Read Online A Perfectly Good Man by Patrick Gale - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Patrick Gale
Ads: Link
had reviewed and embroidered it in private. Once he got to Portsmouth, he released snippets of it in bus queues, on trains, in waiting rooms and in bars until he quite believed it himself and could grow genuinely moist eyed at the mention of his dead wife. Wife and child retained the names of their faithless real-life counterparts – Sylvia and Lily – because it gave him a cheap pleasure to murder them in conversation and because he fancied their unassuming, lower-middle class Englishness lent an added sheen to his sentimental history. Changing the name he went by could not have been simpler and, even though he was obliged to let the probation office know, he felt it made him less vulnerable to anyone from his past life who might seek him out.
He had always been careful with money and, even after the divorce settlement, retained enough savings to start a new life. Returning to teaching was out of the question. Instead, with the savings that had been harvesting a handsome interest in his absence, he took on a rundown second-hand bookshop whose owner had just died in harness. It had a lavatory, a sink, a kettle and there was just room to squeeze a single bed into the office so – probably illegally – he lived in the shop too.
Most of the stock was inferior, paperback stuff, the greasy fruit of house clearances, and it was hard to see how the previous proprietor had made an honest living. The most popular line, he soon discovered, were the tattered old porn magazines in the basement’s ‘adult’ section. Of these he duly sealed the less damaged in cellophane and began to market them at a premium as vintage erotica.
The other healthy market was signed for and unsigned first editions. He soon found there were collectors of these – usually men – who seemed to have less interest in the contents of a book than in its condition. Other dealers’ catalogues and prices taught him what to look out for. Every Monday he kept the shop closed to trawl house clearance sales and down-at-heel auctions where books were sold by weight or by the yard. And while he was minding the shop, he would pick through his latest haul, cleaning the better purchases and wrapping them neatly in cellophane. He became an extremely neat wrapper. When it was worth his time, he would visit book festivals and join the long (or sometimes surprisingly short) queues to have a famous writer sign an old copy of one of their books.
‘Just your signature,’ he would always tell them to prevent them writing all good wishes or some such devaluing nonsense.
By degrees his principal income began to come from online sales – a business for which the shop, which was hardly in a prime bibliophilic district, became little more than an office.
His time in prison and the reasons for it had killed off any impulse to form a relationship, even had the opportunity arisen. When his need became distracting he visited a prostitute, of which Portsmouth had such an abundance that he never needed to see the same one twice and so suffer the shame of her recognition or bad memories. Outside again, however, he was assailed by a bitter loneliness he had never felt as a prisoner. Free to move among people once more, he became sharply aware that he was noticed only for the brief registering of disgust. At least disgust involved notice. More wounding was the not being noticed at all, the skating over of eyes, the automatic, impersonal courtesies of transaction. He became obsessed with eye contact. When he paid for something, he would hold back his money a second or two until a salesgirl met his eye. When someone bought a book or magazine off him – especially when they bought a magazine – he would make them – make them! – return his gaze. And he would smile. In prison he was in all probability clinically depressed but now that he was free he taught himself to smile again, practising whenever he faced his spattered mirror. Smiles, he learned, were a challenge less easily
He had always been careful with money and, even after the divorce settlement, retained enough savings to start a new life. Returning to teaching was out of the question. Instead, with the savings that had been harvesting a handsome interest in his absence, he took on a rundown second-hand bookshop whose owner had just died in harness. It had a lavatory, a sink, a kettle and there was just room to squeeze a single bed into the office so – probably illegally – he lived in the shop too.
Most of the stock was inferior, paperback stuff, the greasy fruit of house clearances, and it was hard to see how the previous proprietor had made an honest living. The most popular line, he soon discovered, were the tattered old porn magazines in the basement’s ‘adult’ section. Of these he duly sealed the less damaged in cellophane and began to market them at a premium as vintage erotica.
The other healthy market was signed for and unsigned first editions. He soon found there were collectors of these – usually men – who seemed to have less interest in the contents of a book than in its condition. Other dealers’ catalogues and prices taught him what to look out for. Every Monday he kept the shop closed to trawl house clearance sales and down-at-heel auctions where books were sold by weight or by the yard. And while he was minding the shop, he would pick through his latest haul, cleaning the better purchases and wrapping them neatly in cellophane. He became an extremely neat wrapper. When it was worth his time, he would visit book festivals and join the long (or sometimes surprisingly short) queues to have a famous writer sign an old copy of one of their books.
‘Just your signature,’ he would always tell them to prevent them writing all good wishes or some such devaluing nonsense.
By degrees his principal income began to come from online sales – a business for which the shop, which was hardly in a prime bibliophilic district, became little more than an office.
His time in prison and the reasons for it had killed off any impulse to form a relationship, even had the opportunity arisen. When his need became distracting he visited a prostitute, of which Portsmouth had such an abundance that he never needed to see the same one twice and so suffer the shame of her recognition or bad memories. Outside again, however, he was assailed by a bitter loneliness he had never felt as a prisoner. Free to move among people once more, he became sharply aware that he was noticed only for the brief registering of disgust. At least disgust involved notice. More wounding was the not being noticed at all, the skating over of eyes, the automatic, impersonal courtesies of transaction. He became obsessed with eye contact. When he paid for something, he would hold back his money a second or two until a salesgirl met his eye. When someone bought a book or magazine off him – especially when they bought a magazine – he would make them – make them! – return his gaze. And he would smile. In prison he was in all probability clinically depressed but now that he was free he taught himself to smile again, practising whenever he faced his spattered mirror. Smiles, he learned, were a challenge less easily
Similar Books
