The Gramophone, Decembe·r, 1929

281

Bobbie's GraIllophone

A Short Story

By

ROBERT DARRELL

Illustrations by

LAURENCE

EAST

IT was great fun looking into shop windows, especially Paterson's, where they sold pianos and gramophones, and pretending that you had so much money that you didn't know what to do with i t . Bobbie spent much of his spare t ime at this absorbing game. -Whenever his mother sent him out upon an errand, or he had a spare half-hour, he would run as fast as his none too sturdy l i t t le legs would permit in the direction of the High Street.

The bright lights of the electric standards, the gaily illumined windows and the shining interiors of the tram-cars seemed like Fairyland after the dinginess of Parker's Oourt. There, even at midday, the sun did not penetrate, and at night the lamp at the corner shed only a feeble yellow glow upon the slinking forms of underfed cats and the shirt-sleeved men lolling in their doorways.

An archway connected Parker's Oourt with Fenders Street, a drab thoroughfare, but comparatively clean judged from Parker's Oourt standards. This in turn led into Vere Street where the houses, each with i ts l i t t le patch of garden, stood back from the pavement, a trifle haughtily, like so many women drawing their skirts about them for fear of contact with anyone hound for Parker's Oourt, or Bishop's o

Oourt, or Venner's Court, which were all synonymous to the ladies of Vere Street. A chemist's shop marked the corner where Vere Street issued out into the splendour of High Street. There were huge bottles of coloured liquids in the windows that afforded Bobbie immense delight. He used secretly to wonder what ills they cured, and sometimes even wished that he could develop a pain that would call for a draught out of that heavenly green one.

Next to the chemist's was a book shop; the gay colours of the magazine covers would wink at Bobbie attractively as he hurried past. Then came a large dr~per's, and after that, in quick succession, a boot shop, a cafe and' a florist's. The cafe, perhaps, was the most attractive of these;

such a glorious warm smell came up from the iron. grating while you stood over i t choosing the sorts of cakes you'd like for your tea. I t was necessary to go by the colours when you had never tasted a fancy cake in your life, or, of course, by the people's expressions while they ate them; except so many people didn't seem to care which they ate, or, at any rate, didn't shew i t by .t heir faces.

But i t was outside Paterson's Music Store that Bobbie's boots-(" soulless " but '''oly''his father had once described them and then roared with laughter)would most firmly come to anchor. I f he were lucky that thin man, with the black hair oiled well back, making his head look like a starling's back (Bobbie had seen starlings in the recreation grounds) and those funny horn-rimmed glasses, who served behind the music counter, might be playing the piano, or, better still, demonstrating a gramophone to a prospective buyer. Pianos were all very well, but you had to learn how to play them; gramophones were "the goods "; a small boy of nine could get as fine music out of them as the thin man with the starling-backed hair and the owlish eyes. At least so thought Bobbie, flattening his podgy nose against the window and breathing so hard that every now