The Loneliness of the Long Distance Book Runner (14 page)

The street into which I emerge smells bad. The stench of dog shit lingers. I look down at my shoes and see why. For 48 hours I haven’t spoken to anyone in a non-official capacity. I need a beer, so enter a small bar to order one. The barman looks puzzled when I take my drink onto the terrace. The clouds have cleared and it’s warm enough to sit outside. I sip at my drink while looking furtively at a skinny lady in chic garb on the adjoining table. Passers-by openly eye her up. Absorbed in a magazine, she doesn’t seem to notice them. I get up and walk off with affected casualness. I walk for hours with no real aim in mind; picking up the smell of the Seine before glimpsing its waters.

The banks of the Seine are lined with green metal
bouquiniste
stalls. The bookselling tradition dates back to the seventeenth century when the Renaissance ushered in an era of ‘vagabond’ booksellers. They were to eventually set up fixed places of business alongside the river. I try to make conversation with one of them who isn’t engrossed in a newspaper or book. Thwarted by my French, we both agree, with consoling smiles, to end our attempts at communication.

I wander into the city’s Latin Quarter and then come across Gibert Jeune bookshop, a seven-storeyed bookshop on Boulevard Saint-Denis. What a p(a)lace. It is said to hold the biggest stock of books in France; providing literature for university students from all fields of study.

To help broach the subject of my French books, I buy the recently published French language edition of
A Prayer for Owen Meany
in the misguided belief that, knowing the story in English, it will help improve my language skills. An employee, a tiny man with large glasses and good English, expresses a modicum of interest in my business proposal. I arrange to bring the books in tomorrow. The rest of the day passes in a whirlwind of ideas and distractions. A rough calculation of my budgetary needs causes me to check into a hostel in the Marais district. It is cheaper than the previous hotel and has a friendlier receptionist.

Jacques is from a
pied noir
family, French nationals who were born in Algeria. Keen to practise his English, he listens as I tell him about my day and my bookselling intentions. It turns out that he spent some of his childhood in Oran and had relations who lived just outside Algiers. He asks me to bring down the book I have about the city. (
Tout l’inconnu de la Casbah by Lucienne Favre. Published in 1933, Baconnier frères Algier, 1933
.)

‘You see the Casbah. It’s so different. Not European,’ he explains.

‘In the Casbah no signs of colonisation. Narrow streets, so different. Beautiful.’

He continues to leaf interestedly though it. ‘Look here.’ Jacques mentions prostitutes; Favre comparing the indigenous women in a favourable light to their European counterparts whom he finds crude.

‘I’ave heard of Brouty, you know. He took Le Corbusier for walk around the Casbah. You know Le Corbusier?’ I nod, not wishing to appear ignorant. And before I properly realise it, Jacques is negotiating a price. I ought to take the book first to Gibert Jeune but Jacques is insistent. ‘I give 500 francs and three days ’ere for free,’ he says.

‘Three days?’

‘And nights too,
biensûr
.’

‘Four nights.’

We shake hands on the deal. Jacques is clearly delighted with his new purchase. Have I undersold? I console myself by thinking that his enthusiasm might have skewed his valuation of the book in the way that football fans might bet, regardless of the odds, on their team.

At Gibert Jeune the next day I end up showing my wares to a lady whose seniority, I gather, trumps the bespectacled small man when it comes to the buying of stock. After producing an assortment of paperbacks, I pull out the Rimbaud from my bag with a flourish. It doesn’t create the impact I’d been hoping. Surprise is expressed at it having been translated at all. I point out the original black cloth with red plate and gold lettering on its spine. It has a colour frontispiece and six colour plates by
Keith Vaughan who has designed the dust jacket with distinctive free flowing lettering. Both the book and its dust jacket are in very good condition so I can’t understand her muted response.

She doesn’t even deign to make an offer, gesturing instead towards a glass bookcase used to display Gibert Jeune’s ‘
livres a collectioner
.’ I spot the familiar olive-green of Olympia’s
Traveller’s Companion
. It’s William Burrough’s
The Naked
Lunch
which she takes out to show me the author’s signature. I don’t understand. Is it that they don’t want translations of French works of literature. I accept an offer of 350 francs for the paperbacks and leave the shop with the Rimbaud.

Maybe it will get a better reception at Shakespeare and Co.

A flowing veil of weeds delays its removal. The falls, a riot of motion in rock and water some ninety yards downstream of Foxford’s ancient bridge. Simon eventually fishes it out and prises it open to find that the old tin is watertight. Seeping out is the aroma of stale cigar while fresh light yields an iridescent splash of colour; the feathers of the bronze mallard, the blue jay and the pheasant, some enwrought with gold and silver and all intricately woven onto hooks in deadly disguise.

The room’s former occupants have left behind a packet of Silk Cut cigarettes, water-stained copies of
Trout and Salmon
, and a book. We laugh when we read its title.
A River Runs Through
It
by Norman Maclean. It becomes one of my favourite novellas. It’s about the Macleans, a Presbyterian family during early twentieth century Montana whose opinions of life are filtered through their passion for fly-fishing. The novella is
presented from the point of view of older brother Norman who goes on one last fishing trip with his rowdy and troubled younger brother Paul in an attempt to help him get his life on track.

My friend Simon, Joyce aficionado and former colleague, is tutoring me in that art of catching brown trout from Irish rivers. In casting a cold eye upon waters he can read a river and take from it handsome trout and even the occasional salmon. It’s good to have salmon on the menu for a change. Our bed and breakfast doubles as a bar and restaurant, doesn’t offer the richest variety of food but the family who run the place can’t be faulted on their hospitality. They commiserate with due solemnity on what are mostly unsuccessful expeditions on my part. And they are pleased to toast Simon’s successes. His dark handsome face lights up and he lets rip with his gift of the gab. Pints of Guinness are poured in celebration and in mock consolation. I don’t really care. I’m much more troubled by a dilemma of affection.

I like being on the riverbank, lost in the Moy’s mud and mysteries. I put down the rod to take it in. It’s another country, obviously so but it is more than that. The peal of bells for mass; the shadows of owls flitting across the belfry and silhouettes of bats. Simon catches one in his line, extricating it gently before trudging upriver. I’m fishing with a jungle cock fly, intrigued by its design even if the trout don’t appear to share my interest. Like a hallucination, Mary appears; her face ghostly pale in the moon’s light. She scrambles down the bank.

‘Any joy?’

A shake of the head. She follows a while and I want to embrace this girl whose mellifluous voice stirs the blood. ‘See you another time, take care.’

‘Bye.’ I curse myself.

Last time I got my camper van stuck in the entrance to a car park, so today I’m taking the train. It’s a pleasant journey from Bangor; the mountains to the right, the sea to the left if you sit facing in the direction of travel. Before we arrive at Chester, a large ship, seemingly marooned on the sands, catches the eye. After noting its name as the
Duke of Lancaster
, I discover that it has its own appreciation society. And from their website I learn that: ‘in 1979, as a former Sealink passenger ferry, it was beached in North Wales with the intention of turning it into a floating leisure and retail complex. The project never seemed to get off the ground and as such the ship has been on the banks of the River Dee.’

It transpires that the
Duke of Lancaster
was one of finest vessels afloat in the late fifties and early sixties. The first class quarters were the best around, silver service restaurants,
state-rooms
and luxurious cabins. The River Dee is tidal, and seeing the sandbanks and the ship, Shelley’s poem comes to mind.

In Henry Bohn’s big bookshop in Liverpool I feel strangely lacklustre. There is plenty to interest the reader, collector and dealer alike. But I’m struggling to muster enthusiasm for the search. I wonder if the
Duke of Lancaster
is to blame. I leave the shop only with a handful of out of print paperbacks. But I
also learn that the 12-volume Pilgrim set of Dickens’ letters on display in the shop’s window was offered by The Folio Society to its members for a knock down price of £400. I have a set in similarly good condition.

The trip hasn’t been a wasted one since I return to Bangor with a typically eclectic range of titles from News from Nowhere, Liverpool’s radical and community bookshop. They have something of an underrated second-hand section.

As well as visiting a shop specialising in antique weaponry, I like going to Porthmadog for its sprawling junkshop/scrap yard in the back streets. They don’t make many like this any more. You half expect the characters from
Steptoe and Son
to appear, only they’d be speaking in Welsh. To get to the books at the back I have to clamber over fridges, televisions and ironing boards. I rather enjoy doing so. The corrugated metal roof leaks in places but most of the books are unscathed.

Beneath a pile of Haynes car manuals, I find a collection of Rupert the Bear annuals from the seventies. They aren’t old enough to command any real monetary value.

A man, smelling of milk who presides over the place, is surprised that I don’t want them but consoled by my purchase of a book on the Tea Clipper ships.

I return to Bangor via Beddgelert. Much of the landscape in the Rupert stories is inspired by the local landscape of Snowdonia, notably around Beddgelert, where Alfred Bestall’s family had a cottage. The character was created by the English artist Mary Tourtel and first appeared in the
Daily
Express
in 1920. In 1935 the mantle of Rupert artist and storyteller was taken over by Bestall, who was previously an illustrator for
Punch
.

Dan and I spend hours discussing his various options. He wants to keep his shop going but needs to dissolve a business partnership with someone who takes little active role in the day-to-day running of the shop. I want to help extend the used books section, which Dan thinks is a good idea, but if he breaks ties with his partner, the landlord can hike up the rent. We call it the Rubik cube of quandary; iron out one and another crops up. We scheme and plot, rather appropriately given the shop’s history and its close proximity to Bangor’s Cathedral. Local historians believe the shop to have once been the archdeacon’s house, as mentioned in Henry IV Part I, which was the set Shakespeare play in my fifth form.

Act 3, Scene 1: Bangor. The archdeacon’s house. The men take out a large map of Britain and divide it up as they have earlier discussed: after they defeat King Henry, Glyndŵr will get the western part of Britain – western England and all of Wales; Mortimer will get the south-east part of England, including London; Hotspur will get the northern part, home to his family.

Could Shakespeare have travelled here in the missing years? The building supports a stone chimneystack that fits the Tudor period. Glyndŵr is portrayed in Shakespeare’s play
Henry IV, Part 1 (as Owen Glendower) as a wild and exotic man ruled by magic and emotion. Historians describe him as a charismatic leader. And there is possibly a connection to real history too. ‘During Owain Glyndwr’s rebellion, his delegates cloistered in secret session at Bangor with the envoys of his English fellow conspirators, Mortimer and the Earl of Northumberland, to divide the whole of the English realm between them. (from
The Matter of Wales
by Jan Morris).

Dan is great with the public and loves books. He doesn’t seem to covet personal wealth, an attractive trait in a person but puzzling to those that harbour more commercial ambition. A customer thinks Dan is missing a trick by not advertising Tylers’ historical credentials; using the bard and Glyndŵr as a ploy to pull in the tourists. I think Dan can go further still, it being likely that Thomas De Quincy passed by the shop during his wanderings in North Wales. He even took lodging in a ‘small neat home’ in Bangor; his landlady having been a servant in the family of Bishop of Bangor. In
Confessions of an English Opium Eater
, I hazily recall De Quincy’s praise for Bangor’s cemetery but I haven’t been able to find this passage again in the book. Did I dream it?

I am on the phone to Eddy, moaning. In the morning, there’s a Mary Celeste feel to the place. Afternoons at least bring in more punters. I estimate that 75 per cent of the books are sold after 3 p.m. ‘Why not open the shop then?’ Eddy suggests. I laugh, tempted and Eddy goes on: ‘They say the Christmas
period for Harrods represents 70 per cent of its annual turnover. Maybe they should open only for those few weeks. You might start a revolution in the retail trade.’

It might be the routine, but the shop is now energy sapping; I’m reading less too. I start to covet customers’ occupations, which is always a bad sign. I meet an Englishman who assembles cranes for a living in Southern France. As if erecting towering structures of metal was not difficult enough, he’s chosen to exercise his trade over here. My first thoughts are of how he managed to acquire the scores of certificates that French bureaucracy would demand. By good fortune, it turns out he met an employer prepared to take his word on previous assignments and a joint effort was made to translate the relevant qualifications. Crane assembling isn’t the sort of job in which you can easily bluff it as an experienced hand. He leaves the shop with a copy of
Jonathan Livingston Seagull.