Part 9 (1/2)
Connie senses he hopes that will disqualify him, but Woody says ”That's going to take you what, five minutes at your speed? We'll carry the seats down and you follow as soon as you're done. Gonna help me, Connie? Jill needs to be shelving.”
”You go first, Jill.” Connie feels absurd for saying this as they reach the doorway, because she's too aware of trying to establish she's still a manager. She stacks four chairs to Woody's seven as Wilf sinks into the last one with the Brodie Oates book. ”Lots of new books for you, Jill, and don't forget Lorraine's,” she can't or at any rate doesn't resist saying on her six-legged way through the stockroom.
”I'm not about to forget her.”
Woody plants his stack before the lift and knuckles the b.u.t.ton. ”See to these while I tell the group everything's on its way, can you?” he says. ”I'll catch you at the bottom.”
The rapid trapped staccato of his footfalls on the stairs is brought to an end by the clank of the bar on the door, and then Connie hears the lift hauling itself upwards. Beneath its creaks there's another sound: a woman's m.u.f.fled voice. Whoever she's addressing seems unable to get a word in, or is she the voice of the lift? If Connie pressed her ear against the door she might hear what's being said, but before she can bring herself to do so the lift announces that it's opening and twitches wide.
She isn't sure why she doesn't quite trust it. She props a chair against the double thickness of the door and 115 transfers the stacks by degrees into the lift: four, three, three. As she ventures in to push the b.u.t.ton, she's poised to dodge out again. The lift tells her it's closing and is meant to wait a few seconds for anyone who's entering. Instead the eager door shoves the chair at her, and there isn't room for her to sidle past it. As she flings the chair aside she realises she ought to have used it to force the lift open. She's certain she has trapped herself, but she scrambles out and almost falls headlong as the door snaps shut at her back.
She stares as if that may convince Jill she either didn't stumble or intended to. Did she hear the briefest pause, almost like a stifled giggle, between the syllables of the second word the lift p.r.o.nounced? It must have been a fault in the mechanism. She trots downstairs as Woody reappears from the sales floor. ”Should be a lively discussion,” he says. ”They aren't just readers, they're a writers' group.”
Connie refrains from imagining that he receives a m.u.f.fled answer from within the lift. It must have said it was opening, because after a pause that makes him click his tongue as though summoning an animal, it does. ”Oh, I thought someone was in here,” he says.
She a.s.sumes that's a rebuke for leaving the chairs unattended. The one she threw aside has fallen over. He plants it on the heap of three and loads them with three more, and strides out with his arms locked under them while she dashes to retrieve the others. Woody must think she wants to match his speed. He holds the door to the shop open just long enough for her to slip through. ”Here we are, everyone,” he calls. ”Please take a seat.”
As Connie follows him into the Teenage alcove, the people she saw wandering the aisles and lingering over books converge. Most of them are old enough to travel free of charge, apart from two young women who succeed in looking both intense and timid. Once the chairs are arranged in an oval the oldest of the group, a short stout woman with hair plaited like a greying cake, who's wearing voluminous green slacks and a cardigan so 116 multicoloured it borders on the biblical, remains standing. ”Are you both talking to us?” she elects herself to ask.
”Our volunteer's on his way, ma'am.” Woody is staring at the door as if this may conjure Wilf when Agnes calls overhead ”Manager to counter, please. Manager to counter.”
She needs someone to authorise a refund to a teenager with stubbly pimples who has returned a concert video by Single Mothers on Drugs. As Connie initials the voucher, Wilf emerges from hiding. ”Here's our champion reader,” Woody announces, which seems not to appeal to Wilf, and makes for the tills as the customer, having crowned himself with a motorcycle helmet, tramps out of the shop. ”What happened there?” Woody demands.
”What did he say was wrong, Anyes?”
”No music on it, and it didn't look like a concert either.”
Woody frowns as if he thinks Connie should have learned at least that much before authorising any refund, and then he grabs the tape. ”I'm going down to the video store to look at this.”
As soon as he's out of the shop, Agnes says ”Connie, don't you think we should all go to the funeral?”
”We can't, can we? Somebody needs to be here.”
”Couldn't we close for it would only be a couple of hours or so? Don't you think Lorraine is worth that much?”
”There's no use saying that to me, Anyes. It's Woody you'd have to persuade.”
”I thought you might ask him if you thought it was important.”
”I'm sure you can. You seem capable enough,” Connie says while she tries to hear what's happening in the Teenage alcove. The woman with the greyish ma.s.s of plaits has folded her arms so fiercely she appears to have no b.r.e.a.s.t.s and is pointing one forefinger at Wilf. ”What's your interpretation?” she's saying in a teacher's schoolyard voice. ”It's your choice of book.”
”It isn't really. The girl who chose it isn't, isn't here.”
”It's your shop's choice, and you're the shop. We only 117 bought it because we were told. Hands up anyone who would have otherwise.” She rubs her lips together for the instant during which she shakes her head at the tentative gestures of the two young women. ”So explain why you set it if it wasn't just someone's idea of a joke,” she challenges Wilf.
”It could have been the author's, some of it anyway, do you think? He'll be here next week in person if you want to ask him.”
”We're asking you. Your boss says n.o.body reads like you. What do we all want to know?”
”What the ending's meant to mean,” says one young woman, and the other nods.
”The ending,” their spokeswoman cries decisively and jerks her open hands at Wilf, paroling her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. ”We'd all like to hear what he makes of that, wouldn't we?”
A murmur of general agreement is combined with laughter bereft of mirth. Wilf sits forward on his chair and lifts his gaze clear of his audience, only to catch Connie's eye across the sales floor. He glances hastily away and blinks at n.o.body in particular as he mumbles ”Maybe it depends how you understand the rest of the book.”
”How do you?” the second young woman is eager to discover, but is overruled. ”We'll come to that,” the organiser says. ”We want to know what we're expected to get out of the very last paragraph.”
”What did you all think? Did you have different ideas?”
”Let's hear yours first. Your boss said if anybody could make sense of it you could.”
Connie has stayed behind the counter so as not to embarra.s.s him, but she needs to deal with the events leaflets. She's pacing sidelong when his eyes meet hers again. His trapped stare feels as if it's desperate to clutch at her. ”I can't,” he says and lurches to his feet like a puppet hoisted by its mottled head. He stumbles between the chairs and seems about to flee behind the scenes, then abruptly veers towards Connie. ”Could someone else possibly do this?” he pleads. 118 ”What is it, Wilf?”
”I'm...” He wags his fingers in front of his face and pinches the air as if he's trying to drag something out of his brain. ”I've ...8 ”It'll be a migraine, will it?” Agnes tells him.
”I don't know, I've never had one,” he says, then peers at her with something like grat.i.tude. ”Before,” he adds.
Connie wonders if Agnes means to adopt Lorraine's role of speaking up for her colleagues even if they haven't asked her to. ”Are you really not going to be able to carry on, Wilf?”
His eyes glisten like the shrouded tarmac outside. ”I'm sorry. I'm letting everyone down.”
Presumably that's a yes. Connie would take charge of the reading group herself, but she has only leafed through the book. She lifts the nearest phone and sends her voice into the air in search of Jill. ”Let your people know we're sending a subst.i.tute,” she says to Wilf, ”and then what will you do?”
”There's nowhere you can lie down, is there?” Agnes says. ”Try sitting with your eyes shut. You won't be able to drive home.”
”Can you leave your shelving for later, Jill,” Connie doesn't ask. ”Apparently Wilf has a migraine and we need someone to talk to his group about the Brodie Oates book.”
”I don't know if I liked it.”
”Then don't lie about it. Get them talking, that's your job. They're in Teenage. Come straight down,” Connie says and cuts her off.
Wilf has trudged to give the readers' group the news. The plaited woman throws up her hands and her gaze as he retreats to the armchair nearest to his section and sinks into it, closing his eyes. He opens them almost at once and stares at the books ahead of him before covering his eyes with a hand and sinking deeper into the chair. Connie is about to offer him some paracetamol when Jill appears 119 with a gla.s.s of water and a brace of aspirin. Once she has ministered to him he hides his eyes again as she marches to the Teenage alcove without glancing at Connie. She perches on the edge of the empty chair and says ”I'm Jill. Who liked the book?”
Connie has to hold her mouth straight as Jill is met by silence. Eventually the young women admit they rather did. Connie would linger to hear how Jill deals with the plaited woman, but that won't repair the leaflets. She leaves the counter as Woody stalks into the shop. ”Let me know if this guy returns anything else,” he says, dropping the ca.s.sette on the Returns shelf. ”It's been taped over.”
”What with?”
”Some old historical movie. One of your battles, it looks like. It isn't even tuned in right. No wonder he didn't want to keep it.” By now Woody's staring at Wilf and Jill. ”What's been going on while I was out?”
”Wilf's got a migraine,” says Agnes. ”Jill's read the book.”
”Tell him to sit upstairs till he recovers, for G.o.d's sake,” Woody tells Connie.
She's taking a resentful hot-faced step towards Wilf when Agnes says ”Connie said I had to ask you about closing for the afternoon so we can all go to Lorraine's funeral.”
”Woody wants you to sit upstairs so the public doesn't see you.” Having hurried to tell Wilf that, Connie strays back towards the counter to hear Woody say ”Why all? Some of you didn't get on with her too well is how I remember it.”
”I'm certain her parents would like everyone to go.”