An Eye For An Eye

An unusual customer in Houghton's Medical Suppliers leads to a chance meeting.

Richard was bored. Not the sort of boredom that comes from temporarily having nothing to do, before one decides on the next thing to do; no, this was that set-in brand of monotony, much loved by security guards and assembly-line grunts. Richard was neither of these, being too young to be hired by any serious security firm and with too much imagination to consign himself to a factory. In fact, the fresh-faced young man, just seventeen this past March, was a junior assistant at Houghton's Medical Supplies, Ltd; for over eighty years veterans of wars and horrific accidents had approached the shop for a helping hand or a leg to stand on.
The interior of the shop, not brightly lit but comfortably light nonetheless, was a treasure trove of goods that washed completely around Richard; legs in burnished wood and shiny plastic hung from the ceiling, some including knee joints bent unnaturally, as if the imaginary owners were marching in time; on the walls, hands hung from hooks, fingers stiff but so carefully constructed, endlessly waving their welcome to customers. There, really, was the rub; there had not been a customer for some time; indeed, since Richard had started three weeks ago, only two members of the public had ventured inside the old-fashioned store fronting, and one of those had been to ask for directions to Tesco. The other had mistaken the sign in the window that said 'Hand jobs our speciality!'; he had been somewhat disappointed to be turned away, huffing out of the shop with his long grey mackintosh pulled tightly around him.
How did I end up here, thought the young man to himself. In reality, had he applied some of the nascent brain cells he had been gifted with, he would have given a suitable answer; Richard had been put here, plonked here, even, by Nastonbury College's careers department in an attempt to try and give him some work experience. Not, he mused, that much work seemed to get done here. He had seen Ian 'You will call me Mr' Houghton almost as little as the patrons. Each of the pieces of work in the shop had been handcrafted with care and precision and this apparently kept him busy nearly all hours of the day. Once a day, Richard made a cup of tea for himself and Mr Houghton, leaving the latter's cuppa on the worktop of the small kitchenette. By the time Richard came back with his empty cup, Mr Houghton's was gone. It was weird; almost as if he kept watch for an unguarded moment before seizing his milk, four sugars, victory.

For all his watchfulness, Mr Houghton seemed unaware that his shop was stuck sometime in the fifties or sixties, or even that prosthetic goods had moved on, being made in factories. And so, Richard sat, bored. He had long ago inspected every piece in the shop, some more closely than others; one afternoon had been spent bending all of the jointed hands so that they gave variations on the one-fingered salute, but even profanity had quickly grown boring.
A jingle interrupted his grey thoughts. He looked up; standing just inside the door, looking speculatively around, was a tall man, grey-haired under a small-brimmed hat with a closely cropped iron moustache just visible, dressed in a long winter coat, though the weather could hardly have required it; his boots were black and shiny under brown trousers. As he took his hat off and tucked it under his arm, Richard's attention was caught by the black eye-patch the man wore, as if he were an unashamed pirate. The young man's eyebrows shot up; a customer had entered the shop. Quickly he straightened his back and stood up from the tall stool he had been perched on.
"Good afternoon, sir! How can I help you?"
The man stared straight at Richard. "Ah; Houghton's? The prostheses place?"
"Indeed, sir; how may we be of assistance?"
The man chuckled drily; he indicted his eye-patch with a jerk of one finger, and Richard blushed slightly. Still, one should never assume. His voice sounded like forty cigarettes a day for many years, and the slightly comforting aroma of tobacco had reached Richard, caught on the draft from the closing shop door.
"Well then, sir, you've come to the right place! Just here, in this cabinet, is our selection of ocular prosthetics." The words seemed slightly out of place in his mouth, but the little label Richard had made to remind him stared up at him from the back of the cabinet he leant on. He pulled the glass door to one side and reached in, grasping the velvet-covered tray out to lay it on the counter top.
He looked up, and started slightly; the man was looming over him, seeming taller for all that Richard was bowed over slightly, and the man's blue one-eyed stare was becoming slightly unnerving. Something in Richard's brain poked him in to action; this could be his first sale, after all, he thought.
"All of the Houghton's medical prostheses are hand-made by Mr Houghton himself to the highest quality, sir. You're assured of value for money, that's for sure."
"I would hope so, young man!" replied the customer. "I earned this eye; I'd not want something second-rate. Second World War, y'know. Fighting Jerry in the trenches;" He grinned, not a pleasant expression. "I've still got the shrapnel somewhere. Took it right out! Very clean job, oughta thank them for that, what!"
Feeling slightly queasy, Richard did his best to smile and force some colour into his tone. "I'm sure you must, sir. Now, what are you looking for specifically?"
The old man's hand hovered over the tray for what seemed to be an eternity; it was angular, the fingernails cut off square and slightly yellowed at the end. The veins were clearly visible as raised mountain ranges on the back of his hand. With a speed that belied his age, he plucked one of the eyes out. Richard had spent an educational afternoon looking at these glass eyes; not circular but ovoid, detailed even down to a red vein running through each one. They were unmistakably fake, but still would fool a casual observer, being made, not of glass at all, but medical plastic, hardened and coloured to appear as close to a real eye as possible.
"This one; let's see. Not far off the real colour, perhaps a little heavier than need be; do you have anything with a slightly less-dense makeup?"
Richard's mouth flapped open a little; not only was this his first time selling something, but the customer actually seemed to know more about it than he did. "Er," he said, mentally devoid of anything intelligent to say, "We may have something, that is to say, I could ask Mr Houghton to see if…" he trailed off, a little hopelessly.
"Now then, young man," the customer chided gently, "And you're doing such a good job of not knowing your stuff. I'm looking for something non-integrated, now…" Richard backed off slightly as the man ran one horny finger down the side of the rack, then swooped down on a completely different eye. "Let's see, non-integrated, non-porous; integrated means I'd be able to move it, don'cha know; I'm too old for that malarkey, so we'll keep it simple."
He held the eye up in a sunbeam that chose that exact moment to lance across the shop. It picked out the cascade of dust that always seemed to be present, and the eye shone slightly as it reflected the glory, as if it were simply a large piece of dust. He turned it this way and that, inspecting it minutely.
"This style, I think, and makeup; old man Houghton must have had a good day when he made this." The customer turned his head to the side, spitting Richard upon the merciless sapphire gaze again. "Ian still likes his tea with four sugars? We used to say, back in the day, that it was to make up for the sweetness he didn't have. He's a strange one, that man, but damned if he doesn't make the best glass eyes I've ever used."
Richard could only nod in mute astonishment. It was as if this customer had complete control over the shop and all its contents, such was his presence.
The customer tutted gently at the lack of response, then returned the eye he was holding to the tray. Without hesitation, he picked up the one next to it, weighed it for a moment in his hand, gave it a hard stare and placed it gently on the glass counter top. It made a small click.
"This one, I think, young man. Will you ring it up for me, do you think?"
Almost stumbling over himself in his haste, Richard lurched for the till; this, at least, he could do, having read the yellowing manual cover to cover on his first day. As the man paid, Richard began to feel that a little control over the situation was returning to him. Seeking to fill the silence, he blurted out without thinking "Well sir, you certainly seem to have an eye for, well, an eye." His eyes widened as he realised what he'd said, and he bleated out a little laugh that choked and died in the still, dusty air. Mortified, he stood as if poleaxed.
"No, young man, regretfully not," said the customer, steel in his voice. He looked seriously at Richard, scooping up the prosthetic; at the same time, he brought his other hand up to his unpatched eye, deftly popping it out. He held the two glass eyes up to the light, seeming to compare the old model with the one he had so recently purchased, before turning his empty eye-socket towards Richard.
A silent moment passed before the man turned, his matching pair puddled in his hand and, without fault, quit the shop. In his wake the tinkling of the bell filled the musty silence of Houghton's Medical Supplies, Ltd.