The Magus of Hay(7)

‘Like, you’re saying if we open a pagan bookstore we’re gonna encounter fundamentalists waving their crosses and calling down reprisals from a vengeful God?’

‘Here? Unlikely. Highly unlikely.’

‘I mean you’re Indian, right, you’d know all about this stuff. Sacred cows, elephant gods? Ganesh, Kali the destroyer with all the arms?’

‘Born in Brentford, mate, but, yeah, my people have many indigenous gods.’ Kapoor did a little guru-type bow, gestured at a framed and signed photo of an Indian-looking guy in shades and a white cap. ‘But while I’d be the last to diss the deities of my ancestors, when did Ganesh get a hundred test centuries?’

The card underneath the picture said Sachin Tendulkar. Robin had never heard of him, but he was getting the point.

‘Coffee?’ Kapoor said.

‘Thanks. Thanks, um, Shiva. You did say your name’s Shiva?’

Kapoor threw up his hands.

‘Stone me, you can’t get away from it, can you? Jeeter. Short for Paramjeet. Try fitting that over a bleedin’ shop doorway.’

Robin seemed happier. Danger sign. He’d just been told the second-hand book trade was in possibly terminal crisis and they’d be gambling on a niche, but he looked happier.

He’s found a possible mate, Betty thought warily. A guy who, on a slow day, he can walk out of the shop and trade insults with.

‘You knew he wasn’t called Shiva, didn’t you?’



‘Who, me? A naive cripple from a land where they play baseball and chequers instead of chess?’

They were walking along Castle Street, the main shopping thoroughfare in Hay. Betty saw food shops, fashion shops, an antiques’ shop and an outdoor pursuits shop selling canoes. A chemist and a jeweller’s which had a long-established look about it.

Robin, meanwhile – he gave Betty a commentary on all this as they walked – saw streets laid out like the fingers of a grey glove below the castle. A marketplace that sloped away from its curtain wall. A small statue with a crown high up on the gable end of a bookstore. A little structure with stone pillars like a Greek temple. Everything crowded, intimate. Once a walled town, most of the walls gone now, but still a town that was all old, just different periods of old.

And a handful of bookshops, of course, though possibly fewer than either of them remembered.

And one Betty didn’t remember.

‘Hey.’ Robin started to cross the narrow street, calling back over his shoulder. ‘Lemme just check this out.’

It was, at first glance, another bookshop, but it had more than books in the window. Behind the guides to the town and the castle were posters and certificates. One said Hay Order of Chivalry beside a picture of a man on a horse. A small flask was labelled Royal Tipple. There was also a picture of Henry VIII with no beard, a different face and glasses.

A red robe hung in the window. It had a fleece trim, like the one around the rim of the crown, which seemed to be made of thin, bevelled copper with a scattering of what looked like glass scabs. Robin pointed at the orb below the crown.

‘That’s gotta be out of a toilet! Am I right?’

‘It’s an old ballcock, Robin.’

Betty glanced up at the sign. The shop was called The King of Hay. In the centre of the window was the King’s autobiography.

Richard Booth, My Kingdom of Books.



The man on the book cover wore the robe and the tin crown and carried the orb made out of a cistern component. Books were piled around him. In the background you could see part of the castle and the foothills of the Black Mountains.

‘I’m going in,’ Robin said.

‘No…’

Betty was grabbing for his arm, but it was too late. She stood uneasily in the open doorway, listening to him talking to a woman and a bulky man of mature years who occasionally grunted. Robin was nodding at the crown.

‘It really safe to leave that in the window? All those jewels?’

‘Hmph,’ the bulky man said. ‘Could be right. Might not be easy to find another poodle collar.’

His laugh was the kind of laugh you rarely heard any more. It’s a guffaw, Betty thought, as Robin took down a copy of My Kingdom of Books.

‘This second-hand?’

‘Bugger off,’ the bulky man said.

Robin came out grinning, cradling the book he’d bought at full price, and the future was spinning in Betty’s inner vision and not all of it – she’d have to admit this – was optimistic.





4

Needs


BEREAVEMENT APPARITIONS WERE the most common and least-alarming of all reported paranormal phenomena. The recently dead husband pottering translucently in his greenhouse, the much-loved cat on the stairs.