Quill, ink pot and birds with script quote

The rain has not let up since Tuesday, and the stall is a sorry thing, its tarpaulin sagging over my table like a wet sheet. Mrs Okafor came by this morning, her umbrella turned inside out by the wind on Corn Street. She wanted a letter to her sister in Lagos, and I wrote it the way she spoke it, every word bent to fit her mouth. When I dipped the nib, the ink in the little glass pot had gone thick and dark, the way it does before a long wet spell.

Then there was the other business. A lad of about nineteen sat down with his hood up and asked me to write something he could never say aloud. He would not give his name. I wrote it out, folded it twice and sealed it with a dab of wax. When I handed it over he looked at the paper as though it might bite him, then tucked it inside his coat. I told him it would go where it needed to go. He laughed at me. Later, when the market had emptied and I was packing the tins, a flock of starlings lifted off the gutter opposite and wheeled low over the stalls, and I could have sworn one of them carried a corner of white paper in its beak.

Thirty-one years at this table, and I have never sold so much paper to people who wanted it to fly. Tomorrow I'll order more ink, and a bigger pot.