The big match kicked off tomorrow, and according to the headlines on the shopkeeper’s newspaper, riots would kick off with it. He flicked disinterestedly over the sport as the door-chime jangled, admitting yet another of the groups of young men and women who had been drifting in all week.
The ‘pools win’ and ‘my team’ were conspicuously empty, but they still asked. Two days again he’d finally harrumphed his way over to them and stuck signs on both shelves: ‘No more until next month, don’t even ask’.
It didn’t stop them asking, because customers obviously couldn’t read, but it gave him something else to be rude to them about when they did.
This morning’s group were slightly different, more clean cut, splitting up, and pretending not to know each other as they looked at the shelves. They’d been drifting in and out all morning without buying anything.
Eventually one of them took the plunge, sidling up to the counter and nervously pushing a small box across it. The shopkeeper checked the box - a ‘Commendation’ - and rang it up without comment. He held out his hand without looking. Notes crinkled into it, and then there were footsteps and the door chimed closed.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
As another set of footsteps approached the counter he grudgingly looked up over his paper. A ‘Have Courage’ followed, cheaper than a commendation and just as surreptitiously bought.
Fifteen minutes later the door chimed again, for a snatched up and hastily presented ‘Do a Good Job’. The ‘Help People’ an hour after that was cheaper than the two ‘Public Respect’ tins that preceded it, bought by men in sharp suits in a car with tinted windows.
Two officers strolling in off their beat, looking as casual as uniformed police could, pocketed and paid for an ‘Escape Unscathed’ and ‘Protect People’ for a few pounds each. One of them had been in earlier, but this time he was buying.
The well-dressed woman shadowed by her bodyguard left her driver outside, but the blue light on the car was visible through the dirt-streaked shop window and her face was in the paper reassuring the public. The ‘Be Approved Of’ she picked up was expensive, but the shopkeeper didn’t care.
Finally at a quarter to six, the door chimed again as the shopkeeper was getting ready to close up. The older man who stepped in, greying and rotund, was in full if rather rumpled police uniform. With a nod and a respectful tip of the hat to the shopkeeper, he went straight to the neglected shelves at the back and picked up a small box.
“Sorry I’m late. Got caught behind the desk.” The shopkeeper humphed and rang the box up.
“That for tomorrow?”
“Yeah. It’s going to be a long shift, and the town doesn’t need the trouble.” The shopkeeper nodded incuriously and handed the small box back.
“One Quiet Day. Fifty pence.”