Читать книгу Confessions of a Bookseller - Shaun Bythell - Страница 43

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At 11 a.m. a tall, thin man with diabolical halitosis appeared at the counter and said, ‘Hello Shaun, we’ve met before. I’ve got some books to sell.’ He then deposited a box of books about cinema on the counter and wandered off, so I went through them and picked out a few. When he returned, I offered him £12 for eight books, at which point he produced a list and started checking each one against it, saying, ‘That one’s selling for £6 on Amazon, how much are you giving me for that one?’ I attempted to explain that, although it might be £6 on Amazon, I would probably be lucky to get £4 for it. I might as well have been explaining particle physics to a chimpanzee. Eventually he left with all the books he’d come in with and a bewildered look on his face. I still have no idea who he was, or where we had previously met.

Among his books, though, was a copy of This Thing of Darkness, by Harry Thompson. It’s a truly excellent book. A friend gave me a copy about eight years ago. Shortly after I’d finished reading it, and during the Wigtown Book Festival, a visiting author asked me if I had anything in stock about Fitzroy and the Beagle (the very subject of This Thing of Darkness). I had a look in the relevant sections but we had nothing, so I went upstairs to the Writers’ Retreat to let him know. I found him chatting to Fiona Duff, the person who was in charge of the PR and marketing for the festival that year. I waited for a suitable gap in the conversation and told him that we didn’t have anything in stock, but that I could strongly recommend This Thing of Darkness, at which point Fiona piped up, ‘Oh, my husband wrote that.’ My relief that I’d said I had enjoyed it was swiftly followed by Fiona embarking on a scathing and detailed description of the end of their relationship.

Very quiet day, even for the time of year, but a huge sense of optimism restored by noticing that—even half an hour after closing the shop—there was still a vestige of daylight in the darkening sky. It’s almost worth the miserable, sinking sense of despair of December to experience the exhilarating elation of emerging from the depths of darkness as February marches on. I remember a few years ago talking with my sister Lulu, who had recently been travelling, about her time in Ecuador, or Peru, or possibly northern Chile. I asked her how she’d enjoyed being there, and contrary to my expectations, she told me that what she had found hardest about being there in summer was the shortness of the days, being so close to the equator. She had longed for the stretching Scottish summer evenings, when the sun sets at 10 p.m. in June, rather than soon after 6 p.m. for most of the year in those countries. Even when I reminded her of the four o’clock December sunsets in Scotland, she assured me that—for her—it was worth it for the pay-off of the endless evenings in the summer.

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