A Book at Bedtime

by Barrie Shore

  CASTLEBRIDGE

  Saturday, 10th December, 1927

  The Great Man sat at his desk, profound and still, reading his book.

  The boy stood before him, clutching his cap close to his chest, scarcely daring to breathe.

  It was the man in the picture, the one in the shop. The same domed head and wrinkled forehead; same mottled cheeks; same nose, long and hooked, the nostrils widely flared as if the better to sniff the bedraggled moustache beneath; the same eyes, watery blue, rheumy, disappointed, gazing at some distant place that nobody else could see. And his eyebrows… that rose in bristling arches as if astonished at what they read.

  He’d never seen anyone quite so old. There was Mr Hopcraft at the brewery, to be sure, but he was round faced and pink cheeked like an ancient baby: this man was shrivelled and blotchy like an apple in winter.

  The Great Man turned a page, a small sound rustling loud in the silence of the room.

  The boy waited.

  The Great Man stirred at last, stretched his great eyebrows and fetched up a shuddering sigh. ‘To the Lighthouse,’ he muttered. ‘What lighthouse? Where? And why to it, one wonders?’ He looked at the boy in melancholy hope. ‘Have you any idea?’

  The boy was ready for questions, but not such as this. He considered a moment. ‘No, sir,’ he said.

  ‘No, neither have I.’ The Great Man closed the book and frowned at its cover. ‘Alas, poor Virginia, I struggle with her work. She is a melancholy girl, too thin, too pale, she would benefit from a few brisk walks and a good square meal from time to time. And as for that husband of hers…’ He let out a bark of laughter that made the boy jump. ‘He has a lean and hungry look; he thinks too much. Ah, well, no matter, I shall read this Lighthouse with close attention, unravel its mysteries, report to the author in glowing terms.’ The Great Man tossed the book aside. ‘In the meantime, you may thank Mr Pride for supplying me with Miss Woolf, hot off the press, I believe is the phrase, and you may tell him that remuneration will follow in due course.’

  The Great Man leaned back in his chair, put the tips of his fingers together and closed his eyes.

  The boy did not move.

  The Great Man opened one eye. ‘In other words, young fellow, you are dismissed.’ The eye closed.

  The boy stood on one leg and scratched his calf with the heel of his boot, making a rasping sound that caused the Great Man’s eyebrows to twitch. But the eyes remained shut.

  The boy left off scratching and rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. ‘I beg your pardon…’ He had the soft burr and shifted vowels of a country boy and his voice was high in the roof of his mouth. ‘I beg your pardon, sir, but Mr Pride said I was not to leave until…’ He swallowed a bubble of saliva that was in the way of his tongue.

  ‘Until?’

  ‘Until I have payment.’

  The eyes flew open, the great eyebrows leapt with displeasure.

  ‘Payment?’ The Great Man rumbled like a gathering storm.

  ‘Yes, sir.’ The boy had rehearsed his speech till he had it off pat. He gathered his courage and delivered it sternly. ‘Mr Pride said to remind you that your account has not been paid these last six months and… and…’ The boy’s eyes widened with panic as he lost his words.

  The Great Man bent forward, the eyebrows descended in a fearsome scowl. ‘Yes? And?’

  The boy knocked the toes of his boots together to prompt him to memory. ‘That he cannot accommodate you any further,’ he said in a rush. ‘Sir.’

  The Great Man thumped the desk with his fist. ‘Oh, cowardly Bob,’ he thundered, ‘you send this minion as your messenger. How much do I despise you.’

  The boy beamed. ‘He said you’d say that, sir.’

  ‘Oh, did he indeed.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Mr Pride says that you are a master of the spoken word.’

  The Great Man was mollified. He combed an eyebrow with the back of his thumbnail and smiled a little. ‘And what of the written one?’

  ‘He didn’t say anything about writing, sir.’

  ‘Did he not.’ The Great Man inspected his thumbnail with a dissatisfied frown.

  ‘He said that you are all sound and fury, but that it signi… signif…’

  ‘Signifieth. Signifieth nothing.’

  ‘Yes, sir, that’s what he said. Nothing at all.’

  The Great Man picked traces of dandruff from his thumbnail, examined them briefly and flicked them away.

  ‘Then you must tell Mr Pride that he too is a master, a master of cunning. He shall have his payment, the wily old goat.’

  The Great Man opened a drawer to his desk and peered into it cautiously, as if something hidden within might leap out and bite him.

  ‘How old are you, boy?’

  ‘Ten, sir. I shall be eleven next April.’

  ‘Ten, eh? And already at work?’

  ‘No, sir, I am at school still. I work at the bookshop on Saturdays. I’m the Saturday Boy.’

  ‘Aha, a boy of enterprise, I admire you for it.’ The Great Man took a cashbox from the drawer and placed it on the desk. ‘And what will you be when you are grown? A shopkeeper, I suppose, like Mr Pride.’

  ‘Oh, no, sir. I shall be a writer. A famous writer, the same as you.’

  ‘A writer?’ The Great Man’s eyebrows shot up so high they seemed about to take flight. ‘A writer, by God.’ He patted his pockets in a searching way. ‘A noble profession, but one that will bring you untold heartache, one that will lead you to the brink of despair.’

  ‘Will it, sir?’

  ‘Doubt it not.’

  The boy considered again. ‘Like Christian, you mean, and the Slough of Despond?’

  The Great Man was mightily pleased with this reply. ‘Exactly so. On the other hand, there are moments in the life of an author, moments of peculiar joy when, like the Pilgrim, having clambered the Hill Difficulty and sojourned a while in the Delectable Mountains, he will reach the Celestial City and stand triumphant, a very god among men.’ He produced a small key with a flourish. ‘Eureka!’ he cried. He unlocked the cash box and opened the lid. ‘You must savour those moments, my boy, for they are few and far between.’

  ‘I shall pray for the moments,’ said the boy, in his earnest way, ‘that God in His mercy may grant them to me.’

  The Great Man raised a dubious eyebrow. ‘One can only hope that your prayers will be answered. Speaking for myself, and despite playing second fiddle to my father’s first at many a hop in the church hall, I am of the agnostic persuasion.’ He took a pile of bank notes from the cash box. ‘So difficult to make up one’s mind about anything, don’t you think? Especially the question of God.’ He shuffled the notes. ‘What about you, are you a Creationist? Or do you believe in Darwin’s evolutionary process?’

  The boy lifted his elbows in the effort of reply. ‘I don’t know, sir.’

  ‘Do you not? How disappointing. You have no theory, then, as to how the world came into being?’

  ‘Oh, yes, sir.’ The boy dropped his elbows and took comfort in catechism. ‘“In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.”’

  ‘Ah, but did He? Do you have proof that such was the case?’

  ‘Why yes, sir, it says so in the Bible. Genesis, chapter one, verse one.’

  ‘So it does. “The earth was without form, and void: and darkness was on the face of the deep. And God said, Let there be light, and there was light.”’

  ‘That’s right, sir, you have it exactly. “And God saw that it was good.”’

  ‘He did indeed.’ The Great Man peered into the cashbox with a puzzled frown. ‘Well, I’ll be dashed, I could have sworn there was a ten bob note in here. I expect my wife has been raiding the till, I wouldn’t put it past her.’ He replaced the notes in the box and closed the lid with a snap.

  The boy was
made anxious by the disappearance of the notes. ‘I could run back to the shop and fetch you some change. Mr Pride has plenty of money.’

  ‘In that case,’ said the Great Man, with a triumphant smirk, ‘he has no need of mine.’ He locked the cash box and replaced it in the drawer.

  ‘But if you please, sir…’

  ‘Enough. The subject of payment, young fellow, is closed.’ The Great Man tucked the key into his pocket, leaned back in his chair and contemplated the boy with a beneficent smile. ‘Tell me,’ he said, by way of conciliation, ‘what will you write? Poetry, perhaps?’ The eyebrows rose in hope.

  ‘Oh, no,’ said the boy, in a superior tone, ‘it’s stories I write.’

  The eyebrows drooped with disappointment. ‘I am sorry to hear it. The pursuit of fiction is a vain path to happiness and fulfilment, as I know to my cost. All joy and good intent in its creation polluted by the howls of outrage from Mr Mudie’s virtuous readers, the condemnatory whispers in literary drawing rooms.’ The Great Man pushed his eyebrows upwards with the tips of his little fingers as if to encourage them to better spirits. ‘But poetry… ah, poetry is food for the soul.’

  The boy was not convinced. ‘Is it, sir?’

  ‘Never doubt it, my boy.’ The Great Man released his eyebrows and sniffed at his fingers. ‘To hell with prose,’ he declaimed, ‘verse is the thing.’ He locked his fingers together and twirled his thumbs in slow circles. ‘Stories, eh? What kind of stories?’

  The boy overlooked the matter of commerce in favour of literary exchange. ‘Adventure,’ he said, standing up on his toes. ‘I’ve copied one out in my best hand, if you’d care to read it.’

  ‘It would be an honour, I assure you.’

  The boy set his heels back to the floor, stuffed his cap into his pocket, reached into his jacket and extracted a few pages of foolscap bound together with string.

  ‘And what is the story’s title, pray?’

  The boy bristled with pride. ‘The Dastardly Deeds of Captain Daring and His Drastic End.’

  ‘Bravo,’ cried the Great Man, clapping his hands. ‘An excellent title, it intrigues me greatly.’ He held out his hand, the eyebrows aloft with anticipation.

  The boy hesitated, as if at the last moment he was loath to part with his story. He smoothed the pages against his chest and laid them tenderly on the desk.

  The Great Man picked up the manuscript and repeated the title in a reverent tone. ‘The Dastardly Deeds of Captain Daring… oh, splendid… and his Drastic End… truly splendid. A tale with a moral, it would seem.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ The boy’s eyes gleamed with excitement. ‘Captain Daring commits a dastardly crime but he is discovered and hanged to death.’

  The Great Man’s eyebrows flew up in astonishment. ‘A drastic end indeed. And what, pray, is the Captain’s crime that he should deserve it?’

  The boy’s cheeks turned a little pink. ‘He ravishes a lady, sir, if you’ll excuse my mentioning it.’

  ‘Severe punishment, surely, for so little a crime?’

  ‘Not little at all.’ The boy was offended. ‘The lady is the Colonel’s wife, Captain Daring’s Commanding Officer.’

  ‘Aha, so the Captain’s sin lies not in the ravishment of the lady, but in his daring to ravish outside his class.’

  The boy bit at the knuckle of his thumb and pondered his answer.

  The Great Man enlightened his predicament. ‘Had the lady in question been a common soldier’s wife, you would have spared his life.’

  ‘But then,’ said the boy, with a troubled frown, ‘then there would be no story to tell.’

  ‘Touché, my boy, touché.’ The Great Man barked with delight. ‘But tell me, what of the lady in the case? Is she punished too?’

  The boy was astonished. ‘Why, no indeed. She has done nothing wrong.’

  ‘What, nothing at all? No come hitherish glances at the Captain? No feminine wiles and winkings? No noddings and smilings behind her fan?’

  ‘Her fan?’ The boy was aghast. ‘But the lady hasn’t a fan. Must I write one? Must I write her a fan?’

  ‘Not in the least.’ The Great Man hastened to reassure. ‘What are fans, after all, but mere pebbles in the labyrinthine path to seduction. And who am I to question the authorial voice before I have even read the work?’

  The boy was stubborn in defence of his lady. ‘The Colonel’s wife is as pure as the driven snow. The Captain woos her with honeyed words and blandishments and she is utterly deceived, he can be given no quarter.’

  ‘Alas, poor Captain.’ The Great Man gazed to a distant point beyond the boy’s head. ‘I saw a hanging once.’

  The boy’s eyes widened with shock. A hanging? A properly one? With a noose and a gibbet? And a man in black with a mask on his face?

  ‘A woman.’

  A woman…

  ‘It was a piteous sight, its memory has never left me.’ The Great Man closed his eyes and stretched his lips in pain. ‘The curve of her thigh against her shift, the press of her breast beneath her blouse.’

  The Great Man’s chin sank to his chest, his mouth fell open, the abundant moustache trembled in the light breeze of his breath. He had fallen asleep.

  The boy pulled his cap from his pocket and clutched it to his chest.

  The curve of her thigh against her shift.

  The press of her breast beneath her blouse.

  The boy hunched his shoulders up and down and looked about to distract him from the image of death. He had not much noticed his surroundings before, except for the desk that stood like an island in the middle of the room with the Great Man marooned behind it. He saw now that the walls were lined with books except the one where the window was. Not so many books as there were in the shop, but still hundreds, maybe a thousand, bound in leather and embossed with gold, pressed together in orderly ranks, with a superior look to their spines as if they were too grand by far to be opened and read.

  The press.

  Her breast.

  The Great Man snored. A whistling sound with a grunt at the end.

  The boy watched him closely, willing him to wake, and took to raising his skimpy eyebrows and lowering them again in a fearsome scowl.

  The Great Man awoke as suddenly as he had slept. He stretched his eyebrows and opened his mouth in a cavernous yawn, revealing stubbed teeth and receding gums. He finished the yawn, smacked his lips and opened his eyes, catching the boy in mid-grimace.

  ‘Great Scott, what ails you, boy?’

  ‘Nothing, sir. Nothing at all.’

  Her breast.

  The press.

  The Great Man seemed restored by his short sleep. He flourished the manuscript in a relishing way. ‘I shall read your story tonight in bed and shall report to the author in glowing terms.’ He laid the manuscript on the desk and patted it as if to reassure its safekeeping.

  The boy was troubled again. ‘But what if you struggle, sir? Like you do with the lighthouse?’

  ‘Then I shall ask the author for elucidation and advise him accordingly. But have no fear on that score, I open each one of Virginia’s novels with considerable dread, but yours is one to which I look forward with eager anticip…’ the Great Man broke off as a bell sounded in a distant room. ‘Ah, summoned by bells.’ He grasped the edge of the desk and pushed back his chair. ‘Would you care to join us for tea? My wife, so I’m told, makes the best Battenberg in the county.’

  His wife.

  Her breast.

  ‘Oh, no, sir,’ said the boy, in a scramble. ‘Thank you most kindly, but I must get back to the shop, Mr Pride will be anxious.’ He was reminded of his commission again. ‘Might you,’ he said, in a confidential way, author to author, discussing the knotty problem of plot and resolution, ‘might you enquire of your wife concerning the ten bob note?’

  ‘The what?’
/>   ‘The ten bob note that she raided from the till. The one that was going to pay Mr Pride.’

  The Great Man’s eyebrows ran a riot of consternation, his dry laugh cackled in the back of his throat. ‘My dear boy, you know not whereof you speak. It is more than my life is worth to challenge my wife on any subject at all, let alone that of high finance.’

  The bell rang again, insistently now, and a dog barked.

  The Great Man leaned forward and beckoned the boy close. ‘Women, beware women,’ he said, in a lugubrious tone. ‘They gobble you up and spit you out, there is no mercy in them.’

  ‘Isn’t there, sir?’

  ‘Speaking as a man twice married without discovering conjugal felicity in either case, you may take my word for it.’

  ‘I will, sir. I surely will.’

  ‘Good man.’

  The Great Man grasped the arms of his chair and heaved himself upright, and the boy saw, with surprise, how small he was for so great a man, how unsteady on his feet, how his hand trembled as he reached it out across the desk. The boy wiped his hand on the seat of his britches and shook hands with the Great Man in solemn farewell.

  ‘It has been a pleasure meeting you, my boy. You must call one afternoon next week, after school perhaps, and I shall return your manuscript.’

  ‘But it’s a present, sir. You must keep it with the rest of your books.’

  ‘A present? For me? How uncommonly kind.’ The Great Man’s eyebrows seemed to tremble a little and his eyes to water. ‘Then you, too, shall have a present.’ He moved to a shelf behind him and trailed a knobbled finger along a row of books. ‘You shall have poetry.’ He selected a slim volume bound in green leather, embossed in gold, and returned to his desk. ‘Many of these verses were written in memory of my wife, my first wife, that is, a remarkable woman, strange and particular in every way. She had beautiful hair, I remember, beautiful nut-brown hair.’ He heaved a sigh, opened the book to the flyleaf and reached for his pen. ‘Your name, boy?’

  ‘Carter, sir. John William Carter. But you may call me Jack if you like.’

  ‘Thank you, I will.’

  The Great Man pondered a moment, dipped his pen into ink and started to write.