A Book at Bedtime

by Barrie Shore

  Saturday, 14th May, 1927

  A board on the counter next to the till, marked into squares. Two armies of soldiers, black and white, facing each other, ready for battle.

  ‘Please, where do you keep the rest of the toys?’

  ‘Great God, this isn’t a toy. It’s a very serious game called chess.’

  A serious game. That didn’t seem right, like the contra his mother said if ever he dared to argue against her. Don’t contradick me.

  ‘I’ll teach you to play if you like.’

  ‘Oh, no, playtime’s for children. I have my living to earn.’

  ‘This is true,’ said the lady man, frowning mightily, ‘but if you are to earn it here, I must insist that you learn to play chess, otherwise I shall have no choice but to dismiss you.’

  ‘You mean you would send me home?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh, well, in that case…’

  ‘Good.’ The lady man took up two pieces and swapped them about behind his back. ‘I should like to read your father’s stories.’

  ‘But they’re not writ down.’

  ‘Written down. They’re not written down.’

  ‘That’s what I said, they’re not writ down. The stories were all in his head and now they’re in mine.’

  ‘Then you should write them.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘So that people can read them.’

  ‘What people?’

  ‘People like me.’

  People like Bob? There couldn’t be anyone like lady man Bob. Except for the brothers, and they were dead.

  ‘And when they do, they’ll think of your father.’

  ‘Oh. Oh, yes, I see.’ It was still dark in the shop except for the flickering gas, but it seemed as if the sun had come out. ‘Yes, that would be grand.’

  Jack’s chin was just the right height to rest on the counter so he rested it now and waited, with a pleased little smile, for the serious game to begin.

  Sunday, 3rd December, 2006

  ‘Mr C… Mr C?’ Margaret is calling.

  ‘Yes, hello?’

  Jack is at the chessboard, contemplating his next move. Once upon a time, he used to imagine Eva his opponent although she always hated the game: furious if he won, angrier still if she did, knowing he was the better player and that he had allowed her victory. Now it’s Margaret he plays: she venomous black, he virtuous white, determined to beat her. But she’s turned out to be a surprisingly devious player and, much to his chagrin, always seems to win in the end. In the present game, for example, his king has been in check overnight to Margaret’s queen’s knight, and her queen is impatient for the endgame.

  ‘Oh, there you are, I might’ve known.’

  She comes bundling in from the hall with an armful of soiled laundry and her clipboard.

  ‘I’ve got a bone to pick with you.’ She slaps the clipboard onto the counter. ‘About this nutrition chart.’

  ‘Ah, yes, the nutrition chart.’ Jack ignores the obvious defence, white king and rook to castle, and moves the white king to his bishop’s three, straight into the path of the black queen.

  ‘Fifty mills?’ She jabs at the chart with her thumb. ‘You expect me to believe she took fifty mills of tea this morning?’

  ‘I do try, Margaret, but there’s nothing I can do. You know she has difficulty swallowing these days.’

  The black queen traps his king with a swift, triumphant strike.

  Check.

  ‘No she doesn’t, she’s just playing you up.’

  Mate.

  Damn.

  ‘I keep telling you, Mr C, you’ve got to be firm.’ Margaret relishes her victory. ‘You can’t go letting her get the upper hand.’ She hitches up her bundle of laundry and marches to the storeroom door. ‘She’s got to have fluids, you know what the doctor said.’

  ‘Indeed I do.’

  ‘And she hasn’t opened her bowels again.’

  ‘Mercy on us.’

  ‘If it goes on much longer, we’ll have to send for the District Nurse in to give her an enema.’

  ‘Heaven forefend, not the District Nurse.’

  ‘And you still haven’t taken those pyjamas off.’ And out she goes, with her superior nose in the air.

  ‘This is all your fault.’ Jack glares at the black queen. ‘You’re getting far too big for your blasted boots, and so’s she.’

  ‘What was that, Mr C?’ Margaret shouts through from the kitchen.

  ‘Nothing, nothing.’ He starts lining up the chessmen ready for the next battle.

  Sharleen strolls in from the hall with her bicycle helmet slung over her arm and one of her shoulders tucked up to her ear. ‘Yes,’ she sings, in her musical way. ‘Yes, I know… oh, no, yes… no, I know.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ says Jack, ‘what did you say?’

  Sharleen gives him a look that pities and despises him, the pity outweighing the disdain, but only just. ‘Gottago,’ she sings to her phone, four notes, diminuendo. She removes her mobile phone from her ear, reverts her head to the perpendicular, tucks the phone into her pocket, starts twisting her hair into a knot, and smiles at Jack. Sympathy smile. Poor old sod and his bonkers wife.

  ‘Lot of books you got here,’ she informs him, kindly. ‘Read them all, have you?’

  ‘Don’t be stupid.’ Margaret bustles back in from the storeroom. ‘Mr Carter sells books, that’s his trade, that’s what he does.’ She hands her time sheet to Jack. ‘Doesn’t mean he has to read them, does it, Mr C?’

  ‘No indeed.’ Jack signs the time sheet.

  Sharleen tucks her hair into her helmet. ‘My granddad did books,’ she says, in a superior way, as if to establish her place on the literary ladder.

  Did books. What on earth does she mean? ‘Oh, really? And what did he do with the books that he… that he did?’

  ‘He borrowed them out, didn’t he?’ Sharleen lifts her chin and straps up her helmet.

  ‘Ah.’ He’s thoroughly confused with the dids and the didn’ts, so he changes tack. ‘And what about you, do you enjoy reading?’

  ‘Do me a favour…’ Margaret is scathing. ‘She’s on the internet.’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course.’ Jack humbly accepts his position at the bottom of the literary heap.

  Margaret consults her clipboard with an important frown. ‘Uh, oh,’ she says to Sharleen, with considerable relish, ‘you’re bothered by a bit of wee? Just wait till you meet old Mr Styles.’

  Styles. The name rings an ancient bell at the back of Jack’s head. Two boys drawing in the dust. ‘I was at school with a lad called Styles. Ned Styles.’

  ‘That’ll be him. Edward Styles, ninety next Thursday and still gets it out, dirty old sod.’

  ‘What do you mean, gets it out?’ Ned snickering, ‘Bet’n you mine’s bigger’n yours…’

  ‘Never you mind, Mr C, you’re not like the rest.’ Margaret gives him a reassuring pat on the arm and chivvies Sharleen out to the hall.

  Joss Hinxman, hiding his face with his hand. ‘You sh-should be ashamed…’

  ‘By the way, Mr C…’

  ‘Scag off, dung heap…’

  ‘Mr C?’

  He shakes memory away and goes out to the hall. ‘Yes, hello?’

  Margaret is shouldering her jacket on. ‘It’s time you had a clear-out in that spare room of yours. We need more space for the pads and stuff.’

  ‘Do we.’ Careful to keep his voice flat.

  ‘Well, I mean, there’s that wardrobe of yours, for a start. I mean, not being funny, but it’s full of old tat.’

  ‘What do you mean, tat? Those are Eva’s best clothes.’

  ‘Mr C…’ Margaret zips up her jacket, ‘have a word with yourself, she’s never going to wear them again.’

  ‘You never know.
’

  Margaret looks at him. And pigs might fly. ‘Plus I’ve had a look in some of those boxes of yours. Nothing but rubbish, if you ask me, beats me why you’ve kept them so long.’

  Steady, Margaret, that’s my past you’re dismissing so glibly. ‘You might have asked me first.’

  ‘I’m asking you now.’

  ‘Yes, Margaret.’ He gives her a military salute.

  ‘No need to be sarky, Mr C. Just have a sort through, that’s all I’m saying, see if there’s anything you want to keep, I’ll dump the rest down the charity shop.’ She opens the front door and goes out to the pavement. ‘Cheerio then, Mr C, go careful.’

  ‘I will. And you.’ He flattens himself against the wall as Sharleen squeezes herself and bicycle past. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he says, ‘I didn’t catch your name.’

  ‘Sharleen.’

  ‘No, your surname, I mean.’

  ‘Oh, right. Baines, Sharleen Baines. Just call me Sharleen.’

  He stands in the doorway watching them go: Margaret at a brisk trot, Sharleen cycling one-handed beside her, checking her phone; and, perversely, he misses them as soon as they’ve gone, disappearing round the corner into the High Street.

  Baines… Baines…

  It’s beginning to get light, heavy dawn hampered by cloud, rain beginning to fall in a steady drizzle, the street lamp across the way diminishing to a feebler glow, shops emerging from the night like tired ghosts.

  Baines… Baines. Why does that name sound so familiar?

  Ah, me, how memory fails as the years go by. But what does it matter, he has porridge to see to. He’s about to go back inside when another bicycle appears round the corner from Market Square, its rider sitting bolt upright as he pedals majestically, but who suddenly swerves as the cat from next door streaks across his path, causing him to veer wildly and come to a slithering halt, only managing to dismount at the last moment before falling in an ignominious heap at Jack’s feet.

  ‘The trouble with bicycles,’ says the Great Man, gathering himself together and brushing his knees, ‘is that they have a mind of their own. Not unlike the female of the species, if one may say so without causing offence.’ He lugs the bicycle onto the pavement and props it against the window jamb, pausing to glance at his reflection as if to reassure himself that his dignity is still intact.

  Jack is entirely delighted by the Great Man’s arrival, choosing to overlook the fact that it wasn’t his own decision to stop, rather that of his bicycle.

  ‘I can’t tell you how happy I am to see you,’ he says, beaming with pleasure. ‘It seems such an age since last we met.’

  ‘Indeed so,’ says the Great Man, joining him in the doorway. He looks about with a critical eyebrow in the way that Jack remembers so well. ‘And, alas, how changed it all is: so pretty, so charming, and yet so depressingly sterile.’

  ‘I know, I’m sorry,’ says Jack, humbly, as if the changes to Verity Alley are somehow his fault. ‘We were all consulted and all of us objected, but our opinion was completely ignored, of course, and now all the old traders have gone. It’s awfully sad.’

  The old cobblestones have been replaced with pale grey and terracotta brick laid in a geometrical herringbone pattern, the pavements embellished with mock Victorian lamps, tubs of trailing plants and litter bins pretending to art deco antique; the shop fronts are glossy with paint, their window displays self-consciously minimalist, as if to deny association with anything so vulgar as trade.

  ‘Wasn’t there a butcher’s once? And a bakery? I used to come with my mother on market days, and later with my wife. My first wife, that is, my second always sent out.’

  ‘Yes, over there, just along from the gallery, where the bistro is now, and the hairdresser’s.’ Cut U Right.

  And the rest of the shops, dusty, down-at-heel, crammed with goods that spilled out to the pavement; the traders, smoking, gossiping, warily welcoming newcomer Jack, distantly friendly, knowing his past.

  ‘Oh, yes indeed, I remember now. And wasn’t there a locksmith next door to you? Or was it the pawnbroker?’

  ‘No, a laundry.’ That became a laundrette and is now an estate agent. And his neighbour on the other side that used to be a greengrocer’s and is now a gift shop called Long Passed that sells cards and knickknacks, pottery reproductions of a bucolic nature, dairymaids, shepherdesses, sheep, lambs, cattle and poultry, country cottages prettily thatched with plaster straw. Jack is hugely entertained by the shop’s name, longing to know whether its spelling is the result of sheer ignorance or a deliberate and delicious pun. But the two ladies who run the shop, women of indeterminate age, who look remarkably alike and wear seemingly interchangeable ethnic clothes, give him a wide berth. They had been friendly at first, in a timid sort of way that reminded him of Miss Maiden, but on discovering the existence of a demented wife, withdrew rapidly, fearing perhaps that too close an association might lead to their being pressed into service as cooks, carers or shoulders too heavily leaned upon. They greet Jack kindly enough when they chance to meet, ducking their heads, smiling at the pavement, but are surprisingly militant concerning the damp patch in the cellar that is seeping through to their side of the adjoining wall, which he promises, but fails, to address. He persists in liking them, however, because of the times passed, long-ago past.

  ‘Incidentally,’ says Jack, ‘did you ever come across a chap called Baines?’

  ‘Baines? No, not that I recall. Was he one of the old traders? That fellow opposite began with a B, did he not?’

  ‘That wasn’t Baines, that was Mr Bashem, the ironmonger.’

  ‘Oh, Bashem, yes. What a horror he was, one hesitated to pass the time of day in the street, let alone venture into the shop to purchase a candle or two, for fear of incurring his spleen.’

  Gathering his rage in the back of his throat, spitting it out onto the pavement, marching it back into his shop.

  ‘Although one misses him in a curious way.’

  ‘I suppose one does.’

  Yes, rather Mr Bashem with his one-dimensional, red-faced explosions than the young couple from London who run the gallery now and deal in cold politeness. The gallery owner has a double-barrelled name that Jack can never remember, and his assistant or partner, or possibly wife, seems to be called Zeph. Neither would dream of spitting on pavements, but they hold occasional drinks’ parties in the middle of the day that are equally distasteful: groups of people dressed in smart, urban clothes, armed with catalogues and glasses of wine, shrill with laughter, loud with art, spilling out onto the pavement in the way that Mr Bashem’s pots and pans used to do. Mr Double-Barrel who, like Sharleen, is usually attached to a mobile phone, ignores Jack when he encounters him in the street. No, not ignores, simply doesn’t see him. But does see the bookshop, is offended by its dilapidation, delivers acerbic notes through the letterbox at regular intervals suggesting, nay, insisting that Mr Carter should address the matter of rotten fascia and peeling paint and the deleterious effect on his, Mr Double-Barrel’s, upmarket establishment before solicitors are consulted and formal complaints made to the Environment Agency.

  ‘At least you stay the same.’ The Great Man pats the window jamb as if to congratulate the bookshop for its survival and to encourage its continuance. ‘I used to come here as a youth, searching for knowledge, searching for truth. It was half the size then than it is now, of course. Fellow called Inkpen had it, a serendipitous name, given his trade.’ He frowns at flakes of ancient paint on his fingers and flicks them away. ‘I don’t recall what happened after he died, do you?’

  ‘No, I wasn’t even born, and Bob was never very forthcoming about the past. All I know is that his father bought it, and the saddler’s next door, after that business with Oscar Wilde.’

  ‘Good heavens, yes, all that scandal about Wilde, poor fellow, I’d quite forgotten. I never quite took to his work myself, or to his sexual
proclivities. Still, he had fine eyes and an abundant head of hair that one cannot help but envy.’ The Great Man smoothes his balding pate in a protective way and turns to study his reflection at the side window with a critical eyebrow. ‘Did not my portrait use to be in this window?’

  ‘Oh, yes, it was there for years, I used to stand and stare at it when I was a boy. I was sure that if I watched closely enough, it would turn to me and smile. You never did, though.’

  ‘What a charming story, and I must apologise for my lack of manners.’

  ‘Well, I met the real thing in the end so it didn’t matter.’

  ‘Ah, yes, I remember that meeting. Captain Daring and his Dangerous Deeds…’

  ‘Dastardly.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Dastardly Deeds, not Dangerous.’

  ‘So they were. Whatever happened to him, I wonder?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘And the portrait?’

  ‘I don’t know that either, I’m frightfully sorry.’

  ‘No matter, I was not entirely pleased with the likeness. It had a certain gravitas, I suppose, a reflective, almost lyrical quality in the facial expression that was pleasing. But the nose was entirely exaggerated as to size and hook, and nobody has such monstrous ears.’ He pulls at an earlobe with an exploratory finger and thumb. ‘Ah, me, omnia vanitas.’ He moves out to the pavement, collects his bicycle and prepares to mount, then stops for a moment, lifts the great nose and sniffs suspiciously. ‘I don’t wish to alarm you, my friend,’ he says, ‘but methinks your porridge is burning.’

  Oh, stairlift, how much do I hate thee? Let me count the ways…

  Margaret has tried time and again to persuade Jack to use the lift but he refuses point blank, and the more she badgers the more stubborn he becomes. The lift was installed when Eva could still walk by herself but couldn’t manage the stairs; when she could still perform small tasks in the shop or the kitchen, when she’d forgotten who Jack was but wouldn’t let him out of her sight. When she had stopped being Eva.