The Overnight (17 page)

Two girls in yellow sweaters with a large H on each breast are playing noughts and crosses behind the counter. Both raise their heads with eagerness that looks not unlike surprise, and the even blonder and slimmer girl says "Where can we fly you off to?"

"I'm not going anywhere just now. We wondered next door if you'd mind taking some of our leaflets."

"Don't bother wasting many." As he drops about a dozen on the counter she says "That's more customers than we've had all week."

Angus leaves the girls with a version of Woody's smile as he backs out, but it seems not to impress them much. The fog has beaten a mindlessly mocking retreat far enough to reveal an old Skoda out beyond the splintered tree-stump. He makes for the car in case Woody notices it hasn't been leafleted. He lifts one creaky windscreen wiper and plants a leaflet under it, and is retreating towards the fog that has descended on the pavement when a voice behind him calls "What's that you've stuck on my car?"

He skids around to glimpse a tall figure through the undamaged pair of trees. The figure blurs and almost vanishes on the way to tramping past the stretch of grass. The man is wearing white trainers, green trousers, a scraped leather jacket dangling several tatters, a black woollen hat from beneath which tufts of white hair are in the process of escaping. His small mottled face does its best to draw together around its swollen pockmarked nose as he bends his lanky form towards the car. "Oh, it's you," he says even more flatly than his Lancashire accent entails. "You were after me."

"Who was?"

"Your lot here. Texts. Doesn't look as if it would have been worth the effort."

"Why wouldn't it?" Angus is provoked into demanding.

The man peels off the leaflet and squeezes it into a dripping wad that he shies onto the grass, where it lands with a plop. "What's a readin group?"

"A …" A glance at the topmost leaflet in his hand shows Angus what the man has in mind. "It's, it's like a read-in. Where you read."

"Nice try, son, but too late. Carry on then, spread the mistake around. That's how the language we've spent all these centuries building gets pulled down."

Angus can't think of a retort or a defence. "Why did you say we were after you?"

"I've written a few books. Part of one's the story of this place. Maybe that's why you thought I was worth having."

The fog wavers, and Angus feels as if the world has. "I think we've just sold one of your books, if you're …"

"Adrian Bottomley, that's me, for all it signifies. Not what you expected, eh?"

Is his attitude why he refused Connie's invitation? "Why didn't you want to sign books for us?"

"Nothing against your shop in particular. It's this whole place I can do without."

"So why are you here now?"

"Maybe selling a book was such an event I thought I'd better be here," Bottomley says, then relents. "Didn't like what I heard happened."

"What was that?" Angus asks and feels worse than stupid. "Lorraine, you mean?"

"If she's the girl that was run over. Don't like to think of anyone dying here."

Angus stares about and sees nothing except two and a quarter trees in a strip of sodden grass surrounded by a walled-in patch of tarmac. "Why specially here?"

Bottomley lowers his head and butts the air in the direction of Angus's leaflets. "Aren't you supposed to be spreading the word?"

Angus considers taking them back to point out the error, but he doesn't want to make trouble for Connie. Since nobody else has noticed the omission of a letter, it seems best not to draw attention to it—can't they pretend it was intentional if they need to? "Will you come round with me while I do?" he asks Bottomley.

"Don't you want to be out here on your own? Can't say I'm surprised after everything that's gone on."

"I was hoping you'd tell me."

"Someone ought to know," Bottomley admits, and abruptly heads for the pavement. "Come to think," he mutters, "someone has to."

His tone leaves Angus unsure how to take that or even whether it was addressed to him. Bottomley says nothing more on the way to TVid, where a bloated woman and a thin unshaven man with blistered arms are screaming at each other in a turned-down murmur on a therapy show. As the audience jeers and boos, one of the pair of staff who are laughing at the spectacle glances at Angus, who asks "Can I put some of these on your counter?"

"Do what you like with them," he says as he sees where they've come from. "Did you sort out your hooligan tape?"

"Which was that?"

"Some mob fighting on a video that was meant to be music. Your manager looked like he could kill whoever messed it up."

Angus is dropping a handful of leaflets on the counter when Bottomley enquires "Don't you want to read what he's leaving in your shop?"

The assistant who seems to do all the talking grabs one and examines it for a few seconds before slapping it back on the heap. "Looks all right to me."

"Will it have to do, then?" Bottomley might as well not have said. As he tramps out and Angus follows him the televisions raise a derisive cheer, a blurred inarticulate voice emerging from more than a dozen mindless orifices. Outside he turns on Angus. "So what do you know about this place?"

"Not really anything except my job."

Angus adds the latter half in the hope that will give Bottomley less reason to scowl, but the author's expression doesn't soften as he says "You didn't get anything out of my book."

"I never had a chance to read it."

"You and the world, son." Without relinquishing his bitterness he says "Only you might think you'd want to know where you're giving so much of your life to. Do you know why it's called what it's called at least?"

"I don't."

The apologetic answer fails to win him over. Angus doesn't understand why he brought up the name of the shop, but Bottomley finds nothing else to say as they continue their trek. In Teenstuff a manager is overseeing two assistants as they change displays around. In Baby Bunting the mob of dolls with identical sketches of faces in the window have begun to look dusty, and the two visible members of staff are playing My First Computer Game, while next door in Stay in Touch the workers seem to be having difficulty using mobile phones. Bottomley rests an increasingly dissatisfied stare on Angus whenever he repeats "Can I put some of these on your counter?" He must think changing the words of his formula makes him more literate and superior to Angus—"Aren't you going to see what they say?" and "I'd check what he's giving you" and "Have a read first"—though the variety seems to afford him little pleasure. As they emerge yet again into the fog, which appears to have gained more substance from the energy it's sucking down from the unseen sun, he strides at it as though he's bent on confronting it or driving it off. He reminds Angus of a grandfather trying to chase a bad child. After several paces he stumbles to a halt and gasps "Keeping the gangs away now, is it?"

"I expect one did this." Angus points at the graffiti that have grown like deformed ivy over the unoccupied shopfronts. "And we've had children messing up the shop. Maybe it was one who stole the car and did what you heard about."

"Not the same." Bottomley's impatience leaves sympathy behind. "I'm talking about gangs that used to meet here for a fight till the buildings went up. You'd wonder what brought them here from miles round, wouldn't you? Or maybe you wouldn't, not being from round here."

"I can't say I'm as local as you," Angus retorts.

"You might have learned a bit of history at school, all the same. Do you know how many battles there've been here, not just fights?" When Angus shakes his head in what feels like an unsuccessful attempt to stir his brain, Bottomley wags two fingers at him. "Civil War and before that with the Romans," he says and returns the fingers to a fist he continues to brandish. "And between them there were villages here, in the Middle Ages and a couple of centuries later they had another go. Make you wonder anything?"

Angus feels shut into his dullness by the interrogation and the walls on both sides of him, crawling with moisture and graffiti to his right, quivering sky-high on his left. "Such as …" he says in case that hides his ignorance.

"Fair dos, maybe you're not wondering. Maybe you've worked out what happened to the villages."

"Fog like this?" Angus suggests as if he's a child desperate to please a teacher.

"Keep going. We were speaking about it before."

"Battles, you mean."

"If you want to call them that," says Bottomley, but Angus has somehow forfeited his patience. "There was plenty of violence, that's for definite."

"Let's hope we've seen the end of it."

"Hopeful type, are you? You look around the world and see us all getting on with one another."

"I thought we were talking about here."

"You're not telling me your lot don't have any differences. You can't believe there's no tribes any more."

"That doesn't mean there's violence."

"Said you weren't from round here," Bottomley declares and surges forward as though he can't bear him any longer. Angus has to follow him past the guards' hut, where a radio voice that sounds blurred beyond words is shouting through the sightless window, and into Frugo. As Angus makes for the nearest checkout girl, Bottomley lurches into the liquor aisle. "Can I put some of these on your counter, well, everyone's?" Angus asks.

"Never drink on an empty stomach," Bottomley seems to be advising anybody within earshot, and waves a finger at her. "Don't you want a look at those first?"

"What are you trying to give us?" She's halfway through peering at the topmost leaflet before her suspicion fades into indifference. "It's about some bookshop," she informs her colleagues. "Writers and reading and that kind of stuff."

"Put them with the papers," the adjacent girl suggests. "People read them."

From the supermarket entrance Bottomley takes time to include Angus in a despairing stare as the girl takes half his leaflets. Angus trails him to the last occupied property, Stack o'Steak. He's already seated at a table red as a plastic toy, and greets Angus with a cry of "Hey up, here comes literacy."

Neither of the staff outside the kitchen, both of whom sport orange T-shirts with So'S printed across their chests, appear to welcome this any more than Angus does, or Bottomley's question. "Can he put some of those on your counter?"

By now it has become such a ritual that Angus feels bound to produce the response. "Do you want to look them over first?"

The man he asked lowers his cropped skull so close to them that Angus is reminded of a feeding animal. "Don't see why not," he eventually tells Angus in a tone that also contains the opposite.

Angus isn't sure whom Bottomley's applause is meant for until the author asks him "Got the point at last?"

"I don't think so."

Bottomley gives up and turns to the second waiter, who is hairy only by the standards of the job. "How much do I need to eat to get a bottle of your house?"

"He can just have the bottle, can't he?" the man says in a voice like a shrug rendered vocal.

The author squints at a plastic menu half the size of the table he lets it drop on. "Tell you what, I'll have the white and a plate of Chunks o'Chicken."

Angus grows aware of being watched. No doubt the diner staff wonder why he's lingering. He can't leave until he has at least begun to understand. He hurries to the table and sits opposite Bottomley. "What point?" he pleads.

"Any chance of the bottle while I'm waiting? Just one glass." Having called that, he says nothing to Angus in the interim. He scowls at the glassful of wine he's brought and downs half of it before grumbling "A bottle and one glass, I meant." When he mutters after the waiter "Too many apostrophes round here" Angus takes the chance to respond. "Not only mine this time."

Bottomley peers at him. "Do they expect you to have any qualifications where you work?"

That sounds so insulting that Angus raises his voice to be heard by the staff of the diner. "I did three years at university."

"Well, bring on the trumpets. Three more than me then, son, and you still don't get the point. Go away and think about it. I mean go right away. Maybe that'll help."

Angus feels his spine pressing against the chair to push it back. He struggles not to give in to somebody for once. "You keep refusing to tell me things," he protests. "You said someone had to know."

"That's right, and they will. Whoever bought my book from you." With even more weary indifference he adds "That's if they can be bothered to read that far."

Angus watches him sink into his bitterness and imagines him pulling it over his head like a stale blanket. He can see no point in talking further to the author. He leaves him to the bottle the waiter has brought and hurries out. Swapping all the colours for the monochrome of fog and tarmac feels like starting to go blind. As he hurries back along the pavement, the window displays past the graffiti look faded by the murk. Nobody seems aware of him, yet he feels observed, a sensation at least as oppressive as the fog. He must be nervous of encountering Woody, he thinks as Woody emerges from the shop to say "Did you have enough for all the cars?"

"All the ones I saw."

The trick makes Angus feel the reverse of clever. He would mention Bottomley if he thought he'd learned anything worth telling. Instead he asks "What did you say was in that book about here?"

Woody stares at him while he comprehends the question or decides how to answer. "Just some history."

"Such as …" Angus forces himself to prompt.

"It was settled a couple of times."

Angus doesn't know why he feels Woody has managed to pay him back with a trick, unless it's guilt that he's experiencing. He hasn't thought of any further question when Woody says "Better scoot off to your shelving now. But listen, thanks for going out there and thanks for staying here this afternoon. Hey, that's exactly what we need to see. Keep that up."

"Keep what, sorry?"

"The smile."

Angus feels it cling to his lips and writhe like an insect. "That's nearly it," says Woody. "Work on it while you're in the stockroom."