Diary of a Victorian Shopkeeper, 22nd October
Bridge Street c.1880, courtesy of Rob Thomson and Orkney Image Library.
There follows a second installment of the Victorian journal of MK – probably Margaret Kirkness, cofounder of our family business. If you have not yet read the story of this document’s discovery, I suggest you do so before proceeding. The only changes to the original document I have made are to introduce paragraph breaks to make it easier to read.
The whaler has departed for Dundee, thank the Lord, leaving one of its crew locked up in the tollbooth, and another in Mrs Scott’s boarding house, his arm in plaster and his head in bandages. This much I gathered while making deliveries this afternoon, the boy having been sent home for coughing like a stirk choking on a neep. It is heavy labour, for of course I cannot ride a bicycle – James says a woman’s anatomy prevents it – but must lug the basket, weighed down with bottles, jars and packages.
And lug it I did, the length of Albert Street, as far as Mr Goldberg’s emporium. Here I delivered two parcels wrapped in brown paper and one similarly cloaked bottle. What exactly they contained I did not know as James had prepared them. Rumours about Mr Goldberg’s origins flare up from time to time. Some say he is out of the Low Countries, some say Russia, others Poland. I heard an impertinent girl ask him once where his home was. ‘My dear wife is buried in the keerkyard by the cathedral,’ he replied. ‘And my ‘eart weeth her.’ He smiled sadly at the girl. ‘Home is where the ‘eart is,’ he said, his brown eyes moistening. Wherever he is from, his shop is a credit to him and a boon to the town. His selection of glassware and china is of a quality and range surely unmatched in the whole of North Britain.
He greeted me in his habitual gentlemanly way: ‘Ah, Madame Keerkness, a pleasure to ‘ave my few necessaries supplied by your own fair ‘and. I thank you.’ And he gave a little bow.
‘Between our establishment and yours, sir,’ I said, ‘I have passed five other grocer’s shops. It is an honour that you should choose us to supply you.’
‘Quality ees like buying the oats,’ he said. ‘If you want good, clean oats, you ‘ave to pay a fair price. If you want oats already run through the ‘orse...well, that’s a leettle cheaper.’ And he twisted the ends of his moustache in his fingertips. Maybe I was wrong about his gentlemanliness. Or maybe humour is different in Russia. Or Poland.
Now I turn to an alarming turn of events, which I shy from setting down in these pages, but must.
I proceeded up Bridge Street Wynd. James refuses to walk here on our occasional Sunday perambulations. He claims that it smells, which it does, but so does every close and lane in this town. Really I believe it is unhappy memories of his childhood in this quarter that repel him. His own father having died, and his stepfather feeling the need to assert paternal authority with ‘the rod,’ it was a cheerless household. One shining exception was James’s grandmother, Jean Groatie. Granny Groatie, as he calls her. From the little James talks of his bairnhood, I suspect he was largely brought up by this redoubtable lady: modest in her own habits but kind-hearted and generous to those she loved. My next delivery was to her.
I knocked on her door at the top of the wynd, more to allow her an interval to compose herself than in expectation of her opening the door. I brought her eggs and jam to the top of my basket, then knocked again and went it. ‘Good day, Jean,’ I called into the darkness of her room. ‘It’s Margaret. I have your messages.’
Unusually, there was no light from the fire, which invariably smouldered away, filling the room with peat smoke, smuts, and a modicum of warmth. The curtain was drawn at the window. I pulled it back, and light dribbled in. ‘Jean?’ I said. And then a gasp rose involuntarily to my lips. For there she was, prostrate on the floor by the box bed, her eyes wide and staring, her skin as white as the cotton of her goonie. Her spirit had departed its earthly frame.
To be continued.
The evocative photograph of Bridge Street dates to around 1880, and it must have looked very like this as MK hurried along it towards Mr Goldberg’s emporium (which was in the premises where Aal Fired Up is now.) The photo was uploaded to the invaluable Orkney Image Library in 2007 by Rob Thomson, and reproduced here with thanks to them both.
This diary appeared in The Orcadian on 25th October 2023. A new one appears weekly. I post them in this blog a few days after each newspaper appearance, with added illustrations., and occasional small corrections or additions.