Exchange

by Paul Magrs

  ‘My mammy can be proper nasty,’ Ada said, almost proudly. ‘It’s not really her. It’s all the gin. And the awful life. And all us kids pulling at her. She’s not really bad, not when she’s not been boozing. So I should forgive her, you see.’

  Winnie was gobsmacked. This was shocking talk. And the girl wasn’t even whispering. She wasn’t hissing out of the corner of her mouth. Ada spoke loudly and clearly — a voice much too big for this tiny little body. Winnie was to get used to this. Ada simply didn’t care who heard what she had to say. She liked to broadcast all her business; all her thoughts and opinions.

  ‘I’ve got the gift of the gab,’ she told Winnie. ‘Why shouldn’t everyone hear what I’ve got to say? I’m as good as anyone. I’ve got nothing to hide.’

  ‘Sssh!’ Winnie gasped, appalled, clutching the peg bag to her stomach as she started to laugh.

  ‘I don’t care,’ shouted Ada. ‘I’ll tell the whole world anything it wants to hear. Hear that? Hear the echo? My mammy’s got too many kids! She drinks gin when she can get it! She’s up in her bed still, right now! With a great big raging headache!’ Ada pointed up at the back window, where the curtains were pulled against the bnght morning. ‘I don’t care who hears!’ Ada shrieked. ‘Let them all listen!’

  Winnie bit her lip, delighted by all of this.

  ‘You’re Winnie, aren’t you?’ Ada asked.

  Winnie nodded.

  Ada studied her face carefully. ‘I’ve decided that you’ve got to be my friend. No ifs, no buts. It’s what I’ve decided and you’ve got no choice in the matter.’

  ‘All right… Winnie stammered.

  ‘And I mean friends for life, you know. When I make up my mind, I really mean it. And I mean we’ll be friends when we’re old, old ladies and we’re both probably still living next door to each other, like this.’

  Winnie nodded.

  ‘Not round here, though,’ said Ada. ‘We won’t be living round here.’

  ‘Where then?’ Winnie hardly understood what Ada meant. At seven, Winnie couldn’t really picture anywhere that wasn’t round here: this street amongst so many other, similar streets, leading down to the docks and the silver-brown mass of the slow-moving river. To her, the ‘world beyond’ meant only the docks and the great hulks of half-finished ships, stilled in the water like vast wedding dresses with pins sticking out. Waiting to sail out to the sea and over the edge.

  ‘We’ll be somewhere else,’ Ada said. ‘Somewhere posh. The place we both deserve to be.’

  Six

  This time, the man who owned the Book Exchange didn’t seem as friendly.

  Last week he had been almost effusive, jumping up to congratulate them and to give them their special membership cards. This week it was all quite different.

  When Simon and Winnie entered the Exchange, everything seemed at first exactly the same. The autumnal gloom outside; the timeless, amber glow indoors. The scents of old paper, woodsmoke and faintly exotic spices were even more marked and they had both sighed, without even knowing it — letting the stresses of the week drop away from themselves as they advanced into the Exchange. Much more sure-footed now, the two of them. They knew their way about, inside here. There was nothing to be wary about.

  They belonged here. That was how they felt, as they made their way to the room in the middle of the oddly-shaped building. Again, there didn’t appear to be any other customers peering and shuffling through the orderly stacks and this only heightened their feeling that this was a place meant solely and especially for them.

  Both Simon and Winnie were carrying parcels of books with them. Simon had brought last week’s books back. Winnie had brought some others. Three unwanted novels she hadn’t much liked. Three novels she’d had for ages. She hoped that the Exchange owner would accept them in lieu of the Ada Jones novel, which she had decided she would very much like to keep.

  ‘I know it goes right against the rules of the place,’ she’d said to Simon on the bus.

  ‘It does,’ he teased. ‘This is the first time you’ve been and you’ve broken the rules already.’

  ‘But I can’t give that book back. You know why…’

  ‘You really like it that much?’

  Her face clouded. ‘It’s not a question of liking it. It’s my life. That’s what’s in that book. I’m sure if I explain it to him he won’t mind. He’ll take these sloppy romantic novels instead. I’ve done with them. And they’re in much better condition than this old Ada Jones…’

  Winnie was wrong, though. The Exchange owner wasn’t at all impressed with her, or what she was intending to swap.

  ‘What’s this?’ he sighed, prodding her gaudy romances with the tips of his plastic fingers. His voice was very distant and cold. Winnie and Simon had known, as soon as they’d entered his inner sanctum, that his mood was different this week. The whole atmosphere of the place was changed. He really was like a tetchy spider, sitting in the dead centre of his web; setting off vibrations with the tiniest of gestures.

  The two of them stood there, shame faced. They had got it wrong on only their second visit.

  ‘Tell me what this is,’ he said again, coldly, looking up at Winnie.

  She tried to explain. ‘I’ve brought back two of the books I took from here last week. And I’ve replaced the third one with these other romances. I hoped you’d take them instead of the Ada Jones novel I found here. In exchange, if you like.’ She gave a very uneasy, embarrassed laugh. ‘This is the Exchange, after all, isn’t it?’

  He snorted at her words. Utter disgust, Simon thought. Then Simon was aware of the Goth girl, sitting on her high stool at the cash desk. He hardly dared look at her, though he knew she was watching this little scene. He darted a quick glance at her. She was watching with great interest — an expression of pity on her white face. Simon blushed as she caught his eye and smirked at him. She was smirking at his gran’s bumbling stupidity.

  The Exchange owner said: ‘These are just trash.’ He shoved the silly romances back at Winnie. ‘I will not have trash like that clogging up the shelves of my Exchange.’

  Winnie tried to stick up for herself. ‘But you aren’t snobbish. You stock all kinds of books here. Not just posh ones. You’ve got westerns and horror! You’ve got other romantic fiction… I’ve seen all sorts of things here…’

  The man’s almost translucent skin was turning scarlet with pent-up rage. That wayward hair of his seemed to be bristling. ‘I do not stock trash, madam. I stock the best of all genres. These books,’ he pushed Winnie’s offering even closer to her, even more disparagingly, ‘could have been written by just anyone. They might have been written by a committee… of monkeys, or machines. The books I keep here, in the Exchange, they are the kind of books that only one person could have written in each and every case. Each of them is unique. Whichever kind of story they are. You bring me this… trash — to replace a novel by Ada Jones? That is an insult, madam. An insult to the integrity of my establishment.’

  With that, he turned his back on all of them and hooked open a door that none of them had noticed before. It revealed a staircase with piles of books on each step. He hurried away, slamming the door behind him.

  ‘Oh dear,’ Winnie said. ‘I really didn’t mean to upset him.’ She wrapped up the gaudy romances again and slipped them into her shopping bag. Now she was ashamed of them. ‘It’s just that… I really wanted to keep hold of that book. It meant a lot to me…’

  The Goth girl slid off her stool and came towards them. To Simon’s surprise she suddenly gave them a beaming smile. She didn’t seem half as fierce.

  ‘Oh, don’t mind him,’ she said, taking their membership cards off them and examining the books they had returned. ‘Terrance is often like this. Up one minute, down the next. And you really hit a nerve. Offering to swap those terrible schlocky books for one of his. It was a bit of an insult.’

  ‘It wasn’t meant to be.’

  The Goth girl shrugged carelessly, making her silver
bracelets and earrings (spiders! Simon realised) tinkle and shiver musically’.

  ‘You don’t absolutely have to return everything you take from here,’ she said. ‘You can keep them to yourself for ever if you want. After all, you’ve bought them from him. But,’ and here she looked at them warningly, blinking through thick, sticky black mascara, ‘you must realise how protective Terrance is, of his Exchange and all the books in it. They have all been chosen by him and they are all important to him. It’s just that… when they find a good home with someone… he gets a little touchy. That’s all.’

  The girl gave them back their membership cards, having carefully written in Biro what credit they would receive.

  ‘Maybe you think he’s peculiar,’ she said. ‘Minding about his books so much.’

  ‘No,’ said Simon.

  ‘Not at all,’ added Winnie.

  ‘This place, and his books,’ the girl said. ‘That’s all he’s got, really. We are the only real people he ever sees.’ She smiled at them — wryly and lopsidedlv — as if to say: ‘Amazing, isn’t it! We’re his only real people! And how real are we, eh? How real do you feel?’

  The way she talked made Simon feel included in something. It wasn’t a feeling he was used to.

  ‘Will you have coffee?’ the Goth girl was asking now, going over to her gleaming, futuristic coffee machine. She was clearly trying to make amends for the awful way her employer had spoken. Temperamental — that’s what he was, thought Simon. He was disappointed in him. He’d seemed so nice last week. Maybe it was his condition that made him fly off the handle like that? He tried to think back — to whether he’d ever known any other amputees — in books, or in real life. Had they been temperamental too?

  Simon wandered into the stacks, aware that the girl was being nice to Winnie and presenting her with one of those very tiny cups and saucers. Simon could smell the strength of the coffee in the steam.

  ‘I’ll take your son one, too…’ he heard the girl say.

  ‘Son?’ Winnie laughed, flattered. ‘Simon’s my grandson.’

  The girl set the coffee machine juddering and rumbling again. She held another miniature cup under the gleaming spout. ‘You have the same address. Do you live with his family?’

  They’re talking like I’m not even here, Simon thought. He strained to listen without turning as his gran lowered her voice.

  ‘Simon… um, lives with us. Myself and his grandad. For the past few months or so.’ She sounded self-conscious at answering this girl’s questions so freely. ‘His parents passed away, you see, earlier this year.’ She dropped her voice still further. ‘It was a terrible accident.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said the Goth girl.

  Why do we always have to get into this? Simon thought furiously. It was the first thing any new people would ever know about him. His parents have been killed tragically. He’s having a hard time. Be careful with him.

  Then that nosey Goth girl was standing at his side. She’d crept up on him as he was staring into space.

  ‘What’s this?’ Simon looked at the tiny cup. ‘Is this for me?’

  The Goth girl tutted. ‘Of course it is. I didn’t know how you have it, but I figured bitter and black.’ She looked him up and down.

  Simon blushed. ‘Really? What made you think that?’ He felt absurdly flattered, but didn’t know why. Bitter and black. It sounded cool. Like a vampire or a hard-bitten detective. Really, though, Simon liked his coffee with frothy milk, two sugars and a jaffa cake or two.

  ‘I’m Kelly,’ the girl said. ‘You’re Simon, aren’t you? I’ve just been having a talk with your grandmother. She seems like a very nice lady to me. I think Terrance has upset her, talking like he did. He can be awful. I’ve seen him chuck people out of here. I’ve seen him grab hold of them and just about duff them up for having no taste, or being too noisy, or not respecting the Exchange.’

  Simon’s eyebrows shot up. ‘But — how could he grab hold of people when…’ Then he stopped dead. It was probably rude to draw attention to the poor man’s affliction and his artificial arms.

  ‘Ah,’ said Kelly, and took a sip of her own coffee. ‘When I say he grabbed hold of them and threw them out… I didn’t mean it literally, of course…’ She pulled a face. She’d been caught out exaggerating. Lying, almost, and she didn’t really care. Simon liked that. It was as if, to her, the story was the main thing — not the actuality. ‘Really though, Terrance is a demon when he’s angry. And he’s so protective of this place. I’m surprised he ever lets anyone take any books away.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad he does,’ Simon said. ‘I think it’s brilliant here. It’s amazing. There’s books here you’d never find anywhere else. Things I’ve never even heard of…’

  ‘You’ve noticed that, have vou?’ She turned to run her hands speculatively across a row of outsized hardbacks. ‘Lost books, old books, unique books. Books out-of-print, and some never-in-print. Forgotten books and remembered books. Banned books and books disowned by their authors. There’s nowhere else like this. Nowhere else in the world, I bet.’

  ‘I can believe it,’ Simon breathed. The two of them were staring at each other.

  ‘What have you found today?’ She spoke more jauntily, lightening the mood. The two of them had become a bit intense.

  ‘One or two things…’ He shrugged. He wasn’t used to talking about his reading. This realisation came as a shock to him. He and Winnie went shopping together and they read for long hours in the same living room, but they hardly ever talked about the books themselves. And there was certainly no one of his own age that Simon ever talked about fiction with. Any other kids he’d known would have recoiled from spending so much time trying to make all those tiny, inert words mean something worthwhile. To them it seemed like too much effort. They just didn’t see it. He got some strange looks when he was in his favourite place at the back of the school sports hall, reading. And when packs of kids went by they would look at him like he was crazy.

  He couldn’t go anywhere without the security of at least two novels in the bag he carried everywhere. (Two, in case he finished the first. He needed to make sure he had enough to read. What if he got trapped somewhere? In a lift, or at the very top of a building, and had to wait hours and hours to be rescued?) To him, having these hundreds of pages, these millions of words, forever about his person, meant that he could escape into his own pocket dimension at any moment he liked. He could have another voice talking to him in calm, measured tones. A voice that had nothing to do with his real life. A voice taking him away from the panic of the current moment.

  That was exactly how he felt about his life. The panic of the current moment. Dead right. He needed to feel ready to bolt and flee. He was claustrophobic, or was it agoraphobic? Too hot, too cold. And that’s how he felt right now. With this strange girl’s dramatically made-up eyes staring straight into his.

  ‘I like you,’ she said.

  ‘You what?’ He answered bluntly, shocked by her directness. He thought she was mocking him. He sounded rude.

  ‘I do,’ she said, unfazed. ‘I like the look of you. You’ve been through a lot. You’re interesting. Not just some kid.’

  He frowned. ‘What do you mean, “been through a lot”?’

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to explain it all to me. Not right now. But there’ll be other chances to talk. If you feel like telling me all about it some day. I’ll be happy to listen.’

  ‘Right,’ he said. He wasn’t sure what to say to this. ‘OK. Cheers.’

  She sighed. ‘You could act a bit more pleased. Here I am, offering to listen to all your woes and everything. I’m being really considerate here, offering my friendship and time. You could act a bit more gracious.’

  What? Simon was too amazed to be offended.

  ‘Just say,’ she added, with a shrug. ‘If you don’t want to be friends, you don’t have to be. You look to me like you’re not exactly overwhelmed by good friends. But it’
s your choice, right? And you’re really passing up a good thing here, you know. I’m a great friend to have.’

  He cut through her gabbling. ‘How do you know I’m not exactly overwhelmed by good friends?’

  She laughed. ‘Saturday afternoon? Out with your granny? Come on, Simon. Who goes out with their old granny on Saturdays?’

  He came over all defensive. ‘I do! She’s good company. She is! Besides, she wouldn’t go out at all if I didn’t go with her…’

  Kelly twisted her mouth about sarcastically. ‘Yeah, yeah. Anyway, how old are you? You look about fourteen or something.’

  ‘I’m sixteen!’

  ‘Thought so. You’re a bit young for your age. Not exactly babyish, but not fully formed yet.’

  ‘Fully formed!’ he burst out. He didn’t know whether she meant on the inside or the outside and suddenly he didn’t really want to know. She was rude and awful.

  But he wasn’t about to tell her that. He didn’t want her to stop talking and go. Even though just about everything she said was annoying, he didn’t want her to stop.

  ‘I’m a year older than you,’ she said. ‘I’m an older woman.’

  ‘So?’ He smirked. He could be just as cool and sardonic as she could. Just some girl.

  ‘You should make use of my greater experience and knowledge of the world. You should value my superior maturity.’

  ‘Really?’ he said.

  ‘Definitely,’ she shot back. ‘I’ve lived more than you. I’ve seen more and done more, and I’ve read more books, too.’

  Now this last bit stung. The rest he didn’t care about. That just sounded like the usual teenage showing off, just like the kids at school: bragging about what they’d done. All the sex and drugs and extreme sports and all that rubbish. But no one had ever challenged him on reading novels. It had always been assumed and understood, amongst everyone he had ever known: Simon had read more than anyone his own age. He’d read more than almost everyone.