The Overnight Read online

  The quickest route back is through the car park. The fog wobbles backwards as he jogs across the tarmac. Out here the murk seems more solid; it reminds him of tripe, a thick slab of whitish flesh that crawls back to expose its tarry bones. Those are saplings keeping one another company in strips of grassy earth that relieve the barren black. Before long they're his only companions, since the fog has done away with the shops. He feels it trail over his face like wisps of icy cobweb extending themselves from the leafless branches of the saplings he's about to pass between. As he rubs his face with his free hand the supermarket bag blunders rustling against his chest. He treads on grass strewn with fallen leaves, and his other foot follows. The moment all his weight is off the tarmac, a mouth fastens on him.

  It feels as if the veiled landscape has puckered to seize him. The cold slimy bloated lips close on his ankles and suck him down. The fog towers over him, and he imagines it muffling his cries for help before the mouth does. Then he flounders out of the mud and hears it smack its lips as he staggers across the tarmac. It was only mud, he almost shouts at his unforgivably silly self, but why was it so deep? Besides his shoes, an inch of his socks and trouser cuffs are black with it. He tramps at the fog until it peels itself away from the bookshop.

  He's stamping on READ ON! when Greg strides to the near end of the counter. "Good Lord, what on earth have you been up to?"

  "Just trekking back from"—Wilf feels trapped in stupidity until he manages to dredge the word up—"foraging."

  "Anyone would think you'd been out in the fields. I don't think you should walk through the shop like that, do you?"

  Wilf's mouth is opening before he can think of a polite answer or a quiet one, but he succeeds in saying only "I wasn't going to." He wipes most of the mud off his shoes with the supermarket bag and hands it to Greg. "Can you bin that while I try and get upstairs without being asked to leave?"

  As he trudges across the shop his left shoe reiterates a sound rather too reminiscent of the nether fanfare he seems unable to suppress whenever he uses a public toilet. He has to walk with his right toe turned up while he grips the right knee of his trousers to lift the sodden cuff clear of his ankle, so that it's no wonder Greg watches him and two small children giggle at his progress. The cuff moulds itself to his leg as he shows the staffroom exit plaque his badge. Even once he's closed in he still feels watched and stupid. He hauls his trouser leg upstairs and leaves the sushi on the staffroom table before heading for what some of the staff as well as Woody have started calling the men's room.

  The light flares on with a stuttering buzz. Who can be responsible for the state of the place? Wads of paper encrusted with mud are strewn about the floor and block the sink. He uses a handful of paper towels to dump them in the toilet, then he takes most of a roll of towels to rub mud off his clothes. He keeps being distracted by the absurd notion that the next time he raises his head, the mirror will show him he isn't alone. Of course behind him there's only the greenish wall as blank as fog. Once he has rid himself of all the mud he can he sits in the staffroom with an old friend, War and Peace.

  He's feeding himself the first sentence and a Japanese mouthful when he hears voices in the office. "I forgot to tell you I was sitting on something for you, Jill," Connie says.

  "Is it very squashed?"

  "That might be funnier if you hadn't said very."

  "Sorry. Clumsy of me. Is it squashed?"

  "Not so funny second time round. I've got your author photos, so if you could put the promotion up today that would be brill. Get your imagination working."

  "It's been doing that quite a lot lately."

  "Did you want to tell me something?"

  "I don't know about want. Let's leave it, shall we."

  "No, let's not. Look, Jill, if I'd known you'd been married to Geoff …"

  "He's nothing to me, so don't give my feelings a thought."

  "That's very, sorry, what?"

  "I was going to say my daughter's are a different matter."

  "Is she likely to be coming to the shop much?"

  "Not much, I shouldn't think. Even less if she's banned."

  "No call for that, surely. Shall we just try leaving our home lives at home? That's the pro's way. Why the look?"

  "I wasn't sure what you meant for a moment."

  "Got it now? Super. Here's Brodie Oates for you. I'm giving you a window display. Get me all the custom you can."

  "I don't know if I'll be as good at that as you are, Connie."

  A silence follows in which Wilf imagines both women pretending they've no idea what Jill means. He's about to make a noise to indicate they aren't alone when Jill opens the door. She and Connie stare at him as though he has been eavesdropping, which he has. He fills his mouth with sushi and tries to take refuge in reading the book.

  "Eh bien, mon prince..." He can't progress past that while the women are staring at him, and even once the door is shut and Jill is dealing the stairs a series of blows with her feet his mind keeps snagging on the words. He knows Tolstoy is demonstrating that French was the second language of the Russian aristocracy in Napoleonic times, but the thought is no help. He reminds himself what a joy it was to be able to read any book, one a day sometimes, but the memory falls short of his feelings: it's as though greyness like a combination of fog and cobwebs has settled over his brain. Abey Ann, mon prance … A B Ann … A Bloody Awful Nonsensical Nonsense … Has Slater done this to him? Blaming his old enemy only wastes time when he needs to regain himself. He shoves a forkful of sushi in his dry mouth and swallows hard as he sees from his watch that he has been rereading the first line for minutes. Can't he entice himself into the story by recalling its scope? The romances, the duel, the society occasions, the hunt, the battles, above all the people? When he turns to the list of characters at the front of the book, the names might as well be lumps of mud.

  Bezuhov, Rostov, Bolkonsky, Kuragin … They sound like consonants rasping together—like language groping for itself and failing to take hold. He knows it's his mind that's doing so, which is worse. When he returns to the opening paragraph the names seem to lose shape, filling his head like chunks of a substance too primitive to have meaning. Are they why he can't read more than a phrase at a time and takes so long over each one that its sense has sunk out of reach by the time he drags himself to the end of the sentence? The paragraph is less than eight lines long, yet he hasn't finished it when he scrapes the last forkful out of the plastic container. As his eyes labour back to the first words, Greg's voice appears above him, hushed yet enlarged. "Wilf call twelve, please. Wilf call twelve."

  There isn't a phone in the staffroom. Connie gives him a blink that contains a trace of the look he received from her and Jill. As he fumbles with Ray's phone he almost knocks the Manchester United badge off the computer monitor. "What do you want, Greg?"

  "Are you about on your way down? Angus is due for his break, but you know Angus. He doesn't want to trouble you himself."

  "My time isn't up yet, is it?" Wilf asks Connie.

  "I couldn't tell you without looking at the roster. It's up to you to keep an eye on yours."

  He was only trying to make peace with her. He glances at his watch so as to tell Greg in her hearing that he's wrong, but he isn't. Wilf has spent the best part of an hour in struggling to read a single paragraph. He feels as if his brain has shrivelled to less than a child's inside his uselessly huge skull and is desperate to hide there without risking another word. "So what shall I say to Angus?" Greg insists.

  "You can tell him to make his own calls in future, and here's what I think you should do to yourself." Wilf keeps all that and more inside him, instead blurting "I'll be down."

  He's almost out of the office when Connie says "Have you had a chance to sort your section out, Wilf?"

  "What sort of, I mean sort what?"

  "It was looking neglected last time I found someone a book in it."

  It isn't neglected at all. He tidied it last night and
still had had time to help Mad tidy Toddlers. He throws his sushi container in the bin and his fork in the sink and runs downstairs. "Just a second," he tells Angus as he detours to check his books.

  If they're out of order, he doesn't see how. The Bibles are all together, and the books about them follow them. Anything occult is in Occult, philosophies are in Philosophy, even if he can't fit his mind around the more protractedly abstruse titles just now. Are the books arranged by author within their subjects? As he realises he can't judge, he's overwhelmed by a chill so intense it freezes him where he stands. He's peering helplessly at the mass of books when Greg steps out from behind the counter. He leans towards Wilf like an athlete straining to start a race while Angus looks loath to be the reason. "Wilf …" Greg urges.

  "Sorry, Angus. I was distracted." Wilf still is, all the more so when he discovers he can't read the spines of his books from behind the counter. That's the fault of the distance. It doesn't mean he's unable to read. He has no problems in serving customers—by now using the till is as instinctive as driving—which gives him back some confidence until he wonders if it makes him little more than an extension of the machine, no brain required. Just now he isn't anxious to test himself at the Information terminal, and he's glad nobody requires him to use it. By the time Jill takes over at the counter, he's yearning to go home to his own books, but won't his doubts follow him?

  Pacing up and down his aisles shows him nothing he's certain of. The sodden trouser cuff plants a cold kiss on his ankle at every other step. Is he simply convincing himself the books are out of order by looking too hard, just as he couldn't put a sentence together when he tried to read? He's beginning to feel watched, though he can't see the watcher. Is he in danger of betraying his secret to the monitor in Woody's office? He can overcome his difficulty again if he has to—he's older and wiser now. He makes himself turn his back on his section. His shift ended fifteen minutes ago, and the books that fill his flat in Salford are waiting to welcome him home. Once he's there he can relax, and then he'll be able to read. He'll be able to read.

  Jake

  Sean brings the Passat to a gentle halt across three parking spaces outside Texts and lays his warm firm slightly pudgy hand on Jake's knee. Not much louder than the chugging of the engine he murmurs "Be good till tonight."

  "What about then, Sean?"

  He gives Jake the smile that's all the more of one for challenging him to prove it's there. "Be as bad as you like."

  Jake thinks moments like these are why they're still together. He's happy to linger in it while the exhaust fumes play with the fog that dances around the car, but Sean lifts his hand to the steering wheel. "I'll collect you at seven, then. Better be moving before your man in uniform comes and shouts."

  The new guard stands like a bouncer in the entrance, emitting smoky dragon breaths. Jake hopes Sean is feeling guilty only about his parking. He plants a hand on Sean's cheek, which is rough with obstinate stubble, and eases Sean's face into position for a kiss that tastes of sweetish pipe tobacco. Beyond him Jake sees the guard stick out his upper lip as if he's trying to catch a moustache to add to his disapproval. He's one reason why Jake pulls his partner closer, but Sean parts them before Jake has had enough. "Will you do something for me if you have the chance?"

  "Anything," Jake says, wishing the guard could hear.

  "Just see if you've any books I can use next term and buy them if you have."

  "I wouldn't be sure which."

  "Now, Jake, I thought you were listening at dinner." He's become the playfully severe lecturer Jake fell in love with halfway through Sean's evening class on gay Hollywood, and Jake feels half his age, though they're both thirty. "I told you I'll be teaching fifties melodrama," says Sean.

  "Honestly, I'd rather you looked yourself. You aren't lecturing for an hour."

  "I do want to see where you work," Sean admits, and swerves the car backwards.

  Jake loves his abrupt impulses, but this manoeuvre could be dangerous in the fog that seems heavier in Fenny Meadows with each shrinking day of winter. It lurches to follow them as Sean parks precisely in a space with a single deft twirl of the wheel. He slips out of the car as Jake does, and is striding towards Texts when he grabs his hipbones as if to mime how suddenly he has stopped. "What am I looking at?"

  Three faces with as little colour to them as the fog are staring out of the display window—three of the same round smug hairless face lined up as if awaiting wigs. They're too large for their bodies by half. One body cut out of a magazine wears a man's suit, the middle one exhibits hairy knees beneath a kilt, while the right-hand body sports a dress. Each is perched on a heap of copies of Dressing Up, Dressing Down, by Brodie Oates. Beside them a sign says WHAT DOES HE MEAN? FIND OUT ON FRIDAY. "Shall we?" says Sean.

  He's only proposing they should enter the shop. As they reach the doorway the guard moves into their path. "I hope you're going to behave yourselves in here," he says so low he mightn't want them to be able to prove he spoke.

  Jake has faced down bouncers more butch than him. "We couldn't behave anyone else, could we?" he says sweetly and takes Sean's hand.

  Sean doesn't try to keep it to himself, but he doesn't quite hold Jake's either. Sometimes he's shy outside the gay patch of Manchester. Jake can feel him growing hot, perhaps with embarrassment or fury at the guard for saying "That's what I mean. We don't need that in here."

  "Who's we?" Jake asks more sweetly still.

  Sean grips his hand and tells the guard "He's one of you."

  The guard's face turns so red it reminds Jake of a traffic light. "He's bloody not. I'm not having that."

  "You can't," Sean says, deciding to enjoy himself. "I am."

  Jake is wondering how long they're going to test how red the guard's face can become when Lorraine trots past in baggy corduroys. Her ponytail wags and then lifts as she swings around on the READ ON! mat. "He works here," she says.

  The guard grimaces as the tip of her hair brushes his flaming cheek. "Who?"

  "I wouldn't mind either, but it's this one. Are you coming upstairs, Jake?"

  "I ought to." Jake leads Sean past the mat before relinquishing his hand. "Will you be here when I come down?" he hopes aloud.

  A jewel of fog trembles on Sean's eyelashes until Sean flicks it away with a fingertip. "I'll make sure I am."

  Angus is behind the counter and not quite watching them, but muffled embarrassment seems to be his natural state. Mad's could be tidying the children's section, and as she heads back to it from finding a car-repair manual for a customer, she flashes Jake and Sean a smile. Otherwise the only people to be seen are two men in the armchairs by Erotica, their heads so nearly bald they might almost be monks meditating on how little of the world they've time for. Lorraine slaps the plaque by the door up to the staffroom with her badge and then takes enough time on the stairs for Jake to feel dragged down by the chill the bare walls have trapped. There are voices beyond the door at the top, and Ray is at the head of the staffroom table. "Morning, both," he says as Lorraine opens the door. "Now my team's complete."

  That comes with a grin as untidy as his reddish neck-length variously curly hair, but Lorraine won't be charmed. "We aren't on for two minutes."

  "No harm in getting started as soon as we can, is there?" When she removes her card from the Out rack but only holds it, Ray sucks his mouth small and wry while he twitches his eyebrows up and down before the vaguely amiable expression returns to his jowly pinkish face. "I hope we all saw the match at the weekend," he says.

  "Which was that?" says Wilf.

  "Only one it could be, isn't there?" Ray practically shouts, perhaps not realising that Wilf is more polite than interested. "Manchester United giving Liverpool the boot two-nil."

  Wilf, Jill and Agnes deliver a muted dutiful cheer, and Ross counters with a boo faint enough to be comical. "Now, now, let's be sporting," Nigel calls from his desk in the office while Greg contents himself with a reproving blink at Gavin's latest
yawn. "Aren't you two taking sides?" Ray asks the newcomers.

  "Not between men," says Lorraine and slides her card under the clock. "I don't see much difference, I'm afraid."

  Jake waits until he's clocking on to say "Why would I want to watch a lot of boys with bare thighs chasing one another?"

  Nearly everyone laughs, though he isn't sure how many feel forced into it. Lorraine takes the seat Ross kept for her, and Greg slides his behind slightly away from Jake, who sits between him and Wilf as Ray passes out the Woody's Wheedles sheets. "Looks as if the boss has been putting the old brain to work," Ray comments.

  "That's what it's for," Woody says as he strides out of his office. "Okay, let me do the talking. Faster that way."

  "Want my seat?"

  "I'll stand. Want to hear the bad news first?"

  "You're in charge," says Ray.

  "There is no good news. First month's sales, the worst for any branch of Texts."

  "That'll be because people are still finding out we're here, do you think?"

  "Swung on and missed, Ray. Worst sales for anybody's opening month."

  "Christmas has to help, won't it?"

  "Pre-Christmas sales growth, worst for any store. Figures for last weekend, guess what? The worst." His narrowed eyes might be searching for culprits until he says "Okay, that's what we have to fix. Who has ideas?"

  Ray has had enough of playing straight man, and nobody else wants the job. Woody tilts his gaze up as if searching for ideas beneath the flattened black turf of his hair and rubs his face almost expressionless. "Anyone. Anything," he says. "Make me feel we're a team."

  To Jake it feels more like being back at school—like being asked a question nobody wants to be the first to answer, especially since Ray seems to think he's entitled to wait on Woody's behalf. At last Lorraine says "Could it be where we are?"