Like Dreams Or Drainpipes: A Meeting

Jo Castle

They had walked for two miles to get to one second-hand shop in a village on the eastern coastline. Neither took the same journey; one approached from the north and the other from the south, and this little shop was where their paths intersected.

Like many second-hand shops do, this one had its own smell. There was the smell of mothballs- a predictable note. The bookshelves at the back contributed the sweet acid of yellowing pages. In the easternmost corner hung a tatty peignoir, which dominated its section with a perfume that simultaneously suggested a light powder and a punch in the nostrils; the items of clothing hanging on the rails besides it stagnated in sadder concoctions of parted owners. Our two met over the scratchy scent of cheap lavender, where some candles still wrapped in plastic were.

The meeting was delayed. She, an angular thing with long tanned legs freckled with peeling plasters, dithered over the candles momentarily as if they were things of great importance. He, a being of softer persuasion in an expensive shirt and even dearer trousers, tucked some spilling pearl necklaces back into a hefty cardboard box he carried. For a minute there was an almighty impasse, strong enough to slow a speeding locomotive, until their eyes were persuaded to disengage and look at the other.

“Excuse me,” he found himself improvising- “do I… know you?”

“Probably,” she said. Her gaze was flat, dreamlike. “I get that a lot.”

“Do you have a name?” he asked, and then checked himself. “What’s your name?”

Her eyes flickered away from him for a moment and onto the ceiling. “Marlowe.” She remembered the birth certificate she found buried in the bottom of a suitcase and for a moment felt nothing but proud.

“Mine’s Heath,” he offered. 192

“I’m throwing some stuff out. Nobody needed it.” A finger slipped from a corner and the box’s contents made an unappreciative rattle. “So, what brought you here? Browsing?”

She rose from her bent posture in a full and gracious bow, gleaming with exultation. “I came here to find a trestle table,” she half-whispered, “and a day out.”

“Well, this shop doesn’t have any tables on sale-” it was true, it didn’t- “and is it really a day out if you’re inside?” He bent his head towards the shop’s front door, a gesture universally understood even between two half-strangers. Candles now no longer seemed important.

The sharp sea-grass whistled as if permitting them entry, though this went unappreciated due to the aggressive clunking of Heath’s cardboard box. They had tied their shoelaces together and slung the shoes over their shoulders like odd fashion statements. Two entered seaside, and sat down on a patch of sand soft and pale as flour.

“I have some fruit pastilles,” she said, extending a battered tube towards him. “Would you like one?”

“I’d love one,” he said, and took a purple one from the packet. She took a green one, and for a while both chewed in the absence of conversation.

Afternoon thinned out into evening. Salt breezes whipped strands of hair around like playthings and stung at their eyes. A few children played on the edge of the water until they got bored and left; our two remained. “I feel like I should say something,” he said.

“You don’t need to say anything at all,” she said, “Not if you don’t want to.” She offered him a green pastille, which he accepted, and took a yellow one for herself.

The situation was agreed upon. They sat on the nameless beach on an obscure part of the coast, and they said nothing.