About this story
A schoolyard fight with Sid turns into friendship, and inside a wrecked ship you carve your name beside his sister Ann's. She agrees to be your girl and splits a sixpence between you, a promise tested within days, when your uncle puts you on the bus to a Folkestone apprenticeship.
How it opens
Your aunt and uncle's little shop offered toys, books, china, fishing tackle, and forbidden corners.
Beyond its window, flat fields met the New Romney street beneath the slow arms of a windmill.
Uncle KippsArtie, keep clear of Pornick's boy; that family makes noise as if it owns both shops.
Aunt KippsAnd do not touch the trumpet unless you can remember the promise not to blow it.
Sid PornickArtie! The doctor's goat is loose again, and this time we saw it first!
Choose
Your father started the quarrel, but neither of us did.
Say it again and we fight where both shops can see.