Free The Kindness by Polly Samson

talked, Julian could almost summon the taste of the fish that they ate with soft brown bread and watercress, the smoky smell as Jenna lifted the tea towel from its tin bucket of hickory embers.
    ‘I’ve found an incredible present for you,’ he lied. ‘I can’t wait for you to see it . . .’
    The quest for Jenna’s ‘incredible’ present shook him from his mope. In Swallow Street he chained his bike to a lamp-post by the head shop, waved to Pete the hippie, and headed for the antiques and bric-à-brac arcade. The first thing to catch his eye was a collection of brass padlocks at Geldings Antiques – some Victorian, some earlier – and all polished to such a shine he felt like a magpie, he liked them so much, one in particular shaped like a heart. The price tag hung from a thin strip of red ribbon. He winced at what was written there. These shops were not priced for students.
    He wandered from the padlocks to check that his favourite fantasy buy was still on display. And there it was, flamboyant on its stage: a wind-up mahogany gramophone with gleaming trumpet like a strumpet kicking her skirts.
    He stood for a while, just staring at the gramophone and musing, rolling his cigarette. He’d been bad-tempered all week because of that girl with the hawk, was beginning to wish she’d stayed in his dreams. He’d been ungracious with his mother, even though she had offered to fund his train fare to Firdaws. He imagined the gramophone on the grass beside the river: Billie Holiday or Patti Page. How astonished Jenna would be.
    Crosby, Stills and Nash floated from a radio, their celestial harmonies soothing him. He felt almost peaceful for the first time in days as he perfected his cigarette. He tilted his head to lick the paper and glanced at a large oil painting hanging on the back wall of the shop in which a cormorant dried its wings against a background of emerald green. His eye was instantly diverted to an ornate gilt mirror standing beside it. His girl was reflected there: Julia. Rusty-brown sundress, hair tumbling and bare shouldered, she was watching him silently, biting the corner of her lip.
    He was standing right beside her, close enough to touch. ‘It’s exactly right,’ he said as she described the mirror’s fine provenance and he tried not to gulp as she told him the price. He studied her eyes in its reflection. Her pale irises had liminal rings of darkest blue, like ink that had seeped to the edges.
    ‘What I like best is that the angel’s face shows such tender concern,’ she spoke in a near whisper. Her hair looked so soft he wanted to touch it.
    ‘The frame,’ she reminded him. The carved angel whose folded wings enclosed one edge of the mirror could’ve been a crow or a crone for all he cared.
    ‘He looks a bit like Marlon Brando,’ she said.
    ‘Huh?’
    ‘The angel. Don’t you think?’ She kept her gaze steady and they continued staring straight at one another in the mirror.

Seven
    He missed Jenna’s birthday by a week. He travelled with the mirror and the drunks on the last train out of town. The train of shame.
    The moon kept pace as the train hurtled west and the air was heavy with the perfumed-garden-of-hell of the toilet. He took Yeats from his pocket and put him on the table and, twirling a matchstick between his teeth, rested his head to the window and stared at the moon, but saw only Julia, thought only of her.
    He shook himself from a dream of falling and woke with a start just one stop before his station, Julia’s steady gaze still floating before him. He shuffled sideways with the mirror in his arms to the front four carriages, cursing himself aloud. Horton’s platform is shorter than the train: of course it is, stupid . The mirror was an awkward travelling companion and a tear had started in a corner of its wrapping. Together they tumbled on to an empty midnight platform. Oh for fuck’s sake, why wasn’t his mother there to meet him? Did she really think he meant it