IT WAS A CURIOUS thing to see a man take up a plate, drop it upon the ground so that it shattered and then with such painstaking care gather the pieces together in an almost loving embrace.
'Now, what are you hoping to achieve there Wackie?' another man said as he watched on, beer can in hand.
'For once in my life a sense of completeness, Mold,' he replied sullenly.
'Kind of cheating though, ain't it?' his friend replied before sipping his beer, belching, and then reaching down to retrieve a missed fragment which he handed to the other without comment.
'Bless you,' Wackie said. 'You are a true friend, Mold.'
They began to move off then before someone stopped them.
'You going to pay for that broken plate?' an irate shopkeeper asked reasonably. 'Crockery don't grow on trees you know.'
'Thank goodness,' Wackie replied. 'Imagine how noisy autumn would be right now.' He handed over some coins and the two men shuffled away without further word.
Vetta watched them with growing dread.
She had seen something neither of them had for she watched the plate descend with horrified fascination, its perfect round shape doomed to destruction. The pieces scattered over a wide area on the pavement outside the shop and she saw it all unblinkingly, every bit of it. Including one particular piece. By chance it had a roundness to it which let it roll some distance from its fellow fragments as if determined to flee the scene of a ceramic crime.
It rolled down a slope to where Vetta stood looking at some picture books on a stand. The little thing, a couple of inches in diameter actually bumped her shoe before settling to rest.
The two men had gone through the odd pantomime of retrieving the pieces, except this one. They did not even glance in her direction.
With trembling fingers Vetta picked up the pale blue piece with yellow edges that revealed its original biscuit colour beneath the glaze. By the time she looked up the men were out of sight.
The thought seized her intensely these men somehow needed the piece she had picked up for the plate would forever be incomplete without it. In her hand she held the key to some kind of happiness. It was a happiness she admitted she did not understand. That did not make it any less significant.
Thus she ran.
The two men were so far ahead of her by this time she could very easily have lost them but the strange terraced nature of the coastal strip helped her in her endeavour for her pursuit was down hill towards the beach front where that huge body of water swelled up like a restless wall of glistening blue. Thus from her higher position she could see the two hats below, one grey and ragged, the other a dirty kind of red with a narrow brim. So long as she could keep them in sight she would be able to catch up with them and give them the missing piece.
Yet by the time she reached the lowest terrace there was no sign of them.
'Unburstable beach ball miss?' a man said, seeing someone pausing within his selling circle.
Vetta looked at him a little confused.
'You are kind,' she spluttered and he looked hopeful. 'No, thank you,' she then added when she realised what he meant and he paused in offering a big round globe he had in netting which he had been dragging up and down his strip of the beach front in search of customers.