SILVER SERVICE
Published 'Purple Patch' 1998
The cutlery drawer was silent, not even the tiniest clink or clunk or even inadvertent settling of the empty volumes between the spokes and blades and tortoiseshell handles. Why there was one large carver residing amongst the daintier brand of English Afternoon Tea utensils was a question one might have asked, given the sight of its saw-like edge and gouge-tip of sparkling intensity. A certain sugar spoon with sprinkle-holes was a particularly fearful sort of implement, sweet by name, sweet by nature. She—and, of course, she was a she—simpered at the sight of such a manly shaft as the carver’s, yet, equally, she was scared stiff of its mighty glint (even within the comparative gloom of the drawer). Little could she do about it, though, until the human wielder shuffled them again, following a good old grease-up and subsequent sudsing by the kitchenmaid ... not that the sugar spoon was usually submitted to the fouler sort of substances that maybe the carver had to endure. That would have been the end of the story if the whole drawerful had not been sold as a joblot to a local transport café, close on the heels of the owner’s sudden death at the hand of a particularly aggrieved servant. Sad to say, suds away, she to it, silver holes-a-plenty, as far as the sugar spoon was concerned, bearing in mind its next to no use to nobody in the real world.
