The Magus of Hay(3)

Big silence. Betty drawing a long, hissy breath. Robin leaning forward on his stick with the ram’s head handle.

‘You know what?’ Robin had said. ‘We might just fucking do that.’

Betty going, ‘Robin…’

G. Nunne looking unperturbed.

‘Fifteen hundred books en’t a bad start. It’s how most of us got going, flogging our own. Then you wind up like me.’ A toothy wheeze. ‘Life sentence.’

G. Nunne was like walled in by books, all the shelves loaded up, hundreds more stacked up either side of his chair. He scratched his nose.

‘Nice little shop gonner be up for rent soon, I reckon. Back Fold. Have a look. Small but perfectly formed. Like its owner.’

And then he’d done the smile.

They hadn’t checked it out. Not that day. Too annoyed. Too deflated.

No smile from Mr-American-Gothic-but-actually-painfully- English pitchfork guy.

‘And who told you that?’

Who tewld you? Now, here was a London intellectual.

‘Just a… guy in town.’ Robin followed him inside. ‘He said the store might be up for rent. Soon.’

‘Bookseller, was it?’

The cold stare over the glasses.



The guy switched on lights, an antique gas mantle, electrified, a magnesium glow over mainly empty shelves. It certainly looked like an outlet for old books. You could spend a week cleaning and dusting and it would still smell musty. You could replace the gas mantle with halogen spots and it would still look Dickensian-drab.

Which was kind of good. Wasn’t it?

‘And you’re looking for an outlet, are you?’

‘Could be,’ Robin said.

‘A bookshop?’

‘You even get a choice in this town?’

Though evidently you did have a choice now. Driving slowly down the main street with its painted hanging signs which were probably newer than they looked, he’d noticed two new womenswear stores and an outward-bound emporium. Most likely by-products of the new wealth the book trade had brought.

‘So it is gonna be available for rent, Mr, um…’

‘Oliver. Let me say from the outset that we have never offered this shop for rent and anyone who told you otherwise is being deceitful and possibly malicious.’

‘Malicious?’

Jeez.

‘There’s a small but pernicious element here that seeks to cause unrest.’

Mr Oliver’s short, sandy hair was parted in a Victorian way over a thin, scholarly face on which disapproval was always just a blink away.

‘I apologize,’ Robin said, ‘if we were in any way used by these bas— elements.’

‘You’ve had previous experience of the book trade?’

‘Books. I have experience of books.’

Robin turned. Betty was back.

‘My wife,’ Robin said. ‘Betty Thorogood. I’m Robin Thoro-good.’

Small exchange of nods.



‘Well,’ Mr Oliver said. ‘If you leave your contact details, I may possibly be in touch.’

When they left, the lights went out.

‘Holy shit,’ Robin said.





2

Without light


THE BEDROOM HAD fitted wardrobes, floor to ceiling, and lemon walls on which the shadows of trees trembled. It overlooked a garden, well screened with silver birches and larches and woody extras: unnecessary gates, two beehive composters, a Gothic arbour, like a boat stood on end, with a seat for two.

The bedroom had twin beds with quilted bedheads and matching duvets, one blue, one light green. Also, a typist’s chair. Merrily had been shown directly up here. No living room chat, no offer of tea.

Ms Merchant, Sylvia, sat on the side of the blue bed facing the green bed.

‘This is mine. When I awoke in the morning, I’d see the sun over the trees at the end of the garden, and then Ms Nott’s face on her pillow. She tended to awake before me but would not get up in case that disturbed me. When I awoke, her eyes would often be open and looking at me.’

Ms Merchant was what used to be known as a spinster. An early retired secondary school headmistress with a live-in companion, who used to be her secretary. Used to be alive.

Rather than go to her parish priest, as was usual, Ms Merchant had made a direct approach to Sophie at the Cathedral gate-house office.

Merrily hovered by the typist’s chair, metal-framed, in the bay window.

Sylvia Merchant nodded.



‘Please…’

‘This was…?’

‘Ms Nott’s office chair. I bought it for her when we retired. From the education authority.’

Sylvia Merchant had moved from Wiltshire to Hereford, the town of her birth, with Ms Nott, on retirement. She had a long, solemn oval face, short bleached hair solid as an icon’s halo.

Merrily lowered herself on to the typist’s chair, the light-green bed between her and Sylvia Merchant.