Oranges From Spain Read online

  I worked my butt off that first day and it was obvious he intended getting value for money out of me. Maybe my father had told him it was what I needed – I don’t know. It was nearly time to close and the shop was empty. He was working out some calculations on the back of a brown paper bag and I was moving fruit into the store room, when he glanced up at me with a kind of puzzled look, as if he was trying to work out what I was thinking.

  ‘Sure, son, it’s money for old rope. Isn’t that right?’

  I gave a non-committal nod of my head and kept on working. Then he told me I could go, and I could tell he was wondering whether he would see me the next day. Returning to his calculations again, he licked the stub of the pencil he was using and hitched up his trousers. I said goodbye and just as I was going out the door he called me back.

  ‘Do you want to know something, son?’

  I looked at him, unsure of what response he expected. Then, signalling me closer, he whispered loudly, ‘My best friends are bananas.’ I forced a smile at his joke, then walked out into the street and took a deep breath of fresh air.

  The fruit shop did steady business. Most of the trade came from the housewives who lived in the neighbourhood, but there was also a regular source of custom from people who arrived outside the shop in cars, and by their appearance didn’t live locally – the type who bought garlic. He knew them all by name and sometimes even had their order already made up, always making a fuss over them and getting me to carry it out to their car. They were obviously long-standing customers, and I suppose they must have stayed loyal to him because they were assured of good quality fruit. He had a way with him – I had to admit that. He called every woman ‘madam’ for a start, even those who obviously weren’t, but when he said it, it didn’t sound like flattery, or like he was patronising them. It just sounded polite in an old-fashioned way. He had a great line in chat as well. If he didn’t know them it was usually some remark about the weather, but if he did, he would ask about their families or make jokes, always cutting his cloth according to his audience. When a gaggle of local women were in, it was all ‘Now, come on, ladies, get your grapes. Sweetest you can taste. Just the thing for putting passion into your marriage’, or ‘Best bananas – good enough to eat sideways’. They all loved it, and I’m sure it was good for business. Whatever their bills came to, he always gave them back the few odd pence, and I’m sure they thought he was very generous. As far as I was concerned, I thought he was one of the meanest men I’d ever met. For a start, he never threw anything away – that was one of the things that was wrong with the shop. Whether it was a bit of string or a piece of wood, he stored it carefully, and if he saw me about to throw something away, he’d stop me with a ‘Never know when it might come in useful, son’. Most of the produce he collected himself from the market early in the morning, but whenever deliveries were made, he inspected each consignment rigorously, with an energy that frequently exasperated the deliverer. If he found a damaged piece of fruit, he would hold it up for mutual observation and, wrestling up his trousers with the other hand, would say something like, ‘Now come on George, are you trying to put me out of business?’ and he’d haggle anew over already arranged prices. Watching him sniffing out flawed produce would have made you think he’d an in-built radar system. And he was always looking for something for nothing. Sometimes it was embarrassing. If the Antrim Road had still had horses going up and down it, he’d have been out collecting the droppings and selling them for manure.

  One day Father Hennessy came into the shop. Mr Breen’s face dropped noticeably and about half a dozen parts of his body seemed to fidget all at once.

  ‘Hello, Father. What can I do for you?’

  ‘Hello, Gerry. How’s business?’

  ‘Slow, Father, very slow.’

  The priest smiled and, lifting an apple, rubbed it on his sleeve, the red bright against the black.

  ‘I’m popping over to the Mater to visit some parishioners. I thought a nice parcel of fruit would cheer them up. Help them to get better.’

  He started to eat the apple and his eyes were smiling.

  ‘Of course, Father. A very good idea.’

  With well-disguised misery, he parcelled up a variety of fruit and handed it over the counter.

  ‘God bless you, Gerry. Treasure in heaven, treasure in heaven.’

  With the package tucked under his arm, and still eating the apple, the priest sauntered out to his car. If he had looked back, he would have seen Mr Breen slumped on the counter, his head resting on both hands.

  ‘The church’ll be the ruin of me. He does that about three times a month. Thinks my name’s Mr Del Monte, not Gerry Breen. Treasure in heaven’s no use to me when I go to pay the bills at the end of the month.’

  The frustration poured out of him and I listened in silence, knowing he wasn’t really talking to me.

  ‘Does he go up to Michael Devlin in the bank and ask him for some money because he’s going to visit the poor? Since when did it become part of my purpose in life to subsidise the National Health system? I pay my taxes like anyone else.’

  I think he’d have gone on indefinitely in a similar vein, but for the arrival of a customer, and then it was all smiles and jokes about the rain.

  ‘Do you know, Mrs Caskey, what I and my assistant are building out in the yard?’

  Mrs Caskey didn’t know but her aroused curiosity was impatient for an answer.

  ‘We’re building an ark! And whenever it’s finished we’re going to load up two of every type of fruit and float away up the road.’

  ‘Get away with you, Gerry. You’re a desperate man.’

  And then he sold her tomatoes and a lettuce which he described as ‘the best lettuce in the shop’. I’d almost have believed him myself, but for the fact that I’d already heard the same phrase on about three previous occasions that day.

  Gerry Breen was very proud of his shop, but he took a special pride in his displays outside, and he did this expert printing with whitening on the front window. Not only did he fancy himself a bit of an artist, but also as a kind of poet laureate among fruiterers. He had all these bits of cardboard – I think they were backing cards out of shirts – and on them he printed, not only the names and prices of the fruit, but also descriptive phrases meant to stimulate the taste buds of the reader. Grapes might be described as ‘deliciously sweet’ or strawberries as ‘the sweet taste of summer’ while Comber spuds were always ‘balls of flour’. The front window always looked well. Bedded on a gentle slope of simulated grass rested the various sections of produce, complete with printed labels. Each morning when he had arranged it he would go out on the pavement and stand with his hands on his hips, studying it like an art critic viewing a painting. Inside he had other signs saying things like ‘Reach for a peach’, ‘Iceberg lettuce – just a tip of the selection’ or ‘Fancy an apple – why not eat a pear?’

  After the first week or so we started to get on a little better. I think he realised that I was trustworthy and prepared to pull my weight. He probably thought of me as being a bit snobbish, but tolerated it so long as he got good value for his money. I in turn became less critical of what I considered his defects. Gradually, he began to employ more of my time on less menial jobs. After three weeks I had progressed to serving customers and weighing their fruit, and then a week later I was allowed to enter the holy of holies and put my hand in the till. I still had to chop sticks and brush up of course, but whenever the shop was busy I served behind the counter. I almost began to feel part of the business. The continual wet weather stopped me from missing out on the usual activities of summer and I was increasingly optimistic that my father would reward my industry with a motorbike. Mr Breen didn’t much like the rain – he was always complaining how bad it was for business. According to him, it discouraged passing trade, and people didn’t buy as much as they did in warm weather. He was probably right. Sometimes, when a lull in trade created boredom, I tried to wind him up a little.

&
nbsp; ‘Mr Breen, do you not think it’s wrong to sell South African fruit?’

  ‘Aw, don’t be daft, son.’

  ‘But do you not think that by selling their fruit you’re supporting apartheid?’

  He swopped his pencil from ear to ear and did what looked a bit like a tap dance.

  ‘I’m only supporting myself and the wife. Sure wouldn’t the blacks be the first to suffer if I stopped selling it? They’d all end up starving and how would that help them?’

  I was about to provoke him further when a customer appeared and I let him have the last word.

  ‘God knows, son, they have my sympathy – don’t I work like a black myself?’

  The customer turned out to be Mr Breen’s wife. She was all dressed up in a blue and white suit and was on her way to some social function. She had one of those golden charm bracelets that clunked so many heavy charms I wondered how her wrist bore the strain, and while she hardly looked sideways at him, she made an embarrassing fuss over me, asking about my parents and school, and gushing on in a slightly artificial way. When she finished whatever business she had, she said goodbye to me and warned Gerald not to work me too hard. I smiled at the name Gerald, and I could see him squirming behind the counter. A heavy shower came on and we both stood in the doorway watching it bounce off the road. He was unusually silent and I glanced at him a few times to see if he was all right. When he spoke, his voice was strangely colourless.

  ‘Never get married, son – it’s the end of your happiness.’

  I didn’t know whether he was joking or not, so I just went on staring at the rain.

  ‘My wife’s ashamed of me,’ he said in the same lifeless voice.

  I uttered some vague and unconvincing disagreement and then turned away in embarrassment. I started to brush the floor, glancing up from time to time as he stood motionless in the doorway. In a minute or so the rain eased and it seemed to break the spell, but for the rest of that afternoon, he was subdued and functioned in a mechanical way. He even closed the shop half an hour early – something he’d never done before.

  Nothing like that ever happened again, and my first experience of work slipped into an uneventful routine. One day, though, comes clearly to mind. One afternoon when business was slack he asked me to deliver fruit round to a Mrs McCausland. The address was a couple of streets away and I felt a little self-conscious as I set off in my green coat. It wasn’t a big order – just a few apples and oranges and things. I followed the directions I had been given and arrived at a terraced house. Unlike most of its neighbours, the front door was closed, and the net curtain in the window offered no glimpse of the interior. At first, it seemed as if no one was in, and I was just about to turn and leave, when there was the slow undrawing of a bolt and the rattle of a chain. The door opened wide enough to allow an old woman’s face to peer out at me, suspicion speckling her eyes. I identified myself and showed the fruit to reassure her. Then there was another pause before the door gradually opened to reveal an old woman leaning heavily on a walking stick. Inviting me in, she hobbled off slowly and painfully down the hall and into her tiny living room. She made me sit down and, despite my polite protests, proceeded to make me a cup of tea. The room resembled a kind of grotto, adorned with religious objects and pictures. Her rosary beads hung from the fireplace clock and a black cat slept on the rug-covered sofa. She talked to me from the kitchen as she worked.

  ‘Isn’t the weather terrible?’

  ‘Desperate – you’d never think it was the summer,’ I replied, smiling as I listened to myself. I had started to sound like Gerry Breen’s apprentice.

  ‘Summers never used to be like this. I can remember summers when the streets were baked hot as an oven and everyone used to sit on their doorsteps for you could hardly get a breath. If you sat on your doorstep these past few days you’d get pneumonia.’

  She brought me a cup of tea in a china cup, and a slice of fruit cake, but nothing for herself. She sat down and scrutinised me intently.

  ‘So you’re working for Gerry for the summer. I’m sure that’s good fun for you. You work hard and maybe he’ll keep you on permanent.’

  I didn’t correct her misunderstanding, but I laughed silently inside.

  ‘He says if it keeps on raining he’s going to start building an ark.’

  She smiled and rearranged the cushion supporting her back.

  ‘Gerry’s the salt of the earth. Do you see that fruit you brought? He’s been doing that for the best part of fifteen years and nobody knows but him and me.’

  She paused to pour more tea into my cup and I listened with curiosity as she continued, her words making me feel as if I was looking at a familiar object from a new and unexpected perspective.

  ‘I gave him a wee bit of help a long time ago and he’s never forgotten it, not through all these years. I don’t get out much now, but sometimes I take a walk round to the shop, just to see how he’s getting on. He’s a great man for the crack, isn’t he?’

  I smiled in agreement and she shuffled forward in her seat, leaning confidentially towards me.

  ‘Have you met Lady Muck yet? Thon woman’s more airs and graces than royalty. She was born and bred a stone’s throw from here and to listen to her now you’d think she came from the Malone Road. I knew her family and they didn’t have two pennies to rub together between the lot of them. Now she traipses round the town like she was a duchess. You’ll never catch her serving behind the counter.’

  It was obvious that the woman wanted to talk – she was probably starved of company – and no matter how often I attempted a polite exit, she insisted on my staying a little longer, assuring me that Gerry wouldn’t mind. I wasn’t so sure, but there was no easy escape, as she produced a photograph album and talked me through a maze of memories and mementoes.

  Parts of it were interesting and when she told me about the Belfast blitz I learned things I hadn’t known before. Before I finally got up to go, she returned to the subject of the weather, her voice serious and solemn.

  ‘This weather’s a sign. I’ve been reading about it in a tract that was sent to me. It’s by this holy scholar, very high up in the church, and he says we’re living in the last days. All these wars and famines – they’re all signs. All this rain – it’s a sign too. I believe it.’

  When she opened the front door it was still raining and I almost started to believe it too. I ran back quickly, partly to get out of the rain and partly because I anticipated a rebuke about the length of my absence.

  There were no customers in the shop when I entered and he merely lifted his head from what he was reading, asked if everything was all right with Mrs McCausland, and returned to his study. It surprised me a little that he said nothing about the time. He was filling in his pools coupon and concentrating on winning a fortune, so perhaps he was distracted by the complexities of the Australian leagues. He had been doing them all summer and his approach never varied. He did two columns every week, the first by studying the form and this forced him to ponder such probabilities as whether Inala City would draw with Slacks Creek, or Altona with Bulleen. For the second column, he selected random numbers, his eyes screwed up and an expression on his face as if he was waiting for some kind of celestial message. On this particular afternoon, reception must have been bad, because he asked me to shout them out. Out of genuine curiosity, I asked him what he would do if he did win a fortune. He looked at me to see if I was winding him up, but must have sensed that I wasn’t, because, on a wet and miserable Belfast afternoon, he told me his dream.

  ‘It’s all worked out in here,’ he said, tapping the side of his head with a chisel-shaped finger. ‘I’ve it all planned out. Thinking about it keeps you going – makes you feel better on days like this.’

  He paused to check if I was laughing at him, then took a hand out of his coat pocket and gestured slowly round the shop.

  ‘Look around you, son. What do you see?’

  A still, grey light seemed to have filtered into t
he shop. The lights were off and it was quiet in an almost eerie way. Nothing rustled or stirred, and the only sound was the soft fall of the rain. In the gloom the bright colours smouldered like embers; rhubarb like long tongues of flame; red sparks of apples; peaches, perfect in their velvety softness, yellows and oranges flickering gently.

  ‘Fruit,’ I answered. ‘Different kinds of fruit.’

  ‘Now, do you know what I see?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘I see places. A hundred different places. Look again.’ And as he spoke he began to point with his finger. ‘Oranges from Spain, apples from New Zealand, cabbages from Holland, peaches from Italy, grapes from the Cape, bananas from Ecuador – fruit from all over the world. Crops grown and harvested by hands I never see, packed and transported by other hands in a chain that brings them here to me. It’s a miracle if you think about it. When we’re sleeping in our beds, hands all over the world are picking and packing so that Gerry Breen can sell it here in this shop.’

  We both stood and looked, absorbing the magnitude of the miracle.

  ‘You asked me what I’d do if I won the jackpot – well, I’ve it all thought out. I’d go to every country whose fruit I sell, go and see it grow, right there in the fields and the groves, in the orchards and the vineyards. All over the world.’

  He looked at me out of the corner of his eye to see if I thought he was crazy, then turned away and began to tidy the counter. I didn’t say anything, but in that moment, if he’d asked me, I would have gone with him. All these years later, I still regret that I didn’t tell him that. Told him while there was still time.

  Four days later, Gerry Breen was dead. A man walked into the shop and shot him twice. He became another bystander, another nobody, sucked into the vortex by a random and malignant fate that marked him out. They needed a Catholic to balance the score – he became a casualty of convenience, a victim of retribution, propitiation of a different god. No one even claimed it. Just one more sectarian murder – unclaimed, unsolved, soon unremembered but by a few. A name lost in the anonymity of a long list. I would forget too, but I can’t.