To achieve greatness, one needs an enemy. Where would Churchill be without Hitler, Ali without Frazier, shadow without light? Not to keep you honest - let's not get starry eyed about this - but at least to impose some discipline on your lies.

Or a rival, I suppose. We now live in softer times, after all - pistols at dawn a thing of the past. At a pinch a rival will do. Someone who will criticize your weaknesses and remind you of your failings, not realizing that by pressing you in this way they are only spurring you on to greater success.

And if you can't even muster a rival? It may be that greatness is not your destiny. Or perhaps you just need prompting from some other direction. A spouse, for example.

#

"Henry, the bathroom tap is dripping."

"Is it?"

"Yes dear. Just like it has been all week."

"Oh that. I tried to fix it the other day."

"It's still dripping."

"I pulled it apart, but it didn't seem to have a washer to replace. I think it's one of those modern ones. I'll need to buy a special part."

"You could go now."

"But I'm reading the paper. Halfway through the crossword ... You realise I'll have to turn off the water main? Have to pull out the whatsimathingy and take it with me. Otherwise I won't know what to get."

"If you say so, dear."

#

A half-hour later, Henry was contemplating the emptiness of the disabled parking space. Its vacancy had enticed him into the hardware store's small and crowded carpark, the curve of the driveway rendering its orange lines invisible from the road. Should he? How long could it take to buy a single item of tapware? He sighed and selected reverse, began a three-point turn. He had got as far as the exit, indicator ticking away, waiting for a gap in traffic, when a movement in his rear vision mirror alerted him to a car moving out of its slot. He cursed it for not having shown itself moments earlier. Could he back his car down the lane, he wondered? It would be clumsy and ungainly, but when needs must ... Grimly, he selected reverse again.

Too slow. The other car was out of its slot now, was coming towards him. Would its driver have the gumption to recognize his reversing lights? To halt at a convenient spot where Henry could back around him? No, apparently not. Too late now, the other vehicle had entered the narrow exit lane. It emitted the briefest of toots on its horn, politely indicating to Henry that he was an obstacle to progress. Henry sighed again. If he'd owned an SUV he could have driven over the curb. Over the flower bed and back into the car park. He considered it briefly but it didn't seem a wise course of action in a Honda Civic. Another car was coming in the entrance, the empty slot as good as gone now.

Back out on the road, Henry followed the path of least resistance, searching the nearby streets in vain and at random, getting farther and farther away from his destination. It was a Saturday morning, mid-December: worst case scenario for parking a car. It was Marion's habit to have her morning cup of tea around now, he recalled. Had she remembered to fill the kettle before he turned off the water? He wasn't sure.

There it was, at last. Not just a hardware store, but a hardware store with vacant street parking. Not a large gap, but times are a tiny Honda will outdo an SUV. And Henry was a native of this city: parallel parking was in his DNA.

Inside, his elation faded. The store was laid out in a series of display shelves, waist high and filled with anonymous cabinets and assorted products that failed to trigger any recognition in his sweeping glance. He blinked, but the stacked items declined to resolve further. Clearly, not a hardware store at all. So what was it then? An emporium for antiquities? A junk shop? The merchandise exuded a collective property - this much he could tell - of being the sort of things that, had the natural order still held, would have been carted here on the backs of donkeys. But beyond this, nothing. His brow creased in renewed frustration.

Or perhaps it was a hardware store, one translated in time. Something about the feel of the place. A vibration from beyond the immediate senses - it shook loose a fragment of memory. From childhood? He recalled poking about in tubs of nuts and bolts, wondering at the pipe fittings and other arcane objects of the adult world, how they made for poor toys. It was a good memory. Here and now, the recollection was like waking up with a dream still vivid and real, yet uncertain whether the events experienced were from real life or mere echoes from some other past dream. This was odd. Henry was fairly sure he'd never dreamed of metal fastenings, but how could he be sure? Whatever it was, something about this place chimed with the memory. The wooden floorboards, the dim light - beams of sunlight that filtered in from a dirty skylight or infiltrated through side windows and between stacks of piled boxes. These sunbeams were the sole form of illumination, he noticed - no artificial light sources were evident - though a term like natural lighting hardly seemed appropriate given the room's peculiar candle-lit aura. Something about the totality of the impression meshed comfortably with his memory, the train of thought uncreasing his brow and restoring good-humour to his face. Only one thing, he noted, was distinctive of the here and now: a faint smell (his memory was odourless). Not unpleasant, almost inviting in a dusty kind of way; the air had a mustiness to it, like wine aged too long in the bottle, like a forgotten potpourri of dead flowers.

To his right was a counter, behind it a woman he had interrupted in the act of reading a book.

He held up his tap valve. "I'm looking for one of these. I realise I've come to the wrong place, but, well, I'm here now. Thought I may as well ask."

She smiled at him, took the object from his hand for closer inspection then returned it to him with a shake of her head.

"This was the only place I could find a car park ..." He looked sheepish.

"Just like the drunk in the joke?" She was in her middle years, hard to place any more precisely than that. A part of Henry felt it important to judge her age, necessary for modulating his responses to her, just as another part registered his inability to make the call. Her race, too, was hard to pin down - dark curled hair and an olive skin, suggestive of the Middle East without ruling out South America. It was as if she hailed from some mid-point, equidistant from Asia, Africa, and Europe.

"I'm sorry?"

"A group of people are coming home from a night out. They find a drunk searching for his keys under a lamp post, stop to help him, but no luck. When one of them asks where exactly he lost these keys, he says, 'Oh, I lost them over in the shadows, but it's too dark to look for them there'."

"Ha, I get it," Henry chuckled. "It's the name of your shop, isn't it? Light and Dark, I saw the sign on the way in." He looked about him. "Is that the reason for the subdued lighting?"

"The drunk in the joke never finds his keys. But perhaps he finds some new friends." Her speech was accented - melodic and feminine - but not to Henry's ear suggestive of any one origin over another. "It's pleasing to find what you seek. But how much more agreeable to discover something you never realised you were looking for."

"You think I might? Now that I'm here?" He peered into the gloom at the rear of the shop.

She shrugged, her face benevolent. She was not unattractive. Henry wondered at how many customers she must get in a day. Perhaps not many. Yet hers was not a face that looked like it needed actively to seek out conversation and company. He felt a frisson of pleasure at the flattery implied by her talking to him in this unusual manner.

"You're on a quest." She patted the book on her lap, as if its pages contained corroboration for this assertion. "Not quite the holy grail, but a quest nonetheless. They say, you know, that to succeed at such a thing, one must keep a pure heart." Her voice was emphatic, edged with a mix of humour and kindness. While the accent continued to elude him, there was, Henry realized, something in her speech he found familiar. Not from real life but from movies. Old movies in black and white - intrigue in dark rooms or passion under a desert sun. A voice that could speak such words as 'quest' or 'pure heart' and make them sound like everyday vocabulary.

Henry laughed, the sound of it dying quickly in the still air of the room. "Too late, I fear. I've been sullied already. Driving through Saturday morning traffic does that to you."

She didn't reply, merely tilted her head at him. A gentle smile.

"Does it still apply in a quest for bathroom fittings? It's not exactly, ..." Henry was watching her face, gauging her reactions as he spoke. A thought occurred to him. "What is a grail anyway? Holy or otherwise. I know it's something knights are always riding out in search of. But what exactly is it?"

She stood up from her seat. "Come with me," she instructed him. The simple cotton dress she wore was pinched in enough at the waist to indicate that, although slim, there was a solidity to her physique; something Henry became conscious of as he followed her across the room.

She opened a cabinet and removed a goblet, resting it in the palm of her hand for Henry to look at. "The grail was the cup used to take communion at the Last Supper. So the legend goes. This piece is not so holy, but beautiful nonetheless, don't you think?" She handed it to Henry who took it with care. Examining it, Henry realised it was made not of metal as he might have expected, nor even of glass, but of ceramic. The thinness of the sides made him intensely conscious of its brittle rigidity, becoming in his hands a living thing that threatened to wriggle loose and dash itself against the floor were a momentary lapse in concentration to provide the opportunity.

"You see the design? It is worked in silver and gold leaf, held by a thin transparent glaze. A very fine piece."

Henry murmured agreement, peering nervously at the intricate workmanship and feeling a moment of vertigo from its swirling abstract patterns before hastening to hand the goblet back to the woman. He did so with elaborate care, causing the woman's hands to entwine with his for an extended moment.

"Only one of many treasures here, I don't doubt," said Henry. "Perhaps I should have a look around now that I'm here. Christmas is coming. Maybe I'll find a gift."

"Please do. There is much here I would be happy to show you, but only you can know what you really want."

As he turned away, Henry wondered at the time. How long had he been here already? He had promised Marion a quick return. He moved along the aisle, examining the display of trinkets and figures as he went, finding it hard in his beguiled state to concentrate on any one piece. He halted in front of a chess set, its figures carved of wood. He picked up the most ornate of them, the queen, for closer examination, aware from his peripheral vision that the woman was returning to her counter. He placed the chess piece back on the board and pulled his phone from his trouser pocket, feeling guilty as he did so of been seen committing an action so incongruous with his surroundings. It was nearly eleven. What time had it been when he left home? He noticed, too, and without surprise, the icon for loss of signal. The disconnection from the outside world seemed appropriate somehow.

Putting the device away, he moved on to a set of leather-bound books. The sense of recognition that had met him when he first entered the store had merely dimmed in the presence of the woman, remaining as faint overlay on his reactions to her. Now it came back to him as strong as before. Yet surely his childhood self had never encountered anything like this. He took one of the books and checked the spine; it was Bleak House by Charles Dickens. So what could account for the feeling?

"Do you enjoy Dickens? It is a complete set." Her voice carried easily across the distance between them. "Not so old, I think, but hand-tooled. The collectors get so excited about first editions, but here we care only about the beauty." Henry nodded back at her. He was possessed, as it happened, of an aversion to Dickens instilled in high school. But what about Marion, he wondered? They had long given up the practice of exchanging Christmas gifts, but was this something she would enjoy? Would she delight in the unexpectedness of the gift, or would she recoil from its oddity. Here in these peculiar yet familiar surroundings, redolent of a time long before Marion became part of his life, he found the question a hard one to focus on. In twenty-odd years of marriage, had they ever discussed Dickens?

He replaced the book and continued his browsing along the shelves. Time shifted again. He had gone almost full circle now, down one aisle and up the other side. Glancing across, he could see she had put down her book once more, was observing him unselfconsciously, hands in her lap, her expression one of idle contentment. He nodded at her, picked up a complex-looking contraption of wood and polished metal. "What's this?"

"Isn't it delightful?" she said, coming across to him, smiling and unhurried. "It's an egg timer. Watch! You turn it so, and ... " She took it from his hands and wound a clockwork mechanism on its side, placed it back on the shelf. "Now we must wait for the time it takes to boil an egg."

"Time?" mused Henry. "You know, I really should be going soon. I still have a plumbing supplies store to find." Something in the act of saying the words, of watching her reaction, rendered them untrue. It was a Saturday morning, after all. He was here on his own account. Why not take his time. The woman was still watching him with the same expression, comforting and complacent.

"But have you found anything you like yet?"

Henry shrugged. "Perhaps a little bit longer. I'm still looking."

"I, too, have been looking." She laughed, stepped across to the cabinet and took out the goblet once more. "I think my first instinct was the right one, don't you?" She handed it to him.

"How much is it?"

"Price ..." She waved a hand, dismissive. "First you must decide whether it really is what you want. Then we discuss."

In his possession, Henry was conscious once more of the object's delicacy, resting it loosely on his fingertips, as if to hold it full in his hand risked crushing it in some involuntary motion. He held the goblet by the stem and rotated it, noting how this movement amplified the hypnotic character of the patterns inlaid on its surface. Could he desire such an object?

"Where are all your other customers?" he asked.

She shrugged. "If it is as bad as you say out there, perhaps they are wise enough to stay at home today."

"Smarter than me you mean?"

"Ah, but you are here for a reason."

"My quest?"

They were silent for a moment. She took a step closer, began to raise a hand toward him.

Henry's reaction was barely perceptible, instinctive, the slightest of flinches. The goblet fell from his fingers, shattered on the floor.

He stood unmoving for a moment, registering what had happened. Then a chime sounded. He turned his head in time to see a jack-in-a-box pop open in a clatter of movement. The egg timer.

The woman's reaction was a brief string of words in a language Henry could not identify, her tone of voice translation enough. Turning back to observe the transformation in her demeanour, Henry was agitated as much by the feeling it invoked as by the shards on the floor, or by the tiny grotesque head that nodded accusingly on its spring, still under the influence of residual inertia. "Oh," he said. "I'm so sorry. It was an accident. You startled me, the way you ... Look, I'm sure we can come to some arrangement." he hesitated. " You never told me the price."

Her smile was long gone; her face hardened. She named a sum.

"What?" Henry look at her, dumbfounded. "Surely you're joking."

#

Behind them, the door to the shop opened and a figure entered. Henry turned to look. A woman with blond hair tied back in a severe bun, a paleness of face that appeared doll-like in the tainted sunlight of the store interior. "Marion? What are you doing here?"

"I'm here to ask you the same question." She peered about, sniffing as if to adjust to some peculiarity in the air. "I couldn't do the laundry and I couldn't wash the dishes. I couldn't even make myself a cup of tea. So I got sick of waiting."

"But how did you know where I was?"

"Um, the same way I always do?" She looked amused. "Using Find my Friends?" Glancing across to the shop lady, she gave her a look of complicity, as if to apologize on behalf of all womanhood for the general phenomenon of male ineptitude, and by doing so to assert personal ownership of this specific instance. "I called but you didn't pick up."

"I think we're in a dead spot." Presented with a question he could answer, Henry rallied.

"Find my Friends had this as your last known location. Either you were still here or you had slipped off into some parallel dimension." She was still smiling, but something in her expression changed. Henry followed her line of sight to the debris at his feet.

The shop lady now spoke: "This man is your husband? I am afraid there has been an incident. We were discussing the question of retribution." Her voice had lost all softness.

"I think you mean restitution." Marion looked at her husband, shaking her head. "Oh dear, Henry. Have you been clumsy?"

"This is a most precious piece. Highly valuable. I must insist."

Marion focused back on the woman, their respective expressions synchronizing as each took the measure of the other.

"Well, you may insist all you like, but it doesn't necessarily follow ..."

"What are you saying? The goblet was in your husband's hands. Now it is shattered on the floor. You must accept your obligation."

"Ah, well, obligation. There's the crux, is it not?" Marion countered the woman's haughtiness of tone with a voice of mild reason.

As this was going on, Henry was distracted by his own thoughts, wondering when might be the time to inform Marion of the sum the woman had just quoted him, leaning for the present toward a policy of discretion. He was still pondering the question when he became aware of his wife having just spoken to him.

"Did you take it outside?" she asked.

Henry looked confused. "What? No. I ..."

"Did you express an intention to purchase it?"

"No, this lady merely gave it to me to admire ..."

"And did you break it intentionally?"

"No, of course not." Indignant now. "She ...," he started then stopped, flustered as well as indignant. "I was startled,... the jack-in-a-box ..." He waved a hand at the fearsome miniature head leering at them from its display shelf. "It just slipped out of my hand."

"Then in that case the problem is one for the store to take up with its insurance company." Marion smiled genially at Henry, who in his turn was expressing open-mouthed relief.

"But this is unacceptable." The shop lady's voice crackled with anger. "An exquisite piece, destroyed. Very old, very valuable."

"I'm so sorry," said Marion, still looking on at her husband. "But consumer law is quite explicit."

Contrite now, Henry looked across at the shop lady. "Marion is a lawyer," he explained. Addressing his wife: "You know, if I'm going to get to that plumbing store, I think we really ought to be going."

#

On the way out, Henry took his wife's hand. "You really are a marvel, you know. A knight in shining armour. Riding to the rescue." He gave the hand a squeeze.

She laughed. "You have such an imagination, Henry."

"Do I? Perhaps I do." As they emerged into daylight, he paused for a moment to think. "There is one thing, though. One thing about all this that still mystifies me."

"Really? And what is that?"

"It's wonderful that you came to find me. But how on earth did you manage to find an empty parking space at this time of day?"