The Loneliness of the Long Distance Book Runner

by Bill Rees

  The crossing is late at night on a ferry populated by as many staff as passengers. The crew, fresh and alert, crack jokes while the passengers, unused to the late hour, eat and drink in the canteen with an air of mournfulness. In between mouthfuls, I look out of the portholes. They aren’t actually portholes as such, but I feel that the apertures, which are just big windows really, should carry more of a nautical connotation. It is dark outside and only with difficulty can I make out the movement of water. I think of school trips to France. Flick knives bought in Boulogne. Firecrackers too, and more interest shown in mopeds than boulangeries. On the ferry’s return to Dover, a rumour spread fast that custom officials are as punitive as they are vigilant. In the ensuing panic, thirty contraband weapons were lost to the sea. Only Eddy had kept his nerve.

  I drink an insipid cup of coffee (the last for some time, I imagine, since a quick return to England is not an option) before descending two decks to use up my English change on the fruit machines. Several passengers wanting French currency discover that the bureau de change is closed. Returning to the canteen, I feel strangely serene until approached by two sickly pale kids who brandish plastic toy guns. They make the inevitable sound effects before being ineffectually admonished by parents who look barely out of their teens. The only other person within range to be irritated is a fat man in smart business attire. He, however, seems to have set himself the task of exhausting the ship’s entire supply of lager. Alcohol makes him oblivious to the noise or anyone else’s company. I order a lager myself while it is still possible. Surveying the rest of the canteen, I wonder idly if there are any lone passengers of the opposite sex.

  In French waters we reassemble with surprising efficiency and the coach leaves the ferry at Calais without a hitch. Shifting restlessly on hard seats, I try to trick myself into believing I am at ease. Some people evidently succeed, sleep carrying them away from the discomfort of the coach.

  At 6.30 a.m. on an cold overcast morning in early October the coach reaches its Paris destination, a grotty bus station in the city’s northern suburbs. In the bleakness that envelops the place and the moment, I experience a pang of self-pity. No family or friends clamour to meet me. The driver, a red faced man with beefy arms, opens up the belly of the coach and gets annoyed with the passengers impatient to reclaim their luggage. The removal of rucksacks and cases from the undercarriage is exclusively his preserve, even if it does involve a great deal of huffing and puffing.

  The RER line quickly comes to my attention since it is situated on the other side of the car park. The vehicles are neatly aligned beneath a corrugated iron hangar. Little thought for environmental aesthetics, however, had gone into its construction. It quickly rids me of the naive notion that somehow everything in the City of Light is going to be of dazzling wonder.

  If I’d managed to convince anyone to think of me as a non-tourist, my pointless act of deception abruptly ends at the ticket office. I ferret in a panicked mind for vaguely appropriate words to explain an undignified search for some change. Putting on my best apologetic face, I pull out a 100 franc note.

  Misreading the metro map results in an ungainly stagger down the Champs Elysée. I regret my decision to stock up on some weighty classics of English literature in addition to the French books. Sweat burns at the edges of my eyes and I have an hour’s wait before the tourist office opens. I sit down on the cold pavement and watch others gather outside the same building before we are all herded like cattle (the analogy embarrassingly apposite) into the building. Accommodation is everyone’s natural priority. We queue to be told by blasé looking staff where a bed is to be found. A service is offered whereby hotels are telephoned to assess the likelihood of their having vacancies. The staff do not appreciate independent suggestions gleaned from Fodor’s ‘cost conscious’ guide to Europe. The cheapest nightly rate that they come up with is 180 francs, which I agree to pay. The deal is fixed up and a map thrust into my hand with the hotel’s location nonchalantly ringed in red ink. The hotel is close to the Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Montmartre. I want to declare: ‘Hey I’m no tourist, this is a business trip.’ I say nothing but leave with a spring in my step, seeing romance and adventure on the horizon.

  Reality soon asserts itself. A soggy shower curtain is draped over the rim of a small bath. On the green linoleum floor there is a pool of water containing all the germs of the last occupant, whom I imagine suffers from unspeakably horrible diseases. The bathroom is windowless and the smell of dampness permeates into the bedroom. This consists of a creaky bed, a wardrobe and a chest of drawers. My belongings, transported in a navy blue rucksack, could fit into a single drawer but I leave them in the rucksack. I leave the suitcase unopened. The room looks out onto more insalubriousness. Clothes dangle from washing lines that criss-cross the gap between buildings. Brown rusted sheeting slopes down, from various levels, to meet in the square’s middle. There are three soot-blackened stairways, clinging to the buildings’ exterior, that seem to lead to nowhere.

  The street into which I emerge smells bad. The stench of dog shit lingers. I look down at my shoes and see why. For 48 hours I haven’t spoken to anyone in a non-official capacity. I need a beer, so enter a small bar to order one. The barman looks puzzled when I take my drink onto the terrace. The clouds have cleared and it’s warm enough to sit outside. I sip at my drink while looking furtively at a skinny lady in chic garb on the adjoining table. Passers-by openly eye her up. Absorbed in a magazine, she doesn’t seem to notice them. I get up and walk off with affected casualness. I walk for hours with no real aim in mind; picking up the smell of the Seine before glimpsing its waters.

  The banks of the Seine are lined with green metal bouquiniste stalls. The bookselling tradition dates back to the seventeenth century when the Renaissance ushered in an era of ‘vagabond’ booksellers. They were to eventually set up fixed places of business alongside the river. I try to make conversation with one of them who isn’t engrossed in a newspaper or book. Thwarted by my French, we both agree, with consoling smiles, to end our attempts at communication.

  I wander into the city’s Latin Quarter and then come across Gibert Jeune bookshop, a seven-storeyed bookshop on Boulevard Saint-Denis. What a p(a)lace. It is said to hold the biggest stock of books in France; providing literature for university students from all fields of study.

  To help broach the subject of my French books, I buy the recently published French language edition of A Prayer for Owen Meany in the misguided belief that, knowing the story in English, it will help improve my language skills. An employee, a tiny man with large glasses and good English, expresses a modicum of interest in my business proposal. I arrange to bring the books in tomorrow. The rest of the day passes in a whirlwind of ideas and distractions. A rough calculation of my budgetary needs causes me to check into a hostel in the Marais district. It is cheaper than the previous hotel and has a friendlier receptionist.

  Jacques is from a pied noir family, French nationals who were born in Algeria. Keen to practise his English, he listens as I tell him about my day and my bookselling intentions. It turns out that he spent some of his childhood in Oran and had relations who lived just outside Algiers. He asks me to bring down the book I have about the city. (Tout l’inconnu de la Casbah by Lucienne Favre. Published in 1933, Baconnier frères Algier, 1933.)

  ‘You see the Casbah. It’s so different. Not European,’ he explains.

  ‘In the Casbah no signs of colonisation. Narrow streets, so different. Beautiful.’

  He continues to leaf interestedly though it. ‘Look here.’ Jacques mentions prostitutes; Favre comparing the indigenous women in a favourable light to their European counterparts whom he finds crude.

  ‘I’ave heard of Brouty, you know. He took Le Corbusier for walk around the Casbah. You know Le Corbusier?’ I nod, not wishing to appear ignorant. And before I properly realise it, Jacques is negotiating a price. I ought to take the book first to Gibert Jeune but Jacques is insistent. ‘I give 500 francs an
d three days ’ere for free,’ he says.

  ‘Three days?’

  ‘And nights too, biensûr.’

  ‘Four nights.’

  We shake hands on the deal. Jacques is clearly delighted with his new purchase. Have I undersold? I console myself by thinking that his enthusiasm might have skewed his valuation of the book in the way that football fans might bet, regardless of the odds, on their team.

  At Gibert Jeune the next day I end up showing my wares to a lady whose seniority, I gather, trumps the bespectacled small man when it comes to the buying of stock. After producing an assortment of paperbacks, I pull out the Rimbaud from my bag with a flourish. It doesn’t create the impact I’d been hoping. Surprise is expressed at it having been translated at all. I point out the original black cloth with red plate and gold lettering on its spine. It has a colour frontispiece and six colour plates by Keith Vaughan who has designed the dust jacket with distinctive free flowing lettering. Both the book and its dust jacket are in very good condition so I can’t understand her muted response.

  She doesn’t even deign to make an offer, gesturing instead towards a glass bookcase used to display Gibert Jeune’s ‘livres a collectioner.’ I spot the familiar olive-green of Olympia’s Traveller’s Companion. It’s William Burrough’s The Naked Lunch which she takes out to show me the author’s signature. I don’t understand. Is it that they don’t want translations of French works of literature. I accept an offer of 350 francs for the paperbacks and leave the shop with the Rimbaud.

  Maybe it will get a better reception at Shakespeare and Co.

  Foxford, Ireland, 1988

  A flowing veil of weeds delays its removal. The falls, a riot of motion in rock and water some ninety yards downstream of Foxford’s ancient bridge. Simon eventually fishes it out and prises it open to find that the old tin is watertight. Seeping out is the aroma of stale cigar while fresh light yields an iridescent splash of colour; the feathers of the bronze mallard, the blue jay and the pheasant, some enwrought with gold and silver and all intricately woven onto hooks in deadly disguise.

  The room’s former occupants have left behind a packet of Silk Cut cigarettes, water-stained copies of Trout and Salmon, and a book. We laugh when we read its title. A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean. It becomes one of my favourite novellas. It’s about the Macleans, a Presbyterian family during early twentieth century Montana whose opinions of life are filtered through their passion for fly-fishing. The novella is presented from the point of view of older brother Norman who goes on one last fishing trip with his rowdy and troubled younger brother Paul in an attempt to help him get his life on track.

  My friend Simon, Joyce aficionado and former colleague, is tutoring me in that art of catching brown trout from Irish rivers. In casting a cold eye upon waters he can read a river and take from it handsome trout and even the occasional salmon. It’s good to have salmon on the menu for a change. Our bed and breakfast doubles as a bar and restaurant, doesn’t offer the richest variety of food but the family who run the place can’t be faulted on their hospitality. They commiserate with due solemnity on what are mostly unsuccessful expeditions on my part. And they are pleased to toast Simon’s successes. His dark handsome face lights up and he lets rip with his gift of the gab. Pints of Guinness are poured in celebration and in mock consolation. I don’t really care. I’m much more troubled by a dilemma of affection.

  I like being on the riverbank, lost in the Moy’s mud and mysteries. I put down the rod to take it in. It’s another country, obviously so but it is more than that. The peal of bells for mass; the shadows of owls flitting across the belfry and silhouettes of bats. Simon catches one in his line, extricating it gently before trudging upriver. I’m fishing with a jungle cock fly, intrigued by its design even if the trout don’t appear to share my interest. Like a hallucination, Mary appears; her face ghostly pale in the moon’s light. She scrambles down the bank.

  ‘Any joy?’

  A shake of the head. She follows a while and I want to embrace this girl whose mellifluous voice stirs the blood. ‘See you another time, take care.’

  ‘Bye.’ I curse myself.

  Train to Liverpool, 2006

  Last time I got my camper van stuck in the entrance to a car park, so today I’m taking the train. It’s a pleasant journey from Bangor; the mountains to the right, the sea to the left if you sit facing in the direction of travel. Before we arrive at Chester, a large ship, seemingly marooned on the sands, catches the eye. After noting its name as the Duke of Lancaster, I discover that it has its own appreciation society. And from their website I learn that: ‘in 1979, as a former Sealink passenger ferry, it was beached in North Wales with the intention of turning it into a floating leisure and retail complex. The project never seemed to get off the ground and as such the ship has been on the banks of the River Dee.’

  It transpires that the Duke of Lancaster was one of finest vessels afloat in the late fifties and early sixties. The first class quarters were the best around, silver service restaurants, state-rooms and luxurious cabins. The River Dee is tidal, and seeing the sandbanks and the ship, Shelley’s poem comes to mind.

  ‘“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

  Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

  Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

  Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

  The lone and level sands stretch far away.’

  In Henry Bohn’s big bookshop in Liverpool I feel strangely lacklustre. There is plenty to interest the reader, collector and dealer alike. But I’m struggling to muster enthusiasm for the search. I wonder if the Duke of Lancaster is to blame. I leave the shop only with a handful of out of print paperbacks. But I also learn that the 12-volume Pilgrim set of Dickens’ letters on display in the shop’s window was offered by The Folio Society to its members for a knock down price of £400. I have a set in similarly good condition.

  The trip hasn’t been a wasted one since I return to Bangor with a typically eclectic range of titles from News from Nowhere, Liverpool’s radical and community bookshop. They have something of an underrated second-hand section.

  Porthmadog, 2005

  As well as visiting a shop specialising in antique weaponry, I like going to Porthmadog for its sprawling junkshop/scrap yard in the back streets. They don’t make many like this any more. You half expect the characters from Steptoe and Son to appear, only they’d be speaking in Welsh. To get to the books at the back I have to clamber over fridges, televisions and ironing boards. I rather enjoy doing so. The corrugated metal roof leaks in places but most of the books are unscathed.

  Beneath a pile of Haynes car manuals, I find a collection of Rupert the Bear annuals from the seventies. They aren’t old enough to command any real monetary value.

  A man, smelling of milk who presides over the place, is surprised that I don’t want them but consoled by my purchase of a book on the Tea Clipper ships.

  I return to Bangor via Beddgelert. Much of the landscape in the Rupert stories is inspired by the local landscape of Snowdonia, notably around Beddgelert, where Alfred Bestall’s family had a cottage. The character was created by the English artist Mary Tourtel and first appeared in the Daily Express in 1920. In 1935 the mantle of Rupert artist and storyteller was taken over by Bestall, who was previously an illustrator for Punch.

  Plotting with Shakespeare’s Ghost in Tylers Bookshop, Bangor, 2005

  Dan and I spend hours discussing his various options. He wants to keep his shop going but needs to dissolve a business partnership with someone who takes little active role in the day-to-day running of the shop. I want to help extend the used books section, which Dan thinks is a good idea, but if he breaks ties with his partner, the landlord can hike up the rent. We call it the Rubik cube of quandary; iron out one and another crops up. We scheme and plot, rather appropriately given the shop’s history and its close proximity to Bangor’s Cathedral. Local historians believe the shop to have once been the ar
chdeacon’s house, as mentioned in Henry IV Part I, which was the set Shakespeare play in my fifth form.

  Act 3, Scene 1: Bangor. The archdeacon’s house. The men take out a large map of Britain and divide it up as they have earlier discussed: after they defeat King Henry, Glyndŵr will get the western part of Britain – western England and all of Wales; Mortimer will get the south-east part of England, including London; Hotspur will get the northern part, home to his family.

  Could Shakespeare have travelled here in the missing years? The building supports a stone chimneystack that fits the Tudor period. Glyndŵr is portrayed in Shakespeare’s play Henry IV, Part 1 (as Owen Glendower) as a wild and exotic man ruled by magic and emotion. Historians describe him as a charismatic leader. And there is possibly a connection to real history too. ‘During Owain Glyndwr’s rebellion, his delegates cloistered in secret session at Bangor with the envoys of his English fellow conspirators, Mortimer and the Earl of Northumberland, to divide the whole of the English realm between them. (from The Matter of Wales by Jan Morris).

  Dan is great with the public and loves books. He doesn’t seem to covet personal wealth, an attractive trait in a person but puzzling to those that harbour more commercial ambition. A customer thinks Dan is missing a trick by not advertising Tylers’ historical credentials; using the bard and Glyndŵr as a ploy to pull in the tourists. I think Dan can go further still, it being likely that Thomas De Quincy passed by the shop during his wanderings in North Wales. He even took lodging in a ‘small neat home’ in Bangor; his landlady having been a servant in the family of Bishop of Bangor. In Confessions of an English Opium Eater, I hazily recall De Quincy’s praise for Bangor’s cemetery but I haven’t been able to find this passage again in the book. Did I dream it?