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Old Things Most Precious Do Not Shine, pt. 1

novella

Active Member
From my recent trip to Lincolnshire, an experiment in lost punctuation, integrated dialogue, and memory. Part one of maybe three.

Old Things Most Precious Do Not Shine

Free quid luv. For you. He winked at me automatically. Did it to everyone, I guessed. Try your luck, why not. He did it without thinking and held out his hand for the money. In his other hand was the thing I wanted, inside a used paper bag he’d scrumbled around for under the table.

I fished out three pound coins. Glad to get rid of them, ruining my wallet with fat bulges, hard edges. I set the coins in his pink palm, took the bag from him and shoved it into my knapsack. He lit a fag and the smoke hung around his head. Ta luv. Bye now.

Moist clouds of bacon, fry oil, damp tea hung in the square, smelling better than the taste. The canteen lorry swapped out food for coins. Next. The queue moved forward. Bacon baps, sausage rolls, something they call a hamburger. Not to me. I keep walking, stomach growling, past the cockles man, the Taiwan watches, the rows of cheap commemorative mugs. Racks of sleazy nightclub clothes, mistakes waiting to happen to some girl in clacking heels.

At the market edge a guy was auctioning. Men stood, hands in their pockets, careful not to bid. A box of fresh carrots still muddy, a rusted bicycle with no seat, then something like head pincers. Maybe ice tongs. Boxes lay waiting their turn. Things no one wanted. I watched for a while, thinking of my paper bag. Sometimes you get lucky. The bidding was sluggish. A chipped tea set, missing pieces. Eighty P, one pound, a pound ten. Sold to the man in beige. Rubbish, said a fat woman in a pale blue cloth coat. She spoke to everyone and no one, her knit tam jaunty with discontent. Swung a bare cabbage in a net bag, her ready weapon. I edged away.

At the chippie, I said just tea and fried potatoes. The fish at the neighboring table was shedding limp batter, thick and wet. Definitely not that. My glasses steamed up, as if submerging, down down through fog, obscuring the plastic orange chairs, yellow tables, and mumbling couples. Their gentle disappointment in it all, the cod, the oldish milk, the marriage. Could’ve done better down the road, their faces said.

The girl set a metal tea pot on the table, a cold cup, milk in a jug. I poured it out, clear amber. One thing you can count on, against the cold, against accusations of idleness. Tea, beyond reproach.

I reached into the knapsack and felt around for the paper bag. Inside it was a plastic baggie. The metal guy scanned the fens with a detector, picking up anything to sell. Most of his table was predictable: hundred year old coins, old horseshoes, bits of tack, spent shells and wartime debris, shoe buckles, buttons, and square-head nails. In a glass cabinet, a few relics from crashed warplanes, the stuff for real buyers: a bombsight, a compass, a Lucky Strikes tin. Then I saw my little sack, abandoned on the dirty felt next to sharp bits of anonymous rust.


Sitting in the chippie, I felt through the bag. Little round discs, most illegible, tiny, thin. Just bits of metal. A few Roman, I guessed, most later. And one other. I searched with my fingers into the bag to feel it, the horse with its prancing legs, the wheel between the legs. Just barely there, to trace round with the pad of a finger. Celtic silver under black, I knew it. I could feel it pulling me. I could see the horse’s foot, the curving boar’s quill. A bag of tarnish and green dust. A bit of silver.

At the table it took all my concentration to veer away, to look at everything else, talk to the guy, he’s the expert, right? Play that game. Tell me about this eel hook. And about this buckle. How much for these? And these little coins?

Free quid, luv. For you. Thump thump thump. Breathe. Smile.

Hmmm. Okay.

He grinned his crooked teeth at me. Visiting? he asks, not waiting for an answer. Nasty weather.

Not so bad, I said, watching him pick up the coins. Not watching his hand, but his eyes. I like the windmills. And the beer.





The chips hit the table, a plate of limp whitish fingers. Anyway, they’d been a gesture. Good will for taking up space. Finished the tea. Tucked the bag back into the corner of the knapsack, feeling watched.

A folded card on the table said, This restaurant operates a self-clearing facility. Pay cashier. Your cooperation is appreciated. Ha, I get it. Pick up the dish, the tea things, juggle them over to the side counter. Scrape the tates into the bin.

Wasteful, that, a woman says, pointing in the bin, thick Midlands accent like gum. Feel funny, I say to her, squinching my face. A good lie. She moves away, wary. A sick American could have anything.

I pay the cashier as instructed and set out on the long walk back to Freiston Shore.
 
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