Fishcakes and Felonry

Sears and Roe, purveyors of fishcakes and treacle-sweets, an eye on the quick-and-run where less-finer fare is sold, to encourage a second hob at the can. I recall supping on genuine Indian craw, made form cobnut and brown stain; and the felon behind the counter scouting out greenhorns and wee knockers. His wife, so enlarged that the veins in her legs, right up to the thigh, bulged and crooked like a house on fire, her floral dress cowed round the drawl of her hips, a sight worse than buggery or hard-candy. She sat en-tooled as we rocked through the store, pilfering Pixie Sticks and Sipsacs and allsorts of odds and felonry. Her husband, hat in hand, penciled in racing stubs and smoked Uruguayan cigars that he stowed in a box behind the counter, a real five-and-dime operation. I met his daughter’s husband, a fast-chef at a men’s club, and recalled my youthful knocking-around, to which he replied, ‘she was a fat one, she was, all veins and blubber and those too-tight reading specs.’ She, the fat lady, a nickname I passed round like an alms cap, one even our parents used to refer to the poor woman, collapsed behind the counter one day while serving the ice-maker from the hockey rink, three-fingers, as we called him, as he’d had the others sheared off like cog-pins, her husband kneeing the racing barrier, track-stubs squeezed harder than hard-candy or algebra in his fists, while she took her last gasp of worldly air, the veins in her legs, right up to her thighs, bulging and crooking like a house on fire.