He Told the Whole Market I Was Only the Stall Filler — Then the Licence Ledger Read His Number Aloud
"She's only the stall filler." Frank said it loud enough for the whole aisle to hear, one hand flat on Yvonne's trestle like he was measuring it for someone else.
Yvonne Mbeki has signed the Saturday licence for that aisle-end pitch for four years. If the hall believes him, she loses the pitch, the emergency table she set up at six that morning gets cleared away before the families arrive, and every trader in the building learns to keep their head down again.
Frank Ollerton walks this market like he still owns it. Green quilted gilet, brass long-service watch, laminated pass banging against his palm while he talks. Three traders had already been told the regular layout was wrong. Lewis had already been told, by three separate people, never to contradict Mr Ollerton.
At nine forty, Frank told a woman in a waxed apron to clear her trestle. She was weighing a bag of potatoes at the time. She finished weighing the bag, took the money, gave the change, and said nothing at all, which seemed to please him enormously.
Then his shoulder went into her left side and pinned her back against the edge of her own trestle. The stack of apple crates on her right toppled. One crate rolled the whole length of the aisle, apples bouncing under the shoppers' feet, and a thin red mark came up on her forearm where the trestle edge caught it. Her eyes shut. Her hand went to the spot. Nobody in the hall spoke for a beat.
She righted the crate herself. Then she walked to the market office door at the far left of the aisle and came back with something under her arm, and Frank did not waver, because Frank believed the committee had buried it.
What she lifted above her shoulder was the pitch licence ledger, open flat, and it fills the frame: the ruled licence column in dark blue ink, a row of pitch numbers, and at the foot of the page her own signature, Y. MBEKI, dated that morning. Beside Frank's authority number, in the same registrar's hand, runs a line written twelve months ago.
Lewis reached for the tannoy button. Frank's pass stopped swinging against his palm.
Who were the food parcels for that morning, and why were the traders never told the layout had changed? The next post names the families who came at noon and prints the committee letter that gave Yvonne the aisle end for good — follow the link below.
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