Think Yourself Lucky (25 page)

"I know a writer when I see them. I've met a few that tried to say they weren't. It's like being mad. If you say you're not that means you are." As David struggled against feeling trapped by the notion Kinnear said "What was that title of yours again?"

"It wasn't mine." In case this didn't fend the danger off David said "I don't remember."

"Well, it was a good one. Anyone that comes up with a title like that, they're a writer. If I think of it I'll let you know."

"Don't try," David called after him and was afraid he'd said too much. Might Kinnear wonder why he was anxious to prevent him from remembering the title? Suppose he recollected it and looked it up online? If he read the entry about Frank Cubbins he was bound to blame it on David—the entry and perhaps more than that. David was watching him recede uphill—he was willing Kinnear to decide the title wasn't worth the effort, any more than David was—when he glimpsed someone following the bookseller.

He'd barely distinguished the figure when it vanished, only to reappear for a moment further uphill. It seemed not to be using the crowd for concealment so much as borrowing visibility from the gaps between the people. Apart from the impression of a pursuer, David could make out very little. He couldn't be sure of the figure's build—it might have been as chubby as an overgrown infant or wiry enough to suggest it had no need for food—and it appeared to have nothing he would call a colour. He was reminded of the way sunlight faded the covers of books, except that the pallor looked more reminiscent of the moonlight that had seized him in the field the night he'd invoked Newless. The follower dodged into view again, keeping its distance from Kinnear while matching his pace. David thought of shouting to the bookseller, but he was too far away. He'd taken a step after Kinnear when he became aware of holding the paper plates. "I need to speak to him," he said and thrust the plates at Rex.

"What do you want me to do about it?"

"Whatever you think you ought to do for Andrea." Since Rex hadn't taken the plates, David planted them on the nearest table. "This can't wait," he declared and dashed uphill.

He was dismayed to find he'd lost sight of Kinnear. His skull felt as brittle as ice by the time he located the bookseller almost at the top of the street. Did someone else flicker into view between two people on the pavement lower down? All at once venturing closer felt like a threat of meeting face to face. It wasn't as though David had any reason to care much about the bookseller. If he didn't try to prevent the man from coming to harm he would be responsible for it, and how could he bear himself then? He saw Kinnear turn a corner onto the main road and sprinted after him.

He was afraid to hear a screech of brakes or the thump of metal against flesh. When he reached the corner he let out the little breath he had. The bookseller was waiting at the traffic lights, and nobody appeared to be near him. "Mr Kinnear," David shouted. "Len. Len Kinnear."

Kinnear met him with an expectant look. "Go on then, what was it? Remind me and I'll kick myself?"

"I'm not telling you the title. I mean, it's still gone out of my head. It isn't why I'm here."

Why exactly was he? Recalling how he'd tried to warn Norville and the street preacher seemed to leave him even less to say. Or was something else stealing his words in a bid to render him powerless? The lights halted the traffic, and as he crossed with Kinnear to the bombed church David had a sense that the thief of his speech was among the pedestrians who passed him on their way downhill—no, not among them but behind each of them in turn. "What were you in such a rush to tell me, then?" Kinnear said.

David could only speak as much of the truth as he was able to utter. "I want you to stay away from where I work."

Kinnear halted at the foot of the steps to the church, inside which bedraggled pigeons were fluttering up through the hole where the roof used to be. "It's on the way to my shop, pal."

"I'm saying don't come in. Don't come anywhere near me again. I'm never going to write, and you trying to convince me otherwise drives me mad."

"Don't you want people to know what you're like?"

"It isn't worth knowing. You can't have much taste if you think it is."

He was hoping to offend Kinnear, but the man looked vindicated. "I've had writers say worse than that till they empowered themselves and embraced what they are."

"I've got nothing to embrace except my girlfriend."

"See, right there you're talking like a writer. Why don't you give All Write another shot. Maybe being with other writers will set you off. We've even got a vacancy just now. Remember you met—"

"I don't want anything to do with your group." Either David's desperation lent him eloquence or his rage did. "I don't want to be associated with anyone like them or the stuff they write," he said. "No publisher worth anything would touch it, and that's why they have to publish it themselves. All you're doing is deluding them that it's anything but rubbish. They ought to be ashamed of it, not cluttering the world up with stuff nobody with any sense would buy. It isn't even worth space on the internet. You should be ashamed of encouraging them."

Kinnear's mouth had hung open during most of this. "Have you finished?" he said.

"If you've heard me at last I have."

"Don't worry, I've got no doubts about you. You're a writer." As David searched for more words Kinnear said "Just not the kind we want to support. The kind that thinks they're better than the rest of us."

"I don't think I'm a better writer at all," David protested, but that wouldn't help. "I just think I've got to be better than the trash you have in your shop."

"You've got what you wanted." Kinnear gazed with sad contempt at him. "You'll not be hearing from any of us again," he said. "Specially not Frank, and all he wanted was to help."

David was afraid that could be an accusation, but as Kinnear turned to cross the road to We're Still Left he saw it had only been a parting shot. Why did he no longer feel nervous on Kinnear's behalf? At some point his sense of a threatening presence had faded, and now it was gone. Somehow this seemed to promise that Kinnear wouldn't stumble on the Newless blog, unless the hope was founded on that notion. As David made to head back to work he felt more than equal to confronting Rex and whoever else might need it. Then a thought overtook him at last, and he wavered, almost falling on the cracked steps of the defunct church.

He might have ensured that Kinnear wouldn't find the blog, but Emily already had. Indeed, David had shown it to her. That was why the sight of her had kept reviving his panic. He couldn't let the blog cause her harm, whatever might happen to him. He started as a blackened pigeon flapped up from the gaping church into the grey deserted sky, and then he found a reason to grow calmer. However he'd achieved it in Kinnear's case, he seemed to have gained some control over events. "Don't touch Emily," he whispered, staring at the hollow church. "Don't even go anywhere near her. She's to be left alone."

"
Cunts
."

I thought that would catch the attention of the girls behind the bookshop counter. One of them looks like the cover of a novel, the kind that's droll about romance so that the reader needn't own up to feeling too much and just intelligent enough not to threaten any of its audience. I hope to see her makeup crack—her face has spent quite a stretch in front of a mirror—but her features set into even more of a mask while the humour deserts it, turning it dull. "Excuse me?" she demands.

"Cunts,"
I say loud enough for several loiterers at the shelves to stare at me. "By John Updike."

Her colleague raises her eyebrows, or at least the skin above her eyes, which is occupied by a pair of whitish lines almost too thin and faint to be identified as hair. "Not familiar."

It sounds as if she wants those to be the final words, but I won't even make them hers. "Aren't you?" I say like an innocent. "I thought he was quite well known."

"Of course we know the author," Bookface says. "Just not that book."

"I expect you meet a lot of writers in your job. What's he like?"

"She means we know his work," Baldbrows says, and the skin above her eyes climbs higher as though in search of extra hair. "We've never seen him."

"You might be surprised how many writers you've met. Some of them mightn't make themselves known." I'm tempted to let them know who they have the privilege of meeting, but then I'd have to shut them down, and I've already made today's choice. "Anyway, we're talking about cunts," I remind them. "You'd think they'd have made more of a splash."

"We can look into ordering it for you," Bookface murmurs as if she's in church or a restaurant or somewhere else equally sacred, "but could you stop saying it now?"

"I wouldn't mind getting my hands on what I'm after, only I was hoping you could give it to me right away." I watch her and Baldbrows fait to be sure enough of my meaning to object to it, and then I say "I'm surprised anybody in a bookshop wants to do away with words."

"Words like that one we can do without," Baldbrows informs me.

"And we certainly don't want our customers to hear them," Bookface contributes.

"I'll have to be careful what I else I ask you for, will I?" I let them have time to wonder if not dread what that might be while I give the street another glance. There's no sign yet of today's selection, but I know they pass the shop on their way to their car. "Am I allowed to say the en word?" I ask the guardians of language.

"We'd rather you didn't," Baldbrows says.

"There's no need for it," says Bookface.

"I thought you'd say there was. I can say the whole word, then."

"No," Bookface says, and I'm sure her stubborn impervious mask is growing glossier. "That isn't what we said."

The other girl's brows seem determined to reach for her hairline. "So is there anything we can find for you?"

"
Ten Little En Words.
You surely must have that."

"It hasn't been called that for a long time," Bookface says as if this is a triumph to celebrate.

"Not since before any of us was born," Baldbrows is even happier to add.

"Don't be so sure who was born when." Saying this doesn't quite restore my sense of myself—it feels not far from achieving the opposite—and as Baldbrows makes to leave the counter on my behalf I find some loathing to help me feel more substantial. "Never mind bringing me that one if it's changed its name," I tell her. "I've got no time for things that won't own up to what they are."

She appears to take this personally, and I'm toying with a question—maybe she and Bookface cunt with each other—when she reverts to her job. "I'm afraid that's all we can bring you," she says and looks relieved to be able to stay behind the counter.

"There must be some things that are too old to change.
Prancing En Word
, isn't that a classic?"

Bookface can't entirely keep her suspicion out of her eyes. "I've never heard of it."

"Would it offend you too much to look it up?"

I'm rather hoping they'll say yes, but Baldbrows only shakes her head while Bookface consults the computer. "It's by Ronald Firbank," she says and seems not far from disbelief. "We can order it for you."

"I'd like to have something in my hands." I glance at the street, but we've still a few minutes before today's terminations pass by. "Joseph Conrad," I say. "You must have his book. What's it called again?"

Both girls gaze hard at me as if they can find my intentions in my eyes. "He wrote a lot," Baldbrows says.

"You know the one I have to mean."

Each of them might be waiting for the other girl to speak, unless they're willing each other not to take the bait. Professionalism gets the better of Bookface, who says "You mean the one about Narcissus."

"The character who didn't know his reflection was him. You'd wonder how anyone could make that mistake." I'm so distracted by the idea that I have to bring myself back to the situation; it feels like starting awake, I imagine, if I ever fall asleep. "That isn't all the title," I object "What's the rest?"

Bookface ensures that I hear her breathe through her nose, more than I hear myself do, but it's Baldbrows who says "I think you know perfectly well."

"I'm asking you to tell me. Or aren't you supposed to help your customers too much?"

Both girls look offended—I've begun to think they have just one expression between them at a time—but I'm threatening their image of themselves. "Has the shop told you not to say what the book's called?" I suggest. "That's a strange way of selling books."

"Of course not.
The En Word of the Narcissus,"
Bookface mutters as if she hopes not to be heard.

"That wasn't too hard, was it?" I feel as if I need to carry on the argument so as to keep myself where I can watch the street and perhaps to keep my mind alive as well. "You can't suppress words," I point out. "It doesn't make the thoughts go away. More like it puts them beyond your control."

"I don't see what you're getting at," Bookface complains.

"If you don't spell the word out you can't be sure what it is, can you?" For a pause like a void in my mind I feel as if I meant something else entirely, and then I manage to regain myself. "Let's say niggler.
Ten Little Nigglers. Prancing Niggler. The Niggler of the Narcissus.
Don't you even like me saying that? Let's try
Ten Little Nibblers
..."

"Shall I show you where the book is?" Baldbrows tells me rather than asks.

"The Nitwit of the Narcissus
, you mean.
Not Prancing Nitpicker
or
Ten Little Nincompoops.'"
Being ushered to the shelf would take me away from the street, and in any case I've exhausted their ability to amuse me, not that there was much of it. "Or
The Nonsense of the Narcissus
, are you saying?"

"If you don't want anyone to find what you asked for—" Bookface says.

"You'd like to see the last of me, would you? Quite a few have." I'm tempted to enquire if the shop has a complaints desk, although no doubt there'd be a warning on it against abusing the staff, which I'd say would be a provocation to complain about the notice. If the shop does have a grievance facility I won't be visiting it just now, but at least the question might leave the girls nervous, though nothing like as much as I ought to make them. I'm about to speak when the pair I'm awaiting pass the shop and vanish downhill. "Thanks for the diversion," I tell Baldbrows and Bookface. "You wouldn't think it, but you've been some use."