The harbour auction

Source: an original fiction extract.

The auctioneer lifted a wooden gull by its tail. Its painted eye surveyed the room with a confidence that none of the bidders appeared to share. Jonah sat between a man smelling of engine oil and a woman with a notebook balanced on her knee. He had come for lot forty-two: a battered sea chest listed among the contents of the closed harbour office. Inside his pocket lay the photograph his mother had given him. In it, his grandfather sat on what looked like the same chest, holding a mug against the wind.

There were thirty lots before the chest. Coils of rope went cheaply; a cracked barometer inspired an argument. Jonah tried to calculate what everybody could afford from their clothes, then abandoned this when a man in a torn jacket bought three brass lamps without hesitation. Twice the auctioneer looked towards him and Jonah shook his head too vigorously. The woman beside him smiled. He studied his numbered paddle, afraid of raising it by accident. Each completed sale brought the chest closer without making him feel more prepared.

His mother had found the photograph while clearing a drawer the previous Sunday. She had laughed at the mug, which she remembered more clearly than the man holding it. Jonah had enlarged the image on his phone until the chest dissolved into grey squares. There seemed to be a pale scratch below its handle. At the viewing that morning he had found a scratch in approximately the right place. He had not told his mother he was coming. He wanted to bring home a certainty, something heavier than a photograph and easier to hold.

Lot forty-two was placed on the table. The auctioneer named an opening price. Jonah raised his paddle and the woman beside him raised hers. For the next minute the room seemed to contain only the two paddles and the man's moving mouth. Jonah reached the limit he had written on a scrap of paper. The woman bid again. He kept his hand still. The hammer fell. She turned to him and asked whether he had wanted the chest for anything particular. He showed her the photograph, trying to make his disappointment sound like an interesting coincidence.

She leaned closer, then pointed to the edge of the picture. Behind his grandfather was a sign for a harbour Jonah had never visited. Her father had worked there too. The chest might be the one in the photograph, she said, but many had been made to the same design. She gave him an address where old harbour records were kept. Outside, Jonah called his mother. He had nothing to carry, which made the call harder to begin. Before he could explain about the auction, she asked which photograph he meant. There were others, she said, in a blue envelope.

Consider the whole source. Analyse how the writer structures the text to develop Jonah’s search for a connection with his grandfather. You could consider the opening focus, shifts in time, changes in pace and the ending. Support your explanation with references to the source.