Episode 15: Market Day
By the time they came to the last of the wood, Uncle Robert had stopped being careful.
At the beginning he had shown Neil exactly how everything was to be laid out. The longer pieces together, the smaller bundles stacked at the front, nothing thrown down carelessly.
Now he seemed not to care.
“That’ll do,” he said.
Neil looked at the bundle in his hands.
“You said these ones went over there.”
“I did.”
“So…”
“So put them there.”
Robert waved towards the stall without looking.
Neil put the bundle down.
The neighbour’s whisky had changed his uncle. Robert wasn’t falling about, and he wasn’t speaking strangely. It was something else. He seemed younger – like a friend.
He was cheerful.
That was strange enough.
When the first customer stopped to look at the wood, Robert greeted him as though they had been friends for twenty years.
“Best you’ll get here.”
The man lifted one of the pieces.
“Best?”
“Did I stutter?”
The man laughed.
Robert laughed too.
Neil stared at him.
Robert caught him looking.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Then stop looking at me like that.”
Another customer came. Then another.
Soon Neil was too busy to watch his uncle. He carried bundles, took coins when Robert told him to, and tried to remember which pile was which.
The market was noisy now. People called prices from every direction. There were vegetables, sacks of grain, chickens complaining from wooden cages and smells Neil could not put names to.
He liked it.
For the first time since arriving in this new country, he felt that he was not simply visiting it.
He was doing something in it.
“How much for two?”
Neil looked up.
A woman was pointing at the smaller bundles.
He turned towards Robert.
His uncle was talking to a man at the next stall and laughing about something.
“Robert?”
No answer.
The woman waited.
Neil thought about the prices he had heard his uncle asking.
He named one.
The woman frowned.
“For two?”
Neil nodded.
She handed him the money.
When Robert returned, Neil proudly showed him the coins.
“I sold two.”
Robert looked at the money.
“For that?”
Neil’s stomach dropped.
“I thought”
Robert slapped him on the shoulder.
“Good lad.”
Neil blinked.
Normally there would have been a lecture.
Instead Robert took one of the coins, tossed it into the air and caught it.
“Nearly a businessman.”
By late afternoon, there was very little wood left.
Robert sold the last bundle for less than he had asked for the first.
Neil noticed but said nothing.
“Home,” Robert announced.
They gathered their things and left the market as the traders around them were packing away.
Neil’s arms ached and there was a blister on his palm, but he felt strangely pleased with himself.
Robert walked beside him, humming.
Neil had never heard him hum before.
“What song is that?”
Robert stopped.
“What song?”
“The one you were humming.”
“I wasn’t humming.”
“You were.”
Robert gave him a sideways glance.
“You’re hearing things.”
A minute later he began again.
Neil smiled but said nothing.
There was something almost pleasant about walking beside him like this.
Robert seemed younger somehow.
Neil had always thought of Uncle Robert as simply old. Not old like a grandfather, perhaps, but fixed and finished, as grown-ups seemed to be. Robert belonged to the world of serious faces, work, money and things children were not supposed to ask about.
But now, walking home from the market with whisky inside him and a tune escaping from his lips, that man seemed to have disappeared.
“I’ll get the horses later” muttered Neil, knowing Robert was in no condition to drive them.
For a moment Neil could imagine another Robert.
A young Robert.
A Robert who had run down roads instead of telling boys not to. A Robert who had laughed too loudly, got himself into trouble and perhaps even ignored his own uncles when they told him what to do.
Neil tried to picture him.
Robert caught him looking.
“What now?”
Neil smiled.
“Nothing.”
“You’re a strange boy.”
Neil thought that was funny coming from him.
They walked a little farther.
Then Robert said, “Your father could sell.”
Neil looked up.
Robert rarely spoke about his father without being asked.
“Could he?”
“He could sell anything.”
Robert laughed quietly.
“Sometimes things that weren’t even his.”
Neil wasn’t sure whether this was a joke.
“Did you work with him?”
Robert’s smile faded.
“For a time.”
“What happened?”
Robert walked on.
“We both got fired from the steel company for giving out a trade union magazine in Scotland.”
Neil waited.
Perhaps because of the whisky, he had the feeling that if he stayed quiet, Robert might say something he wasn’t supposed to.
He did.
“I should’ve gone looking for him, he wasn’t home on time, that night he got hit by the car.”
Neil frowned.
“For my father?”
Robert stopped walking.
For a moment he seemed confused, as though he had forgotten what he had just said.
Then he shook his head.
“Never mind.”
“Who did you mean?”
“Nobody.”
Robert started walking again.
Neil followed.
“What about Thomas?”
Robert stopped.
The younger man Neil had imagined disappeared.
Uncle Robert was back.
“Why would you say Thomas?”
Neil shrugged.
“I don’t know.”
Robert stared at him.
“Have you heard something?”
“No.”
“Has somebody spoken to you about him?”
“No.”
Robert stepped closer.
“If you hear anything about Thomas, you tell me.”
Neil nodded.
“And you don’t go looking for him.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“I’m serious, Neil.”
“I said I wasn’t.”
Robert turned towards home.
This time he did not hum.
And somewhere beyond the market, in a stable Neil did not know existed, Thomas was still lying in the straw.