Frank looks at his watch. Eight o’clock. He’s been here an hour, no more.
At the next stall, David’s already unloading his second batch. Out they come, from the ordinary cardboard cartons underneath the table and into those baskets he’s got, in arty, rabbit-dropping piles. The women are the usual free-range crowd, shouldering their way to the front like punters on race day.
Frank eyes the stallholders, with their smiling and nodding, their passing of bags. All he’s getting are backs and arses. He feels the cat’s-bum tightness in his mouth and knows it’s his own fault.
He hears Ellen’s voice in his ear. You’re scaring them off.
She’s right, as usual. And David – despite the ponytail, the silver eyebrow ring – is a canny bloke. The way he spreads his palms, nods towards the laminated photos. ‘Happiest chooks in the world,’ he grins. All a bloody show, but it gets the customers.
‘They’re not buying an egg,’ David said once. ‘They’re buying a story.’
Holy shit, he thinks. A story.
In the last hour, as David’s baskets have emptied and been refilled, Frank’s sold one lousy jar.
‘Cheers, mate.’ David raised the jam like a schooner. A pity sale.
There’s a noise at his elbow. He looks down to see a kid tugging at the tablecloth, eyeing the wobbling jars.
‘Hey, kid.’
The boy looks up, gives him the look: the watchya gonna do look.
Jesus. He’s in no mood. He looks around for the mother. Three bloody guesses. There, in the purple pants. She’s lifting an egg, holding David’s eye.
‘Oi,’ Frank says. ‘Leave it.’
He sees the woman pass David a note and cock her head, asking something. David gestures his way.
She’s coming over.
Come on, Frank, says Ellen, straight into his eardrum.
He pulls his face into a smile. The woman stops at the table, picks up a jar, examines the label. He gathers the words in his throat.
‘Home-made.’
Her eyes do a quick dart, taking him in.
‘My wife.’
‘Ah.’ She turns the jar in her hand.
A story, he thinks. A story. He should’ve brought the photos. ‘Stop bellyaching,’ Ellen had said as she’d snapped him unloading the crates of seedlings. Later, she’d tied on her apron, stood before the big saucepan and told him to get her good side.
The woman’s thinking it over and the kid’s started jiggling again. Leave it, Frank. Forget the bloody kid. She’s interested. It’ll be three jars, maybe more.
If only he had the photos. That’d clinch it, no question. Only … those shots were a bit out-of-date now, weren’t they? Not the full story, the real story. And what would he put in their place?
The answer rushes in before he knows it’s coming.
Ellen. She’s standing at the stove, holding the spoon. Her face, without the wig, is like a peeled potato. Her mouth is open. She’s telling him she’s had enough. She’s chucking the bloody chemo and there’s no use trying to talk her out of it.
‘I’ll take three,’ says the woman, but he’s not listening. He’s seen what’s coming, knows it’s been coming, suddenly, since the day started, since he stood in the cool morning and slid the rattling boxes into the back seat of the car.
‘Kid!’
He lunges forward, but it is too late. The jars are rolling and toppling like skittles. They’re crunching onto the floor, one by one in quick succession, a rapid vomiting cascade of glass and strawberry jam. There’s a slow leak across the concrete floor.
Frank finds himself standing with his hands by his side, helpless as a child holding the pieces of his mother’s favourite teacup.
He feels the gentle pressure of Ellen’s hand on his arm.
*
He walks out of there four hours early, a schoolboy with an early mark. He leaves David and the others to smile smile smile until the crowds trickle away and the bottom of the boxes show.
He’ll drive home, he thinks as he walks across the car park, with the window open. Let it blow away, the whole bloody lot.
‘Fuckin’ ratbag,’ he’ll say. And Ellen, sitting in the passenger seat, will try to look disapproving.
Only he won’t, and she won’t.
The last of the jam has gone, one way or another. The last batch, just like he’d promised her.
And now it’s gone, she’s going too.
She used to do that, when she’d had something she wanted to say. Hold her thumb down on the remote, making the sound plummet. ‘Oi,’ he used to say. ‘I was watching that.’ Only now it’s her voice that’s fading.
He walks to the car, opens the door, slides into the driver’s seat. He rests his hands on the wheel. After a while – minutes, hours – he puts his key in the ignition. Going, going, gone. Nothing to hear but the sound of an engine starting in an empty car park.