The Loneliness of the Long Distance Book Runner Read online

  I don’t join the others for a drink after work. This upsets Eddy, who wants my company to divulge a confidence. It must wait. I want to visit my parents to break the news. I also like the idea of a good lounge in front of the television, mug of tea in hand.

  There is no need to hurry but an inexplicable force impels me to ride the bike at top speed. A car swerves out into the middle of the road to avoid contact. I then realise that I have fallen into the spirit of competition, racing against cars and fellow cyclists. My heart pumps harder. I feel my back moisten with sweat. Pushing down aggressively on the pedals, I soon arrive. I park my bike in the alleyway that runs alongside the house. It is dank and full of derelict bikes, some of which have ‘stabilisers’ dating back to my infancy. There are bigger bikes stripped of various essential components like seats and cross bars. They make me think of skeletons awaiting burial. Mum resists organising their removal; it would signal the emphatic end of something quintessentially familial.

  For some reason I forsake the lounge and tea. Instead I go out to stand in the cold garden. The shiftless clouds have come to harden my sense of frustration. I want sunshine. A beaker full of it and more. And I know what I don’t want: fêtes, marriages, council meetings and supermarket openings. I can rid myself of it all by a single press of the ‘Delete’ button. I have come to tell them this.

  Phil has given me a copy of Sartre’s Nausea. A mistake, maybe, given my current solipsistic musings.

  Tregarth Council Flat, North Wales, February 2003

  We get the call. Along with a fellow bookseller, I have the chance to go through the library of a man who must leave his council house for a nursing home. We arrive to find the books in various corners of the house. Dan is happy to buy a handful but for me only one title stands out. The Britannia and Conway Tubular Bridges by Edwin Clark in two volumes. With General Inquiries on Beams and on the Properties of Materials used in Construction.

  Some research is needed. Edwin Clark, it transpires, was the clerk of the project which built a bridge across the Menai Strait between the island of Anglesey and the mainland of Wales. The volumes contain descriptions and drawings of the original tubular bridge; with wrought iron rectangular boxsection spans. It is now a two-tier steel truss arch bridge.

  Clark produced a comprehensive presentation of continuous beam theory as applied to the Britannia and Conway bridges, backed up by experiments, within the scope of a two-volume book about both bridges, I am reliably informed. The work was published by Day & Son and John Weale, 1850. And with the sanction, and under the supervision, of Robert Stephenson.

  Two vols. of text in 8vo, orig. blind-stamped cloth spines gilt. contents very good, spines worn and scuffed at top and bottom, no markings, binding good; both volumes are heavy and we will need to incorporate postage costs into the book price.

  I take the book to a Llandudno dealer at the trade’s top end. ‘Museum stock’, I say to Dan by way of explaining the man’s credentials. The dealer expresses interest although there is some confusion as to whether there should be another volume. There is no mention, in the book we have, of a third volume, but COPAC – an online library catalogue giving access to major university, specialist and national libraries in the UK – suggests that there is a third volume.

  In spite of a lingering doubt over a third volume’s existence, the dealer agrees to part with hundreds of pounds.

  The mystery ends appropriately enough within sight of Britannia Bridge several years later while taking a tour of Plas Newydd, a National Trust country house in Llanfairpwll, Anglesey. We have brought the kids to see Rex Whistler’s drawings and the military museum with relics from the Battle of Waterloo. Here, in front of the former marquis’s artificial leg, a Trust volunteer is railing on about the iniquities of Napoleon and his people. We allow him to finish his speech before revealing Anne’s and our children’s French nationality. Afterwards we pass into an anteroom where I spot, lying on an elegant mahogany table, a large leather bound volume with the words Britannia Bridge and Plates embossed upon its side. The book is of a larger format than the two volumes we have sold. The usher in the room breaks protocol; kindly permitting close examination. It is indeed the missing volume; an atlas complete with 47 lithographed plates (six tinted, five double-page and folding).

  Plas Newydd, November 1993

  Before opening a bookshop at Plas Newydd, the Trust used to organise an annual book sale event there in mid-November. Surrounding the house are large gardens, woodland walks and a marine walk along the Menai Strait where we bump into the current Marquis of Anglesey. He seems to be doing a spot of impromptu gardening, from which he breaks off to politely acknowledge us. ‘It’s a good book sale,’ we say in passing. ‘Good. Good. Buy lots of books,’ he instructs in jovial fashion. We already have. Several hundred in fact. Dad has helped by being on hand to carry the books I pick out. You don’t have much time when other dealers are engaged in the same activity. There are thousands of books; scanning their spines is exhilarating. The sheer pot luck of the experience; what author and what title will crop up? Pick and pass and scan. Pick and pass and scan. Your mind is racing. Recognising titles and estimating their resale value. Pick and pass and scan.

  The Interaction of Books, Life and Death, Llanfihangel, Late August 2006

  To the north and west of Llanfihangel are the high moorlands of the Berwyn, while south-eastwards the land falls towards the Vyrnwy and Severn valleys. Nain (my grandmother) was brought up in the area on a farm.

  Her mother gave her a book entitled Life in a Welsh Countryside – A Social Study of Llanfihangel yng Ngwynfa by Alwyn D Rees. On page 86 is the following paragraph.

  ‘Since the household is asleep when the young man appears on the premises, it is necessary to signal the girl, and this is done by throwing turf, gravel or dried peas at her window. Hence, the practice is called mynd i gnocio (going to knock). An appointment is not essential, a young man may go to knock up a girl to whom he has never spoken before. If he is lucky, she will come to the window, the young man will introduce himself, and if he is acceptable she will let him into the kitchen, and they will have a light meal or a cup of tea together. In Merioneth, the custom is called mynd i gynnig (going to offer, or to try one’s luck).

  Priceless. I can’t sell this book. Can I?

  My Nain’s ashes lie in the village cemetery. Today we are interring my father’s ashes alongside. Family has assembled. My children recite a poem by R. S. Thomas.

  The Bright Field

  I have seen the sun break through

  to illuminate a small field

  for a while, and gone my way

  and forgotten it. But that was the pearl

  of great price, the one field that had

  treasure in it. I realise now

  that I must give all that I have

  to possess it. Life is not hurrying

  on to a receding future, nor hankering after

  an imagined past. It is the turning

  aside like Moses to the miracle

  of the lit bush, to a brightness

  that seemed as transitory as your youth

  once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

  I have some irreverent thoughts that I keep to myself. Earlier, in reading to myself the R. S. Thomas poem ‘Gifts’, I come across the line, ‘From my father my strong heart’ and I can’t help but hear the word ‘fart’. For diplomacy’s sake, we do not use this poem. And we refrain from using another of Thomas’s poems, ‘Welcome to Wales’, although this has lines that seem uncomfortably relevant. Come to Wales / To be buried; the undertaker / Will arrange it for you. / We have the sites and a long line / Of clients going back.

  Years later, a dealer whose quarry was manuscripts and authors’ letters contacts me. Believing me to have the ‘right’ name and connections, I am handed the following in February 2009.

  Thomas (Ronald Stuart)

  A small archive of mostly typed material, mostly early 1980s, including a ra
re cassette and material relating to a BBC Radio 3 broadcast in 1983 celebrating the 70th birthday of RS Thomas, including a rough sketch of the programme/script in the hand of Kevin Crossley-Holland. Twelve folio sheets, a further set of twelve leaves being a second sketch plan for the programme, heavily corrected by Crossley-Holland, plus a further forty-six pages in his hand, a further revised version, typed interviews with D.Z. Phillips, Gwyn Jones, Robin Young, Andrew Waterman and R.S. Thomas himself, all with corrections by Crossley-Holland. Plus an original typescript of Thomas’s book Cymru or Wales?, a related letter from the editor Meic Stephens, a short note in the poet’s holograph written at the end of the letter with his signature, plus a thirteen page typescript of a broadcast by Thomas entitled ‘The Living Poet.’, from 17th November 1980.

  Before submitting the R. S. Thomas material to auction, I decide to give Bangor University the opportunity to acquire the papers. The university has set up a special Research Centre which seeks ‘to promote research into his work, the Centre’s archive contains all of R. S. Thomas’s published works, together with a comprehensive collection of reviews, critical books and articles, interviews and audio-visual material.’

  There is some initial enthusiasm before their interest wanes. Maybe they have a surfeit of material.

  Near to Llanfihangel is Llanfylin, which lies on the River Cain amid gently rolling hills. My Nain went to school in the village as did my father in the war years of the 1940s. We have spent happy days on holiday visiting family in the town.

  Situated at the top of Greenhall hill, south east Llanfylin, is ‘The Lonely Tree.’ It stands above Y Dolydd workhouse and legend has it that if you intend to stay in the area, you must make the trek up the hill to give the tree a hug. Whenever I read ‘Fern Hill’, I think of great afternoon expeditions, as they seem to us then as children, to reach ‘The Lonely Tree’. Used to London streets, we saw the countryside as so exotic, with its gigantic ferns in which we could hide.

  Fern Hill

  Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs

  About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,

  The night above the dingle starry,

  Time let me hail and climb

  Golden in the heydays of his eyes,

  And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns

  And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves

  Trail with daisies and barley

  Down the rivers of the windfall light.

  My cure for feeling blue in Paris is to visit the Pompidou Centre and listen to recordings of the poem made by the author. I recall an oceanography field trip to Laugharne lying on the estuary of the River Tâf. The town is widely known for having been the home of Dylan Thomas and may have been an inspiration for the fictional town of Llareggub in Under Milk Wood.

  As oceanography students, we dyed the beaches by day (to detect movements in the sands) and drank beer by night in what was Dylan’s ‘local’ – Brown’s Hotel. We were let out of a lock in, which means that our 3 a.m. walk down to the beach was really a drunken stagger. A couple of no good boyos up to no good. Joe wanted to ‘contribute’ to the experiment by peeing on the sand in the test area.

  English Bookshops and a Mexican Restaurant, Paris, 1990

  I’m suffering from the would-be writer’s delusion of waiting for the muse to visit; hoping that the ghosts of Hemingway and Joyce will work their magic. I’m in Paris to check out the English book scene and am wondering if can get a job connected to it. I visit the city’s legendary Shakespeare and Company, an independent bookshop located in the fifth arrondissement, in Paris’s Left Bank. Its octogenarian owner George Whitman keeps the shop open late into the night and you can find work but only in exchange for accommodation. George thinks of his temporary tenants – ‘tumbleweeds’ – as budding writers; they are required to read a book a day as part of the deal which allows them to sleep in the shop among the shelves of books.

  The original proprietor was Sylvia Beach and her shop was located at 12 rue de l’Odéon. The shop was frequented by artists of the ‘Lost Generation’, such as Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein and James Joyce. Shakespeare and Company, as well as its literary denizens, was repeatedly mentioned in Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast, a paperback which I automatically buy whenever I come across a copy out of a strange sense of loyalty to my memories of Paris, as well as those of Hemingway’s. Not that I remotely equate the two.

  It was Sylvia Beach who first published Joyce’s book Ulysses in 1922. The book was subsequently banned in the United States and United Kingdom. The original Shakespeare and Company published several other editions of Ulysses under its imprint in later years. D. H. Lawrence wanted Sylvia Beach to published Lady Chatterley’s Lover, to hamper the circulation of an unauthorised edition doing the rounds in Paris. She refused Lawrence’s Lady, citing a lack of capital and time. She later wrote that it was ‘impossible to say that I wanted to be a one-book publisher, what could anybody offer after Ulysses?’

  One morning eight years later, in March 2000, a lady strides through the doors of my shop in Montpellier to drop off a plastic bag bulging with books. ‘Cadeaux’ she shouts, before walking swiftly back out. Such donations aren’t that uncommon. In having a good clear out, people regularly come by to ‘dump’ their unwanted English books. I encourage the practice, as there are usually some books worth saving. This time the bag is stuffed with old textbooks of limited usefulness, but below them, nestling at the bottom of the bag, is a large, and unusual paperback.

  Ulysses: Shakespeare and Company, 1924. Original cover (white with blue lettering). 4 page corrections bound in at rear of volume. 8th Printing. Original Blue wrappers.

  It didn’t stay long in the shop, a dealer in Joyce taking it off my hands. I was going to write that the book returned to Ireland. But it didn’t, of course, as a physical object, hail from Dublin, although its characters did. Joyce’s thoughts were rarely in exile.

  The sale’s proceeds of £400 were shared with my then business partner.

  Back to Paris, and a gruff sounding George is explaining Tumbleweed Hotel’s modus operandi. He invites me to lunch but I make my excuses and leave. Oddly enough, I don’t feel that comfortable in the bookish atmosphere and being around so many bohemian types. I also realise that there is no paid work on offer.

  I get a friendly reception in Tea and Tattered Pages, a retail concept I later adopt in Montpellier. But they say, almost apologetically, that there are no jobs going.

  Abbey Bookshop, a small shop specialising in Canadian books and literature, certainly doesn’t raise any expectations either.

  Nearby is another shop in the vicinity of the Sorbonne which I come across by accident. I recognise its name – Attica – and inside the shop its manager explains that it is the sister business, as it were, of the shop in Rue Folie Méricourt in the eleventh arrondissement, an establishment selling foreign language textbooks in the main and teaching aids.

  David is decidedly foppish with his smart linen jacket and blond hair which he is forever sweeping back from his forehead. He is in his early thirties and articulate in English while retaining a strong French accent. Holding forth is a long-haired, dark complexioned American student called Jan. He talks intensely about the utilitarianism of the Red Indians and David is listening with a distracted air to stories of buffalo being forced off cliffs. (I think the conversation owes its origin to the imminent release of Kevin Costner’s Dances with Wolves.) In ascertaining that Jan is soon to return home, I sense there may be a job opportunity. I buy some books, including Money by Martin Amis, which is probably a subconscious choice, and end up staying a while since David is in chatty mood. He’s pleased to hear that I’m from London. He’s quite the anglophile and I soon learn that he used to live with an ‘East End girl’. I exaggerate my city boy credentials and get offered a couple of afternoons’ work a week.

  David likes to play the generous host; his benev
olence extending to books. The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron is one of his early gifts. It brilliantly recounts the author’s journey through the Middle East to Oxiana – the country of the Oxus, the ancient name for the river Amu Darya, which forms part of the border between Afghanistan and the Soviet Union. It stirs the wanderlust. We travel to Chartres; our travelling ambitions not extending to buying a plane ticket to Kabul. We marvel at the Gothic architecture which years later will be a comforting sight on my travels between France and the UK. The immense cathedral is visible from miles away as you approach it by road through the surrounding flat fields of wheat. Within five minutes of the town’s historical heart is the camp-site Les bords de l’Eure, situated beside the gently flowing waters of the Eure – where I will regularly stay in years to come since it conveniently breaks up the journey between Montpellier and Bangor.

  Ostensibly, I make sure that the books are arranged in alphabetical order. My real task, I suspect, is to alleviate David’s boredom. The shop isn’t that busy and the only regulars are a motley crew of characters, myself included, who rarely leave with purchased books. There is a tall Irish aristocrat who could be a character straight out of a J. P. Donleavy novel. Outspoken and on the wrong side of thirty, he is considerable older than his livewire Serbian girlfriend, whose outrageous ideas mix madness and brilliance. They are scathing in their opinion of George Whitman after spending eight years as ‘tumbleweeds’ before falling out with him. Whitman’s current head honcho is Karl. Ernest and intellectual, he is a much calmer presence. When he isn’t working at Shakespeare and Company, he is publishing books through his own press called Alyscamps. Serendipity runs through our lives and the book world is no exception. Karl publishes in 1994 A Dream in the Luxembourg by Richard Aldington with a preface by Lawrence Durrell. The following year Richard Adlington’s daughter walks into my shop. I know that many consider the central idea in John Guare’s Six Degrees of Separation to be an urban myth. But my experiences suggest that its premise is plausible. That if a person is one step away from each person they know and two steps away from each person who is known by one of the people they know, then everyone is at most six steps away from any other person on Earth.