The panelling was chipped and stained in places, shabby-chic, without the chic. About twenty people were drinking real ale and local wine, served at fat farmhouse dining tables with chips and gouges in them. The bar was like a butcher’s slab, lit by globular frosted lanterns, teardrops of cracked yellow light. Robin, meanwhile, was lit by most of a bottle of something from a Welsh vineyard.
Would’ve been churlish to keep refusing. They were nice people, even Gareth Nunne who’d tried to rip him off and wound up inspiring him. None of them what he’d been expecting, still figuring that the stringy entrails of his meagre knowledge of the book trade would be exposed on Gwenda’s rugged bar and publicly picked over by experts.
Her name was Gwenda Protheroe. Someone said she used to be in the theatre. Sometimes she served behind the bar, sometimes just sat on a tall stool, wearing a little black dress and a wry, sympathetic smile that was kind of sexy in a momsy way. Not long after he’d walked in here Gwenda had told him the bar was an attempt to restore the way rural pubs used to be in the old days – parlour pubs, someone’s living room where ale was served. Like the Three Tuns in Hay used to be before it was done up, back when it was run by someone universally revered called Lucy.
Not actually that long ago, apparently, but a rough old parlour pub wouldn’t be economically viable now, which was why this had become a wine bar, also serving coffee and food. But Gwenda said this was just one small retro development. In other areas, Hay was in danger of going badly wrong.
‘I hear there was a woman with plans to open a nail bar there,’ she said now.
‘Where?’
Gareth Nunne looked up from his cloudy beer.
‘In the Back Fold shop,’ Gwenda said. ‘Oliver’s shop – Robin’s shop. Seriously, a flaming nail bar.’
‘What, like carpentry supplies?’
‘You’re an old fool, Gary,’ Gwenda said fondly.
Just a trace of a London accent there. Gareth Nunne smiled into his beer, his port wine stain skin blemish laid around one eye and down into his left cheek.
‘And what,’ he said, ‘did Mr James Oliver say to that, Gwennie?’
‘Well, I’ve heard several versions, but some might’ve been made up, so I won’t pass them on. Yet.’
Nunne turned bleary eyes on Robin.
‘He know what kind of books you’re gonner be selling?’
‘Leave the boy alone,’ Gwenda said. ‘He doesn’t need to worry about that.’
‘No, come on, what did you tell him, Mr Thorogood?’
‘Uh…’ Robin shrugged. ‘I just said books. General books.’
‘So you didn’t mention The Teen Witch Style-guide—’
Robin threw up his hands.
‘Aw, you just had to pick on that one. It’s a book I did some creepy Goth drawings for, is all. They dumped a dozen copies on me.’
‘Get off his back,’ Gwenda said. ‘A bookshop’s a bookshop. Teen witches are fine by me. Not that you find them much any more.’
‘Period value?’ Robin said.
‘There, see, he’s learning.’ Gwenda smiled at him. ‘So you’ve been an illustrator, then, Robin?’
‘Gwenda, sweetheart.’ A murmur. ‘This is the man who gave form to Lord Madoc.’
It was Gore. Welsh rugby shirt, white jeans.
Gwenda looked blank.
‘The Intergalactic Celt?’ Gore said.
Robin gazed uncomfortably into his glass. Gwenda raised a forefinger.
‘Hold on, those the books you used to collect when you were a kid? The warrior chappie with big hair? Great pile of them down the bottom of your wardrobe?’
‘I know it wasn’t really aimed at kids,’ Gore said to Robin. ‘But I was a precocious reader. Man, I wanted to be that guy. What happened to him?’
‘He finished,’ Robin said tightly. ‘The writer adopted a new pseudonym and started something else that didn’t need an illustrator.’ Felt his fingers forming fists. ‘The way no one seems to need one any more.’
‘That a fact,’ Gore said.
He had his hands curled around Gwenda’s shoulder, like doing a massage. Jeez… they were an item? Gwenda and Gore, who had to be fifteen years younger?
‘Cover designs get done in-house with Photoshop and other… similar money-saving devices,’ Robin said. ‘Talent-saving devices. The days when commissioned artwork was part of the creative process, when books were illustrated by legends like Mervyn Peake, that’s history. The days when you’d do a full-size painting for a book or an album sleeve, and the original was worth good money… that’s over.’