My circuitous route into Dale’s arms had been like one of those yarns about a stranger in town who goes tramping down street after street, eventually to find the place he sought was round the corner a few yards from where he started. Having at last crossed into the territory of physical love, I felt that everything between us was right, exactly as it ought to be. From that first night together, it was to be the two of us against the world.
The next day, just after one, he rang me at the bookshop. His voice was so soft and deep that it made me long to touch him. ‘You all right?’ he asked.‘I’m in a daze. Jeremy’s noticed. He saw me gazing out of the window, sneaked up and startled me by slamming one of the big encyclopaedias shut behind my head.’
‘I’m as bad. In the staff restaurant, I went up to the counter but couldn’t face eating anything. All I had was a cup of tea.’
‘You can’t not eat.’
‘I’ll recover.’
Later, Jeremy called me into the little office at the back of the shop to help him with some figure work, and I explained the cause of my dreamy abstraction. ‘You, Dale, ah… I see! Good. Steady, dependable type. I’m pleased, hope it all works out for you. You must both come over for a meal at my place, Sunday after next if you’re free. Actually, Ben, there is something I have to tell you, another development with the business.’
‘Oh?’
‘Well, development might not be quite the right word, it’s not going to affect you all that much. You know that empty shop a couple of doors down that used to be a funeral parlour? Well, someone I know has taken it. As a matter of fact, in a way, you are partly responsible. Remember those astrology books Dale’s aunt had? I contacted an old friend who is fascinated by the paranormal, to see if she might be interested. She told me she had been thinking of setting up a little business, a psychic shop or something of that sort. When I mentioned the old funeral parlour, she decided to come and see it. She has wasted no time, she’s taking possession next week. She’ll be on her own at first, most of the time anyway, and she’s hoping we will be able to cover for her if she has to slip out somewhere during shop hours.’
‘A psychic shop? Does that mean making appointments for people to have their fortunes told?’
‘No, not fortune telling… well, possibly, I’m not sure. More likely Alicia will sell things. Books, crystal balls, magic potions, I don’t know, whatever nonsense that kind of shop sells.’
‘Sounds a bit eccentric.’
‘Now don’t pull a face. It’s a matter of business. If a customer came in here wanting a book about racehorses or famous casinos, I would try to find it for him even though I think gambling is a waste of time, effort and money. We may not think much of astrology and crystal ball gazing, but if others attach importance to it, who are we to sneer? Actually, Alicia is quite an expert in all things Egyptian. She’s been engaged as a professional… been on archaeological digs in the desert sands, can translate the hieroglyphics. Anyway, wouldn’t be a great problem to keep an eye on her shop for half an hour or so if she has to pop out, would it?’
‘Well, if she’s a friend of yours obviously… but we are trying to build up the business here.’
‘She will reciprocate when she’s settled in, I’m sure. Should make it possible for me to show you more of the book trade, take you along to some of the book auctions, that sort of thing.’
‘Oh, good.’
‘We mustn’t be over-critical of paranormal fancies,’ he coaxed. ‘Ask yourself how rational and logical a lot of our own trade is? We make sales to collectors desperate to get their hands on books on arcane subjects of no importance or relevance to the world we live in. Think of the Victorian good housekeeping guides. Aren’t they merely curiosities from a bygone age? Are we entitled to sniff at the items a psychic shop sells? Alicia’s a good sort. Outspoken, but a good sort.’
Whether she was a good sort or not, what would wags like Smiles at the Give and Take say if they found out about me helping in a psychic shop?
The appearance of a sign saying ‘Hatshepsut’s Pavilion’ above the old funeral parlour’s window warned me that Jeremy’s friend Alicia was about to manifest herself. She was a woman in her forties with large brown eyes and shortish hair, fawn but tinted to a darker shade of brown in places – or it might have been the other way around. When Jeremy introduced us, she gripped my right hand firmly in both of hers for so long I wondered if she meant to keep it. I said, ‘Unusual name you’ve given your new shop?’
‘It’s Egyptian. Everyone has heard of Cleopatra and Nefertiti. Well, Hatshepsut was the only female Egyptian pharaoh, from an earlier period, a highly successful woman, well regarded as a ruler, and she ought to be better known. Glad you asked. Has Jeremy mentioned the possibility of giving me a hand?’
‘He has mentioned minding the shop for five minutes if you have to pop out anywhere.’ Jeremy nodded.
‘Well, that would be a help, but I’ve got boxes full of books on astrology and other occult subjects.
Jeremy says you’re an ace at organizing stock. Loads of stuff is being delivered over the next couple of days. Be a change for you from the worm-eaten old tomes Jeremy fills his shelves with. What do you say? Are you up for it?’
Jeremy showed no reaction on hearing his valuable rare books described as worm-eaten old tomes. Offended for him, I said defensively, ‘Jeremy buys things that his business sense tells him are in demand. What do you mean, am I up for it? I’ve got a boyfriend.’
‘I was not referring to your sex life. Are you willing to give me a hand with my stock?’Jeremy said, ‘I did tell Alicia we would find space in the basement for her books while the shopfitters are in at Hatshepsut’s. If you have time, she would appreciate it if you would go through what she has.’
Wanting to sound unenthusiastic without actually refusing, I said, ‘No problem, though I’m not familiar with the subject area.’
Alicia’s boxes of books were too heavy for me to manage on my own, and Jeremy was gasping for air after helping me manoeuvre one of them down to his basement. I got him a chair and took the rest of her books down by myself in manageable quantities. Most had come from a bookshop in Hay-onWye that had closed, and luckily the owner had compiled a list in alphabetical order, everything from Astrology to Zend-Avesta. They were a mix of second-hand books and new ones that had been published years ago and had not sold. Checking the market value on the internet and updating the prices, some of which were still in pounds, shillings and pence, took me hours.
The shopfitters needed only a week to install shelves and furnishings for the new psychic emporium. After they had left, Alicia invited us in to see how it was progressing. Wind chimes suspended above the door tinkled ethereally as we entered. Shelves and glass display cases had been positioned so as to create all sorts of nooks and crannies, good for encouraging people to linger and inspect the curiosities on sale, but the hidden corners increased the risk of pilfering. ‘Have you thought of getting a closed circuit TV system,’ I asked, ‘to discourage the kleptomaniacs?’
‘You’re very cynical,’ she said. ‘Don’t you think people who are interested in the occult will be above that sort of thing?’
‘I’d have thought the opposite. You’re not relying on extra-sensory perception to find them out, are you?’
It was meant as a joke, but she said seriously, ‘To be truthful with you, I’m not at all gifted myself. Not that I haven’t tried, but…’ she shook her head. ‘Oh dear. You’ve sensed something though, haven’t you? Don’t say there’s a jinx, please. After all, the place used to be a funeral parlour.’ I did not know how to respond to this. She turned to Jeremy. ‘He’s not keeping anything from me, is he?’
‘Ben wasn’t hinting at anything being wrong, Alicia. It’s his sense of humour. You’ll get used to him.’
‘Well, let’s hope so. It would be really useful if he could keep shop for me when I go to my Egyptology meetings on Wednesday afternoons.’
‘What do you say, Ben?’ Jeremy asked.
The hour helping out now and again had suddenly lengthened to half a day every week. Thinking quickly I reminded Jeremy he often went to a book fair on Wednesdays.
‘He’s right, Alicia. They’re about once a month.’
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I asked you round to see the shop, not to twist your arm. One or two of my friends might help out if I’m stuck. Let’s leave it for now. How about a glass of wine and some nibbles, as a little thank you for your help so far?’
She had only two chairs, so I cleared a space on the counter to sit on. Above my head hung a mobile with little ceramic tiles in the shapes of stars and planets. A shapeless black thing in one of the crates attracted Jeremy’s eye. ‘What have you got over there, Alicia?’ he asked.
‘My Cleopatra headdress!’ She lifted out an Egyptian-style wig and positioned it on her head, the long black hair hanging down over her shoulders. ‘What do you think?’ Jeremy and I laughed, and she said with mock annoyance, ‘Not meant to be funny. You might show a little respect, especially you, Jeremy. Ben is still young, he can be forgiven.’
Actually Jeremy himself had come in that day dressed rather like an overgrown schoolboy in a royal blue blazer with gold braiding; the pair of them made the place look like a fancy dress shop. At the centre of Alicia’s headdress was a cobra’s head, possibly stuffed, but certainly dead. I gave in to the temptation to hold out one of her Garibaldi biscuits towards it, and asked, ‘Does it eat squashed flies?’
Patting the sides of the headdress she said, ‘Isis, help me. Protect me from these heretics.’
On the way back to the bookshop Jeremy said, ‘She’s not so bad you know. Heart’s in the right place. Half a day for a little while, Ben, to help her get started. We could take turns.’
‘Wonder what her Egyptology meetings are like. Probably people sitting around a table, pretending to sharpen razor blades by putting them under a plastic pyramid.’
‘You’re wrong about that. She is recognised as an expert on the hieroglyphics of a certain period. It’s not like you to be grumpy.’
‘No, it’s not. Sorry. Maybe it’s sorting out at all those books of hers in the basement. Soon have them finished, anyway.’ Working half a day a week in her psychic shop was a bit of an imposition, but not bad enough to risk Jeremy’s good opinion.
‘Anyway,’ Jeremy said, ‘you know she’s one of us.’
‘What, Alicia’s a shirt-lifter?’
‘You know perfectly well what I mean. She’s a lesbian.’
Hatshepsut’s Pavilion opened six weeks before Christmas, a good kick-off time for any business selling what, to my mind, were trinkets and novelties. Alicia crammed the place with an amazing variety of stuff: porcelain phrenology heads, palmistry hands, peculiar-shaped candles, supposedly Egyptian artefacts, large sparkling crystals – a thousand oddities cluttered her shelves, the more expensive safely locked in a display case. The shop had bright sales areas under spotlights, and shadowy nooks where the intrepid might try on tribal face-masks or handle totemic figurines. In one corner rubber vampire bats and big hairy spiders hung from imitation webs.
The first time I went in for a stint of minding her shop it appeared to be deserted until, after a couple of minutes, the cobra’s head became visible above an ornate screen. ‘Ah, I sense a presence,’ she called out in a wavering voice from her hiding place, ‘Have you come from afar?’
‘I’ve come from Jeremy’s bookshop.’‘Oh it’s you, Ben. In good time too. Lucky, I’ll be able to do your horoscope before I go. I’ve just installed a new software package that’s been highly recommended. Come and sit down.’
‘Afraid I’m just not into that sort of thing.’
‘Help me try it out. It won’t take long. Fortune telling by computer instead of astrological charts, you must admit it has a funny side to it. I need the exact latitude and longitude of where you were born, and the date and the exact time.’
‘You’re not serious. I was born in Southend in the early hours.’
‘Isis preserve us!’ she said. ‘Early hours? You might have had more consideration for your poor mother. How do you expect me to produce your horoscope if you can’t give the map reference and exact time?’
‘I don’t expect anything. Doing my horoscope was your idea. Forget it.’
‘I’ve spent hours trying to get to grips with this damn thing. You might try to be a bit more cooperative. Oh never mind, I’d better be on my way.’ She took off the Cleopatra headdress and placed it on one of the phrenology heads.
‘You don’t wear that to the Egyptology meetings, then?’
‘Heavens no. They’re all much too serious. And passers-by in the street might think me a bit weird. You’re not smirking at me, are you?’
‘As if I would.’
‘Don’t think that’s the last you’ve heard of the astrology system. I can understand you not sharing my fascination with the cusp of Venus, but you might try to show a modicum of interest in Uranus. One thing does come over very clearly, all the same. Someone you know will be front page news before the week is out.
What was going on in her head for her to say someone I knew would be in the news? Surely she had broken a basic rule in the fortune-telling game: never make a prediction definite enough for events to prove you wrong. I couldn’t help blurting out ‘It is highly unlikely that anyone I know will be front page news.’
‘Willing to bet on it?’ She harassed me into betting a fiver, grinding down my resistance with the argument that a refusal would imply I did not believe what I was saying myself.
‘By the way, if any customers do come in you’ll find that some of the stock still needs price tags. I’ve left a price list on the shelf under the till. Help yourself to tea or coffee, and you’ll find plenty of biscuits. I’m hoping to be back at about half-past four. If you do need to go out, put up the ‘Back in five minutes’ sign, lock the door and don’t forget to take the key. It’s in the till under the ten pound notes. You’ve got my mobile number?’
Left alone in the shop, I switched her computer on again, thinking of checking my e-mails. She had set up password protection, and on the off-chance I typed in ‘Cleopatra’. The log-in screen disappeared and a message in large red letters scrolled across: Ben, if that’s you trying to guess my password, try Nefertiti. She had clearly predicted, or anticipated, that I would try to use the machine after she left. Worried she might have set further traps for me, I gave up and tied price labels on some necklaces and amulets instead to pass the time.
Next I rang Dale to relieve the tedium, but could only leave a message as he was at a meeting. When he called back he pretended to be a sheikh wanting to buy love potions to stimulate the sexual appetites of his wives. ‘Hi Dale,’ I said. ‘Alicia probably has some love potions in stock somewhere. You should see for yourself all the weird stuff she has.’
‘Much as I would like to drop in for five minutes, I’ve just come out of a meeting and a load of urgent stuff is waiting on my desk. Means I’ll be late getting home again.’
The next day he came into the bookshop. The hospital owed him lots of time and he had taken a couple of hours off to see Hatshepsut’s Pavilion for himself. We hugged and kissed, and over tea and some of Jeremy’s biscuits he showed me his newspaper. At the bottom right of the front page, under the heading Double Celebration for British Writer, was a paragraph that read Champagne Corks were already popping for Loyd Larcher on publication of the omnibus edition of his novels, when The Bookseller’s Guild announced he was to receive its lifetime achievement award. A Guild spokesman said ‘Nobody in contemporary fiction can touch him for range and variety.’
‘Oh no.’
‘What do you mean, “Oh no?”’
‘Yesterday Alicia bet me five pounds that someone I knew would be front page news.’
‘She’s must be cheating. She’s been tipped off.’
‘How could she know he would be on the front page?’
‘Jeremy might have heard somehow and told her.’
However she learned that the story would be on page one, she had tricked me out of five pounds. When we went in to see her I showed her the paper and said, ‘You win. You’ve caught me out somehow. Loyd is someone I know, and the story about him did make the front page.’
‘Loyd Larcher? Can’t stand the man. How did he get himself onto page one? Let me see.’ She read the paragraph and said, ‘Still, I’ve won our little bet, haven’t I? Thank you, Isis, thank you,’ she said, clasping her hands together and gazing upwards, though the object that hung from the ceiling above her head was not Isis but a plastic vampire bat.
‘Thought your predictions came from astrology, not from Isis. Anyway here’s the five pounds.’
‘I wasn’t thinking about that silly old coot Larcher. This is what the bet was about.’ She pulled the current month’s edition of the magazine Psychic News from its plastic wrapper. On the front page was a small photograph of Alicia herself under the heading: ‘Egyptologist opens new London venture’, and inside was a half page article about Hatshepsut’s Pavilion. ‘I don’t want your bloody five pounds,’ she said, picking up the note and slapping it down in front of me. ‘I was joking. Did you really think I was trying to rob you? What I would really like is someone to give me a hand with the astrology system.’
To my great surprise, Dale volunteered: ‘I’ll have a go, if you like, though frankly I think astrology is a lot of twaddle.’
He discovered how to change the settings so that the nearest large town or city could be entered instead of the map grid reference, and made the time of day that someone was born an optional entry. As an experiment we generated a horoscope for Loyd Larcher, entering a date of birth that would make his present age a hundred-and-two. With a lot of trial and error we worked through until we generated a ten-page horoscope, including an impressive coloured chart of stars and planets.
‘It is a clever package,’ Dale said, ‘ingenious. I’d better leave you to try it out and go back to work.’
‘Surely you want to see what the stars hold for you?’ Alicia suggested.
He smiled wryly and put on his coat. ‘Maybe another time.’
‘Well, let me give you something from the shop. Has anything caught your eye? How about one of these?’ She unlocked the display case and took out a turquoise glass pyramid, inside which could be seen another smaller, pyramid in glass of a lighter hue. ‘Would this go nicely on your desk at work?’
‘It might go missing. You don’t need to give me anything, really.’
‘But I want to. Do take it, you’ll find somewhere for it.’
As the weather cooled towards Christmas, Jeremy came into work wearing one of those winter coats with thick, padded horizontal bands of fabric like motorbike tyres going all the way round. These insulating layers increased his girth, and on his way to the little back office he had to squeeze between shelves of children’s books on one side and encyclopaedias on the other. The fabric squeaked loudly as it rubbed against the spines. Thinking that if he became wedged in the gap I would have to climb over him to fetch the office scissors and cut him loose from his clothing, I suggested that he remove his outer covering before he entered the bottleneck. He went into a huff at first, but could not resist examining the spines of the books for signs of damage, and then said, ‘I suppose I’ll have to do as I’m told.’
He had been out of spirits the day before because Loyd Larcher was hesitant about coming to his little Christmas party. The veteran author had another engagement, and doubted if it would be over in time. Dale and I, Alicia, her girlfriend Muriel, and a few of Jeremy’s business contacts were expected, but Loyd’s presence would have made the event special.
I cleared some space in the shop and put up folding chairs and a trestle table for snacks and bottles of wine before going home for an early dinner. When I returned with Dale, Jeremy had put on a big sweater with broad brown and yellow horizontal stripes. Judging he was in far too amiable a mood to take offence, Dale said, ‘I know who you’re meant to be, Jeremy, you’re Mr Bumble the beadle from Oliver Twist.’
‘I expect any minute Ben is going to tell me I’m always bumbling around,’ Jeremy replied.About twelve people, in all, attended. Dale struck up a conversation with Alicia about alternative medicine, and soon we were exchanging opinions about acupuncture, hypnosis, herbal remedies, vitamin pills, and how to choose from the hundreds of different remedies and tonics available.
We enjoyed a couple of hours chatting, eating and drinking. Then Alicia asked me if, when I was left alone in the bookshop, I ever noticed anything odd, such as strange noises, tricks of the light, or peculiar smells.
‘Oh no, not really,’ I said. ‘Jeremy’s customers aren’t as decrepit as that.’
‘You know what I’m getting at. These shops have been here for more than a hundred years, had different owners, survived bombing during the Second World War. Traces of the past remain behind, some are visible like that old-fashioned bell on the shop door, but others cannot be detected so easily.’
Then Jeremy suggested she bring out an Ouija board she had recently acquired. He added, ‘This is a traditional time of year for ghosts, so perhaps we should… by way of a little entertainment…’
Most of Jeremy’s guests decided the time had come to leave, and I whispered to Dale that we might do the same, but he said, ‘It’s okay, let’s indulge him, if we go hardly anyone will be left.’
Alicia, her girlfriend, Jeremy, Dale and I were the only ones to stay on. We sat in a circle around the Ouija board, an ornate affair with the letters of the alphabet in Gothic script. We were all to place our fingers in grooves on a special hexagonal glass dish with a lighted candle in its centre. Jeremy switched off the lights. The flickering candlelight made our faces appear mysterious, conspiratorial. At first the glass dish in the centre remained immobile. We all waited. I turned my head and caught Dale’s eye. He was smiling faintly, probably thinking how silly we all were. Then the glass dish began to glide slowly across the board. We audibly drew breath. Was one of us pushing it? It came to a halt above the letter M. We all pronounced ‘M’, our voices somehow achieving unison and harmony. Next the dish moved off to the letter A, and as we all said ‘A’ it moved off to R, followed by L. A cold blast of air suddenly blew out the candle, and at the same moment we heard books thudding onto the floor.
Jeremy turned the lights on again. ‘Oh blast,’ he said, ‘must have caught the bookshelf somehow when I reached out for my glass of wine. Sorry everyone. Help me put them back, would you Ben?’ Among the books I picked up was Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. It had fallen open at the page in which the phantom first appears. Jeremy took it from me and read out the description of Marley’s ghost.
When I sat down again Alicia fixed me with a questioning gaze. ‘Are you quite sure, Ben, that you have never noticed anything otherworldly when you have been on your own in the shop?’
‘Oh, come on Alicia,’ said Jeremy, ‘don’t overdo it. Let’s have another try. See if the spirit world has a message for us.’
Dale put his hand over mine under the table. ‘I can feel a freezing draught coming from somewhere,’ he said.
‘Must be from the window at the back of the shop, can’t have put the latch down properly,’ Jeremy answered. This was an improbable explanation; that window had not been opened since I had been working there. Once again we settled around the Ouija board in the flickering candlelight. Again, after initial hesitation, the glass glided across the board, and we intoned the letters at which it stopped, ‘M, A, R, L, E, Y. Marley!’ Suddenly we heard a determined rapping at the shop door. Behind the blind, a dark figure was silhouetted by the glow of the street lights. The latch clicked. ‘Who’s there?’ cried Jeremy in alarm. The door opened wide and the temperature in the shop plummeted. A ghastly apparition, weighed down by chains, floated into the room. As it crossed the floor it left an eerie greenish-brown powdery trail behind it. I shrank back, afraid that some of this deathly deposit might rub off on me. Dale clasped my hand.
I could not take my eyes from the spectre. In the meagre light of the candle I begin to make out its features, which were, I began to realize, uncannily like those of Loyd Larcher. The mouth opened, and it spoke in what was unmistakeably his plummy voice: ‘Terribly sorry, Jeremy, may have dropped a bit of a clanger.’ He rattled his chains. ‘Could have sworn you said this evening was to be fancy dress.’
Jeremy put on the lights. He, Alicia and Loyd grinned widely, all three obviously in on the joke, their teeth shining like rows of tombstones on a moonlit night. They must, though, have been a little disappointed that more of Jeremy’s guests had not stayed on for Loyd’s performance. Of course I had not really thought, in my rational mind, that a ghost had been conjured up by the Ouija board, but for a while my heart had been thumping all the same.