Short story: Health Food By Karl Whitney - - - - There was a small town by the sea in the south of Ireland. It was quite a pretty town, too, and every summer tourists would come and stay. The small winding streets of the town opened onto a large square that overlooked the sea. It was picturesque, in other words, this small town, and photos of it frequently graced the pages of holiday brochures. The town and its surrounding county had its fair share of residents too. Some were farmers, others were from other countries and had been attracted to the area by its natural beauty and laid-back lifestyle. Many of the latter had been tourists in their day. They had come on holidays, secretly seeking an escape from the day-to-day, and had found it in this tiny corner of a small country, a place called Darntree. On arriving, they had unpacked their bags, and, metaphorically at least, had never repacked them for the journey home. For this was home, they quickly realised, here amongst the verdant hills and craggy peaks of this coastal idyll. Inevitably, occasional trips were made to tie up loose ends in their country of birth: houses were sold, jobs were terminated, relationships were concluded. But, eventually, they were here and here was where their new lives were to begin. Many of these new settlers started businesses. Previously they had been accountants and highly-paid consultants; now they applied themselves to the land as organic farmers, or pursued their sculpting or painting no longer as a hobby to pursue surreptitiously away from the icy glare of work colleagues; here their hobbies became businesses, and many of the new settlers opened shops selling their wares to tourists and locals, but mainly tourists. The indigenous locals just nodded and smiled as they saw each new settler arrive. For each one that came to the area they had seen two or three arrive before with similar aims and similar ideals. And they had seen each settler leave soon after, or sometimes stay on longer, but never too long. The locals were more attuned to the demands of the place; their expectations were much lower. They survived. Last year a vacant shop on the hill on the way out of town was taken over. It had been vacant for over two years, and everyone in the town had presumed it would remain unoccupied for the foreseeable future. In a town where commerce was not a priority and business thrived solely during the summer it was not unusual for shops to come and go. But this property was to be a shop once again. Modest wood hoardings, painted white, were erected around the façade of the store, with signs with red text on them declaring ‘Jim and Jane’s Healthfood Store’ would be opening soon. This was news to the owner and proprietor of ‘The Village Wholefoods’ who reacted badly to the threat of competition. When he got home from work that day he locked himself in the bathroom and sobbed, wildly, until his wife knocked at the door and asked him was he okay. Robert, are you okay? Okay? Things had been going badly for so long; the business was barely breaking even after three years of attempting to get it off the ground. He had done some market research recently and had come to the conclusion that there really weren’t enough customers to sustain even one healthfood shop in Darntree. Now there were going to be two! He despaired. He went downstairs to his wife and together they drank some herbal tea and talked it over. As the weeks progressed, the healthfood store on the hill began to take shape. The outer walls were painted bright red, and a big yellow sign was put up over the door. On the sign a cartoon sun with a smiling face beamed down benevolently. Robert watched these developments closely, but was so inconspicuous in his spying that he was sure no one could tell what he was doing. Every evening, after he had locked up the shop, he would leave the dingy alley where his business was based and head up the road to the bright new store on the hill. On some days the early evening sunlight would catch the red walls of the new store and it would beam beacon-like across the town, or so it seemed, at least, to Robert. On these days his misery, ever present, was compounded by the gap he perceived between his shop, dark and poorly stocked, and their shop, this Jim and Jane. He had never actually met Jim and Jane. He hadn’t seen them around town. Sometimes people would come in to his shop and mention the new healthfood store on the hill. He would try not to growl at them. Some people had met Jim and Jane. ‘…And they’re lovely people, really lovely. Jane said to me…’ ‘Grrrrr…’ He didn’t want to know what kind of people they were. He was happy, in a way, to keep them there on the hill, as objects of his scorn. Then, one day, they turned up together in his shop. ‘Hello.’ ‘Hello.’ ‘We own the shop on the hill.’ ‘Oh?’ ‘I’m Jim, this is my wife Jane. We’ll be opening the new shop from tomorrow. We’re inviting local shopkeepers to the opening – it’s kind of a first day party.’ ‘Right.’ ‘We hope you’ll come.’ Then they were gone, and Robert was alone in the shop. He sat in silence, his hands wound tightly into fists. He stared at the floor. He hated them. He hated their friendly, easy manner and resented that he was going to be run out of business by these, these … nice people. He pictured the future, the inevitable day when he would have to close the shop. Once the shop was closed he’d soon have to sell his house on the mountain. He’d have to tell his wife and children that they’d be leaving, that they’d have to go back to where they came from. The shop wasn’t profitable by any means, but it provided an excuse for staying in this pretty town, even though they were slowly, steadily slipping into greater debt. They would be outside the shop packing the last bits and pieces into Robert’s van. A ‘To Let’ notice would hang in the shop window. And all the time, Jim and Jane would be standing there smiling and waving and tut-tutting at what a shame it was that they were leaving. Smiling and waving. He hated them. All he could see now were their smiles, bright and sinister in the half-light of the shop. He focused his rage on the spot on which they had stood not ten minutes ago, his concentration so great that he didn’t notice a customer wait by the till with an armful of groceries, then, as Robert sat there in a trance-like state, the customer edged towards the door, becoming thief as he crossed the threshold of the shop, stealing off with what were now undoubtedly stolen goods. Robert could see the smiles still and they made him angry. --- The opening party of Jim and Jane’s shop was nearly finished when Robert arrived, with a crazed look in his eyes and a faint smell of alcohol on his breath. One pocket of his frayed tweed jacket bulged slightly. He said hello to Jim and Jane through gritted teeth before scrambling for a glass of wine. It had been a hard day for Robert. Not that he was busy; quite the opposite: there were only three or four customers, and two of them were on their way to the new healthfood shop, and had mistakenly stopped at Robert’s store. They made their excuses and left. Robert just sat there plotting his revenge. Jim and Jane’s shop was much larger than Robert’s. This much he expected. But it was also beautiful. There were bright wooden shelves packed with products; there were skylights letting in the slanting rays of evening sun; there were several varieties of organic toothpaste and all sorts of grains and rice for sale; all manner of tofu was available in the capacious fridges. It made his shop look like shit. Slurping the wine clumsily from the glass, Robert took in his surroundings with a sneer. Secretly, though, he was impressed. He knew his shop could never, ever be like this. Robert wanted to destroy them, but he couldn’t think of how to do this. Instead, he decided to poison their vegetable bouillon with gravy made from meat. It made Robert cackle with glee when he thought of it. It was a minor act of rebellion, but it gave him just enough satisfaction to justify going through with it. He was in the shop now, holding open the jar of vegetable bouillon, the dry grey powder inside soon joined by a scoop of Bisto siphoned from the jar in Robert’s pocket. He glanced quickly over his shoulder, then swivelled the lid back on to the jar, placing it back on the shelf. He turned quickly to face Jim, a broad smile on his red face. Months passed and business got much slower for Robert, but, strangely, his spirits were mostly high. His inner flame was stoked by the thought of an unsuspecting vegetarian consuming the contaminated gravy from the shelf of the shop on the hill. One day he was leaving his shop after work. The door slammed behind him on the way out. He had left his keys inside. He always left his car keys in the ignition of his van; no one would steal it. But his shop keys always hung on the hook behind the till. He shrugged. There were copies of the keys at home; he’d have no problem getting in to the shop tomorrow morning. Then his mobile phone rang. His wife, asking him to bring home some environmentally-friendly washing-up liquid. She insisted on it. He tried to explain what happened, but she was gone. He cursed under his breath. Robert sat with his forehead balanced on the steering wheel of the van. He knew he could not get back into the shop, and he knew he could not go home without the environmentally-sound cleaning product. There was only one thing to do: he would have to buy it in Jim and Jane’s shop. They opened late. Well, they opened an hour later than Robert’s shop. He closed at 4, they at five. Privately he poured scorn on them for giving in to customer demands in this way. He walked in and greeted Jane, who was organising some leaflets next to the till inside the door. ‘Nice weather’ ‘Hmmm? Yes, where d’you keep your washing-up liquid’ he asked. In the corner. He soon returned with the bottle in his hand, after wandering briefly around the shop, taking it all in again. He hadn’t been back since that first day. It now looked different to him, less pristine, less vibrant. He felt good. He took some money from his pocket to pay, remembering as he did so the vegetable bouillon he had contaminated. He walked back over to the shelf where he had polluted a jar with gravy granules all those months ago and felt a faint pang of nostalgia. He picked up a jar and walked to the till. While Jane was ringing up his purchases he felt an overpowering urge to tell her all about it; how he had planned the whole thing while sitting in his shop in a daze; how he had bought the gravy the day before; how it had sat in his van until the afternoon of the opening of their shop. How casually he had done it and how easy it had been. He paid for the products, thanked her and left. He felt grateful. They were equals. He didn’t tell her, or anyone, what he had done. -------- Stories | Home | About This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.