the better to resist the tarnish – but the insignia was Aaron Hadfield’s, and the work maybe Hadfield’s own: a name worth something in itself, and the piece more than a century old, made in Sheffield, the City of Steel.
It reminded him of Birmingham, that knife. The Lockhart workshop in the Jewellers’ Quarter. The voices of his father and Graeme and Christy, before the war, his brothers’ banter and their father’s songs rising and falling as they worked together. The life which he was meant to have and which he has been cut off from.
He would have kept it, if he could – the knife – but it came through Noakes’s boys, not Michael’s private man. Word might have got back. It’s nice work, not that Noakes will know it. Noakes will let it go for a song. Noakes wouldn’t know nice work if you walked up and sheathed it in his throat.
‘Daddy,’ Iris calls, ‘look, I made room for us! Now we can put more flowers in. Isn’t it good?’
‘Aye,’ he says, ‘good,’ and the dear child smiles up at him, for all the world as if his words are payment made in silver.
*
This is the day when the Lane rests. On Saturdays alone, Middlesex and its dependent streets lose their rush and noise. The fight goes out of them. They become frail and thin, like fields where a fair has been and gone.
Columbia Road isn’t so worn. Its market only lasts a day, and so it lives a separate life. Paul Jones makes his round, door to door, out and home to the dairy in Ezra Street. The Birdcage and the shops are open. Passersby peer in their windows. Now and then one goes in, blinking in the blue fluorescence.
Other markets take their place. Club Row and Spitalfields, Whitechapel Waste and Kingsland Waste, the Broadway and the Roman, and half-ruined Watney Street, where Bernadette fans herself with Wells’s The Invisible Man at the stall – two pitches long – of Mr Nothing-Over-Thruppence.
‘Vanishing cream, Mrs Malcolm?’ Mr Nothing says, and Bernadette has to laugh, light-headed, the girl in her three months’ old and there to stay, so there already she feels like she might stay put forever: there’s no vanishing her away.
(Sybil, Bernadette calls her: Sybil Malcolm, after her own mother; even if, as yet, this Sybil is only a dream of a child, a slip of a girl coiled in bliss, without fear or hunger.)
‘No!’ she says, ‘no, no,’ and she leans gingerly against the sun-warm spread of wares, the scented soap, the exercise books, the elephants carved from Authentic Alabaster. ‘I want some reading, for my son.’
‘He’s on to novels now, is he? My, but he’s a quick little fellow. It’ll be the grammar school for him. That one you have, that’s a page turner. My clients speak highly of it. See how he goes on with that one. Bring it back when he’s done and we’ll choose him out another.’
Bernadette opens the book. But what devilry must happen to make a man invisible?
‘I don’t want him frightening himself,’ she says. ‘I don’t want him losing sleep. Do you have something educational?’
‘Bottles of ink,’ Mr Nothing says, and again, ‘bottles of ink,’ so that Bernadette laughs some more: he sounds so like the parrot in Neville’s pirate story. ‘Ten thousand words in every bottle, and every word an education! Or, now, there’s this by Mr Orwell, calls itself a fairy story. Very intellectual man. Or here, this is good old Strang. Round the World in Seven Days . This is the one for him.’
‘I’ll think on it.’
‘Thruppence a read, for as long as he likes –’
‘I’ll think on it,’ Bernadette says, and Mr Nothing tips his hat and twinkles.
‘I’ll keep it for you, Mrs Malcolm. I’ll put it by until you say so. You’ll come by later, now, won’t you?’
Flatterer, Bernadette thinks. Charmer, sweet-talker, honey-tongue. But Clarence honeys his words, too, when he puts on his crown. He’s sweet enough in his old fedora, but no one’s sweeter than the Banana
It reminded him of Birmingham, that knife. The Lockhart workshop in the Jewellers’ Quarter. The voices of his father and Graeme and Christy, before the war, his brothers’ banter and their father’s songs rising and falling as they worked together. The life which he was meant to have and which he has been cut off from.
He would have kept it, if he could – the knife – but it came through Noakes’s boys, not Michael’s private man. Word might have got back. It’s nice work, not that Noakes will know it. Noakes will let it go for a song. Noakes wouldn’t know nice work if you walked up and sheathed it in his throat.
‘Daddy,’ Iris calls, ‘look, I made room for us! Now we can put more flowers in. Isn’t it good?’
‘Aye,’ he says, ‘good,’ and the dear child smiles up at him, for all the world as if his words are payment made in silver.
*
This is the day when the Lane rests. On Saturdays alone, Middlesex and its dependent streets lose their rush and noise. The fight goes out of them. They become frail and thin, like fields where a fair has been and gone.
Columbia Road isn’t so worn. Its market only lasts a day, and so it lives a separate life. Paul Jones makes his round, door to door, out and home to the dairy in Ezra Street. The Birdcage and the shops are open. Passersby peer in their windows. Now and then one goes in, blinking in the blue fluorescence.
Other markets take their place. Club Row and Spitalfields, Whitechapel Waste and Kingsland Waste, the Broadway and the Roman, and half-ruined Watney Street, where Bernadette fans herself with Wells’s The Invisible Man at the stall – two pitches long – of Mr Nothing-Over-Thruppence.
‘Vanishing cream, Mrs Malcolm?’ Mr Nothing says, and Bernadette has to laugh, light-headed, the girl in her three months’ old and there to stay, so there already she feels like she might stay put forever: there’s no vanishing her away.
(Sybil, Bernadette calls her: Sybil Malcolm, after her own mother; even if, as yet, this Sybil is only a dream of a child, a slip of a girl coiled in bliss, without fear or hunger.)
‘No!’ she says, ‘no, no,’ and she leans gingerly against the sun-warm spread of wares, the scented soap, the exercise books, the elephants carved from Authentic Alabaster. ‘I want some reading, for my son.’
‘He’s on to novels now, is he? My, but he’s a quick little fellow. It’ll be the grammar school for him. That one you have, that’s a page turner. My clients speak highly of it. See how he goes on with that one. Bring it back when he’s done and we’ll choose him out another.’
Bernadette opens the book. But what devilry must happen to make a man invisible?
‘I don’t want him frightening himself,’ she says. ‘I don’t want him losing sleep. Do you have something educational?’
‘Bottles of ink,’ Mr Nothing says, and again, ‘bottles of ink,’ so that Bernadette laughs some more: he sounds so like the parrot in Neville’s pirate story. ‘Ten thousand words in every bottle, and every word an education! Or, now, there’s this by Mr Orwell, calls itself a fairy story. Very intellectual man. Or here, this is good old Strang. Round the World in Seven Days . This is the one for him.’
‘I’ll think on it.’
‘Thruppence a read, for as long as he likes –’
‘I’ll think on it,’ Bernadette says, and Mr Nothing tips his hat and twinkles.
‘I’ll keep it for you, Mrs Malcolm. I’ll put it by until you say so. You’ll come by later, now, won’t you?’
Flatterer, Bernadette thinks. Charmer, sweet-talker, honey-tongue. But Clarence honeys his words, too, when he puts on his crown. He’s sweet enough in his old fedora, but no one’s sweeter than the Banana
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