Steven Pirie

In the grocer’s shop, nestled on the quiet corner of the King’s Road, Norman stood alone in shadow, fondling his sprouts.

He liked to rotate his sprouts on a regular basis. He said it stopped the top ones fading unduly on the display. Oxidation was a green vegetable’s worst enemy, and almost as bad as a fungal blight. It comforted him to be elbow deep in the green bullets. It stopped him worrying about the wife’s death; eased his concerns over what the bin men would say if they looked in the Safeway carrier bags and noticed the wife all chopped up in them.

Typical of the wife to be noticed by bin men, Norman thought.

The shop’s tinsel bell pinged. Norman glanced toward the doorway where Mrs Tate shook the Wednesday morning drizzle from her umbrella. She was a big woman, Mrs Tate, big and bulbous, and Norman wondered for a moment how many Safeway carrier bags she’d fill.

As Mrs Tate stumbled inside, Norman lifted a single sprout and held it to the light as if inspecting it. ‘Sprouts should be the deepest green, Mrs Tate,’ he said. ‘You can always tell a master grocer by how green his sprouts are.’

Norman sighed as he played the green orb about his fingers. The wife had no love for sprouts. She’d said they were functional, in a bowel-movement sort of way, but that was all. She’d made him take down the lovely poster of cauliflowers and broccoli from the wall of the spare room, the poster Mr Gordon from the Ministry of Agriculture and Fish had given Norman for his birthday in April.

Mrs Tate shook her head. Her jowls were pink and loose and flapping beneath her chin. A cake woman, thought Norman, and sugared biscuits, perhaps. The wife was a cake woman, flabby and oily skinned. Perhaps all women were cake women. Perhaps that was why they, as a species, never understood him.

‘I’m here for no sprouts,’ said Mrs Tate. ‘I hear you’ve an introductory offer on Argentinean baked beans. I’m here to claim my worth, before Mrs Alderman from number six snaps them all up.’

In his head, Norman imagined Mrs Tate and Mrs Alderman fighting over his baked beans. Two wrinkled gladiators, all flash of walking stick and buzz of hearing aid, gripped in death’s struggle between the lettuce rack and the household wares section. He saw them with rubber washing-up gloves at each other’s throat. And he was Nero, presiding over affairs in his golden toga, the fate of the baked-beans-defeated balanced at the mercy of his thumbs up or down. Norman shifted his weight from foot to foot. With such thoughts it was all he could do to avoid an accident below.

And it was hard to think of the wife fighting over him like that. Not to the death, not over baked beans. Norman shivered. Once, in the Coach and Horses on the high street, when the wife was drunk with Mr Coleman the estate agent, the wife had laughed about Norman’s accidents. ‘Norman’s always been a bit quick off the mark,’ she’d said. ‘He was never a lover who lasted.’ Then, Mr Compton had grinned knowingly and the wife had her hand on his knee. It was hard to think that Nero would put up with such nonsense.

Norman coughed. ‘Ah, I’m sorry, Mrs Tate, but Mrs Alderman called earlier. She’s asked me to put a supply back for her. I’m sure I can’t go giving them out and letting her down, now, can I? At least, not unless…’

Norman leaned forward across the countertop. From here, looking down, he could see the lumpy veins on Mrs Tate’s legs. They were bowed and stumpy legs, legs that longed, just once, to see a waxing. The wife didn’t shave her legs, either, except when Mr Coleman the estate agent came round. Then, she’d wash her armpits, too. Norman wondered if Mrs Tate washed her armpits for Mr Tate. Was it something wives did?

‘Unless what, Mr Roberts?’

‘Unless there’s something you can do for me, Mrs Tate.’

Mrs Tate looked suspicious, wary. Norman liked that in a woman. It was a power thing, a testosterone thing. The wife hadn’t suspected a thing; not the electrification of her armchair, not the swish of his best butcher’s knife, not the electric drill nor the grip of her nylons on her throat. And that, in a way, had definitely spoiled things for Norman. It meant she thought Norman safe.

‘Do?’ said Mrs Tate. ‘I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.’

Norman drew himself back upright and winked. It pained him that the bananas remained out of reach. They were big, and curved, with skins ripe to be pulled slowly back. He desperately wanted to peel his bananas in front of Mrs Tate. The wife never let him peel his bananas in front of her. He had to do it in the spare room, and then only while he was alone in the house. Instead, Norman reached for a courgette and stroked it with his fingers. It felt firm and ready in his grasp, vibrant as if it might go off at any moment. He felt his eyelid twitch as he stared across at Mrs Tate. There was the trickle of perspiration upon his brow.

‘I was thinking perhaps you might…’

Thud… thud…thud…

Norman stiffened at the sound of the wife’s boots upon the stairs. The courgette drooped in his grasp. He glanced about, sparrow-nervous and shadow-feared, as if he might leap and hide behind the cabbages. But the wife knew all his hiding places. The shop was now dark, as if he’d noticed for the first time the boards nailed across the window frames. The sign upon the door said open, which meant the sign on the street side of the door read closed.

Norman sagged where he stood. Had he really been talking to Mrs Tate? Where had she gone? No, there was no Mrs Tate, no Mrs Alderman, not any more. Now, the only place they’d fight for his aubergines was inside his head. It was gone; all of it. His empire was in ruins. Oh, it was such a mistake to put the shop in the wife’s name. Had she really closed it down? Who would look after the little ones? Who would care for the sprouts if she had?

The wife came, breathing fire through the staff only door to the rear. It seemed to Norman, for an instant, that her hair was filled with writhing snakes. A shame, because once, when they were young, she’d let him run his fingers through her hair.

Once, not twice.

‘Have you not done yet?’ said the wife. She threw a new handful of Safeway carrier bags at Norman’s head. They fluttered like oversized confetti at a wedding without smiles. ‘Get rid of those bloody sprouts. The place will stink, and Mr Coleman will be around soon. What’s he going to think if the shop is full of rotten sprouts? And I want you upstairs and getting the dinner on in ten minutes. We need to have eaten before Mr Coleman arrives. Do you understand, Norman?’

Norman stooped to retrieve the carrier bags as the wife turned back toward the stairs. They were good, sturdy bags, sure to hold a limb each. He waited until the clump of her boots fell silent once more. He took one last glance around his shop, cold, and dark, and lifeless, before moving to follow the wife upstairs. At the household wares section he paused.

‘What’s that, Mrs Tate?’ he said. ‘A box of rat poison; whatever can you want with that? Have you an infestation problem?’

Norman grinned. ‘I’m sorry, my dear,’ he said, ‘but I’ve just taken the very last one down from the shelf.’