A/N - Just a short token chapter to show that I'm alive and so is this story
Furtive, from the Latin "fur" meaning "thief". So, if we were to describe Jean Valjean as being furtive as he entered Casimir Cohen-Jones's Junk Emporium we would be correct on a number of levels. Not that Jean Valjean had actually stolen anything today. After all, he is in a junkshop – they don't sell bread!
He still looked pretty dodgy for all that, picking up and admiring a selection of door knockers and bell pulls laid out on a table near the door. Dodgy enough so that M Cohen-Jones who is, as his name in fact does not suggest, neither Jewish nor Welsh (He hails from the part of the world known to the Twenty-first Century as Liberia)
"Can I help Monsieur at all?" Casimir enquires, performing an odd little dance to try and get a look at the stranger's back pockets without appearing to be looking
"Yes," says Valjean in a whisper that will be familiar to anyone who has ever worked in a newsagent's shop and been asked for a dirty magazine, "I'm looking for some . . . bric-a-brac"
"Something for the weekend, Sir?" says Casimir Cohen-Jones with a smile and a wink, "Well, you've come to the right place, but I must warn you that I run my emporium in a slightly unorthodox manner. You see, I firmly believe that the clutter chooses the collector."
Casimir takes a step back from Jean Valjean and looks at him closely, scratching his chin with thumb and forefinger and narrowing his eyes.
"How about a nice Seventeenth Century prayer book?" he says finally, holding one out to Valjean. Valjean takes it and the tattered book immediately begins to struggle violently, finally managing to break free and flap away to assume a perch on the shop's dusty rafters where it stays, looking down on them malevolently and occasionally croaking "Agnus Dei"
"Evidently not," says Casimir, "I've got a lovely walking stick here if Sir would like to try it"
He passes Valjean a walking stick which the old con would never have thought of calling 'lovely' in any circumstances since it was black and knobby and had a rather grumpy looking brass snake coiled on top of it in place of a handle. Obediently, however, Valjean takes it and gives it a wave, an action that causes a large dusty fishbowl standing in the corner to shatter into a thousand pieces.
"Not that either," says the now slightly annoyed Cohen-Jones, snatching back the cane.
"What about this?" enquires Jean Valjean, picking up a gold medallion from the counter. Immediately there is a rushing of wind through the shop and a flash of light.
"Ooooh," says Casimir Cohen-Jones with a look of surprised relief on his face, "I think it likes you"
"How much?"
"Five francs to you – to be honest I've always found the thing rather creepy. Only – "
"Only what?" says Valjean, preparing himself for a long tale of the trinket's sentimental value and a greatly inflated price tag.
"Only you have to take what comes with it, Sir. Kind of a job lot."
Mr. Casimir reaches down behind the counter. We hear some squeaking and an exasperated cry of "Don't you DARE bite me you little toe-rag!" and then he re-emerges clutching a very small monkey. Immediately as the monkey sees Valjean it scampers towards him, leaps onto his head and curls up on top of his hat.
"Five francs and the monkey it is," says Casimir, "would Monsieur like a bag with that?"
As Mr. Cohen-Jones shuts the shop door behind him, Jean Valjean looks over his shoulder at the little old Liberian man, who is mournfully sweeping up the pieces of the shattered fish bowl
"What a weirdo!" he says under his breath. Still, on the bright side, the medallion will be easy to hide from Cosette and . . . Eureka! He can give the monkey to Cosette as a present! Jauntily he strides down the street but perched in the window of he shop he spots a rather fine stuffed vulture. He glances up at the name above the shop: Hamish Hernandez's Bric-a-brac Bazaar (by a strange coincidence Hamish Hernandez is, despite his name, actually Welsh.)
Valjean sighs. It can't hurt to take a look, can it?
"Oh Daddy!" Cosette squeals.
Jean Valjean automatically flinches at his adoptive daughter's high pitched tone; "Yes dear?"
"Oh Daddy, he's beautiful!" she continues, snuggling the little monkey up in her fichu, "Aren't you? Aren't you beautiful? You are! Yes you are a booty-ful likkle monkeykins!"
The monkey does whatever it is that monkeys do in lieu of purring.
"So you don't mind about the vulture?"
"What vulture?"
"Never mind"
"Thank you very much for Minky, Daddy!"
"Who's Minky?"
"The Monkey, Daddy. I thought it was cut because mink are soft and furry with little sharp teeth – like Minky – and 'Minky' sounds like the English word for 'monkey'.
"But the English word for 'monkey' is 'singe', isn't it?"
"No, that's French, Daddy. Aren't you silly? Isn't he a silly daddy, Minky? Isn't he?"
Depressed by his lack of prowess in English, Valjean strolls back to his cabin to stroke his vulture. With an odd sort of irony he has called the vautour 'Vulture' which, he believes, is the English word for 'lawyer'. This he has done as an act of remembrance for poor, sleazy little Marius.
