Books

Books

I AM EXTRAORDINARILY

excited about my lunch this afternoon. Sensationally excited. Sausage and mash with gravy from the pub on the corner – they found a polystyrene box for me to take it outside in as the sunshine was too glorious to miss. Bella has a platter of sushi that she said she found in the discount section of Tesco. Should one eat discounted supermarket sushi? I asked. She seemed to think so.

‘Eddie,’ Bella says through a mouthful of her sushi.

‘Yes?’ I ask through my own mouthful of gravy mash, which is proving just as delicious as I’d hoped.

‘What did you do before you retired?’

‘Hm.’ I swallow. ‘Before the charity shop, I worked in academia.’

‘So you’re Professor Eddie Winston?’

‘Oh no, I was never good enough to be made a professor.’

‘Doctor then?’

‘I did get my PhD, yes.’

‘This is so cool! What was your field? Have you written any books?’

‘Linguistics. And just the one.’

‘Fuck. Off!’ Bella says.

‘Oh, it was only an academic book.’ I wave my hand at her. ‘It’s probably out of print now.’

‘What was it about?’

‘It was an analysis of some of the most famous romantic scenes from literature.’

‘Was it any good?’

‘I’m probably not the best judge of that,’ I tell her. ‘I don’t even have a copy. I think it had a pink cover. Reminded me of an ice-cream sundae.’

‘Dr Eddie Winston,’ she says. ‘Do you miss it?’

I think about this. ‘Not really. I enjoyed teaching my students, but the charity shop is much more fun.’

A few days later, as I am sitting in Pigeon Park attempting to open a particularly tricky packet of nuts, something is placed on my knees. I recognize the dusty strawberries-and-cream cover with its abstract rectangles in the colour of ice-cream sprinkles at once. And in a black box near the top: ‘The Language of Love: Stylistic Analyses of Romance in Fiction. E. Winston.’

‘You were right,’ she says. ‘It’s out of print, but there are plenty of second-hand copies online.’

‘I never thought I’d see this again,’ I say, opening the book, and on the inside cover is the name Gemma Neville, Cartmel College 1994

, and then, beneath her name in much more certain ink, is Ruby V. UCLAN, 1999

, and beneath hers is K.

and something that looks like McKinley

from 2004, Warwick

. All of these people held my book in their hands. How wonderful.

‘I haven’t started it yet,’ Bella says.

‘Oh, you don’t have to read it,’ I tell her, given that I have no idea what is inside. I remember being very proud of the last line on the first page and I believe there’s a pretty juicy analysis of a scene from Othello

, but other than that, it has all crumbled into unimportance in my memory.

‘I know I don’t have

to,’ she tells me, taking the book back and flicking through the orange-ing pages. I can see some passages are underlined, some are highlighted. A few paragraphs have little asterisks in biro drawn beside them. What a compliment that anyone thought my writing worth annotating. ‘But I’m going to anyway,’ she says. ‘You wrote a fucking book, Eddie. You should be really proud.’

‘Oh, I don’t know.’

‘Stop that,’ she says. ‘Don’t be bashful. Own it.’

‘And how would I do that?’

She thinks about this. ‘At the very least, tell Marjie. Get a copy for your flat. Read some excerpts to Pushkin.’

‘Oh, I doubt he’d have much patience for the humanities.’

‘Eddie, he’s a poet!’