Momentum

He got out of the car slowly, waiting for one foot to touch the kerb before the other one was lifted off the mat that rode up against the pedals. His knees resisted with a stiffness that was almost entirely psychological. Old now, for certain, but feeling it more in his head and heart than his veins and joints; old from the top down, as if the grey in his head had soaked into his brain, and thence to his blood and his knees. He began, ponderously, to straighten himself out of his seat, and under his corduroy trousers he was certain he heard a cartilaginous crackle.

Clump, went the door. There was a time when he would have walloped it shut and spun on his heel. A time when the car body he could glimpse in the corner of his eye would have had the glorious bulbs and swoops of a Daimler, instead of this Japanese... thing he had been forced to buy in retirement. Casio, or whatever in God's name it was. Shaking his head he began to shuffle the hundreds of miles to the shop front.

Inside the shop Mr Harris was swearing. Specifically, he swore about stock ordering that had slid entirely from the surface of Jamal's mind. Jamal was his nearly-new (or shop-soiled, as Harris often called him) employee, who had forgotten to buy in as he had been told, and reminded, and reminded again. As he saw Mr Friedrichsen approaching Harris moved smoothly to swearing about that instead. Oh Christ, he thought. That old bugger. It must be after eleven, then.

The bell tinged.

"Morning, Mr Friedrichsen," Harris intoned, acknowledging the man with words and the daily ritual with voice.

"So, Harris," said Friedrichsen. It was meant, as always, to be a greeting; he clipped each word as it left his mouth and coloured it with an accent that wandered around middle and eastern Europe like Napoleon's army, getting thinner whenever Friedrichsen's thoughts on a subject frosted over.

Harris folded newspapers and flopped them down on the counter in front of the old man. He punctuated the process with the titles of the publications. "Telegraph, Figaro and Die Zeit. And a pack of extra-strong mints?"

"Ach, no," Friedrichsen said, waving a finger at Harris' mistake. "End of the wik. Not today. Nefer today, by hwich I am meaning this day of the wik!" Harris tried to smile and largely failed, but providence sent him his wife at this point, who could talk to Friedrichsen as well as she could talk to any one of their customers: very well indeed.

"Mr Friedrichsen!" she cried, as if the old man didn't come into the shop every day, but had instead been absent for years. "Nice to see your face! I hope life's treating you all right?"

Friedrichsen bowed stiffly, his back lacking gallantry. "As well as is to be expected, yes?" He smiled warmly to indicate it was a joke. Dutifully, masterfully, Mrs Harris giggled.

"Ah, that's good to hear, isn't it, Phil?" (No pause for an answer) "I think that's all you can really hope for, isn't it? As well as can be expected! I just hope you don't get this flaming cold that's been going round, is all. And any news about your kids, Mr Friedrichsen? Not that they're kids any more, I suppose!"

"Ach! Do not ask me about them!" he said resignedly, glad they had asked. "The girl she is not so good a dotter, spending her time and my money with these... artist types in London, but.... she is young still, yes? Still time, I am supposing. My son, though. Ah!" He turned to Mr Harris, one father to another. "Dat boy of mine, eh, Harris? Hwat can you do with setch a fool as he? Hwen the world and his wife are forsakink the countryside in drofes, drofes I say, he returns to it, end to his rrreckless, stupid climbink. How bleak it all is, where he and she are lifing. It almost makes me glad, that he nefer haf infited me."

Harris was at a loss. Mrs Harris stepped in again: "I'm sure they don't mean any harm by it, Mr Friedrichsen. We were all young once, and I'm sure they're having fun learning from their mistakes."

Wearily Friedrichsen nodded his wrinkled head. "You are right, Mrs Harris. I am certain that Mrs Friedrichsen, Got may her soul rest, would say the same. Yet I wish they could be learning from my mistakes sometimes, perhaps! Till tomorrow, Mr Harris. Good day, Mrs Harris."

Again the door rang its little bell and he was outside. They watched him stalk, chin held high against the world and its youth, back to the car.

"Poor sod," Mrs Harris said quietly.

"Poor sod indeed," Mr Harris said. "Those kids are better off away from him and his bleeding edicts. Dictatorial old swine."

Mrs Harris just smiled and returned to the back room, again on cue like a weather-house figurine.

Turning back to the counter, which he had been in the middle of tidying, Mr Harris continued to talk as if his wife were still there. "If nothing else the old boy must be well-read, I suppose. I wonder what his son's like. God, if I had had that waiting for me at home every day then I'd have cleared off too.... What's that- Jamal! Jamal! You've left the papers over the chiller's air vents again. Do you want the whole bloody place to burn down?"