I always name characters after members of the No. 1 Readers’ Club over on Patreon – this was Jackie’s turn! As is usually the case, this Bezzina’s story is a standalone. You don’t have to read them in order, but you can find them all here.
One winter evening, a couple enter Bezzina’s Emporium of Magical Artefacts and Antiquities looking to sell a rather unusual piece of jewellery…
Winter in Southend high street: frantic shoppers digging through bags or pockets for change for the parking metre, swaying beneath the weight of to do lists, cursing as they realise they’ve parked near one of those cashless metres and, no, the app-text-phone call system doesn’t work so which button do they have to press? Girls in bars on weekend evenings, clutching fishbowls full of something that matches their lipstick. Glass shards catching early morning light, abandoned on pavements and curbs for whoever’s job it is to clean it up. Winter in Bezzina’s Emporium of Magical Artefacts and Antiquities: frosted windows framed with holly and ivy. Self-fuelling lamps washing yellow light over taxidermy reindeer and chocolate boxes infused with every type of magic you could hope for. Customers slipping foreign currency over the polished wooden counter. The difference between the two made Ariel Scarlett’s teeth hurt.
Ariel was not originally from Southend-on-Sea, but her colleague Sophey was, so perhaps that’s why Sophey could see beauty in the town during the winter months. Maybe not in the noisy pubs or crowded bars—she had never raised her voice except to be heard above the radio—but in the churning grey Estuary and far off cargo ships, in bare trees with twiggy little arms and feather-light sparrows, in glowing houses proudly displaying fourteen types of LED Christmas decoration. She even liked working the late shift running up to Christmas.
‘Free parking on Thursday evenings,’ Sophey would say cheerfully on Thursday afternoons, when Ariel arrived from school to find Sophey already organising shelves. ‘We’ll be busy.’
Ariel would scowl and say something about the weather or the traffic or the lack of quality shopping opportunities in this godforsaken concrete housing estate, then make them tea. Where is our esteemed boss during this most important of shopping seasons? He’s at home, like every sane person who hates this time of year, watching the weekday helpings of Strictly Come Dancing on BBC Two.
‘Ah,’ Sophey would say. ‘That’s just his bones getting old. He did the elderly people shift this morning. We do the young people shift this evening.’
‘You’ve never been a young person,’ Ariel would say, and swipe a biscuit from the tin.
Sophey was never wrong about being busy on a Thursday, though.
On an evening cold enough to wake the Devil and wet enough to wash away his sins, Ariel was alphabetising spell books when the bell tinged. Actually, she missed the bell completely over the sound of the wind. It wasn’t until a voice said, ‘Do you work here?’ that she jumped and collided with a freestanding floor lamp rumoured to have once belonged to the Queen Mother.
‘Yes,’ she said breathlessly once she righted herself. ‘How can I help?’
Bezzina’s was a cheery little shop, but the evening’s furious rain made it darker and more cramped than usual. Every lamp was on, but precarious shelves and strange objects cast so many shadows that Ariel had trouble making out her customer. He was tall—or at least taller than she was, which was noticeable. He wore a fedora and a smart overcoat. The coat hung loose, as though he had bought it before losing a fair amount of weight. He carried a small suitcase in one hand and a gift bag in the other. The bag was wine red and presumably coated with plastic, because it seemed to have escaped the rain. Its handles were tied, extravagantly and with many loops, with a length of gold ribbon.
‘I’d like to pawn this.’ He placed the gift bag on the counter and stood back, like it contained live animals. Ariel had worked at Bezzina’s long enough to know that it might, so she took a good look before reaching for it. ‘It’s jewellery,’ the man added, with a glance at Ariel’s face.
As Ariel worked her way through the ribbon, Sophey wandered over from her perch at the other end of the shop. She could have handed Ariel the scissors, but instead gazed at the bag, and the man, with an air of expectation that made Ariel wonder if she’d met him before. Ariel caught her eye and Sophey quirked one eyebrow, like, put your hand in, I dare you. Ariel reached in and closed her hand around a small, pristine, jewellery box, the sort made of leather with the retailer’s name embossed on the lid. Next to it nestled a certificate of ownership, handwritten in lacy script.
‘May I?’ she asked, and the man nodded. He’d removed his hat to reveal a greying widow’s peak and the most resplendent black eyebrows Ariel had seen in a good long while. She moved a lamp closer and turned the box over, feeling Sophey lean in.
‘It was a gift. But it is unwanted. I thought… it might be something for you.’
Ariel prized the box open.
The customer’s accent, Ariel thought vaguely, was incredibly posh. Fancier than her grandparents’. The sort that came from public schools and holiday homes in Italy and using fish knives for weekday dinners. His suit was nicer than Ariel first realised. The coat was hand stitched. A tie and jewel-topped tie pin peeked out from beneath a white collar. He wore a gold signet ring on his left pinkie, a watch crafted by Swiss artisans on his right wrist, and cuff links to match the tie pin. Garnets, maybe, or rubies. It might be the light, but she thought his collar was creased and the sort of off-white that comes from mixing colours in an unsatisfactory washing cycle.
Ariel dragged her attention back to the object in her hand.
Ariel’s eyes said, ‘That is a brooch.’
Ariel’s brain said, ‘That is a sunbeam.’
Sophey said, ‘Where was this made?’
‘I commissioned it for my wife,’ the man replied. ‘But… well, times change. She no longer wishes to keep it. You can pick it up,’ he added. ‘It isn’t warm.’
The light from the brooch—a buttery, comforting sort one usually only finds during the very height of summer—illuminated his widow’s peak and the creases around his eyes. Next to him, strands of Sophey’s dark hair glinted gold and red. Ariel realised that most of the shadows in the shop were gone, that the lamps couldn’t compete with what she could really only describe as a very small, very powerful sun lamp.
‘Really,’ the man repeated. ‘It’s not going to hurt to touch it.’
Ariel reached into the box uncertainly and realised he was right: the gold of the brooch clasp was as cold as she’d expect from a piece of metal on a winter night. But the gemstones? They were arranged in concentric circles, the largest in the centre. She was afraid to look directly at the brooch, so she wasn’t sure if each gem emitted its own light or if the stones were themselves mundane—they could have just been glass—with the whole brooch bewitched to give off its own light. Surely she couldn’t just touch—
‘Touch one,’ Sophey murmured.
Ariel brushed her thumb over one stone and was surprised to find it did feel like a regular gemstone. Cold, solid, smooth.
‘How is it doing that?’ she asked. ‘What is making it… shine?’
‘I don’t know,’ the man admitted. ‘I asked for a piece of the sun, and that’s what I got.’ Ariel glanced at the retailer’s name embossed on the box. She didn’t recognise it, but she hadn’t been in the business long.
‘Why are you pawning it?’ Ariel asked. Rule one of working in magical antiques: find out if the object you’re being offered will come to life and eat you as soon as you’ve signed the paperwork.
The man ran his fingers over his cufflinks. ‘As I said, it’s an unwanted gift.’
‘We’d have to ask our boss,’ Ariel said eventually. ‘He’s got more experience with jewellery than we have.’
‘I don’t doubt it.’ Beneath the eyebrows, dark eyes sparkled.
‘Would you sell?’ Ariel asked, ‘if we weren’t willing to pawn it? I’ll be honest,’ she said after a moment, ‘Ernie prefers to buy.’
‘Less hassle,’ Sophey added kindly.
‘Perhaps,’ the man said after a moment. ‘Ah, do you—would your boss take regular antiques? Non-magical ones, I mean.’
‘That depends on what it is. Nineteenth century or earlier, maybe.’ Sophey gestured to the jewellery cabinet, an ancient glass-and-wood jalopy held up by a spell and a prayer. Full of sparkly delights, each shelf was carefully arranged so the cursed and/or lightly bewitched items could not rub shoulders with ordinary ones. No one needed to buy a pretty bracelet for Grandma only to discover that its neighbour, a similarly pretty bracelet, had whispered its nightmarish curse into Grandma’s eightieth birthday present.
He pulled out his tie pin and undid his cufflinks. ‘What about these?’
Sophey and Ariel glanced at each other.
‘They’re older than they look. Gold and garnet. It would save me finding a, er, regular pawnbroker.’
Sophey and Ariel glanced at each other.
‘I’ll phone Ernie,’ Sophey said. ‘He’ll want to come in personally to see the brooch. It’s—’ she glanced at her watch. ‘Oh, it’s only half past five. It’s so dark, I thought it was later. He’ll be happy to come in this evening if he hasn’t started cooking yet.’
‘It’s Thursday,’ Ariel murmured. ‘Soup night.’
‘Sunbeams,’ Sophey murmured back. She turned to the man, whose eyes had not left them the entire exchange. ‘Would you be prepared to wait, sir? I’ll ring him now and see. If he can’t make it in today, we open at eight o’clock tomorrow morning.’
‘Tonight would be better. I have—we have a long journey to begin—I would rather get it sorted tonight.’
‘May I make you a cup of tea while we wait?’ Ariel asked. She pulled a couple of chairs from behind the counter and gestured for him to sit. ‘Or coffee. Or, well, if it can be made with a kettle, we probably have it.’
‘Surprise me,’ he said.
Twenty minutes later, Ernest Bezzina pushed open the door to his shop to find his employees drinking hot chocolate with his newest customer. He could smell peppermint, which suggested one of the girls had taken the opportunity to experiment with kitchen witchery.
‘This is Mr Davenport,’ Ariel said when she saw the door open. ‘Mr Davenport, this is Ernest Bezzina, our boss.’
The men shook hands, each taking in the other. ‘Is that a compass?’ Davenport asked as he took his seat. ‘The artwork is stunning.’ Ariel was impressed: most people who saw Ernie’s tattoos assumed he was either an ex-con or a hippie. Neither screamed ‘responsible antiques dealer.’ Ariel knew he was at least one of those things and didn’t mind in the slightest, but some customers preferred to take their business elsewhere.
Ernie smiled and shook his sleeves further down his wrists. ‘Thank you, sir, it is. Never guides me wrong. Now, Sophey tells me you have something unusual.’
Davenport gestured to the brooch, glowing happily where they had left it. Ernie bent over it for a minute or more, using a set of magnifiers to inspect it closer.
‘Careful of looking directly at it,’ Sophey said from a corner. Ernie grunted.
A police car flashed blue light through the windows. Down at the traffic lights, someone leant on their horn. A gust of wind tapped malevolently on the windows.
‘Mr Davenport, why don’t you fetch your wife? She’s at a train station, is she not? I’m sorry if we hold you up, but this certificate says she owns the brooch so she needs to be the person to sign it over.’
The girls blinked. Ernie was a stickler for the rules, most of the time, but it was unusual for him to speak so directly to a new customer, especially about things no one had told him out loud.
‘She is not, ah…’ Davenport adjusted his tie. Ernie waited. The girls waited. ‘She did not wish to see the transaction. If I am being honest, this is a reluctant sale. She is waiting for me to finish here and then we are taking the train back to London. We have a connection to catch, and we really cannot afford to be late.’
‘Is she waiting at Southend Central or Southend Victoria?’
‘Ah, Central? The one opposite a pub.’
‘That’s Central. Ariel, why don’t you accompany Mr Davenport to fetch her. It’s easy to get lost in weather like this. I’m sure she would appreciate a hot chocolate—Sophey, why don’t you brew us some more? I think we have some stollen in the tin above the coffee. Don’t worry about your train, sir, I have a feeling you’ll make it.’
Five minutes later, the door clanged. Ariel caught Sophey’s eye as she held open the door for Mr Davenport and a tiny, bespectacled woman wearing a large fur coat and a cloche. She, too, carried a small suitcase. Ariel’s eye said, This is not how I anticipated the evening unfolding. Also, this lady is wearing fur. Sophey’s responding glance said, Calm down, that coat is older than Ernie. The animal would have died of old age by now anyway.
‘Welcome to Bezzina’s, Mrs Davenport,’ Ernest said promptly. ‘Please take a seat. Help yourself to a stollen.’
‘Thank you.’ Mrs Davenport sat down delicately. Her eyes snagged on Ernie’s tattoos—all of them, including the strange rune-like ones covering his fingers—with far less ease than her husband’s had.
‘The sunbeam,’ Ernie said when everyone had taken a socially acceptable portion of cake. ‘I must ask why you’re pawning it. I don’t require a backstory—it’s none of our business—but I’m afraid it is my business to ensure that the objects I bring into my shop are safe for public consumption. Or as safe as magical artefacts can be reasonably expected to be.’
‘We no longer need it—’ Mr Davenport started.
‘Well, that’s not exactly true,’ his wife interrupted. Her accent, like her husband’s, was received pronunciation, but Ariel could detect a hint of something less English. Russian, maybe, or Southern European. Sophey would know for sure—she had an ear for accents. Mrs Davenport gripped her teacup like it was a life raft. Her fingernails were manicured, but grubby. Her blouse cuff was frayed, and beneath the scent of dead fox and perfume, she smelt a little like Ariel’s brother did when he’d been up for days gaming.
‘Jackie—’
‘Well, it isn’t true. It’s not that we’re selling the sunbeam, sir, it’s that we’re selling everything.’
‘Jackie—’
‘To cut a very long story short, my husband and I recently found ourselves short on money and long on objects. So we have found them new homes.’
‘Jacqueline.’ Mr Davenport winced, but he sounded more tired than irritated.
Ariel didn’t think she’d ever heard the phrase ‘we’re poor’ worded so well.
‘The brooch has absolutely no faults, as long as you don’t look directly at it for long. We use it on evenings like this one, to brighten up the house. Or when we’re feeling under the weather and need some vitamin D. Well,’ she added after a moment, ‘that’s what we did when we still had a house.’
Ernie sipped his hot chocolate. He pressed a handkerchief to his mouth and placed it in the pocket of his woollen cardigan. He glanced at either his watch or his compass. ‘In that case, I see no reason not to pawn it. The value will be tricky. I’ve examined it closely, and I recognise the hallmark—the creator is a friend of mine from years ago—but custom pieces are hard to value for the open market.’ Ernie produced a fountain pen and a slip of paper from the top of the counter. He wrote a couple of lines on it and placed it underneath Mrs Davenport’s saucer. He tapped one line with his pen. ‘Shall we say… this much for a loan term of this many days? Or if you would rather sell, I am happy to do that too.’ He tapped a second line.
Mr and Mrs Davenport’s eyes widened. Mrs Davenport stood. ‘Excuse us for a moment.’ She walked to the other end of the shop, which wasn’t all that far once she’d manoeuvred around the reindeer. Her husband followed. The staff, as was customary during this part of an exchange, poured more drinks, munched more stollen and discussed the weather. Sophey and Ernest debated the odds of snow in the new year. Ariel savoured her cup of chocolate and wondered why Sophey insisted on drinking hers with a saucer. She wondered if they would have time to make eggnog for Christmas Eve. She wondered why Mr and Mrs Davenport were arguing with each other instead of haggling with Ernest. She could hear phrases like ‘That is beyond generous, Albert, I cannot believe you would think twice. You’d get to keep your grandfather’s garnets,’ ‘Jackie, we are not a charity case and this is not a normal pawnbroker. Can we trust him?’ and ‘Albert, one does not look a gift horse in the mouth when one has just lost one’s worldly goods to a—’
Ariel took a noisy bite of stollen and asked Sophey how her homework was going.
Just as Ariel was starting to think they would have to close for the evening around the quietly animated forms of the Davenports, they returned to the counter.
‘We would like to pawn it,’ Mrs Davenport said. ‘For cash, please.’
‘Of course.’ Ernie stood. ‘Ariel, please could you open the safe while I organise the paperwork? Sophey, I think these people require stollen, to go, and a flask of chocolate if you could.’
Six months later, Ariel was cleaning beneath the shop counter when her fingers closed around a brooch box.
‘Ernie? I thought we sold this after the loan period was up. It hasn’t been on display since…’ she frowned. ‘I was sure this had sold.’
‘You need to improve your cleaning skills, Miss Scarlett. Or pay more attention to our paperwork, at any rate. The loan term has not quite ended.’
Ariel put down her duster and dug out the records. ‘You gave them a term of two years?’
Ariel found herself so touched by this display of sentimentality that she had to sit down and survey Ernest with a feeling she could only describe as moderate affection. ‘You really gave them a loan for longer than thirty days? You’re saving it for Mr and Mrs Davenport? How are you sure they’ll come back with payment?’
‘When you’ve been in the business as long as I have, you develop a nose for when someone’s luck’s run out versus when they’re experiencing a pause in good fortune. In my experience, most people going through the former assume it’s the latter. I have a good feeling about the Davenports coming to collect their sunbeam.’
Ariel nodded and replaced the box beneath the counter. ‘You’re quite an old softie, Ernie, on the quiet.’
‘Of course I am. What suggested otherwise? There’s still dust on that counter, by the way. I don’t pay you to stand around gawping.’
‘Ernie, you barely pay me at all.’ Ariel hid a smile and reached for the duster.
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