Say Goodbye to the Boys Read Free Page B

of grime, and so it was always cool in there, even in a heat wave. ‘Ice box this old place,’ she went on. On winter days she took a hot water bottle with her. That morning she had a paraffin lamp going.
    â€˜What time did you come in last night?’
    â€˜What time did you come in?’ I countered, and she blushed.
    â€˜Told you I was going to the vestry to that social evening, didn’t I?’
    â€˜That finished at nine,’ I said. ‘Who kept you out after that?’ Laura Roberts, nearly ten years a widow, had a friend, a real man about town named William Wilkins, a bachelor and master baker and chapel deacon.
    â€˜None of your cheek,’ she said, dimples in her face. ‘I heard you come in. You fell down the stairs. Twice.’
    â€˜Was he up there with you? What did he say?’
    She gave me a push. ‘Oh be quiet – you and your dirty mind! You go and do that job for me and wash your tongue with caustic soda.’ She clouted me with the Daily Mirror . ‘Go on!’
    Some of the shelving at the back of the shop had collapsed under the weight of books and she wanted it fixing. I edged my way around leaning towers of learned works that no one, surely to God, had read or would ever want to read. My father had followed every sale in the county and Laura too was still buying. ‘You ought to ask the kids over on bonfire night,’ I called out, and turned a corner around some sagging shelves and found myself looking at a real live customer. ‘I was talking to Mrs Roberts,’ I explained.
    He snapped a book shut and stuffed it back on the shelf and gave me a dirty look. A tall, spidery old man, gold-rimmed glasses very low on an inflamed nose, a cigarette-yellow, gone-to-seed moustache. He had a trilby perched on his head and wore a black overcoat that was frayed at the cuffs, a scarf around his neck.
    â€˜Be so good as not to bellow,’ he said, silver in his voice.
    I swept books off a leaning shelf. The old man was muttering to himself. I banged a hammer under a shelf and went on banging; to hell with trade.
    â€˜I am looking for The Historical Essays of Thomas Babington Macaulay ,’ I heard him say.
    â€˜Ask Mrs Roberts,’ I said as I aimed at a nail.
    â€˜Mrs Roberts has never heard of Mr Macaulay,’ he snapped back. ‘Haven’t you got a catalogue?’
    â€˜No,’ I said, and kept on banging. Maelgwyn was littered with old men like him, spindle-legged old coots who had retired from business and who always looked tipsy with all that sea air. And this one I’d seen before, not getting enough kick from the ozone, dipping his nose into a glass of gin around the pubs. ‘We’ve got bags of Bunyans if you’re interested,’ I told him.
    â€˜Ignoramus,’ he growled, and reached for another book. There was a cigarette in his mouth now. He kept on flipping it against the tip of his long, hooked nose. Then taking it out had a coughing spell which sent him into a rage. He reached into his pocket and held out a card. ‘Here laddie. The Historical Essays of Thomas Babington Macaulay . Can you remember that – Philip Roberts?’
    I looked at the card. Didn’t touch it. Just looked.
    â€˜Well take it; take it.’ He had bright blue eyes, the eyes of a young man. I took the card. It said ‘ Amos Ellyott ’, a London address crossed out and ‘ Flat 2b Ocean View, Maelgwyn ’ written underneath. ‘If you find it, bring it. Understood?’ He stared, waiting for me to acknowledge.
    â€˜You’ll be lucky,’ I said and started hammering again.
    He had to have the last word. ‘I have been blessed with good fortune all my life,’ he yelled at me, and whipping the scarf around his neck headed for the door.
    When I had fixed the shelf, I went over to Laura and said, ‘that old buzzard wants a copy of Macaulay’s essays. Even wants them delivering. And