Poppy and chain thigh tattoo

You will not believe what Mr Fenwick brought into the shop on Tuesday. He came in with his hat in his hands, the way he does when he has done something he will be sorry for, and unwrapped a silver chain from a handkerchief. Hung from it was a pendant the size of a thumbnail, a dark stone set in a little scrolled frame, and the chain was so fine it looked as if it had been drawn with a pencil. Mother's chain, he said. Mother's, and it was not his to sell.

I told him the truth, which is that we cannot take anything without a name in the book. So we sat at the back table among the spoons and the clock parts while he talked about the summer his mother pressed poppies between the pages of the hymnal, and how the daisies grew wild along the lane where the tram used to turn. He had sketched them on the back of a bus ticket years ago. I found the ticket in the drawer where the watch oil lives, the pencil faded but the berries still dark.

The poppy he remembers was redder than any I could draw for him on the back of the ledger. I told him red fades in a window and pink lasts longer, and that the chain could be worn under the collar where no one would see it unless they were close. He laughed for the first time since he came in, a dry sound like a drawer sticking.

He went home with the chain at his neck, the pendant tucked under his shirt, and a receipt I wrote out for no money at all. Come at Easter. The lane is still there, and I am bringing the hymnal.

All my love, Dorothy