BETTY'S SHOP (A Reshuffling)

Betty was the envy of the catty, neighbour women.

Betty's shop sold newsagents, tobacco items, sweets, ices, soft drinks
and some "luxary" items like nylon stockings and big, Mother's Day-type
boxes of chocolates.

A local, working girl, she had "married up" (and "changed to Catholic")
to a pleasant man, who had decided to go into (small) business with
money inherited from a dead grandmother. As a result, Betty was
"gentry" (merely, middle class).

Betty was revered and treated in awe by the local people for one thing:
she knew about banks. Working-class people got paid, spent their money
weekly and had little savings. She lived in the gentry part of town,
where they were never quite accepted by the local "old rich."

She held a sway of terror over the neighbourhood, for in order to
"while away" her long, boring hours, she had honed to a fine edge her
gift for humour, cynical observation and glinting remarks.

Within a micro-second, she could beam into the achilles heel of
sensitive, adolescent girls -- their acne, clothes, make up, lastest
boyfriends, first mascara, false bra or promiscuity. Even I was
terrified, but I had a trump card to play.

It got so bad that some young people were afraid--no, terrified!--to
enter her shop and would send in available, local children for the
purchase.
But even that didn't fool her, and she would hoot "Is that for wee Mary
Smith that I see lurking outside, behind the pillar?" Sometimes she
went overboard and would hold a blushing person up to an half hour of
--spectacle, attention, ridicule-- while everyone around grinned or
fumed to be served.

-When the going got hot, I'd ask: "How's James doing?" James, her son,
was my contemporary, who kept flunking the same college exams that I
was breezing thro' in style. So she treated me like a "pro" and,
reasonably, left off the brass knuckles when she "played" with
me.

To my later embarassment, neither my parents nor myself (until my
senior university year) had a bank or bank account. So when an
occasional check (e.g., from government or university, etc.) came to
us, we took it to Betty, signed on the back, saw it stamped and then
got paid, in pound notes, direct from the till.