Diary fragment · 2 min read ·
The Shoes I Take In
Pairs left with me for mending come back to their owners a size larger of waking, and the ninth ticket's pair is owed by no books.
- dated: "the quarter of small soles"
- narrator: "Percival Dane, shoe repairer"
Thursday. Nine pairs in the book for mending since the quarter opened: three half-soles, one set of taps for Mr. Markham, the rest heels and a re-stitch. Rules as ever: tag every pair, the stitch count written on the tag in my own shorthand, rail by the window so the night air passes through them. Written here so the week adds up, and the week had better add. The quarter is called the quarter of small soles and my soles this quarter are running anything but small.
Saturday. Mr. Markham collected the taps. On the collector's stool they were a size larger of waking than the feet he says he brought on Thursday: loose at the heel by half an inch, wide across the ball, as though his foot had been somewhere bigger in the night and come back ahead of him. He paid. He walked out carefully, on the outsides of his soles, like a man finding a deck under him. I checked the last I stretched them on. I stretch nothing.
Tuesday. Counted the rail against the bag of tickets. Eight pairs home and handed over, nine tickets gone out since the quarter began. The ninth ticket carries my stamp and my countersign and names the Kelloe pair, half-soles, sent up to the mender in the Cut before the quarter opened. Not on my rail. Not in the shop. The Cut man says he sent them on up to the depot's boot room for the finishing iron. The depot says its boot room owes nothing to my countersign. A needle goes missing; a thimble goes missing. A pair of boots does not go missing by itself, it is worn out of somewhere by feet.
Wednesday. Book written straight at last. Eight pairs returned this quarter, and every owner of them has said at my counter, in the flat way people say the things they have decided not to say twice, that their shoes come back a size larger of waking. One pair away between two depots and owed on neither's books. I mend shoes; sizes are my meat and my measure. The odd thing, the thing I am writing down before bed so that it stays a fact and does not grow, is the direction. Every pair runs larger, never smaller, always from the left rail to the right. So I set the question down plainly and go to sleep behind it: whose feet are these soles being worn to fit, and which way are they walking when my shop is shut.