Free The Misremembered Man by Christina McKenna

roaring fire.
    Doris was surprised to see Jamie McCloone coming through her door. He had little reason to visit her establishment because he rarely sent or received letters. He did have a savings account, however, which, she was glad to see, was seldom debited (or for that matter credited). It held quite a healthy sum, too: £3,129 and fippence to be exact, which had been lodged soon after his uncle’s death.
    Ms. Crink had inherited the business from her parents and had run it for as long as anyone could remember. Consequently, she knew the intimate goings-on of most members of that small community. As the shrewd clairvoyant can determine a person’s future from the clothes they wear and the things they say, so Doris could judge the state of a marriage or a person’s circumstances through the mail they received and the transactions they conducted over her woodwormed counter.
    “Another red reminder from the gas board for the Kennedys at number nine, I see,” she’d say. “Thomas must be hitting the bottle.”
    “That daughter of Betsy Bap’s out of work again,” she’d observe on another occasion. “That’s the third welfare check she’s cashed this month. Oh, she takes after her mother, that one: a strumpet, the temper of a billy goat. The Lord himself couldn’t work with her .”
    All such speculations and slanders about the people of Tailorstown would be relayed to Mildred, her sister, who worked in the clothing store next door: Harvey’s, Purveyors of Ladies and Gentlemen’s Fashions. At supper in the evenings, in the cramped kitchen behind the post office, the ladies would mull over the day’s events, sifting through the evidence of what was said, done and bought by their customers, in order to build a case against them. Sometimes the purchase of a pair of silk stockings and a withdrawal from a savings account on the same day— and by the same person—could fire their imaginations with the fury of a Cape Canaveral rocket, before returning them to earth like a damp squib.
    “Oh, she couldn’t be having an affair. She’s only just married,” a Crink sister might observe. To which the other would respond with: “Well, I can’t see a hellion like Mickey McCourt allowing his wife to buy, let alone notice, she was wearing a pair a them, can you? Oh, something’s going on there, you can be sure.”
     
     
    As Jamie McCloone approached her counter, Doris Crink removed her spectacles, believing she looked better without them.
    “Jamie, haven’t seen you in a long while. How’ve you been keepin’?”
    “I’m not so bad atall, Doris. But me back’s givin’ me a bit of bother, so it is.”
    “Ach, I’m sorry to hear that. Y’know that back’s goin’ round. Aggie Coyle is nearly kilt with it.” Doris was studying Jamie sympathetically. He might not be an oil painting but he was a civil enough creature, and he did have £3,129 and fippence in his savings book, and no wife to be whittling away at it…or, Doris mused idly, not yet anyway. “Is it the rheumatism, is it?”
    “No, Doris, it’s the lambago, the doctor says. And he give me tablets to take and wants me to take a rest by the seaside, so he does.”
    “Well, so you should, Jamie. That’s very good advice. You’re liftin’ too many heavy things on the farm, no doubt.” She placed her elbows on the counter and leaned confidentially toward him. “Y’know I had a bit a bother with me ears last winter, and Dr. Brewster told me the exact same thing. He said: ‘Doris d’you know what you need?’”
    “God-oh, did he tell you the same thing, did he?”
    “He did indeed. He said: ‘Doris, you need a good rest by the sea in Portaluce with them ears of yours.’ And you know, I took his advice and went for a week and came back,” Doris gave the counter a triumphant slap, “as right as rain with no ears atall.”
    Jamie pushed up the bill of his cap to air his scalp a bit, both flustered and flattered that a woman of Doris’s