The Magus of Hay(26)

‘You’re not proposing to live in those upstairs rooms?’

‘We don’t really have a choice at the moment.’

‘James didn’t tell me that. I mean it’s all so… small and…’

Betty waited. What else had James failed to tell her?

The old woman who whistled traipsed past the door in her long coat.

‘Anyway, you’re young. You have the energy.’ Sounded like she hadn’t been told about Robin’s condition. She looked at her watch. ‘James will be coming back soon. Did you want to talk to him? About health?’

‘Er… perhaps not. Perhaps you can both drop in and have a look over the weekend. See what a mess we’ve made.’

‘We’d love to. But it won’t be a mess. I sense in you a level of determination neither of us possesses.’

Maybe she meant a level of need.

Robin had left the door open, but the paint cloths over the shelves were enough to convince passers-by they weren’t open yet for business.

Except for Gareth Nunne. Wedged in the doorway, blocking Robin’s light.

‘Feel responsible for you now, you bugger. What kind of idiot takes any notice of an old fart with his business crashing round his ears?’

‘A desperate man, Nunne,’ Robin said. ‘A desperate man.’ He put down his palette of acrylics, dropped his brush in the water jar. ‘You realize it’s gonna look better than this. We’re barely started here.’

Gareth Nunne pulled the sheets off a couple of shelves.

‘Better how, boy?’

‘Tidier, for a start.’



‘Tidy?’ Nunne reeling back, like he’d been pepper-sprayed. ‘You don’t want bloody tidy.’

Robin grinned, first time today.

‘Tidy,’ Nunne said, like he was addressing a small kid, ‘looks like you know what you’re selling.’

‘We know exactly what we’re selling.’

‘Of course you do. I’m just telling you it en’t good to look like you know. If you’re wearing a suit and all your shelves are beautifully ordered and it looks like every book’s been assessed and valued, you’re buggered. What you need are subtle hints of chaos… confusion… incompetence. You don’t wanner blow it like Oliver, come over as clever, when what your customer wants is stupid. Some vague, booky type who don’t function in the real world. Your customer’s looking for a bargain. Wants to think he’s put one over on you.’

Nunne pulled down Wells’s guide to the sacred magic of gemstones.

‘Say your punter’s bought this for peanuts and he’s real chuffed, and he tells you it’s a first edition. You go, “First edition? Is it really? Well, well. I never noticed that. Good heavens, you got a bargain there, all right.”’

‘And that works how?’

‘It’s a sacrifice. They’ve got you down as an idiot, and that means they’ll come back.’

‘Uh… right.’

‘However,’ Gareth said, ‘if you’re buying second-hand books different rules apply. You go, “Well, of course it’s a first edition – there only ever was one edition, and if people didn’t want it first time around, they’re not gonner want it now. Only way it’ll sell is as part of a set. Say fifteen quid the lot?”’

‘You tried to pull that one on me.’

‘Aye, and leased bloody Oliver’s shop for him. Jesus.’

Nunne beamed at Robin. His port wine stain shone. Then he was serious.

‘Don’t get me wrong. We’re not in competition, yere, like your Waterstones and your Smiths. It’s about getting people into the town. The town’s one big bookshop. All the rest, the fashion shops, the antique shops, the art shops, that’s just the support. When it ceases to be the support and starts to dominate the book trade… that’s when Hay will fall, boy.’

He probably didn’t mean it to sound as portentous as it did.

Outside the ice cream parlour, a man was crouching on the pavement, taking pictures of the castle, across the marketplace.

‘Not really what one would call a romantic ruin, is it?’ Hilary said.

You couldn’t argue with that. Some medieval castles were beautifully stark, like sculptures made by the hand of God. This one looked like a ruin inside a ruin. Repeatedly smashed and burned, patched up, rebuilt, reformed, abandoned again. And now it just hung around, Betty thought, like some huge, shambling, schizophrenic psychiatric patient in the care of the community.

Maybe Robin related to the castle as a fellow cripple.

Cripple. He liked that word.

‘The keep,’ Hilary said, ‘is supposed to have been built by a huge woman. Matilda. Or Maud. Or something.’