Primrose Square Read Online Free Page A

had not, and greying black hair clipped short. He wore a baize apron over his collarless flannel shirt and looked as if he hadn’t shaved that day, but the good thing – the thing that mattered – was that he was smiling. His mood was good.
    A great rush of relief enveloped her, as she smiled back and cried that she was home.
    â€˜Can see that.’ He set down the piece of leather he’d been shaping and, loosening his apron, came round from the counter. ‘Might as well lock up, then, eh? There’ll be nobody else in today and your ma’ll have the tea ready.’
    Hope so, thought Elinor, for meals were always to be ready when Dad wanted them. As she stood watching her father lock his door, breathing in the familiar smells of leather and shoe polish that had always been a part of his shop and indeed of her own life, she quietly crossed her fingers.

Six
    When she was a child, Elinor had thought her family very lucky to live over a shop, rather than in one of the tenements of Friar’s Wynd. Though wishing they could move out of the Wynd altogether, she still felt that way, for at least in their little flat there wasn’t the same sense of being surrounded by people, the constant sound of footsteps on the stairs, the smell of cooking that wasn’t theirs.
    On the other hand, you couldn’t say there was much space to spare over the cobbler’s shop. A cramped living room with a kitchen range, a sink, a table and chairs, and a bed in the wall for Corrie. A room for her parents, a cupboard for herself – for it was no bigger than that – and a toilet. No bathroom, of course, so getting washed involved taking it in turns to carry water to the washstand in the one bedroom, and hauling out the hip bath for bathing when other folk weren’t around. No wonder Elinor was so happy to be living-in at the Primrose! It would have been worth it, just for the bathroom.
    But small though her dad’s flat was, there was still the rent to find, for of course he didn’t own the property, only leased it from the man he’d worked for as a young man. That was a man who’d given up shoe mending to run a grocery in Newington, saying it was more profitable than cobbling in Friar’s Wynd – and heaven knows that could only have been true, for cobbling wasn’t profitable at all. How many people could afford to have their shoes mended? How many children didn’t have shoes or boots, anyway?
    Walter, though, always said they could manage with what he made. Pay the rent, buy the food, as long as Hessie kept up her work, cleaning at Logie’s Princes Street store, and ‘obliging’ various ladies in the New Town. And Hessie did, of course, keep on with her cleaning jobs, and never risked saying they’d manage a lot better if Walt didn’t go to the pub so much. Neither of her children blamed her for that.
    â€˜Come on, come on, up the stair, then,’ Walter Rae was ordering now, as Elinor still lingered, looking down at the shelves behind the counter where pairs of shoes and boots were tied by their laces and labelled with their owners’ names. Seemed to her she remembered seeing a good many of these on the shelves before. Were any folk coming in to collect their shoes? Just how much would her dad be short, paying his bills that week? As soon as he’d had his tea, she knew he’d be out to the Dragon, or the Castle, or whichever pub he chose. He’d find the money from somewhere, always did. Probably Hessie’s purse, or one of the boxes where she kept funds for this and that.
    Maybe I can find a shilling to put in one of Ma’s boxes, Elinor was thinking, and would have looked in her own purse if her father hadn’t been pushing her upwards.
    â€˜Come on, what are you waiting for? I can smell something good. Always does well for you, you know, your ma.’
    â€˜Does well for everybody,’ Elinor retorted, opening the