Читать книгу Confessions of a Bookseller - Shaun Bythell - Страница 17

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Clear, cold morning. Ice on the windows for the first time this year.

Andy (window cleaner) appeared at 9.30 a.m. for his cash. Tony, who used to clean the windows once a week, sold the business to Andy a couple of years ago. Andy is slightly less regular with his round. The woman who worked in the shop before I took over—Joyce—had an acerbic wit which seemed to offend everyone but me. She used to refer to Tony as the ‘window-smearer,’ which, as with most of her observations on life, was unfair.

Joyce—a vocal atheist—once told me that she was convinced the house had a resident ghost, whose presence she had felt on the bottom landing of the stairs on a number of occasions. She assured me that he was benign, and she had even given him a name: George. I have yet to encounter any evidence of this spectre, and suspect that she was trying to wind me up.

The sole order was for a large, heavy book called Shackleton’s Voyages, a recent title in pristine condition. It sold for £3, and the postage was £13, but it was an Amazon order, so we had to take the hit.

Isabel came in at 11.30 to do the accounts.

The old man with the cowboy hat who huffs and puffs in the erotica section turned up at noon. He is about 6 foot tall, wears black nylon trousers with an inbuilt crease, a husky jacket and—today—a flat cap in place of his beloved cowboy hat. He always makes the unconvincing pretence of being interested in the antiquarian books in front of the counter for the first ten minutes of his visit, and inevitably ends up spending at least an hour in the erotica section. Every few seconds he punctuates the passage of time with a heavy exhalation, a grunt, a sniff or some tuneless whistling. He also drums his fingers on the covers of the books he picks up. Today he told me that he’d had to abandon his car ‘on the top’ because of the weather and had managed to get a lift to Wigtown. He was supposed to be visiting Christian, the bookbinder (4 miles away), but obviously couldn’t without his car. As he rambled at considerable length about this, it transpired that what he was really asking was for the use of the phone so that he could call Christian and let him know he couldn’t make it. He hasn’t worked out how to use his new mobile phone yet, so I lent him the landline, on which he spent at least twenty minutes chatting to Christian, all the while clicking his pen. Just as I was thinking that this litany of staggering incompetence had run its course, he dropped the phone on the floor, before heading off for a cup of coffee, leaving his bags on the counter behind him. He has a slightly arrogant disposition mixed with a false chumminess, which, when combined, gives the impression that he thinks I want to be his friend and am very lucky that he’s considering it.

When he returned from his coffee, he started noisily mauling the books in the antiquarian section then asked for some paper so that he could write down one of the titles to take home with him, presumably to buy it online. He left without buying anything.

Telephone call at 2.15:

Caller: Have you any books concerning the First World War?

Me: Yes, we have a few hundred.

Caller: Are they a fair size?

Till Total £46.50

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