The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend (21 page)

His father had been just as charismatic and successful as the other men in the family. He had always known he would become a minister, but that hadn't stopped him from specialising in the pastoral care of young women during his teenage years. ‘Son of a Preacherman' had practically been his father's signature tune.

And he had taught many, many women, if the nostalgic looks which the town's older women gave William were anything to go by. They looked at him as though they were remembering wonderful moments from their youth, expecting him to live up to his genes and make a move on their daughters at any moment. They always seemed disappointed when he didn't. Apparently they wanted their daughters to have as good a youth as they'd had. Most of the daughters had left Broken Wheel for bigger towns when the economic crisis struck, but William had stayed put.

Now he was the only minister in Broken Wheel and was responsible for all the common religious denominations. Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians all turned to him when they couldn't make it to one of the many other churches in the surrounding towns. As a rule, the Catholics went to Hope. A Jewish family lived somewhere on the edge of town, and he had once hosted a bar mitzvah – with mixed results. An elderly man had once insisted he was a Druid, and had forced William to lead him in the worship of a tree.

That man was resting in peace now, thank God.

William assumed that some people were simply born to lead (his father had clearly been one of them), others to follow on, every now and then irritating their leaders with suggestions and opinions. Others seemed doomed to be left behind: they trailed along from the very beginning and never quite caught up. Else they stumbled at a point in their lives and ended up at the back that way.

That was how it was in all towns. Some were leaders, others were led.

He had accepted all of that by now, but there was something in Sara's new-found charisma which had given him a jolt. When she had first arrived in Broken Wheel, Sara had been quiet and polite and lost, not entirely unlike himself. Now she looked like a woman on a mission.

Surely it couldn't hurt to join her in putting up a bit of resistance?

Sara's campaign stormed ahead. Grace refused to believe she would enjoy a single book, but agreed to have one on the counter. Sara gave her Dylan Thomas's
Collected Poems
, the 2000 edition.

‘The legend goes that he died in his room at the Chelsea Hotel after drinking non-stop for days. His last words, uttered when he staggered in to his lover, were: “I've had eighteen straight whiskeys; I think that's the record. I love you.”'

‘I see,' said Grace, looking more closely at the book.

Sara didn't think she needed to add that the general belief nowadays was that none of this was true. He probably hadn't drunk half that many.

Andy came by the bookstore to lend his support. The Square was too far away for him to take part in person, but he would have loved to see the Hope customers' reaction.

‘Someone has to sell the alcohol,' said Sara.

‘That's true, I guess.' He looked around the shop, froze, and leaned towards one of the shelves. ‘My God,' he said, straightening up and spinning over to Sara. ‘You got some gay erotica in!'

She forced herself to look completely expressionless, but the corners of her mouth were twitching. ‘You asked me to,' she said.

‘But I didn't think you'd actually do it. Caroline's going to have a heart attack.' He went back to the shelf to look at the titles more closely. ‘Even though these aren't the most explicit. You should see some of the stuff you can get hold of online.'

She blushed, though she knew he was saying it just to embarrass her. She answered him surprisingly calmly: ‘They're not so bad. You should give them a chance.' She walked round the counter and took two from the shelf. ‘Try these, they're the best, I think.'

‘Have you read them?'

‘How else would I know what sells? And I actually know a whole lot about what you can find on the Internet, too.'

Much, much too much, she thought.

Andy laughed the whole way out of the bookstore, but not before he had taken both books. She hadn't let him pay.

A first victory, she thought, allowing herself a couple of improvised dance steps in the shop. And tomorrow, Broken Wheel would show Hope exactly what a town which read looked like.

SARA WAS READY
to take Hope on. She had drilled her fellow soldiers and felt like everything was set for their revenge.

The signal had been chosen and disseminated: when the first car appeared, Grace would go out, light a cigarette, and blow three smoke rings. After that, everyone would pull out a book and stare fixedly down into it, as though they were captivated by some fantastical literary adventure, as though they were generally the kind of people who spent their Saturday mornings reading in public. Under no circumstances would anyone name a book or an author. If anyone was near the store and Sara offered them a particular book, they would say yes.

Even the weather was on their side. It was a warm, sunny Saturday. Though half of September had come and gone, the warmth of summer still lingered in the air. It was the perfect day for anyone out for a stroll to stop, lean against a wall and read a book.

The last thing Sara had done was get hold of a new shelf, on which she placed every unreadable book she could find, alongside every Pulitzer Prize-winner, Nobel Prize recipient and nominee for the Booker Prize.

Sara had read a few, but far from all of them. Her knowledge of books had never been particularly systematic. On a few occasions, she had tried to improve it, to give herself a general education. If you were someone who spent the vast majority of your time with books then you should, at the very least, have read the Nobel Prize-winners and the classics, as well as all those books people talked about but had never actually read, as Mark Twain would have put it. She had thrown herself into one ambitious reading project after the other, but things had rarely gone to plan. It was boring to think of books as something you should read just because others had, and besides, she was much too easily distracted. There were far too many books out there to stick to any kind of theme. When she was sixteen, she had tried to work her way through the classics. She had gone all the way to the Stockholm City Library and practically broke down when she saw how many books there were. Too many to read during her lifetime, even if she had shut herself in there full-time, even if she had been able to speak that many languages. So she had pulled herself together and carefully written a minimum reading list for each letter of the alphabet. She had already read both Austen and Dickens, so that was something. But she needed to read one Dostoevsky, preferably two. One Bulgakov.

She had stopped at G, after Goethe's
The Sorrows of Young Werther
, mostly because she got distracted by Gabriel García Márquez and embarked on an odyssey of Latin American authors instead. Then she had seen the film of
A Walk to Remember
which set her off searching for Mr Rothberg's list of the best American authors, but she hadn't managed to find any trace of Mr Rothberg or his list. She had been forced to create her own list and had taken on Fitzgerald, Auster and Twain (when she got distracted by
Pudd'nhead Wilson
and switched to books dealing with racism). When she should have been reading the Swedish working-class authors, she read four novels by Moa Martinson but not a single one by Harry. She had read the majority of Shakespeare's comedies but none of his tragedies, and she had read all of Oscar Wilde. She had read many of the Nobel Prize-winners, but never before they had actually won the prize.

Amy had owned copies of plenty of Sara's more literary favourites, as well as works by a great number of other authors she looked forward to reading. Once she had placed them all on a shelf, she labelled it ‘THE READERS OF BROKEN WHEEL RECOMMEND'.

She gained a certain satisfaction from carefully placing
In Search of Lost Time
on the shelf. Two copies of each of the seven volumes. She removed five and hid them behind the counter, to show that someone in Broken Wheel was currently enjoying the series in an educated and literary way.

When the first well-polished SUV rolled into Broken Wheel that Saturday afternoon, stopping at the red light, the town was ready. A few of the regulars from the Square had been sent over by Andy. One was holding his book upside down, another seemed dangerously close to falling asleep. Otherwise, everything was going according to plan.

William Christopher was leaning against the wall of the cinema, laughing with genuine joy at Don Camillo's conversation with Jesus.

Grace had forced books onto each of her customers, and made them pause mid-meal to gloomily eye the books by their plates. One customer protested, he was in a hurry, but Grace simply glowered at him – nothing more was needed.

George was sitting in one of the armchairs in the bookshop, not reading Proos. Sara had given him one of the
Shopaholic
novels instead.

And Sara herself was also prepared. She was standing in the doorway of the bookshop, ready to flash a friendly smile at the Hope customers the moment they stepped out of their cars.

‘What the hell?' one man said, confused as he took in the scene before him and headed purposefully for the bookshop. A woman smiled spontaneously at Grace, who glared back at her.

Sara gestured frantically to Grace, who swapped her dark expression for a wide, friendly smile which caused the woman to take a step back in alarm.

Sara took over. ‘Can I help you with anything?' she asked.

Broken Wheel was well on its way to seeming like a sunny, well-meaning and almost normal town. Even the asphalt seemed warmer and more friendly with people walking around, book in hand.

‘I'm not much of a one for books, but this seems really good,' Gertrude admitted reluctantly to May when she was halfway through
The General's Daughter
.

May looked at the book sceptically. ‘Isn't it a bit … nasty?'

Gertrude snorted.

Her window looked out onto a small corner of Main Street, where both cars and people, their heads deep in books, seemed to be gathering. ‘What on earth is going on today?' May asked.

Gertrude had no idea, but she would never have admitted it. She therefore refrained from answering the question.

‘And she gave you that book?'

Gertrude nodded. She turned it over in her hands.

May sighed dreamily. ‘Wouldn't a nice love story have been better?'

‘Nonsense. Princes and –'

‘Yes, I know. Frogs.'

An hour later, May was gazing longingly at the beautiful weather. She glanced at Gertrude, dozing in the armchair with a cigarette still smoking in the ashtray and the book open on her knee. Perhaps she should take a walk? The sun was shining. She could go for a stroll and just happen past the bookstore on her way.

No one could say a thing about it.

It was hot and chaotic inside the bookshop. The Hope visitors were ambling around between the bookshelves, taking in the curious arrangement of books. One customer was nervously fingering James Joyce's
Ulysses
and Gertrude Stein's
Geography and Plays
, while another seemed to be wondering who in Broken Wheel had recommended Iris Murdoch's
The Sea, The Sea
.

May chose that moment to slip in. She pushed her way over to the counter. The Hope residents stepped kindly to the side for the grandmotherly figure, which unfortunately meant that they were gathered around her, facing Sara, when she leaned forward and said, in that kind of whispered tone audible to everyone:

‘Excuse me. I'd like a couple of …
romantic novels
.' She glanced about, leaned further forward, and said just as loudly: ‘Nothing
smutty
, though. Do you have any Harlequin novels?' she added hopefully.

The readers from Hope whispered and sniggered among themselves. Sara thought she heard the words ‘losers' and ‘Barbara Cartland'.

And when the customers from Hope finally left, the minister was the only person still reading. The regulars from the Square had dozed off over their books. Grace's customers had finished their meals and gone. The strollers had headed off home.

There was only one thing to do.

Sara laughed at the entire thing. She managed to keep herself together until the last person from Hope had left the shop, but then she laughed for several minutes over the fiasco with the Harlequin novels and the sleeping book lovers. Even once she had managed to pull herself together, her eyes were glittering with tears of laughter. She tried to keep a straight face as Jen talked about their success with the newsletter and the book sale. George was still sitting in the armchair; Andy had already called for a debrief on how it had all gone. Sara hadn't said a thing about the regulars.

‘It makes me think we really should have some kind of tourist information,' said Jen.

It was all a bit much for George. ‘Are you sure that's such a good idea?' he asked hesitantly.

‘Why not? Now that we've got the bookstore, we should exploit it. There are a few nice things to do in Broken Wheel. Like … well, I'm sure we could come up with something if we put in a little effort. Effort. That's what we've been missing in this town. What about starting with a tourist information newsletter,' she said again. ‘It's worth a try.'

‘But what would you give people information about?' asked George.

‘The Square, maybe? People could buy books here and then have a drink there – maybe we could even have dance nights. They used to have them, I know that much. My husband told me about them.'

‘You should include a photo of Carl in the newsletter in that case,' Sara said absent-mindedly ‘Wouldn't that attract visitors?'