The Market That Never Closes
The market runs the length of the harbour front and, as far as you can tell, the length of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. A woman in a Regency bonnet sells rhubarb to a man in a cagoule. The brass band plays everything ever requested on a Thursday, in order.
The stallholders greet you without surprise. You understand, gradually, who they are: everyone who ever followed the counting all the way up the spiral stair. The curious of Wrenfell, arriving one per generation or so, each one welcomed with tea and a bun.
"New," observes the marmalade seller โ there is, inevitably, a marmalade seller โ pressing a jar into your hands. "Edith's, unless I'm blind. She'll be at the wall with His Lordship. She's always at the wall."
She points along the front, where a low harbour wall catches the permanent afternoon sun, and on that wall sits a cat.