by Adam Thorpe
‘I can’t see the print very well,’ he moans. ‘I do wish you’d get some proper lighting, Mike.’
Not quite this time, thinks Mike. The book is slipped back between the crisp Bleak House (damp staining to the board, significant spotting and handling marks) and The Mill on the Floss in three volumes (some wear to the spines and extremities, hinges tender, sunning on the cover). Both first editions, both a snip at £750. Mike leaves Derek to it and returns to his desk. The old man now has his withered head all but inside the cabinet; he’s studying at close range the three rows of delicious spines, mostly in tooled and ribbed leather of every hue, from amber through copper to burnished ochre. He is audibly inhaling the complex fragrance of sweet tobacco and vanilla with its zest of coal smoke, when he says, ‘Now what in Heaven is so special about this one, Mike? A crummy-looking tome.’
He is holding up a familiar book. ‘A pauper among kings, I’d say.’
The cabinet has not been unlocked for weeks.
‘Oh, that,’ says Mike. The heart is sending messages through the jungle again. Curiously, he wants to laugh. A hysterical giggle, more like. A high-pitched howl. ‘It’s a unique copy. Haven’t found any others.’
‘Curious.’ Derek is flicking through. ‘Looks like cheap rubbish to me.’
‘Signed by the author.’
‘So? Not exactly Henry James, is he?’
Mike blinks slowly, leaning back on the desk, heart curiously shifted to the top of his head. ‘Cecil Bigstaff was a top member of the Illuminati. The clue is that striped polo-neck sweater. Those in the know would leap at that book. It’s got messages in code. About the future, about the plans of the secret organisation that runs the world.’
‘Mike, you’re pulling my blasted leg. This utter crap’s for the 50p box!’
In literary fiction of a certain sort and period, characters are given to sudden galvanised movements that wake up the soporific reader by the glowing fire as if an eight-pounder has been let off in the room. Mike does a perfect real-life imitation. Derek all but totters backwards as the book is snatched away.
‘Who runs this shop? Who decides?’
‘But, of course, I wasn’t implying … ’
Derek appears frightened, which does something strange to Mike. It stirs something furry inside his mind, like the abdomen of a hornet. He’s smelling the helot’s blood; he’s breathing in short, sharp pants; he’s spotting the twitches of terror on the flanks of an old and weakening zebra. He leaps, he sinks his teeth into that rusk of a neck. ‘Ah, the 50p box, Derek. Yes. Everything for the 50p box. Utter crap like Gothic churches, Georgian squares, Victorian warehouses, ancient ginnels or bay-windowed shops like mine.’
‘Pardon?’
‘All flattened on the orders of the Emperor Nicolae Bintwell. Swing low, sweet demolition ball. Pulverised for pieces of shit shut-the-fuck-up concrete. For boulevards the size of motor-ways. For ring roads and their attendant pedestrian underpasses. Or should that be underpisses?’
As Derek backs away to the door and opens it, Mike raises his voice. ‘For dickhead shopping plazas, office blocks, multi-boring car parks. Derby, Leicester, Grimsby, Nottingham, ye-es, all for the 50p box! Not forgetting poor old Wolvo!’ He stands on his threshold with his hand cupped around his mouth, shouting down the lane at the old man’s retreating back. ‘Remember the Black Boy Hotel? You were there, Derek, yelling, Utter crap, all for the 50p box! … Thank you, Derek! Thank you for your regular custom! Wa-anker! ’
He’s dancing on his toes like Basil Fawlty, entranced by the manic fiddle of his rage.
The man in question has vanished round the corner on his arthritic legs, moving faster than he’s done for years – downhill, of course, which is more dangerous. The odd passer-by stops and backs away, thinking perhaps it’s a terrorist attack, but the others plough on, a few so deep into their mobiles they haven’t even noticed: he might just as well have been wielding an axe. Oh, it feels so good.
It feels so good to have courage! To go over the top!
Sheena is watching from her shop door. Kids behind her, anxious mothers clasping them by the shoulders. Mike swivels and gives them all a vigorous double thumbs-up. A kid waves back. The slag frowns and goes back in, saying something to the mums. Call the cops! Mad Mike on the loose!
He pulls his own door to, turning OPEN to CLOSED. His legs are jelly. He has to sit down. A real lion wouldn’t shiver after an attack; he’d just tear off another fleshy chunk from the still-living animal, brain hard-wired to survive and not to feel pity. Otherwise there’d be no lions left. No felines at all. No canines, for that matter. No dogs, no wolves, no jackals. Listen to your dog, listen to it properly, listen to its profound heart, its deepest thoughts, and you’d end up a serial killer.
He laughs, a brief yelp. The book has vanished again. He looks around without stirring from his chair. It was in his hand, definitely in this very hand; he must have dumped it somewhere. He’d like to tear it into shreds, into confetti, page by page. He’d like to marry Cosmina. Cosmina, Cosmina, Cosmina. The lion’s mate. The lioness. She does all the hunting, isn’t that right? In the real wild world? While the lion slumbers or eats his rival’s cubs? Yum yum. The beautiful and noble king of the jungle, cracking the cubs’ bones like Twiglets.
The phone rings. It’s the home. The Spanish nurse, Esperanto or something. Mum’s taken a turn. His chest lurches before the voice says, ‘No in any immediate danger, Mr Watkins, but better we let you know. Your mum, he’s a bit more confused. A’right?’
‘I’m coming. Right away.’
Not quite right away. He rescues Fay’s poster from the wheelie bin, slipping on the wet flags. And there, a layer deeper in the pungency, nestling on a banana skin, is Listening to Your Dog. He smooths the poster out but it stays badly creased and stained by a rotten tomato.
He stocks up with another quick swig and takes the stupid book with him. Mum would like the illustrations. By the time he arrives, she’s recovered, swearing and glowering as of old. No one except Cosmina gives her the time of day, he’s noticed. And it’s Cosmina’s day off, which varies depending on needs (the home’s, not hers).
The husband of the old dear next door is seated in the lounge with its rubber plants and washable easy chairs when Mike comes in with a coffee. The husband says, ‘You’d think they’d give her somethink, wouldn’t you? Your mum. Somethink like a sedative. To calm her down. It’s not easy for Diane. My missus. All that swearing.’
‘Mum’ll be dead soon, don’t you fret.’
‘Oh, I didn’t mean …’
Mike feels the power of being a nasty man. Insatiate. There are whole fields of wryness between grumpy and nasty. His brandy breath is a flame-thrower. But the man is so cockney-nice that the poor thing evidently feels guilt, continues to be pally after a brief pause. East End Jewish from his swarthy face and prominent nose. Mike’s always had a soft spot for Jewishness. And for cockneys.
‘That pleasant nurse, the Romany one, says you sell old books.’
‘Did she?’ She’s been talking about him. ‘Romanian, not Romany, by the way. Yes, I do.’
‘Do you have back numbers of Motor Sport? The thing is, I used to be nuts about cars, threw all mine away. My magazines.’
‘I don’t, no.’
‘A bit of an inventor, I was. Anything engineering-wise. That so-called collapsible steering column, first found on the Triumph Herald in 1959? It’s in my file marked AUTO IDEAS at least five years earlier. What was I, fifteen? A flash of inspiration when fiddling with me old toy telescope, then working it all out by crouching in the footwell of my maths teacher’s Standard Eight. Which was replaced by the Herald, if you recall. I don’t mean to be rude, but you could be old enough. A tube sheathing a solid bar, fixed by an adjustable Allen screw passing through to a nut on the other side. Genius! Name’s Howard, by the way. Howie to me mates.’
Mike nods. His mind is being washed, laved by another’s loneliness. It is relaxing. It makes
him feel more normal. The voice continues.
‘I can still smell them seats. Thermo-plastic fabric. Especially when she was parked in the sun for a bit: Tygan, wasn’t it? Or Vinolene? Washable, resistant to all stains. The future is here! Yet the dash was still all hardwood veneer you’d polish up to show the grain. Get the chrome bezels on the dials shining. Craftsmanship, eh?’
‘Pure craft.’ Mike nods. ‘All gone.’
‘Well, that’s the thing. And I was right up with the modern times. Worked for British Steel. Special Steels Division. Up the road. Jets. Big Rolls-Royce engines. Vulcan bombers. Thermonuclear capabilities, that’s what kept us open when that handbag horror was laying waste. Do you know how many times she – the Vulcan, not Thatcher – had to refuel on the way to the Falklands? Have a guess, go on.’
‘Fifty-one.’
Howard’s face falls. ‘Oh, come off it. Thirty-two.’
An uneasy silence. Then: ‘I never understood why, with all that water to the east, they couldn’t use that to fly over, like them Typhoons do now from Coningsby. Know what I mean?’
Ten minutes later Mike is back in his mum’s room. He picks Listening to Your Dog off the blanket and offers it to her again. She takes the book and throws it at the wall. There it lies, splayed like a tent on the stained nylon carpet by the old Georgian tea table he insisted on bringing from home as a comforting reminder. Nurse Bronwen comes in with the trolley on its horribly squeaky wheels and picks up Listening to Your Dog. ‘Ooh, this looks fa-ascinating,’ she says. ‘Could I have a peep over my tea?’
‘It’s all yours,’ Mike says. ‘Keep it.’
‘Not at all,’ she replies. ‘Wouldn’t dream of it. You brought this along for Janie. I don’t have dogs, anyway.’
‘You could put some WD40 on your wheels. Unless it’s part of the torture.’
‘Eh?’
It sits on his passenger seat on the way back, demure and silent. Enjoying the drive, probably. In the way dogs do, muzzles catching the wind. He has to brake suddenly when a farm lorry takes the lane a touch bullishly and he wonders whether his own steering column is collapsible. Bye bye, Mike. A click of the fingers. Gone.
What will he do when Mum goes? Can’t be long now. He’s got to be present at the expiration, the final breath. He can’t let her wander off into the shadows alone.
That’s why he succumbed to a mobile phone. Day or night, he’s told them. Day or night. The first sign of deterioration. OK? The first spot of mould. Contact me. I have to be there.
I have to be. I want her to go holding my hand. That’s very important.
It might as well be the Arctic again. The blustery May Day sky throws down spiteful shards of rain between harsh sunlight that reveals every facial flaw in Lincoln’s streets. We all look old, Mike thinks, in our thick scarves, while the young are mostly nowhere to be seen. Then he spots Cosmina bicycling past. She looks unbelievably foreign and glamorous: a grey-black fur jacket down to her midriff, leather sleeves and trousers with visible zips. This is probably normal in Romania, but here in Lincolnshire she still looks weird, especially on a bicycle. There goes the woman who changes the nappies of the woman who changed his own over a half-century ago. He stares after her like someone on drugs. He’ll invite her for another drink. Meanwhile, he’ll have a little warming top-up, solo, in the Adam and Eve.
The next morning he wakes up wondering where he is. Prison yard. Factory precinct. Snow blowing in. A goods entrance. The back of Littlewoods, now Primark. No, it’s his own kitchen. His brain is smoked by 70cl of Talisker 10 (the empty bottle on its side) and preceding vodka shots in the pub, never mind the ales. He’s worthless. Library remainder, heavy soiling and shelf wear, frayed and browned, beginning to separate at the spine. Pen underlining to pages throughout. Give myself away; 50p would be a rip-off.
How did he get back? The van is there, crookedly, one wheel on the front lawn. Automatic pilot. He’s still emanating high-octane vapours at lunchtime.
The following day is beautifully, suddenly warm. ‘Wel-come be thou, fair fresshe May,’ he cries, driving in briskly, no longer feeling on the edge of death. A new MISSING poster is in place; the old one was crumpled, tomato-stained and torn, impossible to restore. A little tiff, he’s calling it. A little tiff with Fay. No hard feelings. All is forgiven, kiddo. He’s opening up the shop each morning with only a minor ripple of anxiety. The book no longer moves, but for the last few days it has done so in his dreams. On his desk. In the window. Secreted on the shelves at the back. Philosophy. Or Gardening. Or Modern Fiction, buried in the phalanx of dog-eared Rushdies. Yesterday he woke up with the book in his hand, its slab of pages fading away as his real hand swung into view, empty. In reality, it is back on the Animals, Pets shelf. Home again among its own. Business is still quite brisk on the virtual realm. Computer orders keep him out of mischief. He is becoming screen-bleary, like an office clerk. Above all, he never wanted to work in an office.
The warmth lasts a day, before plunging back into unseasonable temperatures, although the sunlight lingers. Due to untrustworthy showers, the trestle table stays folded. He sits in the corner of the Short Straw with Alex after three full days of abstention, having imagined it continuing a year or the rest of his life.
‘I’m thinking of moving to, I dunno, Tibet.’
Alex nods. ‘About the only place you could upsize to from Lincolnshire.’
The next day Mike is humping flimsy cardboard boxes overladen with surprisingly crisp Victorian volumes mostly bound in gilt-stamped half calf, job lots from an auction, when the sky cracks open. As he struggles across the road, a gust drives the rain horizontal and into the back of the van, where two boxes remain. Sheena watches him from her threshold, impassively. They haven’t exchanged a word since he lost it with Derek Bintwell. Maybe she’s scared. Who cares? Hannah is still civil and Alan and Des merrily twiddle their fingers at him. He buys a quiche there now and again.
It helps to finger his rosary of Shakespeare quotes in repeated murmurings, with one in particular thumbed to smoothness: ‘Love goes by haps; Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps.’ Perhaps people think he is talking on a mobile through earphones. No crazier than anyone else in the streets, these days.
He scans the shelves from his cubbyhole through the perpetual twilight of the shop: all these little histories, pleading to be turned into tarmac binder or snow pellets; to be transmogrified into something useful. ‘The greatest university of all is a collection of books,’ as Carlyle put it. What a pity he turned neo-fascist before fascism was even invented.
* * *
Mum has reached a plateau of near catalepsy, which the staff are relieved by and have probably encouraged with some chemical input. Only Cosmina seems to bother to talk to her as if to a person. The May timetable includes a 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. twice-weekly shift, so they coincide several times without effort. He sits by the bed and watches out of the corner of his eye those full lips move as she talks. It is enough to watch them move, that miracle of muscular effort, upper lip dancing with the lower, touching and not touching. He registers again how slender she is, maybe on the thin side. Clavicles clear under the smooth skin, like hard ripples of sand on the beach. He hopes she isn’t anorexic. He is happy simply to worship silently, unnoticed. The drink and chat in the pub has made no difference: if anything, she is a little shyer with him. There is something deliciously agonising about all this. He’ll wait a few more days, then suggest another outing. She’s a gazelle, easily sent leaping away.
He does declare, clearing his throat, that if she wants to improve her English skills, he has some excellent language books in the shop. Cheap, second hand. Then he worries that he’s insulted her, twice over. ‘Your English is very good, of course.’ Which makes things worse. And implying she is poor. But of course she is poor. Her country is very poor. Until Mum passes away, so is he. She says she hardly ever goes into the centre of Lincoln (he doesn’t tell her of his sighting on Saltergate). He tells her about
the website, although he hasn’t updated the catalogue for weeks. ‘We’re in the twenty-first century,’ he jokes. She shakes her head: her iPhone is smashed and the computer at home belongs to Anca, her flatmate, who protects it with a password.
‘That’s a bit selfish,’ he remarks. ‘Did you get cross with your iPhone?’
She’s on the chemicals round, unflipping the lids on the plastic transparent pill-box. His mum meekly sticks her tongue out, waiting. The tongue is furred and white. One of those pills might be a heavy tranquilliser. When he remarked on Mum’s calm the last time, fatso Bronwen said, with an unattractive raspberry noise, ‘You should see her first thing in the morning. A right old rascal she is.’ Which he considered unprofessional.
‘No, it was broken by a car,’ Cosmina says, placing a white pill on Mum’s huge tongue. Who decided on the pills? Mike hovers with the follow-up glass of water. The tongue stays out, a slab of discoloured meat. Will the pill stay on?
‘Broken by a car?’
‘In it goes, Janie sweetie.’
The tongue vanishes. There is a struggle to swallow the ensuing water, which Mike is holding to the crumple of dry lips and tipping in, much of it dribbling from the corners of the mouth. One operation, and he’s goofed. Cosmina is ready with the tissue and the kind words. Is she having him on about the iPhone? Or is it just her English? Broken by a car.
‘Run over, you mean?’
‘Exactly.’
She tells him calmly how she was knocked off her bike. He can’t bear it: she might have been killed. The pills operation is over. He tells her she should wear a helmet. She doesn’t respond. No Romanian wears a helmet, cycling. But European rules? His thoughts feel boring, as asexual as a flotilla of shiny desks in Brussels. He mentions the shop again but it sounds too insistent. Unthinkingly, perhaps, she parts her black velvet curtain of hair and shows him her ear for a few seconds, seconds that stretch forth into a nirvana of timelessness, as if he’s floating far above the moment, looking down on the crusty, unbandaged wound and saying, in an echoey voice like God’s, how it will heal quickly. Despite the mess, he thinks the undamaged part is one of the most beautiful things he has ever seen. Pale and opalescent as the whorls of a seashell, like the dog whelks and periwinkles he would collect in Mablethorpe as a kid. Vaguely honeyish scent from her curls, her skin.