The day I opened my shop nine years ago I overheard my mother talking to my aunt. How is it at all none of mine could be any way cute? They haven’t a dust between them, God help us. A camera shop, I ask you. The barest breeze of hardship will blow it away. And Aunty Susan sighed and shook her head and dragged deeply on her fag in sympathy and sorrow.
We trawled the footpaths and the tarmacadam with our eyes. We sifted through patches of gravel and pebbles with our fingers. We braved the sting of kerbside thistles. We were forensic about it. We’re like the crowd in CSI Miami, someone joked, an older man whose face we all knew well but whose name was known to none. Paddy. He was surprised we didn’t know his name. Sure we’re here years and years, Mary and me. Oh God, ya. There was only our house here starting off. Sure this was the countryside not so long ago. All ye crowd are only Johnny-come-latelies. And he beamed around at everyone, happy to be the one doing all the talking, and we smiled embarrassedly back. We should all have known him well.
Mother drained her champagne flute on my opening day and held it before her, squinting at it with a grimace. Lord Almighty that’s as sour as gall. Oul cheap stuff, that is. Susan rounded a bit then, as Mother’s eyeballs swivelled heavenward in disgust. They say the best stuff is always the bitterest, Elsie. Mother’s eyes narrowed again, her nostrils flared. Well, go get two more then if you’re such an expert till I anaesthetize myself. And I stepped unseen backwards, away from her, and sat for a while in the cool silence of my shining new staff bathroom with that old familiar stinging at the backs of my eyes.
By three o’clock there were nine searchers. A sudden solidarity blossomed in the neighbourhood. Friendly enquiries as to what’s been lost led to sympathetic small-talk, offers of assistance and tea, anecdotes of ancient losses and miraculous finds: watches, wallets, lockets, twenty-pound notes; lifetimes of misplaced things that all made their ways back. No one dwelt too much on the things they never saw again or the dark, iron-grilled storm-drains that line our road or the magpies that patrol the hedges and the carpets of grass.
Lord, wasn’t it a great idea? My father kind of claimed it as his own. We couldn’t keep the shop stocked. He’d call in at least once most weeks and smile at my customers. He searched, often vainly, for common ground. The rugby, the horses, the football. He’d wink over at me. Sure I’d sell snow to Eskimos, son. He’d stand in behind the counter and offer advice. Oh, that’s a right yoke. That’s a great choice. I have one of them at home myself. What about a case for it? Here, I’ll throw it in. And he’d summon Mikhail to ring up the sale, tersely instructing him to apply arbitrary discounts. Mikhail would complain to me. He makes these things up half of the time, you know. He does not know the things about photography he say he knows. He gives away the profit margin with the free stuff. Free! Ah Dad, I’d say jokily, come out from behind the counter. You’re upsetting Mikhail. Dad would harrumph and regard Mikhail darkly. Watch that fella, son, I’m telling you. Them lads are only ever out for themselves as a rule. Don’t worry, Dad, I’d say. Come on and we have a small one in the snug. And Mikhail would come and they’d make it up and Dad would call him Mickey and tell him he was a grand lad and punch him lightly on the arm.
Amber joined the search. The unfriending was pushed away for a while. Who’s this lovely-looking girl, now, Paddy wanted to know. I didn’t know we had a … whatdoyoucallum … supermodel in the neighbourhood! And Amber smiled and Paddy laughed loudly and repeated his joke a few times. God aye, ya. A supermodel, begor. Paddy is kind and avuncular, the type of man who can say these things about a sixteen-year-old without sounding inappropriate. The neighbours laughed as they searched and Amber blushed and smiled and fixed her eyes to the ground.
I thought I was tough. I thought I was knock-hardened, world-wise, astute. I supplied a hotel with thirty-three grand’s worth of video and hi-fi equipment. I smiled to myself as I tucked a jocular note into the envelope with the invoice. To Steve, their financial controller. Sound man, Steve. This order would be the saving of us. I went through seven or eight compliment slips in an effort to look casual. It had to be clear but slightly scrawled; professional but a bit throwaway, like I posted invoices this size every day. I was so proud of that invoice. I thought about leaving a copy of it magnetized to my fridge for the next time my parents called. I wrote something about golf and drinks and God knows what. I spent long pleasant minutes thinking how best to sign it off. Yours. Regards. Best. I settled on Thanks. Again. I considered for a minute slipping a sweetener in with it. A crisp folded fifty, for good luck. Then decided it would be crass. Best to treat him to lunch, or dinner and drinks. I thought about how I’d fill a wicker hamper as a Christmas box for my new best customers. My new friends. I thought about the power of networking.
Paddy became the foreman of the search. We’re at nothing, lads, just milling around like this. We need to divide the road into sections. Now, Deirdre love, tell us again where you definitely remember walking. Right, right, okay, look, I’ll assign a section so to everyone and no one is to step outside their section till we’ve it found. Any cars that come to the entrance we’ll tell them park up and walk. Now, there’s another thing, we’ll have to check the treads of the tyres of any cars that drove up since it was lost. And nearly everyone automatically obeyed, glad that someone was taking charge. A teenage boy sloped away with a regretful look back at Amber.
A month after I posted the invoice I stood smiling a little nervously at the shop door, watching the postman and his bicycle process down the street. He had nothing for me but a salute and a cool breeze as he pedalled past. I wasn’t worried. No one paid exactly on time. Well, I did, but I was a bit obsessive that way. At the next month’s end I sent a second invoice. Ten days. A slightly less light-hearted note. A wastepaper basket full of crumpled compliment slips. Another week passed before I heard the union rep on the radio. Staff shocked. No warning. No notice. Doors locked. Wedding deposits should be claimed in writing. The creditors’ meeting was held in a GAA clubhouse on the windy end of a narrow peninsula in south Kerry. A right stroke that was. Real toughness. I got lost and missed most of it. Steve wasn’t at the meeting. Distance to Empty: 23 miles, my dashboard told me as I pulled out of the potholed car-park. It was nearly sixty miles to home. I pulled into a lay-by and found seven-forty in change beneath the seats and nearly cried with relief. My hands shook as I counted it out in the petrol station.
The neighbour, Deirdre, drafted in her mother-in-law to watch her five-year-old and her six-month-old. The older woman stood at the front door for most of the evening surveying the search. Whenever I looked in her direction she smiled and nodded her thanks. Her son was half a world away and her grandson was swaddled in her arms against the chill of evening. She was weighed down with sadness and worry and love. I knelt down to peer along the ground beneath a car that had been checked a dozen times already and groaned as I straightened. She beckoned me to the doorway where she stood. You’d want to mind your back. And then she leaned forward, raising the child almost to her cheek as she did so, and whispered conspiratorially: It’s gone, I’d say. Poor Deirdre, it won’t be found now. Someone has it taken, surely. Ye may give it up and go in out of the cold. And you’d want to mind your back.
I stood in my father’s garden a few hours ago beneath a branch heavy with pink-white blossoms. How’re things, son? Grand. You’re kept going? I am. Good, begod. And he smiled and sighed and put a hand to the tree’s gnarled trunk to steady himself. The sky was suddenly black with crows. Dad? Are you okay? I’m fine. There they are, look. Going home. The same time every single evening. Lord save us aren’t they a sight? The ring in my jeans pocket must have been sitting on an artery; I could feel my pulse beneath it.