Bookshop
Bookshop
IT WAS SMALLER THAN SHE’D BEEN EXPECTING, wedged between a pub and a tobacconist on a street a few blocks back from the main thoroughfare. It was painted dark green, with the name spelled out in yellow above a single window that was full of books, most of which she’d read. Newspapers were stacked by the door, tied in bundles.
It was twenty minutes past nine. The walk from Frances’ house had taken just under thirty minutes. An hour of walking a day should go some way towards burning off the calories of her aunt’s dinners.
Closed , the sign on the door read. Should she knock? Was anyone inside? She caught sight of her reflection in the window. She jiggled her hair about, wishing as she always did that it wasn’t quite so red. Why couldn’t she have got Claire’s mass of blonde curls?
As she bared her teeth to make sure they were free of lipstick, the door flew open, startling her.
‘Hello there!’
She saw a sandy-haired man beaming at her. The sleeves of his white shirt were rolled, his jeans faded and patched. No tie.
‘I spied you coming,’ he said, thrusting a hand at her. ‘Ellen Sheehan, I presume.’
‘Yes.’
He didn’t look any older than her. Surely he was too young to be a manager? His hand was warm, his clasp firm. ‘Ben McCarthy, you’re welcome. Good to have you on board.’
‘Thank you.’
She felt tongue-tied, and acutely aware of how little she knew about working in a bookshop. She wondered how long it would take for him to realise this.
He held the door open – ‘Go on in, I’ll just grab these papers’ – so she stepped across the threshold and gazed around at her new workplace.
It was perfect.
Narrow and meandering, with a low beamed ceiling and an uneven wooden floor whose broad boards were shiny with age. A third of the way down was a spiral staircase that climbed to an upper floor, and it was wooden too.
And everywhere she looked, there were books.
Covering the walls, stacked on tables, filling every space they could. Books as far as the eye could see. She inhaled her favourite smell, the heady scent of glue and ink and new pages not yet turned. She would never grow tired of that smell.
She felt the promise of stories and characters waiting to be discovered, and a smile came unbidden to her face. She was actually employed here. This was where she would spend all her working hours. She itched to explore the place further, to delve into all its nooks and crannies.
‘You like it,’ he said, jolting her out of her reverie. She had almost forgotten him.
‘I love it. I love all bookshops, but this one’s especially nice. How old is it?’
He dumped the paper bales onto a desk with a thump and began cutting their strings. ‘Well, the building has been here as long as Galway has, but it’s only been a bookshop for about eight years. Before that it was a shoe shop.’
She couldn’t see it as a place where shoes were sold. It looked like it had been a bookshop since the beginning of time.
‘Let me show you around before the others arrive. Staffroom up here,’ and she followed him up the spiral stairs. The first door had Manager on it. ‘My office, obviously,’ he said as they passed, and again she thought him too young for the position.
The staffroom held a small table and four chairs, a fridge and a sink. A little window above the sink overlooked the street. Mugs were stacked on a shelf, along with a jar of instant coffee and a tea caddy. Teaspoons were propped in a mug. There was an electric kettle on the table.
He leant against the sink and crossed his arms. ‘You have a fifteen-minute break in the morning, and another in the afternoon, and half an hour for lunch. There are just four of us here, including you. Jasper likes an early lunch, so he takes his at twelve thirty, and Edwin waits till one thirty because he starts work later. How does one o’clock sound for yours?’
‘Fine.’
Jasper and Edwin. They could have come straight out of Dickens. Ellen should be called Dorrit, or maybe Estella, to fit in.
‘The timings for the shorter breaks you can decide between yourselves.’
‘That’s fine.’
He jiggled at the window fastening. ‘I have a confession,’ he said. ‘I may as well come clean.’
She felt a small prickle of alarm. Confession was rarely good.
He propped the window open and turned to face her again. ‘I’m not really the manager,’ he said. ‘Well, I am, but I’m an accidental one. The real manager had a tumble on a mountain in Switzerland a few weeks ago and broke just about every bone in her body, so there’s no knowing when she’ll be back, or if she will.’
‘Oh . . . that’s awful.’
‘Yes, poor old Muriel. She’s not in any danger, apparently, just out of action for the foreseeable future. The owner, who runs his own shop in Dublin, persuaded me to take over in the interim, even though I only started here in January, but Jasper, who’s been around a lot longer, isn’t really manager material – you’ll understand when you meet him – and Edwin is even newer than me, so I said yes, but I haven’t a clue. I have no managerial qualifications. I’m literally making it up as I go along.’
His candour was disarming. She felt herself relaxing. ‘As far as I can see, you’re doing OK.’
‘That’s what everyone thinks. You were the first person I interviewed – I mean ever. I’m sure you guessed.’
She risked a small laugh, not sure if he expected her to be equally candid. ‘It wasn’t your typical interview,’ she ventured. ‘You didn’t ask any of the questions I was expecting.’
He looked pleased, as if she’d complimented him. ‘True. I decided I’d just look for a book lover.’
‘Well, you found her. Was I the only one who applied for the job?’
‘No, there were others. You just happened to be the first one I rang.’
So it had been a matter of blind luck. Any other reader would have passed his literary test as easily as she had. ‘I did think it strange that you didn’t ask for a reference.’
He grimaced. ‘I forgot about a reference. See? No clue. I suppose I’m too late to ask for one now.’
‘No, I’m sure I could—’ She broke off, seeing his grin.
‘Happy to take my chances with you,’ he said. ‘You look honest. Now I’d better go down and open up – and Jasper will be along any minute. Take your time, settle in. Your things will be quite safe in here: we’re all trustworthy.’
Left alone, she peeked in the fridge and saw a half-full bottle of milk, and opened packets of Lincoln Cream and Marietta biscuits, and a sugar bowl and an apple, and a glass-topped butter dish with no butter in it. She was hanging her jacket and bag on a hook by the door when a man appeared.
‘Oh – hello,’ he said, stopping short on seeing her. Deep-voiced, forties or fifties, she wasn’t sure. Dark hair above a face so completely bloodless it might never have seen the sun. Rumpled pinstriped suit, black shiny shoes. Tall, thin, solemn. Cradling a brown paper bag.
‘I’m Ellen,’ she told him, putting out a hand. His was shockingly chilly, given the mild weather. ‘I’m starting today.’
‘Yes, we were told. Jasper is my name. Pleased to meet you.’ His words were slow and deliberate. A kind of earnest, melancholy air seemed to hang about him. ‘I work in the storeroom at the back of the shop, unless I’m needed on the floor.’ He made a small movement with his mouth, gave a little toss of his head. ‘To be entirely honest, I’m happier out of the public eye, so I’m very glad you’re joining us.’
Not manager material, Ben had said, and she could see what he meant. Probably ran the storeroom beautifully. Kept it as neat as a new pin, she guessed.
He deposited his brown bag in the fridge. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’ll be off then,’ and disappeared. Ellen gave a last finger-rake through her hair, squared her shoulders and followed him down the stairs.
Ben was at the cash register, emptying coins into compartments. ‘I man the desk until Edwin arrives at ten,’ he told her, ‘but once you’ve got the hang of it, I’ll let you do this first half hour.’
‘Right. By the way, what should I call you?’
‘Ben’s fine. We don’t stand on ceremony here. Why don’t you have a look around while it’s quiet, familiarise yourself with the layout?’
She wandered about, taking it all in, trying to memorise where everything was. A children’s section was brightly lit, the bookshelves painted in primary colours. A section of cookery books reminded her of Frances promising, or threatening, to teach her to cook. She wouldn’t mind learning how to make a few dishes, handy for when she and Claire had to fend for themselves.
When she returned to the cash desk, someone was talking to Ben. They turned as she approached.
‘Edwin,’ Ben said, ‘meet Ellen, our newest recruit.’
‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Welcome.’
He looked about sixteen. Rumpled blond hair, casually dressed like Ben, and as smilingly cheerful as Jasper was lugubrious. ‘Edwin will show you the ropes,’ Ben told her. ‘Pay attention: there may be a test – and if you haven’t made lunch plans it’s on me, a first-day tradition I’ve just made up.’
‘No plans,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’
‘Great, see you at one. Now I must go and pretend to be a manager.’
With a wave of his hand he made for the spiral stairs and disappeared.
She spent the remainder of the morning with Edwin, who she learnt was eighteen, and who had been working at the bookshop since he’d left school at the end of May. ‘It’s been great since Ben became manager,’ he said. ‘I mean, Muriel was OK, but she was a bit . . . official.’
‘Why do you start at ten?’ Ellen wanted to know, and he told her of his invalid grandmother who lived with them.
‘Mum mainly looks after her, and Dad and I help out after work, but when Ben took over he said I could start half an hour later if it helped, so I give Gran breakfast now before I leave, and Mum gets a lie-in. And he didn’t even reduce my salary.’
The accidental manager might be making it up as he went along, but he had also put his own stamp on the job by taking it on himself to make life easier for a member of staff, something Muriel hadn’t done. And treating Ellen to lunch on her first day was a sweet gesture too.
He brought her to the pub next door, where they ate decent sandwiches and drank excellent coffee. ‘I only ever have coffee when I’m out,’ he said, stirring too much sugar into his. ‘I’m rubbish at making the proper stuff, and I can’t abide instant.’
He took a bite of his sandwich – ‘cheese and more cheese’ was what he had ordered – and then sat back, regarding her as he chewed, while she tried not to feel self-conscious under his scrutiny.
‘Tell me,’ he said eventually, ‘about the typing pool. You’ve come from one, right?’
She was surprised he’d remembered, with no mention made of it during the phone interview. She described the job she’d taken after leaving school, and the stultifying monotony of it.
‘What made you go for it, and why did you stay for two years?’
Good questions. She couldn’t tell him the truth, that after what had happened she’d been aimless, hadn’t seen any point in looking for anything better, hadn’t felt herself worthy of being happy. ‘Laziness, I suppose. Complacency.’
And then she’d seen his ad, idly leafing through the newspaper one evening, and she’d imagined working in a bookshop – and the thought had been so intoxicating, so tempting, that she couldn’t think why it hadn’t occurred to her till then. She would apply, before she died of boredom in the typing pool. She’d found her mother’s writing pad and written on the spot, and posted it on her way to work the following morning, and here she was.
‘Where are you living now?’
‘With my aunt, just temporarily.’
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Family connections, but not parental, so she can’t boss you around too much.’
‘No, she says she’s not going to be responsible for me. I’m free to do as I please, as long as I’m not late for dinner – half past six on the dot. Oh, and as long as I don’t wake her when I come in after a night out.’
‘No falling up the stairs then. And do you know anyone else in Galway besides your aunt?’
‘Just you so far – and Jasper and Edwin.’
‘You won’t be long making friends. So who’s in your family?’
‘A mother and a younger sister,’ she said – and quickly, before he could ask about a father, she threw the question back to him.
‘Two parents, one brother, one sister, both older than me. My brother’s in his final year in UCG. He’s the one with the brains.’
‘What’s he studying?’
‘Law – and how to solve the problems of the world. He’s a real activist, supports every cause going.’
‘So you’ll soon have a lawyer in the family.’
‘Not that soon: he’s planning to do some travelling when he graduates next summer.’ He seemed about to say something else, but stopped.
‘And your sister?’
‘My sister’s the eldest. She’s a hairdresser, married with one little daughter. First grandchild on both sides, spoilt rotten by everyone, but a little poppet.’
‘And are you from Galway?’
‘I am – born and bred. Love it.’
‘And do you live at home with your parents?’ Immediately, she caught herself. ‘Sorry – I’m being nosy.’
‘Not at all, ask away. I was living at home until I was made manager, and then the owner offered me the tiny flat above the shop that nobody was using, and I said yes. It needed a small bit of smartening up – I gave it a few coats of paint and begged bits of furniture from various charitable souls, and it’s basic but fine. I felt a manager should have his own place, to go with the prestige of the job.’
He was joking. Already she’d cottoned on to the impish expression, the barely suppressed laughter contained within it.
Yes, she would enjoy working with him.