Storytime Monday

Hello.

Today's story came from a Writers in the Rafters exercise but which I never took to the group as I wasn't able to make the meeting.  So it's not really had an audience before... hope you like it.

Cover Story

‘Good morning, ‘The Bookship’, how can I help?’ Evan said.  His voice was crisp, polite, helpful as he shifted the handset to wedge it between his shoulder and his neck, his fingers clattering across the computer keyboard. 

‘Yes, it’s due in today’s delivery… may I check your address and phone number, please..?’

Meanwhile Luke was unpacking the delivery in question.  He looked up, grinning, as I passed.

‘I think they’ve sent everything this time, Bosslady.’

I nodded and went aft to the kitchenette that formed the barrier between the shop floor of the barge and what I laughingly called an office to make coffee for me and the boys.

Well, ‘boys’ is a misnomer.  Luke’s easily into his thirties and Evan just a little younger.  Employees, if you like, although I prefer to think of them as minions.  Even though it is me brewing up.

Luke is of medium height, sharp and smart and clean, good looking in a dangerous kind of way.  His hair is that light, white blond that you always associate with Bond villain assassins.  Evan’s hair is determinedly boy band in style, and dark.  He broods for effect, but his work is always spot-on.  They drive my Saturday Girl, Jenny, absolutely potty trying to decide which she likes best, or which one likes her best, depending on her mood.  Today being Thursday, however, I was spared Jenny’s agonizing.

And The Bookship?  Well, I got the barge – and it is a barge, 14ft wide, twice the width of a standard narrowboat - for a pittance and was able to sweet-talk and bribe my way into getting planning permission to anchor it solidly on dry land and turn it into my current venture.  We’re moored on a wide green bank overlooking the Dee Estuary just along from a parade of shops on the Thurstaston side of West Kirby.  It’s a good little town, with its independent businesses and quirky streets and a refined seaside air.  My friend Anne runs a bric-a-brac shop on the parade behind the Bookship, and she sends over any books she finds in her house clearances.

We keep a small, but select, run of new books.  I’m really hot on local interest, so Gladys Mary Coles, and some of her protégés, have an entire shelf between them.  There’s a bit of history, something of the sea, and I will order in on request. But most of our space is given to second-hand stock.

Of course, I don’t call it that.  There are three distinct sections: Pre-Browsed, Obviously Good Reads and Much Loved.  The bookshelves line the walls to leave as much space as possible for browsing, but there is one area, at the bows, where I’ve had seating fitted around the natural angles of the boat, and this is where we set up The Table.

The Table is a hireable space which any group, subject to a few checks, can use for meetings.  We have knitters and twitchers and writers and gardeners booked in on a regular basis.

I put the coffees on a tray and carried them through to the counter by the till.  Evan was there, checking the diary.

‘Luke? Coffee’s ready,’ I called through.

Once the three of us were assembled, I ran through the plan for the day.  I’ve learned from experience, of course, that everything is subject to change without notice, so these plans were more in the line of naïve optimism than actual objectives.

‘How’s the diary looking?’ I asked.

‘The Table’s booked for 10.30 to twelve with tea and biscuits.  That’s the Lighthouse Writers…’

‘I wish they’d find themselves a real lighthouse,’ I grumbled, causing Evan to grin.

‘You know you love them!’

‘Ha!’ I said.  ‘They arrive early and sit there reading the stock while they wait, they linger afterwards, they never reshelve anything and they read out their own work.  Loudly.’

‘You should join in,’ Evan said.  ‘Give yourself a couple of hours off and see what it’s like on the other side of the counter for once…’

‘Or charge for the extra time,’ Luke suggested. 

I shook my head.  ‘That would be mean.’

‘Which, Bosslady? Charging them by the minute or joining in?’

I didn’t quite growl at Luke; my secret yearning to be a Real Writer wasn’t really a secret.  The fact that I was actually rubbish, however, was very much a secret and if I sat in at a writing group on my own barge my cover would be blown in an instant… I had a bit more pride than that.

‘Anything else happening?’ I asked in a determined change of subject.

‘Yes,’ Evan said.  ‘Table again, two until four – Christobel Mallen.’

‘It’s a new booking, so we’ll need to keep an eye on them,’ I said.  ‘I’m not quite sure we’re quite what they need.’

‘And do we want to encourage or discourage?’ Luke asked.

I frowned as I finished my coffee.

‘I’m not sure yet.  Depends on whether they frighten the books or not. The order book… Luke, you said you thought they’d sent everything?’

‘It was fine, all present and correct.’

I nodded.

‘Excellent.   Evan, if you don’t mind letting them know their books are ready for collection, that’ll be great…’ I glanced at the clock on the wall opposite the till.  I ran it fast so that we manage to close nearly on time and the customers still felt we’d stayed open that extra few minutes just for them.  At the moment, the clock said 9.55; although we start work at 9.30, we don’t open until 10. ‘Right.  I’ll clear away, Luke, if you don’t mind opening up?’

I wandered off to wash up, half-listening to Evan’s welll-mannered voice as he called with the good news that the books ordered had arrived.  There was a little porthole in the hull near my sink, and I could see out to the bright spring morning.  It would be a slow day; they all were. That’s why I love this job.  Somehow, I turn a small profit, and it’s enough.

A clatter on the steps and Luke’s face appeared in the doorway.

‘Bit of managerial clout required outside, Bosslady,’ he said.  ‘It’s Dotty Peg.’

‘What?’ Dotty Peg was a Known Pest in the area and the bane of us poor shopkeepers.  We ring each other up to complain about her, but we never can quite bring ourselves to do anything about her.  ‘Okay, I’ll deal with her.’

‘Can I watch?’ Luke asked, grinning.

I scowled as I followed him up the stairs; I’d prefer not to have an audience but, well, maybe I’d need a witness.

On deck, I went over to the wooden steps I’d had built as access to the Bookship. 

Dotty Peg was at the foot of the steps, one hand clutching the handle of a buggy which held a singularly ugly child: Dotty Peg herself, wearing a Guantanamo Bay Orange fleece, old black tracksuit bottoms and ancient trainers, looked rather as if she were channelling her Inner Spacehopper.

‘You’re breaking the law!’ she announced when she saw me.  ‘And it’s not good enough.  I’m going to report you!’

‘Perhaps if you could tell me what the problem is..?’

‘You have no disabled access!’ she said, swaying from side to side belligerently. 

‘Are you disabled?’ I asked.  Not all disabilities are visible, after all.

‘Well, of course not!’ she said.  ‘But there’s the pushchair…’

‘Was there anything in particular you were looking for today?’ I asked, determined to make a stand.  Dotty Peg didn’t usually buy anything from the shops she visited. 

Unfortunately for my stand, one of the Lighthouse Writers, super-early today, arrived just then and decided to be helpful.

‘Pardon me,’ the writer said, ‘but there’s a disabled entrance just around the side there…’

I hurried back to head Dotty Peg off at the doors; she was already tapping at the glass when I got there.  Unwillingly I opened up and she pushed past me, parking the buggy next to the first editions.

‘I’m leaving Martin here for half an hour,’ she said.  ‘I want to go round Waitrose and it gets very busy in there…’

‘It won’t be busy for another hour,’ I told her.  ‘And we don’t do childcare…’

‘I left him with the lady in the newsagents last week…’

Yes.  Only because they had a new girl on and she didn’t know what to say when Dotty Peg had announced she’d be back in twenty minutes for the child…

‘I’m afraid you can’t leave him here.  I’d have to call social services if I found an abandoned child and, what’s more, those bags on the back might contain a bomb.  I’d have to call the police.  Or the bomb squad…’

She spluttered and tried to find words to throw at me, but I nodded in a fairly friendly way and turned my back; the helpful Lighthouse Writer was looking disconsolately at the space where The Table ought to be.

‘You’re rather early, I’m afraid,’ I told her.  ‘We’re not due to set up for another fifteen minutes.’ 

‘Couldn’t you..?’

From behind me I heard a loud wail and turned to see Dotty Peg’s ugly child – and pushchair - still there, in the middle of the Bookship.

Evan and Luke were both grinning at me as I goldfished my mouth open and closed a few times.

‘Stop that!’ I ordered, trying to be the tough Bosslady we liked to pretend I was.  ‘You know, I’ve a good mind to call the Busies on her!’

Evan passed me the phone and I lifted the receiver but didn’t yet dial.  What would happen to the ugly child, if I did?  Would he and Dotty Peg be separated?  Would it make her behave any differently?  For all I knew, she might be on her own with the child and her forays into Waitrose by herself her only respite…  Instead, I phoned Anne in the bric-a-brac shop; I could at least spread the word amongst the shopkeepers.

‘Second Chances,’ she said.  ‘Can I help?’

‘Anne, it’s me.  We’ve just had Dotty Peg in the Bookship – thought you might like to know…’

‘That’s funny,’ she said.  ‘She parked that baby of hers on Jones the Veg just after nine…’

‘Okay, thanks.’ 

That was enough for me; if Dotty Peg had already inflicted her child on Jones the Veg, she wasn’t getting away with dumping him on us as well.

I called the local police – it wasn’t an emergency, after all, just an annoyance – but when they heard it was for an abandoned child, of course they hurried round.

Give our local Busies their due, they’re an Equal Opportunities employer, all right.  Where for once it would have been appropriate to send a female police officer, they sent two huge burly chaps who filled up the Bookship with reassuring solidity.

‘And this isn’t your child?’ one asked.

‘Absolutely not.  If it were, I’d dress, wash and feed it properly.  And I wouldn’t leave it in shops with people I didn’t know.’

‘Did the lady say anything about where she was going?’

‘Waitrose,’ I said.  ‘Although she really wasn’t dressed for it.’

Meanwhile, Evan and Luke were heroically trying to set up The Table for the Lighthouse Writers, who had arrived en masse by now and were fascinated by the scene.

Someone from Social Services arrived then to take charge of the child, and lifted him out of his pushchair.  Underneath where he’d lain were a couple of pomegranates.

Further investigation revealed Dotty Peg’s route around the shops; she’d already been to Waitrose, as the baby had a jar of own-brand olives in his possession as well as a few other things…

I was relieved when the authorities went outside to wait for Dotty Peg’s return; it meant I just had the Lighthouse Writers to deal with.  They were ready for their tea now.

Just another slow morning in the Bookship.  Don’t you just love the quiet life?

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