At the serving window, the cook rang a brass bell, and a waiter carrying a tray of delicacies navigated around an old man smoking a cigar, dodged a reckless newspaper boy, and brought the steaming macaroni to their table.
The macaroni was coated in sauce, topped with a layer of grated cheese, and garnished with scattered bits of black olives and mint leaves.
The taste was passable. The macaroni set meal costing a few pence even included a cup of espresso, though it was utterly devoid of flavor, leaving only bitterness.
Despite the smoky, chaotic atmosphere in the shop, the steaming plate of pasta managed to somewhat dispel the morning’s hunger and chill.
Dolly refocused her attention and quickly finished breakfast with Mary.
They first went to a nearby wholesale store to purchase several pounds’ worth of daily groceries. This time, the quantity was larger than usual, so the wholesale price was slightly cheaper.
Dolly also found a blackboard at a secondhand shop and bought several boxes of chalk, planning to hang a sign outside the door.
As for seals, she had two sets made at a specialized seal engraving shop.
One was the name of Nash Grocery Store, and the other was a rolling seal with adjustable numbers.
Customizing a seal wasn’t expensive, but it required picking it up two days later.
Finally, they left the bustling market and walked along Whitechapel Road to begin purchasing ingredients for making cooked food.
The most popular butcher shop nearby was called Barpini Brothers Butcher Shop.
This shop stood alone, with a very spacious storefront where many types of fresh meat could be bought, and eggs could also be ordered here.
Moreover, diagonally across the street was the Commercial Street Police Station, which managed security in the White Chapel area, providing a certain deterrent effect, so there was no need to worry about pickpockets.
Dolly and Mary were buying ingredients to make meat broth pudding.
When it came to buying meat, Mary was the expert. She entered the shop, pushed her way through the crowd picking and choosing around the counter, and began selecting the meat.
Meanwhile, Dolly stood by the door, holding a basket and observing the shop.
Inside the shop, several wooden counters were set up, with various types of meat hanging from them for customers to choose from.
At a glance, beef and lamb were the most prominent, but there was also plenty of pork and poultry, along with various types of game.
The meat was divided into different cuts, each priced differently. Even various offal and entrails were prominently displayed.
Indeed, as long as people were poor enough, they would eat any kind of meat. There was no such thing as offal being unsellable, allowing her to snatch a bargain.
The price range for meat here was wide. The cheapest Australian frozen pork cost only six or seven pence per pound.
Chickens and ducks were all sold at fixed prices, with a difference of up to one Shilling between a fat duck and a lean one.
The most expensive cuts were beef and lamb ribs, with English beef ribs priced at over twenty pence per pound.
There was even more expensive meat, but this was the East End, where cheap meat was the most popular.
Several butchers, dressed in suits with cotton and linen aprons over them, bustled about behind the counters.
Some were deboning, some weighing, and others calculating accounts. Their roles were clearly divided, and she couldn’t tell which two were the brothers who owned the shop.
Information gathered from major newspapers allowed Dolly to clearly realize that even England, which had long relied on animal husbandry to maintain the empire’s foundation, was currently in the midst of a comprehensive agricultural depression.
At London Port, frozen meat from Australia, the United States, and New Zealand was brought into England by steamships.
Most of this meat came from vast foreign pastures and was very cheap, greatly impacting the domestic livestock industry.
At the same time, the prices of England’s native livestock and grains were also affected. All cheap grains seen on the market were imported, including animal feed.
This only became possible after the repeal of the Corn Laws several decades ago, which significantly diminished the value of land in England.
For industrialists and merchants, this was a good thing.
The more choices the market had and the less dependent it was on land, the better it was for business.
But for the old aristocracy, this upheaval became a catastrophic blow.
Land depreciated too quickly, and the crop market was influenced by imported goods. The heads that the landed gentry had held high for a lifetime were finally broken.
In the newspapers, one could frequently see marriage registrations between some earls with ancient titles and the daughters of merchants from various countries.
Currently, as a low-level small trader with Irish heritage, Dolly was indifferent to the tragedies of the noble lords. Instead, she believed they had not suffered enough.
In Mr. Nash’s recollections of his youth, Ireland was ruined decades ago by these English landed gentry and landlords.
Relying on unequal systems, they occupied most of Ireland’s fertile farmland and pastures.
They marginalized local tenant farmers and landlords, forcing them to grow potatoes only on barren land.
Later, when late blight broke out continuously for several years, this man-made disaster starved millions of Irish people to death, with two million fleeing.
The English government stood aloof, devising ways to block aid to Ireland and continuing to export grain from Ireland itself to maintain England’s agricultural market.
Recalling those dark years of famine in Ireland and the relatives who starved or fell ill and died during those years, Mr. Nash always said it was a deliberate ethnic cleansing.
Now, these noble lords who often owned half a county’s worth of land, the landed gentry, and bureaucrats with aristocratic backgrounds—not a single one of them had clean hands.
And even now, the Irish in London were still seen as mere weeds in the eyes of the powerful elite.
She was still silently lost in her thoughts when she turned to see that Mary had finished her shopping, squeezing her way out with a basket full of meat.
Mary had bought four or five pounds of pork and offal to make meat broth pudding, and also purchased a chicken for twenty pence to prepare for dinner.
Mother and daughter slowly began their journey back, quickening their pace toward Clark Street before the rain began to fall.
…
On Clark Street, just as the two of them arrived home, a light, pattering drizzle began to fall outside.
Mr. Nash was entertaining guests, so Dolly and Mary took the ingredients into the kitchen, rolling up their sleeves to clean and tidy up the space.
The Nash family’s kitchen was neither small nor large, but because it also served as the dining room and washroom, and was cluttered with many miscellaneous items, it often felt cramped when in use.
However, with the acquisition of a fully functional large stove, many of the small miscellaneous items had become obsolete.
Clearing out the items that were no longer needed, Dolly sold them all to the widow who ran the second-hand furniture shop.
From her shop, she exchanged them for a wooden shelf, on which she organized all the kitchen items that were still in use.
As for the washing supplies, Dolly moved them to the storage room originally intended for Mary’s nursery.
Now Mary no longer needed to help with childcare, and the crib in the storage room had been sold secondhand by Dolly.
She had exchanged it for several sets of wooden shelves at the secondhand shop, placing them deep in the storage room to stockpile inventory.
Using Soap to lather up a cleaning cloth, Dolly washed the windows and doors in the kitchen, then carried two buckets of water to mop the floor clean.
After half a morning of tidying up, both the kitchen and storage room had undergone a dramatic transformation.
The once cluttered and cramped kitchen now had space reserved for a large stove, with plenty of room left over.
Even after adding a dining table, chairs, and stools, it wouldn’t be completely packed.
By the time Dolly finished these tasks, she was so exhausted she could hardly straighten her back.
However, Mr. Nash had to go out to deliver milk at noon.
Dolly could only impassively brew a strong pot of black tea and pair it with a few Biscuits for lunch.
After mustering her energy, she first settled accounts with Mr. Nash.
Mr. Nash had minded the shop all morning, collecting two hundred and sixty-eight pence from a total of eighteen customers.
Only after Dolly counted everything clearly did she begin preparing to receive the large shipment of goods ordered that morning.
Meanwhile, Mary was feeling lighthearted. Even after a morning of work, she still had the energy to hum a tune while cooking.
Tying on an apron, she held the chicken she had bought over the stove to singe off any remaining feathers.
Today was the last time she would use this small stove, planning to make a stewed chicken—a once-a-week treat to improve their meals.
Outside, rain began to fall. Delivery carts from various wholesalers, all fitted with canopies, came and went, transporting the items they had ordered.
Dolly smoothly handled the handover with these delivery cart drivers. After counting everything, she signed the receipts and casually gave each driver a few packets of three farthings goods.
She took the opportunity to chat casually with the drivers.
These cart drivers, often overlooked and disrespected, actually knew quite a bit of gossip. With a little familiarity, one could glean a lot from their casual remarks.
In her previous life, when Dolly had sought out competitors’ contract manufacturers and raw material suppliers, she had used this simple method—bribing truck drivers.
The business world was like a battlefield, a constant life-or-death struggle, and she never cared about notions of benevolence or morality.
The cart driver who delivered the final batch of goods during the midday downpour was named Ronald, a simple, honest old man who worked for a large grain and oil wholesale store.
After unloading the goods, he leaned crookedly to one side, smoking a cigar while waiting for Dolly to check the items and for the rain outside to lighten before heading to his next stop.
Dolly weighed all two to three hundred pounds of flour before signing the receipt.
As usual, after signing, she grabbed a handful of tea packets, stuffed them into a paper bag, and handed it to the old man.
She said, “This is floral tea we made ourselves at the shop. You can take it home for your wife to try.”
Ronald, the old man leaning idly against the counter, was a bit taken aback.
“For me?”
The old man raised his eyebrows, feeling somewhat surprised, but he still accepted the tea packets Dolly offered, wrapped them up, and tucked them into the pocket of his worn tweed coat.
Perhaps feeling that the person before him had acknowledged his presence, Ronald straightened up and stubbed out his cigar.
Clearing his throat, he casually remarked, “So, your family is planning to start making ready-to-eat food yourselves?”
“Yes, we plan to bake our own bread, make meat broth pudding, biscuits and jam, and candies and such.”
Dolly pointed toward the kitchen behind the curtain.
Ronald nodded and said, “That’s good, it’ll save quite a bit on costs.”
He looked back outside, where heavy rain continued to fall from the eaves, shattering on the ground like strings of crystal beads.
“Why won’t this rain let up a bit? I still have to deliver flour to the Penochi Shirt Factory.”
Author’s note: