The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher Page B

off by criticizing him.
    “But you don’t like them,” Nick said.
    “Well,” Katherine said, “not all of them. That one, for instance.” She ran her hand over it. It bore a jazz-modern pattern, orange and yellow and brown, the sort of thing Malcolm’s mad aunt Susan had had since before the war. “That’s fairly horrible.”
    “You don’t think it’ll come back into fashion?” Nick said, still laughing.
    “And in the meantime we’re to have it cluttering up the shop and frightening off the customers?”
    “I see what you mean,” Nick said. He took off his chamois gloves and, with his slight hands, picked up the vase. “Come on,” he said. “We’ll christen the good ship Reynolds.”
    She followed him to the back of the shop. He gave a sturdy kick to the door. It flung open. The brick courtyard was shaggy with weeds, and a cat threw itself up a wall. “Right,” Nick said. “Do you want to do it or shall I?”
    “Do what?”
    “Christen the shop,” Nick said. “All right. I name this good shop—” he hurled the vase with one movement against the wall “—Reynolds.”
    The vase bounced, then rolled along the ground, coming to rest at their feet. They looked at it, soberly.
    “It must be melamine,” Katherine said. “Or some such.”
    “I suppose it must,” Nick said. “How hilarious.” And then they were laughing and laughing; they did not stop until the bell at the front of the shop announced their first customer of the day.
    That night, at supper, Katherine told the story; she tried to make it funny.
    “I don’t understand,” Malcolm said. “Why would he try to smash a vase he’d bought?”
    “It was so ugly,” Katherine said. “I don’t know why he bought it in the first place.”
    “Someone might not have thought so,” Malcolm said seriously. “You can’t assume that everyone’s going to have the same taste as you. He’s not going to make a success of it if he goes on smashing his stock like that. I expect he could put it down to accidental damage, though it wouldn’t be exactly honest. If I were you—”
    Daniel groaned.
    Malcolm looked at him in astonishment. “What’s up with you?” he said.
    “It’s funny,” Daniel said. “He sounds a right laugh, Mum’s boss.”
    “Yes,” Malcolm said. “That’s what I’d expect someone of your age to think.”
    Daniel groaned again.
    “That’s quite enough, Daniel,” Katherine said. She looked down at her plate: the jazz-modern orange and brown pattern they’d always had. She ought to do something about it. And she agreed with Daniel: Nick was a right laugh.
    She soon discovered that Nick needed someone like her. The shop was, of course, just a business. It took in perishable stock, relying as well on imperishable steady sellers—Nick ran an illogical but quite profitable line in minor stationery by the till as well as a carousel of cards, and it was surprising the number of people who popped in for a card, some of whom found themselves leaving with some flowers as well. (The cards were much more artistic—Monet!—on the whole than the dismal and ancient range to be had in the newsagent’s opposite and, being blank inside, were superior to his faintly common specifications of particular birthdays and particular family recipients.) It was, if you thought of it in an abstract, Malcolmish way, like many other retail businesses.
    And yet it was not, because there was the question of the flowers that Nick went to fetch twice a week. Nick, you might easily assume, was a person who had little idea: he projected a kind of uselessness, and a casual Malcolmish auditor might conclude that he had no particular attraction to flowers and no particular aptitude that would make the business a success. But when Nick came in twice a week with his van of flowers, she perceived, without his having to say anything, a kind of magic. That twice-weekly unloading made her feel as if she had carried out some act of betrayal against