Postscript

Postscript

People are footsteps, silhouettes passing. Few of them stop to ring the bell over the door of the bookshop any more. The windows are dirty and the interior is dark, ecclesiastically silent, peppery with dust, fruity with mould. The calendar on the wall is out of date. The radio next to the bargain bin no longer works. Old man Tilston, loose within his waistcoat, eats muesli and smokes rolling tobacco behind the counter. He is wearing his father's shoes today, the leather soft with polishing. They are fine shoes, kept safe in the suitcase under his bed, worn rarely. Yet he is a son with no sons of his own.

The morning passes with tea and cigarettes. Low afternoon cloud softens the light in the shop further. Habit stirs him and he rises from his chair. He finds himself sorting through his stock in the shed in the yard behind the building. A single electric bulb dangles on a dusty flex from high up near the roof, its illumination stark and yellow. Boxes of books rise in jagged pillars into the light, each box filled with rotting whodunits, thrillers, romances, cookery books, diet plans, war stories, biographies of politicians, film stars and sporting champions. The same titles appear again and again. It is not clear to old man Tilston what this means.

He drags a box out into the daylight and stoops to search through it. Children are playing behind the shop next door, their high voices like the cries of animals. There are effortful noises on the other side of the wall and the clatter of a dustbin lid and a small face come into view to stare down into the yard. It belongs to a little girl, curious and somewhat wary, then shy, not quite believing in the pale, grey figure who looks up at her in surprise and waves a grimy fingered hand.

"Who are you?" the little girl asks.

"A bookseller," answers old man Tilston after looking at the book in his hand. "Who are you?"

"I'm me."

"Do you like being you?"

"I think so. I've got to go now."

With another clatter, the girl is gone.

Old man Tilston bends again and continues with his work. The books are damp and smell of the earth. Many of them are twisted and crumpled as if something inside them has attempted to get out. Others are coming apart, their spines broken, glue and threads exposed. None of the covers speak to him. He no longer recognises authors' names, titles, publishing dates, no longer knows what is valuable and will sell. Whenever he opens one of the books and tries to read he soon loses his way. The sentences are solid, but the paragraphs recede into mist and the pages dim to nothing as they are turned.

It is gloomy back in the shop. Old man Tilston switches on the lamp over the cash register and sits back down behind the counter. He is often frightened by nightfall now and he knows he must keep still until the feeling goes away. He tells himself that today he is wearing his father's shoes. But he does not try to understand who he has become or why he is here in the bookshop rather than somewhere else. It is better not to question this world of his, a world walled up with books, explained only by its presence. A world that must make sense even if this sense is mysterious to him, nothing more than a sunset fading behind a hill.

But he does remember. Each day now his younger self comes to smile at him from the silence and shadows of the shop. Come home, the boy says. Come with me. And then his parents' faces appear. He hears their voices, sees the house by the park, recalls whole days in detail both tender and real.

"A pigeon was trapped in the greenhouse," his father says. "I heard the flutter of his wings. Wasn't expecting it and it gave me a shock. And he was a right old job to catch. Didn't want to be where he was, didn't want my hands around him either. Fear, you see. No reason to it."

"I wonder why he went in there in the first place," says mother.

"Not to look at my tomato plants, that's for sure. He's a lucky bird, my uncle Stephen would've put him in a pie."

His father locks up the shop, juggles the keys from hand to hand before putting them away. They stand on the pavement and watch the cars go by. "That one's a Rover," says his father, "you can tell from the grill. Very good car. The next one is an Austin like ours. Do you recognise the badge?"

His mother sleeps in a deckchair at the seaside, a newspaper over her face. One of her hands touches the sand. The towel used to dry him after his paddle at the water's edge is draped across her lap. He tugs at the hem of her dress, but she does not wake.

Hour by hour, day by day, the boy he was has grown harder to abandon, old man Tilston watching him, being him, feeling what it is like to wake expectant and impatient each morning with strong bones and a green spirit. The fog of make-believe that is the bookshop intrudes less and less. At first the truth lasted only a moment, but of late old man Tilston arrives back to find an afternoon, a day, gone.

Today is different. Stranger than before. The boy is on his way across the fields. It is good to be walking, to be alone and free. The sun is shining through the leaves. The air is damp and fresh. He comes to a hedgerow and the path leads on through some trees. There is something on a stump ahead, a book. It's an old book with worn leather covers, the pages thin and the print small. Time is a silver watch in the boy's pocket; so much time he has, the seconds unhurried, the minutes long and light-filled. He sits down on the stump and begins to read. The birds quieten and everything becomes still. The words in the book are a journey and he steps along with them. There will be a final full stop and he must travel on until he meets it.

The day vanishes.