Stick of Rock part 1

Stick of Rock

1.
 

“I’ve got a bugger in my rock.”

    The man looked angry, his face pinched like that of a red bat. Harry had been aware of the man’s anger when he’d entered the shop, alerted by the strident ringing of the bell above the door, but thought this anger might have issued from somewhere else. Now, by the way the man had slammed the stick of rock down on the counter, shattering it into a number of pieces, he wasn’t so sure. 

    The man was fat, so fat that he walked with a cane. Or maybe he was fat because he had the cane, had eaten and eaten until his body and become sepulchre like and he needed the cane, couldn’t leave the house without it. It was a rather fine thing, its bottom end gilded and the knob, if he wasn’t mistaken, a carefully carved replica of the former prime minister. Harry thought of himself as something of a psychologist, had even taken a number of courses in a bleak North European university, the other students for the most part wild eyed opium eaters. Mary never bothered with such things. Her passion was not the mind but knitting and so a customer to her was a customer. She treated everyone the same, except for sizing them up, wondering how many balls of wool it would take to make them a decent Aran sweater, a pair of gloves, a snugly fitting willy warmer. She was practical like that, hadn’t even been unnerved during the invasion of the seals the previous year where three people had lost their lives. No, she had just knitted a seal defence barrier. They sold them in the shop. £2.57. 

    Harry and Mary had run Delicious Gifts, Something for Everyone, Even the Dead for thirty years. It hadn’t always been easy. When the recession had hit ten years before they had made the decision to go twenty-four hours. That meant one twelve-hour shift each. And it was worse when one of them went on holiday. Then the one left would have to work right around the clock, fixing the old camp bed their son had used to sleep on until he was eight years old behind the counter and bringing down the chamber pot from under old Edward’s bed. 

    “Now, about these buggers.”

    The man really was very fat. He had fat wrists at the end of fat hands. Hands waving pieces of broken rock around at an alarming speed. 

    “I’ve got a bugger in my rock.”

    Harry was reminded of the old joke about the fly in the soup. He wanted to say to the man that he should stop going on about his buggers because then everyone would want one but instead he said it was his wife who usually dealt with complaints and she wouldn’t be in until seven. He should come back then. 

It was only after the man had gone that Harry picked up two of the pieces of rock the man had left on the counter. The public ends were all in order. Ginny’s Arcade, clearly written there, the letters pink and jagged against the white, this particular rock having been made to advertise another of the local businesses. But on the broken inner ends, in the same pink lettering, was the word, ‘bugger’.

    “Bugger,” said Harry. 

    He lifted the counter flap and went out onto the shop floor. He prided himself on knowing every item in the shop and its exact price to the nearest penny, a pair of lambswool socks (89p), a snow globe depicting Dr. Frankenstein’s dash across the ice (56p), a seal’s paw keyring (15p), 20 sheets of writing paper from the Chelsea Hotel (32p), a miniature plastic bucket and matching spade (6p), 96 custard flavoured condoms (sold individually) in a vagina shaped merchandiser (5p each), a signed and laminated photograph of Bob Monkhouse (looking slightly startled) (taken when he came to open The Foetus Museum) (99p), the wing of a seagull (12p), a bum scratcher, the carved end of which was a man holding his nose (98p), fart powder (33p), 28 willy warmers each with a popular name knitted into them, Andrew, Paul, Royston and so on, (Mary made these and, if given 2 hours notice, could make them to order) (85p off the shelf, 96p bespoke), post cards of (1) the nuclear power station, (2) the beach, (3) Ginny’s Arcade, (4) Harry and Mary themselves, standing outside the shop with their arms around each other smiling inexpertly and a little tensely at the camera, (their son Sven had just told them he wanted to be a soldier and go off to fight in wars but the photographer had been booked and it was too late to back out now), (5) two seals kissing, (6) an aerial view of Saltburn taken at night, (and unfortunately on the night of the power cut so it was impossible to make out anything except the boys on the hill engaging in a fart lighting competition, but planes, and cameramen, were expensive so there was no chance of it being redone, ) (7) the Saltburn Pier before it had been blown away in a storm (all postcards 3p each or 4 for 10p), a King Kong baseball cap (88p), a pair of sunglasses the arms of which were lime green crocodiles (50p), an old hardback copy of Swallows and Amazons (£1.50), a green towel, a rattan beach mat, an inflatable ring, a thermal cover for a regular cup, an inflatable beach ball, a travel size bottle of factor 17 sun cream (£1 each or £5 for the set), a doll whose eyes opened when she was sitting up, closed when she was lying down (£1.05p), a nose hair plucker (22p), a silver teaspoon with the town’s crest at the end of its handle (£3.12p), a Kenny Everett rubber (4p), a box of 50 fun snaps (99p), camel-print flip-flops (77p), toe nail clippers with the name of the town stamped on them (48p), a pink thong (£1.12), a 7 inch single of The Human League’s Electric Dreams (£2), eyeliner, hair glitter, rouge, 20 different shades of red lipstick, eyebrow pencil (75p each), a Tiny Tots toolkit (64p), a tin of corned beef hash (65p), a head the size of a golf ball fixed to a small plug which you could put up your bum to make it look as if a person was crawling out of your anus (£2.50), a pair of feet attached to a plug etc etc the reverse of the aforementioned (£2, the price less as it was more desirable to come out rather than go in), a Painting With Nancy watercolour set (23p), a small triangular flag on a plastic stick (15p), a jigsaw of the nuclear power plant (500pcs) (£2.01p), a red penknife (45p), a black Biro pen (8p), a red Biro pen (8p), a blue Biro pen (8p), a green Biro pen (10p), an itsy-bitsy lime-green polka dot bikini (£1.67), a blue bikini with a padded bra (£2.50), a yellow beach umbrella (£2.22), an inflatable dingy with optional pump (£25 without, £26.25 with), a set of body paints (79p), a plastic flower with hair grip (12p), various sticks of rock, over 300 in total (25p each or 5 for £1).

    Harry stopped by the rock display, picked one up after another. They all seemed in order. But still… Picking one up at random he broke it in two. 

    Saltburn-by-the-Sea on the outside and there on the inside, Saltburn-by-the-Sea. 

    Nothing to worry about. 

Noticing the time Harry flicked the sign hanging on the inside of the door from ‘Open’ to ‘Closed’ and went outside. 

    There was a seal on the High Street, barking angrily. Two seal volunteers, in the bright blue jumpsuits, were standing with bright red and blue paddles trying to encourage it back towards the sea. The paddles had been donated by Saltburn airport after it had gone into administration. Evans, the industrialist from over in Poulton-le-Fylde had purchased it at a knockdown price, and much to the chagrin of the town had turned the runway into an exclusive overpriced golf course, the conning tower a set of luxury apartments.

    At the bank as Harry stood in the queue with his two £5 notes, ready to swap them for bags of 1ps and 2ps, due to the pricing structure the shop seemed to get through an awful lot of change, he felt a tug on his arm. 

    Duncan from the canning factory was there, smelling strongly of potted meat. Across his forehead was an impression of letters, E V A N S, still visible from the time he had fallen into the stamping machine, and the reason most strangers and then even his friends and family called Duncan EVANS. Duncan / EVANS was dressed in an old purple ski jacket and had a Meerschaum protruding from his lips, unlit.

    “Day off, is it?” said Harry brightly. 

    “My wife,” said Duncan / EVANS, “any news?”

    “I’ll meet you at The Seal,” said Harry, under his breath. “715pm. I’d rather not do it here. People might hear. Talk.”

    Several months ago Harry had put a card up in the window of Rose’s Roadside Café, Gumshoe for hire. He had bought himself a burner phone, put the number for it on the card under, Reasonable Rates, No job too big.

    Mary was in the dark about his gumshoe business, although she had her willy-warmer sideline she was averse to them taking on extra work. And he wanted to keep it that way. Duncan was his first client. Missing wife. Where was she? That was the question. 

    Having collected his change Harry was making his way back to the shop when he became aware of a loud banging. 

    “What the blazes is it now?”

    For standing at the door of the shop was a muscular youth with gums pulled fiercely back from a set of jaunty gold teeth angrily banging. From his free hand, the one not involved in the banging, protruded the two broken ends of a stick of rock. 

    “Not another bugger?” said Harry apologetically. 

    “It was a present for my girlfriend,” said the muscular youth and then let rip with a real haymaker. 

    When Harry came around on the pavement, his left eye throbbing, he was going to have a proper shiner there, with his good eye he saw the two broken non-public ends of the rock staring back at him. 

    “Slag,” they said. 

    The mystery deepened. 
 

Image of Pixabay 

Read part 2 - https://www.abctales.com/story/drewgummerson/stick-rock-part-2