Terroir by Graham Mort

In the window was a pair of clogs and on their soles a pair of flamenco dancers had been picked out in nails and hand - painted. I remembered how the woman wore a crimson frock and the man tight black trousers. The clogs had brass toecaps and were made of oiled leather.
    As a child my father had worn shoes rather than clogs, a fact he’d always been proud of, as if it marked him out as special. The other kids had clogged seven bells out of him and, despite the shoes, labour had stuck to him all his life. The cobbler’s shop had a doorbell that jangled over your head on a metal spring, bringing Carson limping from the back room in his grey apron. He’d lost a leg at Monte Casino. The shop counter was dark mahogany and the shop smelled of tanned leather, neat’s - foot oil, Dubbin, heelball and brown paper. All the accoutrements of the cobbler’s trade. Bullhide not bullshit, my father had said right there at the counter, with a light in his eyes that was the blue flash of thunder. I’d always wondered what Carson’s artificial leg was made of. As far as my father was concerned, he had a job where he sat on his arse all day.
    â€“ Sah?
    You’re right that it makes no sense – harking back to a mill town in the 1960s when I was walking through an African marketplace in the twenty - first century and mixing it all up together. As if Carson might limp from one of the shop doorways or leap up from one of the treadle - operated Singer sewing machines that were everywhere. Just like the machine my mother had used to make our clothes when we were children.
    â€“ Sah?
    A meat fly landed on my arm and I brushed it away. Maybe it was those black enamelled machines with their gold lettering that had sent me back, recalled my mother sewing clothes for the neighbours, or pinning up my father’s trousers as he stood on a chair and ranted. My mother who could make any garment with her hands. My father who could shape even the most recalcitrant piece of metal. The cobbler who turned over a freshly repaired shoe in his hand to show the new leather gleaming. Good for a few more miles. It made no sense, admittedly, but then maybe that’s all the sense there is. To be everywhere and anywhere at the same time. Somewhere and nowhere. To be outside yourself.
    â€“ Sah?
    The man’s voice – a soft, insinuating voice – startled me. When I did look up I saw a small Ugandan man in a ragged tee shirt and khaki pants. He looked about thirty, but it was hard to tell. He had a wispy beard and his skin was paler than that of most Africans. His eyes were the lightest brown eyes I’d ever seen, like honey poured over almonds. Beautiful eyes that slanted down with slightly hooded lids.
    â€“ Shoe, sah?
    He was holding out a pair of refurbished casual shoes. You saw them all over Kampala. Dead men’s shoes re - cycled. They were made of tan - coloured leather and had plastic soles and had been polished until even the scuffmarks gleamed. They were shit. You needed good shoes in Kampala where the roads were broken and gave way to red dirt and pot - holed tracks. I shook my head. The man held the shoes closer, as if I hadn’t looked at them properly.
    â€“ Good shoes. Try them. Try them, sah?
    A marabou stork flew over the market and its shadow crossed the man’s face. Darkening those amazing eyes for a moment. His arms were sinewy and the veins stood out on his hands.
    â€“ Not for me, thanks.
    â€“ Not for you? No shoe? They your size. See?
    The man smiled incredulously. He thrust the shoes at me again, then looked down at my shoes, a pair of knackered brogues made in Dundee. Good shoes once, they had a coating of dust from the market and were stained with salt. Sweat was trickling from my hatband and down my neck.
    â€“ Sah, you come!
    He tugged my sleeve and dragged me into a gap between two stalls.
    â€“ Come! Come!
    We ducked under a carousel of leather belts, past a