In the early darkness cockroaches converged on a piece of fish that had fallen to the ground. They clambered on top of each other in their haste to get at it, antennae waving wildly. Footsteps approached. The greedier ones, busily gorging, didn’t notice until it was too late and a large foot landed on top of them.
Robert felt a crunchy squelch beneath his toes. ‘Ugh.’ He rubbed his foot hard on the earth to clean off the mess. Round the corner of the shop he could hear water gurgling. He found Joshua at the standpipe, scouring a pan under the tap. Robert stuck his foot under the running water. ‘Hello.’
‘Oh, hello, big feet.’ Joshua picked up another handful of earth and scrubbed it into the pan until it was clean. Satisfied, he rinsed it out.
‘Want to come and watch the tourists from the ship?’ Robert asked.
‘Sure,’ he said.
But Robert wasn’t listening. He was staring at Joshua’s father who was seated on a bench in a pool of light, whittling away at a piece of wood that he held jammed between his knees.
‘What’s he making?’ Robert asked.
Joshua shrugged. As far as he knew, his father had never finished a carving.
Robert went over to him and gazed at the knife, moving rhythmically backwards and forwards, scraping and shaping the wood.
‘Please, what are you making?’ he asked politely.
There was no answer. Joshua’s father didn’t seem to notice that he was there.
Robert touched his shoulder and repeated the question, more loudly this time, ‘What are you making?’
The knife stopped moving and Joshua’s father looked up.
‘Making?’ he asked.
It was as if he was waking up, Joshua thought, watching. He never interrupted his father when he was carving. He had always felt that he shouldn’t. And by now he had become accustomed to his silence in the evenings.
‘I’m practising,’ Joshua’s father answered at last.
‘What for?’ Robert was polite but persistent.
This time he got no answer. The butcher’s head was bent over the wood. Backwards and forwards went the knife, quietly whittling.
Robert beckoned Joshua out of the light and around the corner. ‘Why won’t he tell me what he’s making?’ he asked, sounding a little annoyed. ‘He must be making something.’
‘Why must he? He just carves.’
‘But he carves every night, doesn’t he?’
Joshua nodded, bored. ‘Most nights.’
Robert looked thoughtful. ‘Perhaps he carves because he hasn’t got any friends,’ he said.
‘Yes, he has,’ Joshua retorted.
‘Who, then?’
‘Well, Leon, and … Oliver.’ He thought for a moment. ‘And … er … Samuel.’
‘They’re just people he has to know for his business. They’re not real friends,’ Robert said, a bit scornfully. ‘I mean, you don’t see him playing cards and dominoes with them in the evening –’
‘He doesn’t like games!’
‘– or drinking with them,’ Robert carried on, ignoring Joshua’s interruption. ‘And they don’t come to see him, do they?’
‘When the shop opened, everyone came,’ Joshua pointed out, hurt.
‘Of course they did. Nobody wants to miss a party, even at the meatseller’s.’
Joshua stiffened.
Robert’s hand flew to his mouth. ‘Oh Joshua, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean … I just meant … well, he does sell meat, after all.’
‘Hey, Josh, where are you going? Aren’t you coming to watch the tourists?’
Joshua shook his head and walked away from his friend.