Outside on its rusty supports hung the sign of the proud
Medici--three gold balls.
Inside the pawnbroker's shop nothing was proud, except perhaps a
grandfather clock that stood in a corner like an old aristocrat who
has buttoned his coat, cocked his hat, and decided to go down hill
with an air. For the rest--just junk lingering in this sordid,
waiting-room atmosphere to be reclaimed and taken home. I looked at
it and saw it as junk; then I looked again, knew that some of it had
been hard to part with, was, in fact, transmuted by affection so that
its very frayed unloveliness brought tears to their eyes. Those
cheap, badly-made china shepherdesses designed to simper across a
mantelpiece at the girlish gallant whose flirtatious salute was
ruined because the hand that once held his hat had vanished--how
remarkable that anyone had made them, how remarkable that anyone had
cared sufficiently to buy them! There they were in the pawnshop, and
perhaps some poor woman scraping up four-pence interest to keep them
hers, gazing at her bare mantelpiece, longing for their sugary
smiles, the cheap, conventional romance of them....
* * *
"Something'll happen soon," said the pawnbroker to me. "You just
have to wait."
So I waited for comedy or pathos in the dim crowded shop that smelt
of undusted china and old boots. Beyond the stacked window--so full
of clocks and fractious bronze horses, of watches and silly shaped
silver vases--I saw a busy London district; people passing and
repassing, tramcars at congested cross-roads, omnibuses, women
shopping and stopping to talk, their baskets over their arms. I
became aware of a man in a blue overcoat examining the window.
"He's an old hand at 'popping' things," said the pawnbroker.
"You know him then?"
"Never seen him before; but I can tell."
"How?"
"Well, just watch the way he's going over my stock. I bet he's sized
up every blessed thing in the window. It's the jewellery he's
interested in. He's wondering if I'm overstocked with gold
bracelets. See, he's counting them. He's not sure. He's coming in.
You listen!"
The man in the blue overcoat entered, and spoke in a firm, rather
condescending manner.
"Look here," he said, "would you care to give me anything on this? I
shall be getting it out some day."
He threw on the counter a gold bangle.
"Ten shillings," said the pawnbroker.
"Dirty dog!" said the man, and walked out.
"Old X. round the corner'll give him a pound for it," said the
pawnbroker calmly. "He's rather low in bangles."
A well-dressed young man in a great hurry rushed in and detached a
watch from his chain:
"I've never done this before!" he said. "But I want some money
quickly."
It was a good watch, thin as a wafer. Gold.
"Two pounds?"
"Right!" Off he rushed.
All sorts came in, reflected the pawnbroker, you could never tell.
Some needed money desperately and some just wanted it at the moment.
Young men pawn watches to pay the landlady, to back a horse, to take
a girl out to dinner, to stave off a creditor, to buy food. A decent
coat disguises motives. Sometimes a "real lady," who had been
playing too much bridge, "popped" something really worth while, and
always in a quiet shop like this; sometimes "flashy" people came with
diamonds, and then you had to keep your eyes open.
In came a little wisp of a woman. She put sixpence on the counter.
I noticed her thin wrists and the criss-cross grimed lines on her
fingers. She called the pawnbroker "sir." When she had gone he
showed me the article on which she was paying interest. It was a
small box with mother-of-pearl diamonds set in the lid, many of them
missing. She had been paying interest for two years.
In every pawnshop there are thousands of things like this box: links
with happier days perhaps, things which sentiment enthrones in the
heart. I could build up a dozen stories round this box: the gift of
a mother, a dead husband, a son? A Pandora's box full of the winds
of old happiness? I leave it to your imagination.
* * *
Then, at the tail of a number of people, some of whom were obviously
pledging their overcoats for a long drink of beer, came a woman with
dark rings round her eyes, and she said:
"My husband's ill ... very ill ... and I must, I simply must...."
She wrestled unhappily with her left hand and placed on the counter a
plain gold ring....
"That was horrible," I said.
"Look here," replied the pawnbroker. He opened a drawer and ran his
fingers through a pile of wedding rings. "They keep them to the
end," he explained, "but----"
"I understand. I've seen quite enough. I think I'll be moving on."