rich woman,’ she joked. ‘I’ve seen people with their glasses on special strings round their necks. Rather an ageing effect, I’ve always thought. But perhaps the time has come for me.’