by Carla McKay
‘That man has brought us all into disrepute’, she complained to the Knights who were equally alarmed. Suddenly, the atmosphere of peaceful co-habitation looked like it was breaking down. Many of the English, even those who had been there for years, complained that people were snubbing them in the shops or the street. Even Lance couldn’t calm things down. Roland had cordially explained to him that whilst Lance was his bon ami, he and his neighbours couldn’t, in general, stand the English, especially those who thought they could come and take over French restaurants.
Finally, Bill retired defeated but defiant. ‘I’ll start a new restaurant next door if I have to,’ he rallied. But, in truth, he was feeling pretty fed up with the way everything was going. He wondered if he would have been better off in Spain. At least they wouldn’t want to re-fight the Battle of Agincourt the whole time. It was scandalous, the French attitude to the Brits. Who was it, pray, who had rescued the buggers not once, but twice, from the Hun? They could damn well keep France next time, he thought.
14
Gerald Thornton was one of life’s disappointed romantics; that is to say he was a cynic, and people who didn’t know him that well were often offended by his sharp tongue and critical manner. He was 52, his wife had died ten years previously from breast cancer, and he had on a whim sold up in England where he had been an independent publisher and moved to France where, with great difficulty but a kind of grim determination, had eventually set up an English bookshop near the top of a steep stone-clad alleyway in the heart of Montpellier’s historic quarter. For the first five years he struggled to make ends meet. Books were expensive to buy, especially when imported, and his English clientele were largely reluctant to purchase – especially when their paperbacks cost almost a third as much again as they did at home. But gradually, by using his imagination and gritting his teeth, he came to be indispensable to that small section of a foreign population that needs or wants books in its native tongue and to the tiny fraction of the indigenous population which wants to, or has to, learn English. And, by diversifying into videos, greetings cards and cups of tea served outside on the pavement, Gerald was able to get by doing something he enjoyed in a city he had come to love.
Much thought had gone into the naming of the shop. When he arrived in Montpellier Gerald was an angry man. His wife had arbitrarily been taken from him; his business at home was at a standstill; he had nothing and nobody to lose by his move to France. Life was a bitch. Literature was the only refuge. His bookshop was to be his baby; naming her was not to be taken lightly. Not for him Ye Olde English Bookshoppe or even The English Bookshop. Nightly, when he couldn’t sleep he ran through his literary lexicon: Shakespeare was clearly a possibility. ‘The Tempest’ appealed but people might think he was selling rain hats. ‘A Tale of Two Cities’? Now that was quite apt but it was one of Dickens’s lesser known works and it was associated rather strongly with Paris. ‘Bleak House’ was too depressing; ‘Great Expectations’ was too hopeful. ‘Sense and Sensibility’ might be taken for a therapy centre; ‘Vanity Fair’ for a beauty parlour. Suddenly it came to him: ‘Wuthering Heights’. He was, after all, near the top of a hill and the Mistral wind did whistle down the alleyway in October. He was, too, he liked to think, a Heathcliffe figure, solitary, manly, misunderstood.
And so it was that the Wuthering Heights English Bookshop was born. It mystified the French postman but it appealed on the whole to the English exiles who felt it personified an English port in a storm with its union jack flag outside, its Penguin Classics and its Twinings teabags. And an astonishing number of exiles there seemed to be in Montpellier, judging from those who found their way through the maze of medieval lanes to Wuthering Heights. True, many of them were only tourists passing through who had forgotten to buy a paperback at the airport and needed something to read on the beach or back at the hotel. But quickly Gerald got the sense of a very large resident English-speaking population, many of them American, who began to use his bookshop as a valuable resource, ordering books that they needed for work or pleasure which Gerald could usually get hold of within a week, and picking Gerald’s brains (which were considerable) for suggestions.
Unusually, for an English bookshop in a foreign country, Gerald chose not to pander exclusively to the easy sales of ‘bumpy cover’ paperbacks – those whose contents were as lurid as the raised gold and silver and scarlet lettering on their covers. Of course they were available – they were his lifeblood pretty well – but he preferred to stock books of all kinds that he himself would like to read. Otherwise, where was the joy in the job? One might as well have been flogging shoes. So, crammed into every corner of the two floors of his small shop, were books of every kind: the classics, modern fiction, biography, history, art, language, science, film, poetry – you name it.
And sitting just to the right of the door on to the street was Gerald himself, virtually hemmed in by towers of books both on and under his desk either cursing at his computer screen as he wrestled with orders and invoices, or owlishly inspecting customers he didn’t trust not to make off with a book without paying. Or, since he’d had the most expensive books electronically alarmed, watching them closely to see if they showed any signs of rendering the books they perused, without any intention of buying, unsellable by rough handling. At this, Gerald would invoke his inner child whom he had fondly named Ged, a diminutive of ‘Gerald’ and the name of a drummer he had once admired. Ged was merciless with these customers and what’s more Ged had a hammer which he fingered meaningfully when he spied them putting them sticky fingerprints on photographic plates and bending back the pages so far that it broke their spines. If this happened, Ged would spring out and rain hammer blows on their heads. As they went down, he would stand over them waving the hammer in one hand and the broken book in the other. ‘See how you like it,’ he would scream, as their vertebrae splintered into a thousand pieces. ‘Not so funny, is it?’
Ged, up until now, had had to be kept in harness in Gerald’s imagination. When careless customers had actually broken the spines of new books or spilled coffee over them from a takeaway cup they were carrying, Gerald had managed to conceal his murderous impulses and merely suggested that they might like to pay for the books in question. Some did, full of apology. Some didn’t and just walked out. There wasn’t much he could do about it.
Apart from awkward customers, there was another potential enemy – local authors. In and around Montpellier there were dozens of both established and aspiring writers and Gerald would always try to promote them if he felt they were worthwhile, inviting some of them in to sign their books when they first came out. Indeed, there were many local authors who had reason to be grateful to Gerald for promoting their books vigorously by means of window displays or inviting them to exhibit at his stall at the yearly Montpellier book fair.
However, there were those whom Gerald would take against, either because he disliked them personally, or because he thought their books were rubbish. The worst of them were the ruthless self-promoters who felt that if they had written something, even if it was self-published as some were, Gerald was under an obligation to give them free publicity. Two years ago, Lance Campion had fallen firmly into this category. It wasn’t his book, Languedoc: The Four Seasons which Gerald objected to. It was perfectly competent, even though Gerald was growing increasingly tired of French Dream books. It was Lance himself, who from the moment he swaggered into the shop bearing proof copies, got right up Gerald’s nose. Everything about his manner, bearing and self assurance antagonised him. He knew before Lance strode up to his desk and interrupted a customer who was paying for a book that he would be coming to ask special favours of him in the full expectation of getting them. He knew who he was because he’d seen him around but he hadn’t spoken to him before. And sure enough, Lance had virtually demanded that Gerald put on a special window display of his book when it came out, and had even, breathtakingly, in Gerald’s view, written a glowing review of his own book which he suggested Gera
ld use in his monthly online newsletter.
Gerald had glanced at the proposed cover which featured the usual romantic shot of misty vineyards at dawn with a chateau in the background. ‘Don’t think much of the cover’, he said. And before Lance could retort that he hadn’t designed it, turned his attention to the press release Lance had written describing himself as ‘an accomplished and sensitive chronicler of this beautiful and neglected region of France’. Gerald snorted. ‘I take it that you are the accomplished and sensitive author of this touching tribute’? he asked. For a second, but only a second, Lance looked a little abashed. Recovering, he said defensively, ‘Of course. Somebody has to do the pre-publicity. I can’t trust the publishers to do anything. And the real reviews will come out too late for this month’s newsletter and the book will already be in the shops by the time the next one appears.’
Gerald looked amused. ‘Oh, and it wouldn’t do to wait for the ‘real’ ones I suppose?’ Lance bridled. ‘Look, if you’re going to be offensive, I won’t bother you any longer. I was going to offer to come in and sign copies….’
‘That won’t be necessary’, said Gerald firmly.
‘I’d have thought a local bookseller would be glad to help local authors’, retorted Lance. ‘It’s not as if you’re exactly rushed off your feet here,’ he added maliciously, looking round the empty shop. Gerald longed to release Ged and let him rain blows with his hammer on Lance’s mekon-style head watching as the red blood soaked through that luxurious thatch of blond hair – (another source of irritation to Gerald whose own thatch was somewhat threadbare). Instead, he said merely: ‘I help local authors I respect. That’s my prerogative. I shall read your book and I shall stock it if I like the look of it and if I think it will sell. However, I’m certainly not going to give you any personal publicity. You’re more than capable of publicising yourself and I’m doing you a favour by not letting you come here to sign books. If any of the customers actually met you, they wouldn’t want to buy one.’
15
Judith had discovered Wuthering Heights by chance soon after she arrived in France and had been delighted with it. She had bought several novels and one or two books on the region and noted with interest the shop’s courteous but taciturn owner, a well-built man, she guessed in his fifties, with thinning hair, clothes that looked untended though clean, and an intelligent face. She had never spoken to him but had covertly watched him as he talked to a man he evidently knew who was enquiring about a biography. He obviously knew what he was talking about and she liked the timbre of his voice. But she was glad he hadn’t talked to her; she didn’t need any help with her choices and he looked as though he could be difficult with anyone he didn’t know. Besides, she was still too raw to field the inevitable questions about what she was doing in France. Not that this man looked like one for idle chatter.
Since that first time, she had been in several times. She enjoyed a day out in Montpellier, exploring its maze of small streets and squares with 17th- and 18th-century mansions as well as its astonishing new quarter, Antigone, a self-contained utopian development of shops, restaurants and housing beside the River Lez designed in neo-classical style by a Catalan architect Ricard Bofill (or Signor Paella as she had heard Lance refer to him).
Whenever she went into Wuthering Heights, Gerald, as she had discovered the owner was called, acknowledged her politely but made no conversational moves, so she was surprised to find him beside her suddenly when she had gone downstairs to browse through the well-stocked poetry section. There she had, to her surprise and pleasure, found two of her own Howard Hill collections, one of which she was looking at when Gerald spoke: ‘If you’re interested in poetry, I have another section upstairs for the classic poets, or are you happy here with the contemporary ones?’
Judith started, feeling guilty to be caught reading her own book, but of course he wasn’t to know that.
‘Oh, I’m fine, thanks. I’ve got most of the classic anthologies I want. But I like to see what the contemporary poets are doing.’
‘Me too’, said Gerald. ‘There’s quite a few local poets in amongst that lot – this area seems to attract them. Whenever I’ve time, I organise poetry readings here. You’d be surprised how many people show up… he’s good, isn’t he?’ he nodded at the Howard Hill she was holding. Judith felt herself blushing like a schoolgirl. ‘Mmm’, she managed. ‘Do you think so?’
‘Yes, I like his stuff very much,’ said Gerald. ‘I think there are three collections now but I’ve only got two in at the moment. He appeals to me because he addresses the particular rather than the general. I appreciate his observations on the minutiae of life rather than the grand themes beloved by so many male poets. It seems to me that he almost writes from a woman’s point of view, especially about love. I once tried to get hold of him for a big poetry event through his publishers, but they weren’t having any of it. Apparently the guy’s a bit of a recluse. I looked him up on the internet but he’s never even given an interview.’
Judith couldn’t look at him. She swallowed and said, huskily. ‘I think quite a few writers shy away from media attention. Once they are in the public domain, they become creatures of the public somehow. Not just their writing, which everyone feels they can then pick over with reference to the person they now ‘know’ – you know the kind of thing. Oh yes, he writes like that because his mother abandoned him as a baby, etc., but their personal life too. I think it must be intolerable.’
Gerald looked at her carefully. ‘You’re right’, he said. ‘Proper, private people don’t want public attention. They’re right to shun it.’ He smiled at Judith. ‘If you want to come to our next poetry reading, it would be good to see you. I’ve got the details upstairs.’
Almost a year to the day since Tim Lavery had sealed his death warrant on the Tribune he found himself in Montpellier looking for a shady spot in which to have a beer. It wasn’t a city he knew at all but what he had seen of it so far pleased him very much.
He had borrowed his sister’s car and driven in from the house they had taken for the summer, about an hour north of the city, anxious to flee from from the noisy demands of his young nephews who thought that Tim’s role in life was to be canon-balled repeatedly in the pool. Tim’s plan to get on with his novel whilst spending a month with Freya and James and their two sons had not worked out that well. Not only were his avuncular duties required at all times, but he was getting very bored with the smug married couple thing that his bossy older sister Freya did so well with her husband James.
Having done so well themselves, they now apparently found deep-seated pleasure in tormenting him about his ‘untidy’ life. ‘Tim’, Freya would begin in the evenings just when they had settled down a bottle of wine on the terrace, ‘James and I have been thinking… time you settled down… head in sand… old enough now… thinking about the future… responsibility… have you thought…’, and so on. Tim was now practised at blanking out pretty well everything she said and since the key phrases didn’t change much, he got the drift of it without having to look at her or listen. Instead, he sniffed the scented air appreciatively and took another gulp at the ridiculously cheap but delicious wine they’d bought in the supermarket.
Freya was bad enough, but Tim was beginning to actively loathe her husband. What an insufferable prick he was dishing out ‘fatherly’ advice to him when he was only a couple of years older than he was. James was a headhunter whatever that was and earned a fortune doing fuck all, as far as Tim could tell, apart from suggesting friends of his from Harrow for high flyer jobs in the City and then coining in commission. James was now urging him to start as a teaboy or something in a firm like his and ‘work his way up the ladder’. James was a master of cliché, Tim thought.
‘I have a nobler calling, James’, he now told him, yawning with the effort of keeping his eyes open after all the sun and wine.
‘What, writing a novel that never gets finished, and doing scraps of work for magazines?’ interrupted the
beastly Freya. ‘And living like a student in a rented flat with a leaking roof and no hot water when you’re nearly 30?’
‘My column on GQ is very highly regarded’, retorted Tim indignantly, ignoring the unpalatable truth about the hovel in Battersea. ‘Yes, ‘Layabout around Town’, said Freya. ‘That just about sums you up. You really should grow up Tim.’
‘Leave off Freya, since when have you done any work? You have a cleaner to clean your house, a nanny to look after your kids, and a fruit machine called James whose lever you pull every time you want cash.’
There had been several pointless conversations along these lines in the last week or two and Tim was glad to have escaped. Now strolling along in the sunshine from the formal Peyrou gardens, under the Arc de Triomphe built to glorify Louis XIV, and along the chic Rue Foch bordered by eighteenth century mansions housing smart shops at street level, a bold plan began to form in Tim’s head.
He turned off Rue Foch and found himself in a maze of medieval alleyways, some of which opened out into unexpected squares with outdoor restaurants and chestnut trees. God this city was lovely. And the countryside around it was staggering too – the mountains, the wilderness of the surrounding countryside which the locals called the garrigue, the little villages, untouched really by the 20th century. And the things that mattered were so cheap – like wine and houses. Tim had looked in the estate agents’ windows and was astonished by the low rents compared to England. Of course, he couldn’t afford to buy anything here but anyone, he saw, who had a modest flat in London, could exchange it for whole house in Montpellier. Surely, he could afford to live here and finance himself by freelance journalism, and perhaps giving English lessons as well. And if that failed, he could work in a bar. His head swam with possibilities.