Ernest Bezzina really just wants a cup of tea. Other Bezzina’s Emporium stories can be found here.
Two short stories in one quarter? It is indeed. There’s invented Latin. Well, the Latin is real, I just smushed two words together. That’s how language works, right.
I’m not saying that if you enjoy this, you should all keep an eye on my Patreon, but you absolutely should. By ‘this’ do I mean short stories? Do I mean Bezzina’s Emporium stories? Picture me with a fluffy white cat, cackling, and update those notification settings.
Ernest Bezzina did not usually buy or sell plants. He was in the business of magical artefacts and antiquities, and for a plant to count as the former it needed to be cursed, and to count as the latter it needed to be dead.
He did keep some cacti on his windowsill at home, and a few outside pots with lavender and mint. He hadn’t planted the mint, but it arrived one day and made itself comfortable, so now he had a steady supply of tea.
He’d never considered a move into the horticulture. But he suspected, as he surveyed the child standing in front of him, that he would have to. At least for the afternoon. He wondered if he should take preventative measures to protect the bookshelves. Or the clothes rack and shoe boxes. Or the jewellery cabinet. Possibly he should pop out to the nearest home and garden store and purchase a tarpaulin, or conduct this transaction on the pavement outside.
‘Well?’ prompted the child, and Ernie realised he’d been silent for some time. The person at his shop’s counter was small enough that he had to lean to see them, young enough that he could not tell their gender. Longish, blondish curls framed keen green eyes, and their skin and dungarees were suitably grimy. In Ernie’s experience, this was the best age for a decent conversation. The older they got, the more they tended toward bullshit.
‘I’m not sure we’d normally buy this sort of thing,’ Ernie admitted. He and the child both looked at the potted plant on the counter. It was ostensibly a type of succulent, large enough to take up a chunk of windowsill but not so huge that a visitor would remark on it. It was green and appeared healthy, with thick, branch-like leaves and a general attitude of contentment. Succulents, generally, were easy to look after and hard to kill—just water them occasionally and repot them as they grow. These parameters made them the perfect gift for a primary school aged child. If Ernie had nieces and nephews, he would probably procure such things for birthdays.
But there was a reason the plant was here, on his counter, amongst paperwork concerning haunted clocks and magical artwork. Few children would sell succulents gifted to them by a friendly adult. Few people would sell a pot plant they’d bought for their house. No one walked into Bezzina’s Emporium of Magical Artefacts and Antiquities with a cardboard box and a sense of purpose unless there was something… off. Something unusual. Something oh, has someone moved all the furniture in my house two inches to the left. Or unless the item in question had tried to kill them.
‘This plant tried to kill me,’ the child said.
‘How?’ asked Ernie. He’d recently made a pot of tea, and it was getting cold, and he found himself thinking that if this child had come in twenty years ago he wouldn’t have minded the tea getting cold but now his knees hurt on damp days and his eyesight was beginning to worry him and what he wanted more than a lone child in his shop was a warm cup of tea and a peaceful read of this fortnight’s Private Eye. ‘Would you like a cup of tea while you explain?’ he asked hopefully, to speed the child up.
The child shook their head no. Sod this, thought Ernie, and pulled a couple of armchairs from an alcove into the shop floor. He poured himself tea and gestured for the child to sit opposite him. A breeze, from a stray open window, rustled through the shop and the child jumped and glanced back at the plant, which remained motionless.
Ernie nursed tea and waited. The summer sun, dimmed by near permanent cloud cover, warbled through the crowded window display, throwing stripes of light on the succulent and the child. It was a very damp day.
‘It grows at night,’ the child said, fidgeting badly with the sleeves of a striped jumper. ‘And it moves. Along my bedroom floor. Towards my bed. It always shrinks back to that size in the morning though, so my mum doesn’t believe me.’ A crinkle appeared in their forehead. This was also the age, Ernie reflected, when children started to notice when the adults in their life weren’t listening.
‘Where did you get the plant?’ Ernie asked.
‘It was a gift.’ Bingo. ‘From my stepsister.’ Oh, how cliché.
‘Did the growing start straight away?’
‘Not straight away. I think it took a bit of time to warm up. For a while it just grew a bit bigger at night. In the last few weeks, it’s started growing towards me. The last few days it’s made it all the way to my bed.’ The child’s eyes were indeed pink-tinged and gummy from lack of sleep.
‘Did you fetch a parent when that happened?’
‘I tried. My mum said it’s my imagination getting the better of me and to stop reading comics before bed. She didn’t even get up.’
If Ernie didn’t have nieces and nephews, he certainly didn’t have children. He flattered himself that if he did, he’d have gotten up in the middle of the night if his offspring claimed attempted murder via pot plant. ‘Stay here,’ he said to the child and walked to the shop’s stock room. Past boxes of household goods and bags of coats, past shelves of books and underneath this basket—no, that basket—he dug out a worn clothbound tome about magical plants. He returned to the shop floor to find the child over by the jewellery cabinet, as far from the counter as possible without it leaving their eyeline.
‘Can a book help?’ the child sounded as doubtful as Ernie felt.
‘I hope so. I’d like to establish if the plant is a magical variety, or if it started life as a normal succulent and then something happened to it. I’m not usually an expert on magical plants, but if memory serves, this might have the answers.’
‘And if it doesn’t?’
‘We could consult the internet,’ Ernie said reluctantly. ‘Although I have friends who would take less time to share more accurate information. Assuming they answer the phone.’
The child nodded, satisfied, and watched Ernie carefully turn the creaking pages.
‘Ah. Here. Look.’ Ernie turned the book towards the child. ‘Minitabundus frutex. Carnivorous. Rare unless you know someone who can make you a cutting. Grows towards the nearest living thing with the intention of strangulation and digestion.’ The description was vivid and the illustration almost comically clear, showing a three-step digestive process. Ernie was put in mind of those stories where a family’s loving pet snake stretched itself out next to a small child’s bed and everyone said ‘oh how cute’ until they woke up and the child’s bed was looking empty and the snake was looking full. Those stories might be urban legends, though. As a purveyor of the unusual and unsettling, Ernie supposed he should know if there was any truth to it. Like plants, he wasn’t planning on ever investing commercially in reptiles.
‘What do we do now?’ the child asked.
Ernie reread the page, to make sure he understood. ‘The book suggests we burn it.’
‘Could you? If you bought it off me?’
‘I would burn it instead of buying it off you,’ Ernie said firmly. ‘Do I look like I’m made of money?’
‘There’s a necklace in that cabinet that costs eight thousand pounds.’ This was a good point. ‘And I need money to buy a new plant to replace the old one.’
‘So your family won’t notice the difference.’
‘My stepsister will, of course, but by then I’ll be living at my dad’s. Hopefully.’ The child fidgeted a bit more. Ernie was unfamiliar with child custody, but he was fairly sure that when children were as young as this person, they didn’t get a say in who they lived with. ‘And she will be out of the way soon anyway.’
‘Out of the way? You’re… eight.’
‘I’m nine.’
‘And you’re going to… remove your stepsister from the equation.’
‘No, she’s going to university in Portsmouth in September. Then my mum’s going to see her sister in New Zealand so I’m going to my dad’s for longer. Then I’m going to ask to stay there.’
‘I see,’ said Ernie, although he didn’t really. ‘I can give you ten pounds for this plant,’ he said after a moment. ‘That should be enough for you to pop along to the flower shop and buy something similar. If it’s not, tell Therese that Ernie said he’ll cover the difference.’
‘Thanks. What will you do with the plant?’
‘I’ll burn it this evening.’
‘How?’
‘Carefully.’
The child looked ready to say something else, but the shop door clanged with enough force that it bounced off a cabinet. Across the threshold stormed a pale, pointy sort of woman whom Ernie expected was normally neither especially pale nor pointy.
‘Rowan! What are you doing?’
‘Mum!’ The child—Rowan—lept from the armchair. ‘I came to fix the plant.’
‘There is. Nothing. Wrong. With. That. Plant,’ their mother said through gritted teeth. ‘But more importantly, you ran away.’
‘You were in Primark. You’re always in Primark. I was going to come back to Primark.’
‘We have street rangers looking for you! They’re about to call the police!’
‘I’m fine. This plant isn’t,’ Rowan said pointedly.
Rowan’s mother took in the shop’s most prominent features—a huge chest of drawers that vibrated constantly, a ramshackle display of alchemy books, an adult-sized statue of Betty Boop, which always and inexplicably smelt like Parma Violets. She took in Ernie—tattooed fingers, gold-framed glasses, still holding a teacup. He’d gotten up slightly more slowly than Rowan. She took in the succulent on the counter.
‘I’m sorry about the inconvenience,’ she said to Ernie. ‘Rowan should not have given me the slip. Or wasted your time. But I really think you should have contacted the street rangers when an unaccompanied child arrived in your shop. Or the police.’
‘Rowan came in asking for help,’ Ernie said, as mildly as he could manage, ‘from your family.’
She flushed. ‘That is not necessary.’
‘He’s helping me with the plant,’ Rowan said. ‘Since you won’t. It’s called minitabundus frutex.’
‘No it isn’t,’ Rowan’s mother said. ‘It’s a succulent.’
‘It’s a succulent and a minitabundus frutex.’ Ernie held up the book. ‘Look.’
To Rowan’s mother’s credit, she did look at the page Ernie held towards her. ‘But that could be… a different plant.’
‘It could,’ Ernie agreed. ‘But Rowan does seem to have observed it doing what it does best.’
‘The plant digests you, Mum. It turns you into goo.’
‘Yes, thank you, I can see that.’ She was looking back at the page, paler and more pointy than ever. ‘Well. Tia couldn’t have meant to give you this.’
‘She did. She hates me.’
‘Sweetie.’ Rowan’s mother plopped herself into one of the armchairs. ‘Why would she hate you?’
‘Because she hates you.’
‘Why would she hate me? I’m her—secondary parental figure.’
‘She says her actual mother is better and you’re just there to tell her how to do things.’
At this, Ernie decided it was best to pour Rowan’s mother a cup of tea. When he handed it to her, she was rubbing one of her temples, as though she could massage out the bad day she was having.
‘Rowan. Tia doesn’t understand a lot of what happened between her parents when she was little. We’ve done our best to explain what we can, and we’ve promised we will explain more and more to you both as you get older, but…’ her teacup wobbled a bit.
‘Sometimes people have to want to listen,’ Ernie suggested. ‘And some things are more appropriate to share when you know the person has the mental fortitude to understand.’
‘Right,’ Rowan’s mother said. ‘Exactly.’
Rowan scowled. ‘So Tia hates both of us because she misunderstands stuff.’
‘Yes. We have encouraged her to go to counselling.’
‘She also tried to kill me with this plant.’
‘Well. I wouldn’t want to believe that she would, but…’ Rowan’s mother looked at the book, still open to its fairly graphic illustration of consumption, and back at the plant on the counter.
‘Is this definitely the same plant?’ she asked Ernie.
‘I think so. It really is dangerous,’ he said in the kindest tone he could manage. ‘The safest thing to do would be to burn it.’
‘All right,’ Rowan’s mother said. She drank some tea and when she put the cup down on the chair arm, something in her face had gotten… tighter. More brittle. ‘What do I owe you for it?’
‘Well, if Rowan no longer needs to buy a replacement… why don’t you take a look around and see if there’s anything you like the look of?’
‘We can’t afford any of the jewellery,’ Rowan said helpfully. ‘But there are some books you would like. There’s guidebook on New Zealand, look.’
‘It’s a good guide,’ Ernie said brightly. ‘It’s 3D.’
He stood back and watched as they browsed the bookshelves. He really ought to organise those shelves. The nonfiction was organised by genre, but not as neatly as it once had been. It was a job, he decided, for a quiet morning. Within the next calendar year.
Rowan’s mother was in the process of purchasing her guidebook when the door opened and a voice drawled, ‘I thought we were getting lunch. I should have known I’d find one of you in here.’
Both Rowan and their mother jumped. This, presumably, was Tia. She was tall, but Ernie suspected it was an illusion. She wore very high platform heels and an extremely voluminous hairstyle, and her eyebrows were either pencilled or tattooed to appear permanently raised. This, Ernie contemplated, was a look one could successfully pull off at the age of thirty. In her late teens, Tia looked like a child who’d raided her mother’s wardrobe. She surveyed the shop with a curled lip. Her eyes skipped over the books and went straight to the clothing rack by way of a very nice nineteenth century dressing table. Then she noticed the plant on the counter.
‘You’re selling a gift I gave you?’ she sneered in Rowan’s direction. ‘That’s not polite.’ Tia was the optimum age for tending towards bullshit. She tottered through the shop to the dressing table and picked up a glass perfume bottle. She held it to her eye and the curve of the bottle made a funhouse mirror of her face. Rowan’s mother, at this display of indifference, stood up. Ernie fancied he could see sparks flying off her.
‘What’s not polite, Tia, is trying to kill a child.’
‘Oh don’t be silly—’
‘We’re not.’ Ernie rarely interrupted people, but he’d had quite enough. ‘I’ve been handed a plant I know for a fact is extremely dangerous. I’ve been told that you gave it to this child. You are aware that this looks like, and arguably is, attempted murder?’
That got through. Tia put the glass bottle down.
‘That’s not what I was doing.’
‘Isn’t it?’ Generally, Ernie viewed laws as guidelines. He knew he had quite a strong moral code, so he was confident that on the odd occasion he broke the law, he was ethically on the right side of history. But he was completely behind whichever law that said, ‘don’t murder small children.’
‘I wanted to make a point and scare the little shit,’ Tia said. Her voice was smaller now.
‘You were making the point of killing your sibling,’ Rowan’s mother snapped. For someone who had been ambivalent about the plant’s potential until a few minutes ago, she was now radiating rage towards Tia. She picked up Ernie’s book and shoved it into her stepdaughter’s hands, open at the minitabundus frutex page. ‘Tia, you do know there will be records of you having bought that plant? Did you know what it does? If something happened to Rowan, your life would be over.’ Rowan’s mother did not sound as though she was talking about prison.
Tia looked down at the book. For a few seconds, everyone else watched her read the description. She blanched, just a bit. ‘Okay. I’m sorry.’
Ernie thought privately, ‘I do not believe you.’ Rowan’s mother said out loud, ‘I do not believe you.’
Tia looked at the book and then at the floor. She was shorter now too. ‘I didn’t know it would digest people. I thought it just grew all close to you. I wanted to give everyone a good scare.’
‘Well, you have,’ Rowan’s mother spat. ‘Congratulations. We are going home, and your father and I are having a conversation with you about your behaviour. You will not enjoy it.’
With that, she gathered up her guidebook and swept from the shop. Tia followed—now even shorter than the average person—and Rowan looked back at Ernie.
‘Thank you for helping. You’ll really burn it?’
‘You’re quite welcome. And yes, straight away.’
Rowan smiled for the first time, and waved goodbye as the door swung closed behind them.
Ernie took a few deep breaths to calm his thoughts and flipped the closed sign. He washed up the tea things and took the succulent, along with a sturdy metal box, out the shop’s fire exit to a concrete pathway. Surrounded by industrial waste bins and pigeons, he lit a fire using last fortnight’s Private Eye as kindling, then stood back to watch the succulent go up in flames. It did not smell as bad as it might have to burn a flesh-eating plant, although he murmured a few words of a prayer as he watched. The plant hadn’t chosen its temperament, after all. In his younger days he’d probably have taken the plant home, just for a few days, to watch it in action. Ah, well. This evening he had a very important event scheduled: a cup of tea and a book before an early night.
When the box contained nothing but ashes, Ernie threw a bucket of water over it and waited until the metal was cool enough to touch. Really, he thought, someone else could be doing this. The grubby work. The ash-and-dirt. A shop assistant. He’d have to be able to trust them, though. Hiring the right staff was tricky enough when one ran a mundane, forgettable business. Hiring staff for Bezzina’s Emporium of Magical Artefacts and Antiquities was a different kettle of fish. He would, he suspected, know the right person when he saw them.
Ernie hovered the back of his hand next to the box, then set about disposing of the ashes. Once this was done, he’d close the shop properly and draft an advertisement. He’d start by making a list of requirements. Punctuality seemed a reasonable ask. So did an even temperament. You’d have to enjoy dusting and house a certain open mindedness towards risk. Where would he place the advert? People probably found jobs online these days, didn’t they? This was not, he felt, the way he’d want to go about searching for an assistant. A handwritten sign in the shop door?
That might not be a bad start.
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