A Boy Asking for Rain

The next customer arrived carrying a plank of wood.

For one hopeful second, I thought he might be able to put it over the problem. Then I remembered that problems located in ceilings rarely improved when covered from below.

“Bad time?” he asked.

“Wet time. Different category.”

He looked from me to the bowls on the counter. I had added two saucepan lids to catch the splash, which made the shop sound as though a very small person was learning the drums badly.

“I'm after rain,” he said.

I waited for him to smile.

He didn't.

“Really?”

“Just a little. Seven or eight minutes.”

“Right.” I put down the towel. “What for?”

“A roof.”

“Most people come in about the opposite.”

“My grandpa says a watering can doesn't find the same gaps. I've been trying to tell him a hose has settings. He's been trying to tell me the settings aren't weather.”

His hair was dark, cut short at the back and less successfully controlled at the front. There was a pale patch on one wrist where a watch had been. He was about my age, with the careful posture of someone carrying a plank indoors and aware of the objects available to knock over.

“I've got standard drizzle,” I said. “No wind, moderate release. You'd need to secure it above the roof, not stand up there holding it.”

“That's the plan.”

“Whose roof?”

“Stan Shaw's shed. Down past the sailing club.”

I knew the shed. Grandad used to take me there to borrow clamps and remain for three hours. Stan had a boatbuilding business, a collection of chairs too broken to sit on and strong opinions about people who called fibreglass a material rather than an apology.

“You're Eli,” I said.

He looked pleased. “Yes.”

“You used to put crabs in the paddling pool.”

“It was one crab.”

“It looked busy.”

“I took it back.”

I went to the approved shelf and selected a grey cloth pouch. Its sealed label gave the source conditions, measured duration and recommended distance from the surface being tested. Agnes had filled it on a dull Thursday while complaining that the weather could at least have the decency to charge us wholesale rates.

Eli set his plank against the counter, well away from the wet patch.

“June, isn't it?”

For a stupid, private moment I was delighted he remembered. Then I looked down at the name badge I had pinned to my shirt because being in charge had felt as though it required one.

“Available on the front,” I said.

He glanced at the badge and grinned.

“I remembered first.”

There were several answers to that. My brain chose to inspect them all and deliver none.

The rain increased.

Eli caught a bowl just before it overflowed onto a box of uncharged fabric.

“Where?”

“Sink. Back room, left.”

He carried it there without asking why the rain was inside. I put a second bowl under the stream and heard him tipping the water away. He returned with the larger washing-up basin, which I had forgotten because it was usually full of stock needing labels.

“I moved the empty packets onto the shelf,” he said. “Not the tins.”

“Good. Thank you.”

“Would the tins have exploded?”

“No. But some of them would have been very annoying.”

He handed me a dry cloth. I explained the pouch instructions while wiping the counter. He listened properly: not with the overdone attention adults sometimes gave me before asking Agnes the same thing, and not while planning what he would say next.

“No heat,” I finished. “Don't put it in a closed lunchbox after opening. Let it spend itself and dry naturally.”

“I wasn't going to put rain in my lunchbox.”

“You'd be surprised.”

“Now I want to know what people do.”

“Come back after you've paid.”

The drizzle slowed, became a set of individual drops and stopped.

We stood listening for the next one.

“Is it supposed to do that?” he asked.

“Not there.”

“Right.”

I could have said the gutter. I could have blamed a customer or explained that it wasn't really my responsibility. Instead I looked at the blue coat, still moving slightly on the table.

“I repaired something before I read the warning.”

“That sounds familiar.”

“Does it?”

“Last winter I planed a door so it would shut. Grandpa had left it sticking because the frame needed resetting. I made a beautifully fitted gap.”

I laughed before deciding whether I wanted to.

“Did you fix it?”

“With another door.”

“That is an expensive moral.”

He shrugged. “He lets me touch the plane again now.”

When he'd gone, with his rain and his plank, the shop felt bigger and less embarrassing. Nothing had been repaired. I still had water in three bowls. But somebody else now knew I was capable of making a mistake without immediately deciding that this was my entire character.

I moved the coat onto a tray in the vented return cupboard, using the dry gloves Agnes kept beside it. The cupboard was for unstable small returns, not unidentified garments that appeared to contain a season. I left its vents clear and placed the rough dispersal cloth beneath the lining.

Then I texted Agnes.

Old coat from Gran's trunk doing something odd. Some indoor rain. Contained at the moment. Please call.

I watched the message send.

Twelve minutes later, before I had found a better version of myself to write it, I sent another.

I sewed part of the lining closed. There was a warning I didn't see.

The second message looked worse on the screen. It was also the first one that gave her something useful to work with.