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Authors: Camille Deangelis
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and naked men contemplating their own innards.
I peer through the front window and see Harry’s nephew bent over a game of solitaire at the counter. I can make out a long pale nose, thick dark hair in need of a cut, and a pianist’s fingers as he turns a card. I get a strange squirmy feeling then. And in the next moment, as I open the door and he looks up from his card game, I believe I have just locked eyes with a ghost.
The boy has Jonah’s long, earnest face—Jonah’s hair, albeit on the shaggy side—Jonah’s slender fingers—and precisely Jonah’s look of eager expectation. It’s as if these sixty-odd years have melted away in a twinkling.
A few seconds pass in this amazed silence. He is opening his mouth to speak to me when his mobile goes off—“Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” is the ditty—and when he gives me an apologetic look and opens the phone I finally remember myself. This is Justin, Harry’s nephew, and he was only staring at a pretty girl who’d walked into his shop.
I can hear a female voice through the receiver, and he is adopting a certain tone, that tone, you know what I mean: “Hey, it’s great to hear from you … How’ve you been? That’s good … It’s just that things’ve been so busy around here … Yeah, at my uncle’s shop …”
Jonah had grown up in London, and he had that glorious upper-crust accent that made you feel, as soon as he spoke, that you were in capable hands; and so my first thought is that this boy’s ordinary Jersey speech is just an act put on for the girl on the other end of the line.
My heart is thudding in my ears. Desperate for a distraction, I look around the room and pick out the changes since my last visit. To my relief, the horned mermaid chandelier still hangs above my head, but pretty much every item behind the counter has been rearranged and all the furniture dusted and polished. What else … oh! All the books are gone! There’d been no order to the book collection, just a few dusty volumes piled here and there, but now there isn’t a tome in sight. Then I notice an Apple laptop open on the counter in front of him beside a stack of old ledger books. Seems the nephew—Justin—is industrious enough to attempt to bring the Fawkes and Ibis record-keeping system into the twenty-first century. Good luck to him, and he’ll need it.
“Listen, do you mind if I call you back? I’m still at work … Yeah, see, the thing is, I’m down in Jersey right now, so I don’t think I can make it out tonight … Yeah, okay, I sure will …”
Slowly I circle the casket table by the window, examining every once-sacred object on its black varnished surface as if for the first time: the reliquary carved and painted in the likeness of a girlish saint, the repoussé incense burners, the monstrance with its tarnished sunburst.
“Thanks for the call … Enjoy your evening … Uh-huh, you too. Later.”
Is the girl aware she’s just been jilted? Probably not, if she was stupid enough to ring him in the first place. So we have a rake, have we! Not so much like Jonah, then.
I meet his gaze again as he flips his phone shut and I feel that frisson, that very particular zing, shooting out of my quim and rearranging all my guts on its way up. Now his face is strangely blank. I look away. A length of scarlet ribbon trails over the side of the casket table, and I hook my finger through the ribbon and hold the pendant up to what daylight remains. It’s a pomander, with a sprig of dried rosemary inside, but I will allow him to tell me so himself. I place the cake box on a shelf, flick the pomander’s tiny clasp, and the rosemary falls into my open palm.
I can feel his eyes on me. I make a little show of putting the sprig back in the hollow pendant and fumbling with the clasp, and I hear him round the counter and approach the table.
“Here,” he says gently. “Let me.” Gingerly I hand him the pendant and he smiles at me as he refastens
I peer through the front window and see Harry’s nephew bent over a game of solitaire at the counter. I can make out a long pale nose, thick dark hair in need of a cut, and a pianist’s fingers as he turns a card. I get a strange squirmy feeling then. And in the next moment, as I open the door and he looks up from his card game, I believe I have just locked eyes with a ghost.
The boy has Jonah’s long, earnest face—Jonah’s hair, albeit on the shaggy side—Jonah’s slender fingers—and precisely Jonah’s look of eager expectation. It’s as if these sixty-odd years have melted away in a twinkling.
A few seconds pass in this amazed silence. He is opening his mouth to speak to me when his mobile goes off—“Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” is the ditty—and when he gives me an apologetic look and opens the phone I finally remember myself. This is Justin, Harry’s nephew, and he was only staring at a pretty girl who’d walked into his shop.
I can hear a female voice through the receiver, and he is adopting a certain tone, that tone, you know what I mean: “Hey, it’s great to hear from you … How’ve you been? That’s good … It’s just that things’ve been so busy around here … Yeah, at my uncle’s shop …”
Jonah had grown up in London, and he had that glorious upper-crust accent that made you feel, as soon as he spoke, that you were in capable hands; and so my first thought is that this boy’s ordinary Jersey speech is just an act put on for the girl on the other end of the line.
My heart is thudding in my ears. Desperate for a distraction, I look around the room and pick out the changes since my last visit. To my relief, the horned mermaid chandelier still hangs above my head, but pretty much every item behind the counter has been rearranged and all the furniture dusted and polished. What else … oh! All the books are gone! There’d been no order to the book collection, just a few dusty volumes piled here and there, but now there isn’t a tome in sight. Then I notice an Apple laptop open on the counter in front of him beside a stack of old ledger books. Seems the nephew—Justin—is industrious enough to attempt to bring the Fawkes and Ibis record-keeping system into the twenty-first century. Good luck to him, and he’ll need it.
“Listen, do you mind if I call you back? I’m still at work … Yeah, see, the thing is, I’m down in Jersey right now, so I don’t think I can make it out tonight … Yeah, okay, I sure will …”
Slowly I circle the casket table by the window, examining every once-sacred object on its black varnished surface as if for the first time: the reliquary carved and painted in the likeness of a girlish saint, the repoussé incense burners, the monstrance with its tarnished sunburst.
“Thanks for the call … Enjoy your evening … Uh-huh, you too. Later.”
Is the girl aware she’s just been jilted? Probably not, if she was stupid enough to ring him in the first place. So we have a rake, have we! Not so much like Jonah, then.
I meet his gaze again as he flips his phone shut and I feel that frisson, that very particular zing, shooting out of my quim and rearranging all my guts on its way up. Now his face is strangely blank. I look away. A length of scarlet ribbon trails over the side of the casket table, and I hook my finger through the ribbon and hold the pendant up to what daylight remains. It’s a pomander, with a sprig of dried rosemary inside, but I will allow him to tell me so himself. I place the cake box on a shelf, flick the pomander’s tiny clasp, and the rosemary falls into my open palm.
I can feel his eyes on me. I make a little show of putting the sprig back in the hollow pendant and fumbling with the clasp, and I hear him round the counter and approach the table.
“Here,” he says gently. “Let me.” Gingerly I hand him the pendant and he smiles at me as he refastens
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