Victor had spent thirty years painting shop signs. Sixteen shops where he had painted WELCOME were now gone. He remembered the exact number because people kept suggesting he find something positive to do with his mornings.
On Friday his sister Ellie suggested her market stall.
“An hour,” she said. “While I go swimming.”
“You sell jam. It can wait an hour.”
“The jam can. The customers won’t.”
He said no. Then he lay awake considering the amateur lettering he had seen at her market, and on Saturday arrived carrying a brush roll.
Ellie looked at it. “You aren’t painting the jam.”
“I thought I’d have a look.”
She sold plum jam, quince jelly and bitter marmalade. Victor liked the marmalade. He would not say so. Ellie had once told him he would need to learn to enjoy it, and he had objected on principle. Her table had a plain white sign she had made herself. The letters were large, the prices straightforward. He could find three faults without putting his bag down.
Before he mentioned them, she asked him to stack jars.
Eight weeks earlier, the sign company had ended Victor’s job. The new signs came printed on panels, without anyone needing to wait for him to finish a curve. On his last day the manager thanked him for his flexibility. Victor had wanted the man to remember the winter when he had painted every bus-stop sign at night so the daytime crews could keep working. Instead, he received a supermarket cake with his name misspelled.
He had written a letter correcting the spelling. He had not sent it. He had shown it to Ellie twice.
Rain began before the market opened. Across the aisle a young man selling herb plants held his price board under his jacket. Ink ran from the bottom row.
“Waterproof marker,” Victor told him.
“It said permanent.”
“It will permanently disappoint you.”
The young man smiled, which encouraged Victor more than it should have.
His name was Sam. He had twenty pounds for a replacement sign, a dry board behind the stall and a tin of exterior paint borrowed from his landlord. He needed the sign for the opening at nine.
Victor examined the board. “What do you want on it?”
“Three plants for five pounds. Everything on that table.”
“Your name?”
“People ask.”
“They shouldn’t have to.”
Sam glanced at the clock on his phone. “The offer is the main thing. Can you do it?”
Victor said yes. He carried the board into Ellie’s canopy, laid it across two crates, and began with a flowing S. His wrist still knew the work. He made a thick green stroke curve into a fine one, smooth all the way. The damp market disappeared. Here was something that would last beyond the morning.
At eight forty-five he stood the board up. SAM’S GARDEN occupied its top half in green script. Beneath he had lettered Kitchen herbs for the discerning cook. THREE PLANTS FOR FIVE POUNDS ran in small letters along the bottom.
Sam came over holding a tray of basil.
He looked from the sign to the tray. “Where’s the five pounds?”
Victor pointed.
“You can’t see that from the aisle.”
“People will come closer.”
“Some won’t. The bus passes the gate. I’ve got maybe ten seconds.”
Victor explained how the lettering led the eye. Sam took two steps back. Ellie, pricing marmalade, said nothing.
“The big word is discerning,” Sam said. “That means someone who knows good quality, doesn’t it? I don’t want to test their taste before I sell them parsley.”
Victor put the cap on his paint.
“Then you shouldn’t have asked a professional.”
“I asked you to paint the offer.”
The market bell rang. Sam took the board back because a poor sign was better than none. Victor returned to Ellie’s jars. A woman approached, asked the price of the jelly, and paid. He gave her the wrong change. Ellie corrected it before she left.
“You can go swimming now,” he said.
“I can’t.”
“One mistake.”
“And you’re thinking about the sign.”
He moved a jar from one side of the table to the other. Then he moved it back.
Ellie’s towel lay rolled beside the till. She wore her swimsuit under her clothes. For a month she had missed the pool because someone’s unfinished job kept her at the stall.
Victor looked at the towel. He still wanted to argue about his sign. While he argued, Ellie would lose another swim.
He went across to Sam.
“I can change it,” he said.
Sam was giving a customer instructions for keeping mint in a pot. He finished before answering.
“For the same twenty?”
“For the same twenty.”
“Big price. No discerning.”
Victor nodded. He did not ask about the name.
Sam gave him the board during a lull. Victor painted over the tagline and the small offer, leaving Sam’s name above. While the patch dried he returned to Ellie’s jars. When it was ready he wrote THREE FOR £5 across it, as large as the board allowed. He handed it back. The old flourishes and the blunt offer sat uneasily together, but a woman at the gate could read the price before she entered.
She bought thyme, basil and parsley.
Sam put twenty pounds in Victor’s hand. “Thank you. That works.”
He folded the note and put it in his pocket.
At Ellie’s stall he made a little list of the three prices, then asked her to watch while he completed two sales. She watched the money, the jars and the customers. At half past ten she took her towel.
“Back at twelve.”
“I can manage.”
“Call if you can’t.”
He said he would.
Before eleven an older woman stopped beneath the canopy. She looked at his face, then at the brush roll beside him.
“You painted the Blue Lantern, didn’t you?” she said. “I watched you finish it one evening.”
He had: gold letters on dark blue, with a thin pale border he had added without charging because the shop front caught so little sun.
“I used to meet my brother under it,” she said. “He couldn’t remember the street, but he knew the lantern.”
She bought marmalade. Victor told her the shop had been pulled down in the year of the heavy snow. She knew; she had gone to look for it. He described the pale line, then stopped himself from describing the council that had failed to preserve it.
“It showed up at dusk,” she said.
“That was what I wanted.”
After she left, he took out the unsent letter, which he carried folded inside his brush roll. His former manager’s name was at the top. Victor still wanted him to read it. He folded it again without changing a word.
At noon Ellie returned with damp hair and a bag of sandwiches. They sat at opposite ends of the market bench while Sam kept an eye on the jars. Rainwater occupied the middle. Victor laid half his newspaper on the dry boards beside her.
“Twenty pounds,” he said.
“For the sign?”
“The second one.”
She handed him a sandwich. Marmalade, because she had run out of cheese.
He took a bite and watched a man by the gate count five pounds into his palm before approaching Sam’s stall.
“Which of these people needs lettering next Saturday?” he asked.
Ellie leaned over the newspaper to inspect the stalls. She did not answer until she had swallowed.
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