An hour later, thoughts still drifting occasionally to the Runaway Vicar, Jo starts on her daily stocktake. Like studying her measured portion of sky, this mundane ritual gives her comfort. It has become an important, if unnecessary, part of her day.
Business is slow – some days she only has a dozen customers in the shop – so there really is no need to check the stock so regularly. Anyway, she could always calculate the stock from the computerized till that her Uncle Wilbur had invested in. She suspects that by this nod at modernity, he somehow hoped to revolutionize his sales. That didn’t happen. What did happen was the opening of a massive DIY store, less than a mile away. For over fifty years, her uncle’s business has been based on a combination of hardware and stationery. Since the opening of the superstore, the stationery – mainly functional items that appealed to her uncle’s practical mind – have come to occupy more and more of the shelf space.
Jo begins her stock-check by glancing briefly at the fewremaining shelves of hardware. An embarrassed nod of acknowledgement, rather than a careful study of the desultory mixture of screws, picture hooks, nails, plastic washing-up bowls, brushes and extension leads. Each item is lined up neatly, but this regimentation cannot hide the truth; it is an undeniably motley collection.
She moves quickly on to the shelf of writing paper. Here, simple pads of white and pale blue paper are displayed with packets of matching envelopes. Old-fashioned stationery that would not have looked out of place when her uncle started the shop. Flicking through the nearest pad of paper, she pauses to run a finger over the line guide and to stroke the single sheet of blotting paper. The ‘dentist’s’ words come back to her.
‘No one ever writes with a fountain pen these days.’
‘And of course,no onewrites letters any more.’
Her finger hovers momentarily over a pile of envelopes, similar to those bought by the Runaway Vicar. Well, the vicar is clearly writing to someone …
Jo moves on from the writing pads to the notebooks, pushing these thoughts away as she focuses on the simple pleasure of bound pages of pristine paper. Here there are large notebooks covered in brown kraft paper; smaller black ring-bound books; exercise books in a range of primary colours; and her favourites, the receipt books with their virgin navy carbon sheets. Next come the ink-pads and stamps.
A sudden memory produces a genuine smile. Her best Christmas present ever – and this includes the diamond earrings that James gave her on their last Christmas together– was a small handheld stamp from her Uncle Wilbur when she was ten years old. On it were the words, ‘Paid’ and ‘Due’, along with numbers for the date that could be rotated into place. Once the numbers were adjusted, it would be pressed with satisfaction into the accompanying pad of red ink. Next came the exquisite ‘thunk’, as she brought the stamp down hard on the top page of one of her receipt books.
Jo is loitering by the pencils, rolling the shaft of a 2B pencil between her thumb and forefinger, as if it were a fine cigar, when the shop door opens.
‘Malcolm!’ She turns with pleasure towards the approaching figure.
Malcolm was the first customer Jo ever served when she started work in her uncle’s shop. He introduced himself slowly and politely. He was pleased to meet her; his name was Malcolm Buswell and he lived a few minutes’ walk away. Their interaction is fairly limited, but she often finds herself looking out for his tall, rangy figure from her vantage point in the window. It makes her smile to see his long legs striding down the alleyway, arms swinging. When she first met Malcolm she was reminded of Roald Dahl’s character, the Big Friendly Giant. Malcolm may not have the large protruding ears, but he has the hooked nose and the same benevolent expression.
‘Ah, good afternoon,’ Malcolm says, as he turns to study the display of notebooks, as Jo expected he would. Malcolm buys a new one most weeks. He is writing a book. As yet he hasn’t said what his book is going to be about, and he is clearly reluctant to discuss it with Jo. She has tried polite enquiries and has also drawn Malcolm into conversationabout the books they are both reading, but his answers are always vague and noncommittal, and she hasn’t liked to press him.
Jo has gradually discovered that Malcolm has lived near the heath since he was a young man and that he is a retired tax analyst. (This didn’t surprise her; Malcolm is always formally dressed in grey, even his most casual clothes looking remarkably like a suit.) He was a specialist in wills and legacies. He has an interest in local history. And literature. Since his mother died, he has continued to live in the small house they shared together. Each piece of information is offered to her with polite formality, usually once the transaction of purchasing his latest notebook has been completed.
Jo has found herself selecting pieces of information to reciprocate with. It seems only polite, and Malcolm is always polite, holding the door open for other customers and bowing them in or out with a slight incline of his long, narrow head. Jo has told him that her family have always been farmers, her mother’s family in the Lake District, her father’s family in North Yorkshire. She has explained she went to university in Bath, but returned to work in the North after a few years of travel. She worked in Newcastle but lived in a village in Northumberland. She was employed by a national bank, working at their headquarters, until she left nine months ago.
She does not offer Malcolm an explanation as to why she left. Nor does she intend to. Sometimes the words she might say fill her mind, but they never find their way out into the space that sits between them.
You see, I wasn’t good enough, Malcolm.
In the end, whatever I did, and I did try (probably too much), I wasn’t what he wanted.
So that was it, he left me, and is now with a younger, much more beautiful woman.
Nickeeey.
I’m sure his friends don’t blame him.
And my friends? Well, my friends were never really his friends.
It turns out that Lucy, my best friend, hated him.
I guess I didn’t really realize to start with. She and her husband, Sanjeev, had moved away for a few years with his job, but when they came back, oh, I could see it then.
I tried hard to keep everyone happy … I really did …
And so it would go on.
Today, before the internal monologue can start, she fills the void with a question.
‘Malcolm, can I help in any way?’
‘I’m sorry, Joanne? You said something?’
Malcolm always uses her full name.
