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The Necklace

     A growing phenomenon in school playing fields on
Sunday afternoons is the fairly self explanatory  car-boot sale'.
Born from the same matter as Church bazaars, people drive
along to a flat grassy area with all the junk from their loft
stacked up in the back of their cars. Large Volvo estates
packed to bursting point with old cutlery, broken hi-fi's, sacks
of cuddly toys and pottery ornaments park in lines as men with
beer bellies try to sell you that old LP by the Beverly Sisters
that you never quite got around to buying.
     Of course, there are some real bargains and it is due to
these little gems that the  professional booter' has emerged.
Whatever you want, they can get it (and at half the street
price). I have always been averse to these little get togethers,
for if there have been any burglaries in the area, the booty
from those raids tend to accumulate there.
     But this car boot sale was different, it was organised
by the local church to raise funds for the General Hospital
(which was facing cut-backs from the local council). I'd
popped along to browse the second hand books. Beneath the
piles of well thumbed Mills & Boon romances and the handily
book marked Jilly Cooper epics I sometimes found old
hardbacks by De Quincey, Joyce and Greene.
     There was an old Triumph Spitfire selling beads and
marbles, candles and other handicrafts. In a shoebox just
inside the boot was a cardboard box which was full of old
costume jewellery, mostly tarnished metal and paste jewels. I
saw Samantha rooting through it and pulling out ghastly
broaches. As I tapped her on the shoulder and said hello she
was scrutinizing a metal tie pin with a school insignia
embossed into it. She jumped and nearly skewered me,
     "Christ, Mark! You made me jump." she waved the
pin at me, "So, come across any bargains then?"
     "Nothing overly great, but I thought I'd better do my
bit so I've picked up another copy of Dubliners and a couple
of Len Deightons. They've got one or two by the Bronte's but
I've not been inclined to read any of that stuff since Wuthering
Heights. How about you?"
     "Well, there's not all that much interesting stuff in
here." she threw the pin back, " the only thing that looks
interesting from a I wonder what happened to this point of
view is this necklace."
     She held it up, it was silver plated and half a heart with
something written on it.
     "It says," I squinted (as if that would make it clearer),
"I. . Lo. . Yc"
     "You can be really dim sometimes, it says  I Love you'
but the other half of it is missing. I wonder if there's someone
out there still treasuring the other half, or if it's just sitting in
another jumble sale box."
     "The woman selling it might know, I suppose. Excuse
me," I called, a woman in a multicoloured coat turned around
and looked straight at Sam with ice blue eyes, "could you tell
us something about this necklace?"
     "It's just a piece of junk that some bloke brought to us
at Oxfam when his sister died."
     "What about the other half of it."
     "Dunno, and THAT is why it is in the bargain bin for
50p"
     "Did he tell you anything about his sister?" Sam
persisted.
     "No, he just came and dumped all this stuff and a load
of Reader's Digest condensed books and went his merry way,
he said he hoped it would be of some use."
     Sam looked disappointed and threw the necklace back
in the box with the pin. The next car, an old Ford Cortina was
selling Vinyl albums (I noticed a couple by Steeleye Span) and
began to root through for more bargains.

                * * * * *

     It was a Sunday and the Coffee Pot was closed,
Theresa always enjoyed a good rummage through stuff at car
boot sales and she was looking through a rack of secondhand
cocktail dresses when she overheard the woman selling beads
from a Spitfire talking about a necklace. Her ears picked up
and after she finished looking through the dresses (for running
a business had made her methodical) she went to investigate.
One of the blokes she used to date in the seventies, Stanley,
had owned a Spitfire, they were sporty looking but had the
acceleration of a cow and the damn heating had never worked.
She pricked her finger on the pin, she sucked it gently as she
pulled the necklace from the box.
     "How much for this?" she enquired.
     "Ahhhh," the lady leaning on the Spitfire smiled,
"we've had a lot of interest in that particular piece. Call it a
couple of quid?"
     "Have a fiver. Do you know how I could contact the
bloke who brought this in?" the woman looked confused, "I
overheard." explained Theresa nodding towards the young
couple rooting through a box of LP's nearby.
     "Oh, well I don't know if I should tell you that sort of
thing."
     "Come on, I'd just like to know a bit about who
owned this."
     "OK," she pulled an old parking sticker from her
windscreen, then scribbled down an address, "I know him
through one of the volunteers at the shop."

     The doorbell buzzed a shrill electric shriek, there was
the sound of a gentle unfurling of cloth and then a blur behind
the misted window.
     "Hello," said Theresa as the door opened a fraction, "I
was wondering if you had a couple of minutes to chat, I'm a
friend of June's, from Oxfam."
     He opened the door completely and smiled a toothy
grin. "You'd better come in then."
     Theresa sat down in the peculiar smelling front room.
A mingling of damp, grease and roasting chicken hung in the
air. Albert was making instant coffee in the kitchen, he asked
her if she wanted milk or sugar and his voice sounded old and
wavering as he called through the hallway. He brought the
coffee through with a plate of biscuits and sat down in a large
soft chair. As Theresa looked around it was obvious that a
woman hadn't lived here for a good many years.
     "I was wondering if you could tell me a bit about your
sister? I bought this necklace," she held it up, "and I just
wondered if you could tell me about it."
     Albert frowned,
     "Seems a bit odd to me," he said, "but if you want to
know."
     "I do."
     "I can't remember when she got it exactly, I think it
was after she lost her first baby."
     "She was married?"
     "Yeah, she married a man twice her age and they were
married for thirty years before he died. She always had the
hang of living with people, it requires a give and take that I
can't get use to." he swept his hand through the air, "As you
can probably see, I live alone, and it suits me. But Elsie always
needed people around her."
     "You say she lost her baby, did she put it up for
adoption?"
     "No, no! It died a couple of days after it was born. She
miscarried a couple of times after that, they never had
children, but I don't think they ever stopped trying."
     "Oh." Theresa felt she had intruded, but she felt a
compulsion to find out more. "What was she like?"
     "She was a kindly woman, a bit bossy but then sisters
always are. She loved to go for walks along the river. I think
that I shall always remember her that way. If she'd had
children she might have lasted longer after her husband died,
but she only hung on for 3 years. She became kind of empty
when he died. He passed on quietly in his sleep, of old age."
     "That's very sad." she sighed.
     "I think I loved her as much as I've ever loved a
woman," he smiled, "but I know that after he died it was
foremost in her mind, she almost wanted death to come, so
that they could be together again."
     "She believed? She was a Christian?"
     "Obsessively, unquestioningly so. It was very strange,
but she had a very deep faith. I've started to go to church
again," he confided, "but it's really only to meet people and
get out of the house once a week."

     He was cut short by the buzz of the door, toddled out
of the room and greeted the visitor with a vitality that seemed
unnatural in this house.
     "April! How utterly gorgeous of you to drop by." he
yelled happily.
     They walked in to the room and April chided him
when she caught sight of Theresa.
     "Well you randy old Sod, have you been chatting up
woman and luring them back here while I'm not around?"
     "No, no." he smiled, "This is Theresa, Theresa this is
April."
     They said hello and then Theresa made her excuses
and left.

     That evening as she typed up the last few lines of
Elsie's story (as much as she'd been told) she gazed down at
the necklace on the desk. She picked it up and brought it to
her chest. Beneath her sweater lay another half, given to her
by a mother she'd never known.
     She typed the remaining sentences, spell-checked and
printed out a copy. As she sipped her whiskey, water and ice
she tried to picture Elsie, but found she didn't have enough
detail to work with. Shrugging she folded the typed page and
placed it in a brown envelope with the necklace. She opened
the bottom drawer of the desk and dropped the envelope
inside. Peering at the pile of envelopes within she cursed mass
produced jewellery once more. 
      
©1998 Mark Sexton