Piranha to Scurfy Read Free

came. It was three-quarters empty, as was usual at this hour. He had read in the paper that London Transport was thinking of introducing Ladies Only carriages in the tube.Why not Men Only carriages as well? Preferably, when you considered what some young men were like, Middle-aged Scholarly Gentlemen Only carriages. The train stopped for a long time in the tunnel between Mile End and Bethnal Green. Naturally, passengers were offered no explanation for the delay. He waited a long time for the Piccadilly Line train, apparently because of some signaling failure outside Cockfosters, but eventually arrived at his destination just before eleven-thirty.
    The sun had come out and it was very hot. The air smelled of diesel and cooking and beer, very different from Leytonstone, on the verges of Epping Forest. Ribbon went into Dillon’s, where no one showed the slightest interest in his arrival, and the first thing to assault his senses was an enormous pyramidal display of Kingston Marle’s
Demogorgon.
Each copy was as big as the average-sized dictionary and encased in a jacket printed in silver and two shades of red. A hole in the shape of a pentagram in the front cover revealed beneath it the bandaged face of some mummified corpse. The novel had already been reviewed, and the poster on the wall above the display quoted the
Sunday Express
’s encomium in exaggeratedly large type: READERS WILL HAVE FAINTED WITH FEAR BEFORE PAGE 10.
    The price, at £18.99, was a disgrace, but there was no help for it. A legitimate outlay, if ever there was one. Ribbon took a copy and, from what a shop assistant had once told him were called “dump bins,” helped himself to two paperbacks of books he had already examined and commented on in hardcover. There was no sign in the whole shop of Eric Owlberg’s
Paving Hell.
Ribbon’s dilemma was to ask or not to ask. The young woman behind the counter put his purchases in a bag, and he handed her Mummy’s direct-debit Visa card. Lightly, as if it were an afterthought, the most casual thing in the world, he asked about the new Owlberg.
    “Already sold out, has it?” he said with a little laugh.
    Her face was impassive. “We’re expecting them in tomorrow.”
    He signed the receipt B. J. Ribbon and passed it to the girl without a smile. She need not think he was going to make this trip all over again tomorrow. He made his way to Hatchard’s, on the way depositing the Dillon’s bag in a litter bin and transferring the books into the plain plastic holdall he carried rolled up in his pocket. If the staff at Hatchard’s had seen Dillon’s name on the bag he would have felt rather awkward. Now they would think he was carrying his purchases from a chemist or a photographic store.
    One of them came up to him the minute he entered Hatchard’s. He recognized her as the marketing manager, a small, good-looking blond woman with an accent. The very faintest of accents, but still enough for Ribbon to be put off her from the start. She recognized him too, and to his astonishment and displeasure addressed him by his name.
    “Good morning, Mr. Ribbon.”
    Inwardly he groaned, for he remembered having had forebodings about this at the time. On one occasion he had ordered a book, he was desperate to see an early copy, and had been obliged to say who he was and give them his number. He said good morning in a frosty sort of voice.
    “How nice to see you,” she said. “I think you may be in search of the new Kingston Marle, am I right?
Demogorgon
? Copies came in today.”
    Ribbon felt terrible. The plastic of his carrier was translucent rather than transparent, but he was sure she must be able to see the silver and the two shades of red glowing through the cloudy film that covered it. He held it behind his back in a manner he hoped looked natural.
    “It was
Paving Hell
I actually wanted,” he muttered, wondering what rule of life or social usage made it necessary for him to explain his wishes to marketing