Seven Pence Piece

I saw a seven pence piece lying in the snow on the road beside me. I had never seen one before but had heard that they brought good luck. With the week I'd just had I needed a change of fortune.

I was about to bend down to pick it up when a taxi whizzed to a halt in front of me. "Look where you're bloody going," the taxi driver shouted, perhaps words he'd heard once and was interested in repeating, much as Sara used to repeat Indian mantras she comprehended not. They were certainly not words he understood, not advice he held dear, as his driving demonstrated.

I stood still, said nothing, and waited. A man jumped out of the taxi and began to queue at the cashpoint behind me. I looked for the coin, but there was a rear tyre where the Queen's head had been. I would have to dig it out when the for-hire car moved on.

Suddenly the taxi driver gave an angry cry, clambered out of his door and ran down the street, still shouting. The man at the cashpoint had gone. If I wanted my coin I would just have to wait and see what happened next.

I tapped my toes in the snow, not as a dance, but for warmth, as they leaked quite considerably from where Sara had slashed them with a knife. Sara! If only I'd had that seven pence piece a month ago, if I'd found good fortune then, maybe I'd still be with her now. Maybe she'd still not know about Chloe and me, maybe she'd have just missed the early train and arrived home when she was expected, maybe my clothes would remain unshreded, maybe there'd be money left in my bank account, maybe I'd still have somewhere to live. Who knows, if I'd been really lucky maybe I'd still be seeing Chloe. If only she hadn't found out about me and Sara.

I brushed a heavy dandruff of snow from my hair and looked down the street for the taxi driver, but he was out of sight. I could feel the snow melting into water in my shoe. It made me think about mankind's efforts to fight the elements with shoes, clothes, cars, the latest technologies. It made me wonder why we bothered, nature would get us all in the end. There are unseen cuts in our protective shells that allow nature to slowly creep in, through illness, injury, decaying body parts, general human vulnerability, leaky shoes.

As I thus contemplated the purpose of existence, I saw Sara's brother Eric emerge from a sports shop opposite. Eric used to be a boxer, but had recently been thrown out of the profession for being violent. Violent with feet instead of soft-gloved hands. He was carrying a baseball bat over his shoulder, perhaps he was trying out a new sport.

I thought about Sara's words after she threw me out. She said that if I didn't go immediately she'd get her brother and his friends to throw me out. Eric had never liked me. Perhaps it's because I drink wine instead of beer, or because I read a broadsheet instead of a tabloid, but for whatever reason my efforts to get on with him had all been in vain. I had no difficulty in believing that he would be less than friendly to me if he saw me now. Or, to quote Sara, "It wouldn't be the first time he's killed someone either."

I thought about hiding behind the taxi but decided against it, I didn't want to become a crouching coward, hiding from my foe, undignified. Besides which, hiding so obviously would draw attention to me and he might come to look. Plus of course the taxi driver might return and cause another scene. No, the best course of action was to blend in with the crowd, to mingle with the shoppers and hope he didn't notice.

I camouflaged myself behind a Christmas tree that was just passing, being carried by a man with a beard. Using the cover of the tree I managed to make it to the comparative safety of a cafe, still in sight of Eric, still in sight of the taxi and the coin, but just far away enough to put distance and swirling snow between me and my tormentor.

I sat in a seat by the window and looked at him from behind the cover of a tabloid I found on the table. He hadn't moved since I first saw him, he was still practising with the bat he'd just brought, experimenting with a succession of swings. Not very good shots in my opinion, you're supposed to hit the ball out into the baseball field, not knock it into submission at your feet. But at least it seemed to make him happy.

"At least it seems to make him happy," I heard Sara say. I turned very slowly from my seat and stole a glance behind me, Sara sat at the table behind mine with a cup of coffee in front of her, talking into her mobile. She laughed at an unheard joke from the other end of the line and continued, "Well he was never much of a boxer anyway, he's much happier in a sport where you're allowed to bite." Biting? In baseball? It's even more different from cricket than I thought.

Whilst Sara was talking Eric finally put his bat into the bag it came in. Thank god I thought, he'll be gone and I can sneak away before Sara sees me.

Just one problem. I felt the café owner looming over me, he'd expect me to make an order, unaware of my dire financial state, notepad and pencil balanced delicately in anticipation of my desire. I shook my head and gestured that I didn't want anything, but he looked at me blankly.

"You ready to order mate?" he shouted, obviously assuming I was stone deaf, or maybe to compensate for my own silence. Clearly I would have to speak, just to shut him up, else Sara was bound to turn round.

"A cup of tea please," I whispered. I could just about afford tea.

"You what?" the man scratched his thick bald head, as if sending a secret signal to his brain cells that they might soon be needed. I tried again, louder this time, luckily Sara was still engrossed in her phone call. "Yeah, I'm meeting him for lunch, he should be here now actually." She looked at her watch, the silver one I brought her for Christmas. "Perhaps he's been caught by the cops again." Oh dear, I hadn't chosen the best possible hiding place, Eric was coming this way.

Meanwhile the waiter was still taking my order, taking several minutes to make his pencil create the word 'tea'. Even then he didn't leave. "Did you want food with that?"

Through the misted window I could see Eric trying to cross the road. He did this by waving his bat at any car that was unfortunate enough to be driving past when he wanted to cross, he would then chase the car down the road, wielding his bat above his head, before eventually giving up and starting again.

"Did you want any food with that?"

"Er no thanks, nothing to eat."

"Nothing to eat, eh," he shouted, before eventually leaving me in piece.

A song came on the radio, a Nat King Cole number that had been our tune. Sara seemed unaffected by it, though it touched me, I almost wanted to cry.

"No, as I say I'm not really bothered, I was getting bored with him anyway, it just made it easier. This way he's going to stew in his own guilty juices." Maybe this meant I would be spared, perhaps she really didn't care. On the window itself a snowflake cried it's way down the glass, cleaning a clear streak through the misted view. Through the tear-stained glass I saw Eric finally making it to my side of the pavement, coinciding with the taxi driver returning to his car, which Eric kicked angrily on the left wheel. There was no obvious reason for Eric's anger, he just liked to get angry.

I needed to get out. Once the taxi left, the coin would be exposed, someone else could find it and my luck would never change. But how to leave? Sara had hung up and I could feel her eyes lazily circling the café as she sipped her coffee. I buried my face the paper, hoping she'd never recognise me reading the Sun. I heard footsteps behind me, followed by a heavy thud. "That'll be a pound."

I unburied myself from the paper and hunted frantically in my pocked. Did I actually have any money left? The last thing I needed was to be thrown out of the café into Eric's feet. Luckily, I had a pound coin, my last pound, tucked into a pouch in my pocket, which had formed when a hole had been badly repaired. I handed over the last of my money. Sara was busy stirring her coffee, watching the swirling steaming waters of time float round, ignorant of events around her.

I turned back to the window, bracing myself for Eric's arrival, ready to take whatever he threw at me, face still hidden behind the paper. But he hadn't moved. He was still kicking the wheel of the taxi, as if he was stuck in a deja vu that the rest of the world shared with him. The taxi driver was shouting at him and I allowed myself the pleasure of a sip of tea as I watched.

Eric and the taxi driver made quite a commotion. The taxi driver was asking him to stop kicking his taxi, but Eric has very clear views on personal freedom and the rights of the individual, and was exercising his democratic right to kick a car when he felt like it. The taxi driver, meanwhile, was exercising his democratic right to shout ineffectively.

In the excitement I had almost forgotten the presence of Sara behind me, but I was reminded by the sound of her standing up, chair scratching against the floor. "Oh my god," she said, "what's he up to now?"

Obviously she'd recognised the noise that so often accompanied her brother. She wiped a clear circle in the window and waved at Eric, who saw her and waved back. I, meanwhile, tried to shrink to nothing in the inner pages of the paper. It must have worked, as Sara passed me without noticing on her way to the door. "You're late," she shouted, at which Eric shrugged and started to walk to the café. The taxi driver, seizing sudden advantage, picked up a lump of snow and threw it at the back of Eric's head. A good shot, from 30 yards away. Eric turned and snarled. The taxi driver leapt into the driving seat and drove off at pace as Eric drew the baseball bat from his bag and set off down the road after the taxi.

"Oh for goodness sake." Sara returned to her seat, picked up her brown mock-fur coat and walked back to the door. "We'll deal with you later," she said to me, before rushing out and running down the street after her brother.

I got up, took a last swig of tea, and exited. Taxi, Sara and brother were out of sight. The seven pence piece was still there so I bent down and picked it up. I looked at the coin as I crossed the road, the beaming face of the Queen looking up at me. A seven pence piece in my hand! The only one in existence. In MY hand. I was so excited, so overcome with delight at the change in my fortune, that I never saw the bus coming.