How to Find Love in a Book Shop(7)

Julius Nightingale had started working there to supplement his student grant since he’d first come up to Oxford, just over four years ago. And now he’d completed his Masters, he didn’t want to leave Oxford or the shop. He didn’t want to leave academia either, really, but he knew he had to get on with life, that his wasn’t the sort of background that could sustain a life of learning. What he was going to do he had no idea as yet.

He’d decided to spend the summer after his MA scraping some money together, working at the shop full-time. Then maybe squeeze in some travel before embarking upon the gruelling collation of a CV, job applications and interviews. Apart from a brilliant first, there was nothing much to mark him out, he thought. He’d directed a few plays, but who hadn’t? He’d edited a poetry magazine, but again – hardly unique. He liked live music, wine, pretty girls – there was nothing out of the ordinary about him, except the fact that most people seemed to like him. As a West London boy with a posh but penniless single mother, he’d gone to a huge inner city comprehensive. He was streetwise but well mannered and so mixed easily with both the toffs and the grammar school types who had less confidence than their public school peers.

It was the last weekend in August, and he was thinking about going up to his mother’s and heading for the Notting Hill Carnival. He’d been going since he was small and he loved the atmosphere, the pounding bass, the pervasive scent of dope, the sense that anything could happen. He was about to close up when the door open and a girl whirlwinded in. She had a tangle of hair, bright red – it couldn’t be natural; it was the colour of a pillar box – and china-white skin, even whiter against the black lace of her dress. She looked, he thought, like a star, one of those singers who paraded around as if they’d been in the dressing-up box and had put everything on.

‘I need a book,’ she told him, and he was surprised at her accent. American. Americans, in his experience, came in clutching guidebooks and cameras, not looking as if they’d walked out of a nightclub.

‘Well, you’ve come to the right place, then,’ he replied, hoping his tone sounded teasing, not tart.

She looked at him, then held her finger and thumb apart about two inches. ‘It needs to be at least this big. It has to last me the plane journey home. Ten hours. And I read very fast.’

‘OK.’ Julius liked a brief. ‘Well, my first suggestion would be Anna Karenina.’

She smiled, showing perfect white teeth.

‘“All happy families are alike. Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”’

He nodded.

‘OK. What about Ulysses? James Joyce? That would keep you quiet.’

She struck a theatrical pose. ‘“Yes I said yes I will yes.”’

She was quoting Molly Bloom, the hero’s promiscuous wife, and for a moment Julius imagined she was just how Molly had looked, before reminding himself Molly was a work of fiction. He was impressed. He didn’t know many people who could quote Joyce. He refused to be intimidated by her apparently universal knowledge of literature. He would scale his recommendation down to something more populist, but a book he had long admired.

‘The World According to Garp?’

She beamed at him. She had an impossibly big dimple in her right cheek.

‘Good answer. I love John Irving. But I prefer The Hotel New Hampshire to Garp.’

Julius grinned. It was a long time since he had met someone as widely read as this girl. He knew well-read people, of course: Oxford was brimming with them. But they tended to be intellectual snobs. This girl was a challenge, though.

‘How about Middlemarch?’

She opened her mouth to respond, and he could see immediately he’d hit upon something she hadn’t read. She had the grace to laugh.

‘Perfect,’ she announced. ‘Do you have a copy?’

‘Of course.’ He led her over to the bookshelf and pulled out an orange Penguin classic.

They stood there for a moment, Julius holding the book, the girl looking at him.

‘What’s your favourite book?’ she asked.

He was flummoxed. Both by the question and the fact she had asked it. He turned it over in his mind. He was about to answer when she held up a finger.

‘You can only have one answer.’

‘But it’s like asking which is your favourite child!’

‘You have to answer.’

He could see she was going to stand her ground. He had his answer – 1984, small but perfectly crafted, never failed to chill and thrill him – but he wasn’t going to give in to her that easily.

‘I’ll tell you,’ he said, not sure where his boldness had come from. ‘If you come out for a drink with me.’

She crossed her arms and tilted her head to one side. ‘I don’t know that I’m that interested.’ But her smile belied her statement.

‘You should be,’ he answered, and walked away from her over to the till, hoping she would follow. She was capricious. She wanted a tussle and for him not to give up. He was determined to give her a run for her money.

She did follow. He rang up the book and she handed over a pound note.

‘There’s a band on tonight,’ he told her. ‘It’ll be rough cider and grubby punks, but I can’t think of a better way for an American girl to spend her last night in England.’