The Magus of Hay(19)

Merrily sat down.

‘I thought this would come.’

This was how the working day began.

With a blossoming madness.





9

Old habits


FROM THE DOORWAY, Betty watched Robin sleeping in the chair, sprawled diagonally like some spent warrior, in the only position his wounds would allow. He’d been growing his hair again. She recalled the day he’d found a small tuft of grey, attacked his Lord Madoc tresses in disgust.

But he was asleep again, that was the main thing. The past two nights he’d lain awake, stricken with back pain and anxiety: oh, this was all a mistake, the shop would fail; in this bleak new age of atheism, paganism was passé.

If it had been meant, Robin said, they would’ve sold the damn bungalow.

Yes, that was a bummer. Betty had set herself to cleaning and rearranging and making the bungalow look good for the market and not too scary. Taking down the framed star-charts and the green man, lifting the goddess from her niche behind the door and packing her in straw in a wine box.

In just under a month, five couples had been to view the place. None of them had stayed long. Yesterday, the estate agent had phoned.

‘Mrs Thorogood,’ he’d said, tentatively, ‘if I could suggest… have you thought about perhaps finding somewhere to store your books?’

Good point. You never thought when you lived with them day to day, but books on pagan magic seldom came with muted covers.



The supermarket had given her dozens of strong cardboard boxes. They’d spent all morning packing up all the books which would fill the truck maybe ten times before they were all gone.

But the shop in Back Fold was nearly ready for them, with a new midnight blue ceiling on which Robin had painted a full moon and stars in formation. It was starting to look right.

Even if didn’t feel right. Why? Why, why, why?

Betty went quietly into their small bedroom with the mobile, sat on the end of the bed and made her call.

‘I don’t understand,’ Mr Oliver said. ‘You think I’m hiding something?’

Betty saw she’d left the bedroom door open a crack and got up to shut it. Thin walls, cheap doors; voices carried in the bungalow. In Robin’s up-and-down state, best not to involve him in this. Not yet, anyway.

‘You said you bought the shop as a retirement business but found it too time-consuming.’

‘That was…’ Mr Oliver cleared his throat ‘… perhaps an oversimplification.’

‘And yet, by all accounts, you weren’t doing much business at all. I’m sorry – just passing on what I’ve heard… from a number of sources.’

They’d talked to nobody apart from Paramjeet Kapoor, but if you had good reason to believe something was true, it was morally acceptable to pursue it. Morally. Funny how this had become increasingly important to her. In pagan theologies, morals, if they played any part at all, tended to be naive and simplistic.

She heard Mr Oliver drawing a long breath.

‘Mrs Thorogood, these people, booksellers… they’re not what you think they’re going to be – not what I expected, certainly. And the worst kind of gossips. This town’s full of gossip. My wife hasn’t been well, that’s why we’ve had to keep closing the shop for days at a time.’



‘I’m sorry,’ Betty said. ‘You couldn’t find anyone else to work there part time?’

‘You can’t just have someone on a string. They want something solid, need to know which days they’re working.’

‘You see, we didn’t ask to look at your books – business accounts, I mean, anything like that, because our business would be different. But what I—’

‘You’d have learned nothing meaningful. All shops are going through a difficult time.’

‘I was also told…’ Another guess ‘… that the shop had changed hands quite a lot in quite a short period.’

‘That’s not uncommon in Hay. Never has been. Not everyone adapts easily. It isn’t London and it isn’t Oxford.’

He’d sounded as if he’d hoped it would be. Even Robin wasn’t that naive.

‘And presumably you’re only offering the shop for rent because you’ve tried to sell it?’

‘Anyone in the town would have told you – and I expect they did – that it was for sale for several months.’

‘You said – which I thought was very honest – that nobody else had wanted to actually live there.’

‘That’s not exactly what I said, Mrs Thorogood.’

‘Is it possible that these premises have… a reputation?’

‘Goodness, what have those people—? It’s an old building, it’s not in the best of condition. And it can get cold in the winter. That’s why we’re not overcharging. If there are any underlying problems with the plumbing or the electrics that I’m not aware of, you may be sure they’ll be put right as soon as I’m notified.’