Necklace

Every day I pass the jewellry shop when I walk to work. I recently moved to London from Cincinatti in response to job the Times put out for a foreign columnist. I'm not exactly how a writer from Ohio like me could get the job, but I did. I got a column on the third page as their only American on staff. I just found the cheap apartment, or flat as they call it, just a mile away from the Times building. Every time I passed the jewellry shop, I saw a middle-aged hobo staring into the shop.
I'd pass by and ask if he wanted something to eat. "You can never trust a hobo with money," my mother always said. I offered food some days, but he always declined. He had an upturned fedora with a few coins in it. It was obvious he wanted something inside that shop.
There was one day that I happened to be early for work and I stopped to ask him his name. He had the year-old beard thing going on with the dirty sunglasses and trench coat for the winters. He didn't roll around with shopping carts like the rest of the homeless people I've seen back in Cincinnati.
"Charlie," he croaked, as if using his voice for the first time in years. It sounded dry and weak. I didn't know what to say after that so I dropped my last nickel from Ohio into his fedora.
I started dropping coins every chance I could get. Charlie was always there, every day, my Old Faithful fogging up the glass. I walked in one day out of curiosity to see if the shopkeeper had anything to say about him. He was old, already completely bald. He mumbled with his British accent, as if deciphering the accent wasn't hard enough.
"Ah...yes, yes," was all I understood when he spoke. "He's been out there for as long as I can remember."
"He's always been this poor?"
"Yes, I'm afraid. He's been wanting to buy that string of pearls by the front glass for about thirty years."
"Thirty years? Why so long?"
"He wanted to work for that necklace, but he said his mum wouldn't let him. Now, the pound has inflated over the years just like the dollar- yes, I may have lost most of my hearing, but I can tell a Yank by the sound of him. Poor chap, the set got more and more expensive over the years making it harder and harder for him to catch up in his... less than satisfactory financial status."
"I see. Who are they for?"
"His mum, I reckon."
"Thanks," I said in finality. I was too used to interviews as a journalist.
I kept dropping coins.