Jenny worked in the jam-factory, and there was something of the aroma
of ripe fruit about her: ripe strawberries, raspberries, plums,
damsons. She was plumpish and fresh: very red lips and very bright
eyes, reddish-brown, the colour of blackberry leaves in autumn, with
hair to match. Her little figure was neat; her small hands, with their
square-tipped fingers, deft and quick in their movements; there was
something at once rounded and clear-cut about everything she did.
A sea-faring admirer used to say that she was "a bit short in the beam,
but a daisy fur carryin' sail"; and that was the idea she gave: so
well-balanced, so trim, going off to work in her wide white apron on
those rare mornings when she shook off the yellow mackintosh.
Ben saw her like that for the first time crossing the Lee just below
the timber-yard with its cranes like black notes zigzagging out over
the river, which had for once discarded its fog. It was a day of bright
blue sky, immense, rounded, silvery clouds, fresh and clean; with a
wind which caught up the white apron and billowed it out for the sheer
fun of the thing: showing trim ankles, the turn of a plump calf, such
as Ben Cohen had never even thought of before, the realisation of which
was like wine: freshly tasted, red, fruity, running through his veins,
mounting to his head.
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