I said earlier that it was more important to have a sales assistant who liked people rather than one who liked books. Goolie loved both. Watching her introduce books she loved to people she loved, one’s only fear was that she might never leave the two alone together. A bookseller’s job is to introduce, not to chaperone.
However, the great thing about her was that she gave the shop the personality it wanted. There she was, sitting at her table, only too happy to be helpful if her help were needed, pleasantly informal, a large, motherly figure, making you feel welcome, making you feel that if you asked her a question she would probably know the answer (even though she might take five minutes over her reply). A shop is more than just a place where you buy things. It can also be a place where you meet people, sometimes indeed the only place where you meet people and shopping your only social activity. If Dartmouth is a friendly town, welcoming visitors, it is as much as anybody the shopkeepers who have made it so. And if people return year after year, eager to revisit old haunts, for many of them one haunt in particular must have been the bookshop ‘run by that nice old lady.’
Joyce Green joined us in 1963. We had known the Greens in a vague sort of way ever since we had arrived. He was a biology teacher at the grammar school and she could often be seen standing in the street with a sheaf of papers in her hand interviewing passers-by on behalf of the BBC. I knew that she was wanting a more exacting job than that and it seemed ideal that what we needed – help with our expanding school business – was term-time work that would leave her free to share school holidays with her husband. So initially a ‘job description’ would have been simple: to deal with school and library orders and to answer the telephone.
Thus she became the bookshop’s voice, and a most admirable voice it was, too, leaving you in no doubt that you had dialled the right number, no fear that you were getting a little deaf. ‘Good morning. Harbour Bookshop. Can I help you?’ And it became her pride that she could, that if she were asked a question she knew the answer, whether it was a school asking about the availability of a textbook or a private customer wanting something whose title was uncertain and whose author was forgotten. ‘Yes, we have a copy in stock. Shall we send it or will you call?’ Or sometimes, in answer to a stranger who had been telephoning shop after shop in vain: ‘I’m sorry, we haven’t. It’s been out of print for several years, you know. Didn’t they tell you? But there’s a new edition coming in the autumn. . . .’
She knew better than anybody how rare and how welcome it is, when you ring up with a problem, to be able to speak at once to someone who knows what you are talking about. For frequently she would have to ring up publishers. ‘Oh!’ she would say crossly afterwards. ‘I spoke to a wetty!’ And she would imitate the wetty’s voice. But sometimes: ‘I got on to such a nice man and he called me “dear” and he was so helpful. . . .’ And this would make her day. What a pity, that more publishers don’t invest in nice men who take a pride in knowing the answers rather than wetties who don’t.
Of course it would be an exaggeration to pretend that, even after doing a little spadework (as she called it). Joyce could answer every question; for there were some that offered no clue at all, and these she would deal with in her own peculiar way. She would leave them and wait until she was looking for something quite different. Then, apparently quite by chance, she would happen on the answer. This technique worked so often that we used to rely on it. Serendipity, like water divining, is one of those mysterious gifts that you can’t quite believe in but which some people undoubtedly seem to possess. Another gift she had, useful to us if perhaps a little exhausting to her, was the habit of waking up at 3 o’clock in the morning to remember things. No job description would have included night work of this type; and in fact Joyce very quickly found herself doing a great deal that it would have been hard to define, and doing it all so well that when term came to an end we were extremely reluctant to let her go on holiday.
How can I describe her? The spoonful of yeast that you add to the brew to set it fermenting? The life and soul of the party? Something along those lines – and everything that we wanted. She was gay and attractive, the sort of mother you mistake for her daughter’s elder sister, the sort of grandmother that surely nobody ever had, so full of apparent health and vitality that you would never believe she was one of her doctor’s more worrying patients. She never walked where she could run, never smiled where she could laugh, and her most confidential whisper could be heard half way down the road. Is it to be wondered that someone who moved twice as fast as the average person would on occasion take a flight of stairs head first, sit on chairs that weren’t there or fall like a stage comedian into buckets of whitewash. Over the years she had wisely taught herself to fall gracefully and without damage, and this – thank goodness – she was nearly always able to do, so that spectators could join in her laughter, not fear for her safety. On one occasion she got stuck in the cupboard where we keep our stationery. It was a large and rather inaccessible cupboard on the stairs and she had climbed into it to reach for something at the back, and there she remained in mid air, hands clinging, legs waving, until her embarrassed cries for help brought someone to her rescue.
Naturally enough a person so individual and unusual had her own peculiar way of doing things her own techniques, indeed her own language – which was perhaps not too easy to explain to others who needed to know. ‘This is the “Arabia” Book. We call it that because I sent a copy to Arabia once by mistake.’ Or: ‘I think there might be a copy in the “weagle”’9 Joyce’s tongue went as fast as her legs, and it too sometimes fell over itself and the most extraordinary things came out, some of them too good to lose.
So you couldn’t really feel solemn or sad in her company. Or could you? Well, perhaps you could. It depended on whether you were just mildly out of sorts or whether it was something more serious.
The assistant gives her friendly smile. ‘Good morning. Can I help you?’ What a nice shop! What a happy atmosphere! So it may seem to the visiting customer. Yet how much may be hidden behind a smile. How many resentments, jealousies, fears, unhappinesses, domestic problems. . . . If I was never aware of them all it was only because Joyce kept some to herself. For they all came to her: she was that sort of person, the sort you pour out your troubles to. I suspect that most were intended for onwards transmission, but this was never made clear and she would have fearful battles with her conscience: should she tell me or should she not? Usually, I think, she did, for she was not good at keeping things to herself; and I was always glad when she did, and she was greatly relieved when she had.
Staff problems. Oh, yes, there have been plenty over the years, some so small you might be inclined to laugh at them, some so large you could cry. And for fifteen years Joyce was there to help us cope with them. She retired a year ago to get things ready for her husband who retires this year. It was, I suppose, as good a time to leave as any. Though there was still plenty for her to do, there were moments when she could pause and wonder what to do next. The schools that had brought her to the bookshop and kept her so busy with their daily orders and daily telephone calls had now all left us. The last to go had sent us a letter. It was addressed to me but it really belonged to her and so I readdressed it and pasted it onto a card and hung it above her desk. Perhaps now she has gone I ought to take it away, for it is quite hard enough to follow someone so good without having this perpetual reminder of just how good she was. . . .
Now and again – inevitably, I suppose – Lesley and I find ourselves thinking back nostalgically to the days when the shop was just the two of us. What fun it had been! Today it is so different. I am here and she is there; much of our time is spent doing dull things in offices and often we hardly seem to meet. How much pleasanter it was when we were both together downstairs helped only by Hodge.
True, but then what a lot of people we would never have known. They all added something to the shop, helped to make it what it is; they all left their mark before they mov
ed on – to get married or have children or seek their fortunes elsewhere. Tessa and Sarah and Ursula and Janet and Jennie and Nick and innumerable part-timers and summer helps: thank you all for coming. We couldn’t really have done without you.
Interlude. Clare
The one question we always used to dread – the obvious question to ask of someone in their thirties to whom you have only just been introduced – was ‘And do you have any children?’ And I became adept at steering the conversation on to safer ground. Today, older, less sensitive, I find it better to make the matter quite plain from the start: it saves later embarrassment. ‘Yes, a daughter. She’s spastic.’ There follows, of course, a momentary pause; then ‘Oh. . . . I’m sorry to hear that.’ And then, after a few more words, we move to another subject.
Hope is like a life belt: it buoys you up and may keep you afloat until you are rescued; but if it fails you and you are forced to abandon it, you sink. So it is better if you are able to swim without it. In other words it is better if you can accept things as they are rather than live in hope that they will improve.
Once we had accepted Clare’s disability and its effect on us all, there were plenty of other things we could be happy about, plenty to enjoy, plenty to be grateful for. And at the top of the list was her own very evident zest for life, her high spirits, her sense of fun, her cheerful acceptance of all she couldn’t do, her delight in what little she could. She set us an example and taught us a philosophy that parents don’t usually expect to learn from their children.
We tend to think that, if someone is deprived of a blessing that we ourselves possess, their life is the sadder. This is particularly so in today’s Age of Equality when we are made to feel almost guilty at having what others do not have. But in fact the man who has less than his neighbour is only unhappy if he had been hoping for more and chooses to feel jealous.
Is it sad that there is so little that Clare can do? Not necessarily. There are plenty of things that even the most agile person cannot do. Happiness is not measured by agility. Most of what the average person does in his daily life – housework, office work, factory work, commuting – is fairly dull and may well seem almost unbearably dull to others. ‘How can you go on day after day?’ Yet we can. Much of our pleasure comes not from doing but from watching. Only twenty two men actually play football, but thousands watch – with almost equal enjoyment. So it is with Clare. She doesn’t do any gardening in the accepted sense, but if Lesley is digging among her vegetables and she is watching, then she is ‘helping with the gardening’. ‘Helping’? Of course. It is after all the word the French use. ‘Assister’ includes being a spectator.
I suppose that if Lesley or I had been ambitious, pursuing our chosen career with single-minded determination, we might have felt that we didn’t want to be burdened with the various domestic tasks that needed to be done. We might have preferred others to do them for us. This, after all, was the way our parents and grandparents had ordered their lives. The Master worked, the Mistress supervised and a team of retainers scrubbed and cooked and mowed and stoked the boilers. And although it is not like this today, something of the tradition still lingers here and there. But Lesley and I have never wanted it this way. It is not that she likes housework but rather that she dislikes even more the idea of someone coming in and doing it for her. So most of what has needed to be done we have done ourselves and only reluctantly have we asked for help. We have needed help in the bookshop and Lesley had a little help with Clare when she was a baby. And if a fairly large building job has been necessary, we have called in builders to do it. But it is really much pleasanter, much more satisfying, if you can manage on your own. In our parents’ day it was, in any case, economically sensible for the specialist to specialise. Today it is not even that.
So when the question arose: ‘Who is going to look after Clare now she is growing up and cannot look after herself?’ the answer was obvious:
‘We are.’ And if this meant there were other things that in consequence we couldn’t do, then we didn’t do them.
All children limit the freedom of their parents to some extent. And in fact Clare limited ours less than most. For at the age of five she went to school, and since this had to be a Special School it had also to be a boarding school. Very luckily there was one conveniently close, the Dame Hannah Rogers School at Ivybridge, twenty miles away on the edge of Dartmoor. So our lives fell into that pattern that Lesley and I both knew so well from our own schooldays, the alternation between termtime and holidays with all the misery that attends the approach of the one and all the bliss that heralds the other. For Clare the depths and the heights were probably no less and no more than they had been for us.
With Clare at school Lesley and I were once more free to work together in the shop. And it was a happy chance that the beginning of her schooldays coincided almost exactly with the beginning of our school library business. Lesley was thus able to accompany me on all my more exciting expeditions and make them twice as enjoyable.
During the holidays, however, one of us had to be at home, and we took it in turns, Lesley in the mornings, I in the afternoons. August was our most difficult month, the town and the bookshop crowded with holiday-makers, and even with extra help it was a struggle to do all that had to be done. For in addition to the problem of keeping our shelves adequately stocked, we had to handle the books – hundreds and hundreds of them – that our schools had ordered for delivery at the beginning of September. Checking them, sorting them, finding somewhere to put them, carrying back-breaking parcels up and down our narrow stairs and loading them on to our van – when all this had been done and the holidays were at an end and Clare was back at school – well, at least we could relax.
So, term by term, the years went by; and I have no doubt that our friends, looking at us, now and again shook their heads sadly and said to each other: ‘What a pity that . . .’ and ‘If only . . .’ It is always easy to see and solve the problems of others. ‘If I were you . . .’ But of course I am not you and this makes all the difference. Could we have done more? Should we have done differently? But we do only what by our nature we are able to do.
As a child I was shy and self conscious, awkward in company and embarrassed both by my name and by my appearance. At school I would often wish I were a John or a Peter and could join all the other lucky Johns and Peters. At school one lives the life of the herd, and in the herd there is no place for the individual who is different. It is the same in the world at large. The black man in the white community, the Catholic in the Protestant community, the Jew among Gentiles: each has known what it is to be an outsider. Each has longed to be accepted as an equal, treated as a fellow human.
Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?
Shylock’s famous words have been echoed down the ages – and sadly they are sometimes still echoed by the disabled today.
Of course we are not deliberately cruel to the disabled as we have at times been deliberately cruel to Jews. It is just that we are sometimes thoughtless. Or perhaps instead, and with the best of intentions, we try too hard. The blind man waiting at the kerb does not need to be seized by the arm as if he were also lame. The deaf are not better able to hear the kind of language normally reserved for small children. Walking down the street we do not wave or smile at strangers or accost them and inquire solicitously after their health and then pat them affectionately on the head. Yet complete strangers will do this to Clare.
The disabled person may need special attention, but he doesn’t welcome it. He wants to be treated, as far as possible, as if he were ordinary, his differences, as far as possible, ignored. Those who travel in wheel chairs ask only that they can go where the rest of us go, without too much fuss, without too much loss of dignity.
Happily it is not Clare who minds, who is sensitive to how others behave and to what they say. It is I. And how tempting I find it to take the easy way out: to stay at home. It is always pleas
ant at home and there is plenty to do. There is no need to go out, to push a wheel chair through the streets of Dartmouth and into public places. But luckily Lesley is braver – or more determined or wiser or kinder, or probably all four. It is she who plans the outing, and who then insists that I am not merely the chauffeur but come too. I go reluctantly, making an obvious effort, making my effort all too obvious. But when it is over and we are home again I can admit that I too enjoyed it; and I can feel suitably shamed by two brave girls. Lucky Clare to have such a mother!
But to compensate for what I am bad at – and have after all been bad at all my life – I have a skill which, small and unimportant in the normal way, has with Clare come into its own.
Anyone who was taking door locks to bits at the age of seven to find out how they worked, who at the age of eleven was inventing burglar alarms for a Secret Passage, and who was happily defusing German mines at the age of twenty-three, was obviously the right sort of father to have when Clare, sleeping alone in her bedroom, waking in the morning and unable to get out of bed, needed a word with her parents. An electric bell that she could work and then, to make a voice pipe, a plastic funnel and a length of garden hose. . . . The amateur inventor, gadget maker and general handyman was in his element.
The chair we sit on, the table we sit at, the knife and fork and plate that we use when we have a meal, all these are designed to fit the average human body and make use of the things that the human body – and in particular the human hand – can do. Thus the hand can grip and move to and fro, and a knife converts this into the cutting up of meat. So if there are certain movements we cannot manage, then certain tools become useless to us and must be redesigned to make use of different movements.
There were very many things that Clare couldn’t do. In fact there were very few things she could do. When she was young she could scarcely even sit in a chair. She could certainly not have sat at a table and fed herself with a conventional spoon from a conventional plate. But she could grip and she could manage a sort of circular sweep with her arm. Could the right sort of tool convert this into an ability to collect food from the right sort of plate and then carry it to her mouth? I thought it could, and sat and watched her and then went away to work it out.
The Path Through the Trees Page 23
