Page 8 of Christmas at the Borrow a Bookshop

Chapter Four

First Night at the Bookshop

The thing about Magnús Sturluson’s bookselling holiday was that it had been reserved almost twenty-four months ago as a bit of a joke.

You’d have to know Jón, Magnús’s brother, and his dry, wicked sense of humour to understand why it seemed like a good idea to gift him a holiday doing his actual day job, only three thousand kilometres south and where he didn’t know anybody.

The reservation of a spot on the waiting list had been made as a Christmas gift back when Magnús had worked in his very own bookshop, Reykjavík’s Ash and the Crash.

He’d named his shop after the two things Iceland was most famous for overseas (apart from Vikings, whales, cracking Eurovision songs, and lovely knits): the great ash cloud that had sent news anchors everywhere into a sweaty panic as they tried to sayEyjafjallajökull, the name of the volcano that was grounding flights all over the world, and the financial crash of 2008 when the country was almost bankrupted by a handful of moneymen left unsupervised with the nation’s economy.

The name had seemed good and droll and eminently suitable for a touristy street near the hop-on, hop-off bus stop in the centre of Reykjavík. Footfall, the letting agent had promised him, would be excellent.

Now that the shop had gone massively bust and Magnús had lost all his capital and almost all of his pride, the name didn’t seem funny at all.

‘You practically live in your bookshop,’ his brother had joked. ‘We can’t get you out of the place. This way you take a holidayandsell books. Just the right thing for you and Anna.’

‘I have three million króna of books to sell right here! Why would I sell an Englishman’s booksandhave my brother pay for the privilege? Who will run my store while I’m gone, huh? You all have your own jobs.’

Nobody had seemed to mind that he was close to hyperventilating, scratching his fingertips inside his neat, sharp beard and running his hand over his dark-blond head as though this might somehow soothe him. Everyone had smiled knowingly as if to say,This again! You worry too much.

His father, often a little exasperated with his middle child who, according to family legend, had worn a tense and earnest expression since the day he was born, had patted him on the shoulder, saying ‘Þetta reddast; it will be fine,’ and walked him to the dinner table where his mum was serving up the Christmas EveHangikjötwithuppstúfur.

Magnús had brooded all that evening while his family ate and exchanged books. His older sister’s kids had been so excited for theJólabókaflóðtradition that year. It meant that as soon as the hot chocolate was poured they’d all headed to bed to read glossy new books and dozed off dreaming of fairy tales and poetry until Christmas morning.

Anna had been there too, that night. Magnús had wondered at the time whether she had put Jón up to it. She’d resented the bookshop since it opened – or rather, she resented the way it took him away from her every weekend and late into the evenings. He’d be there at all hours – he was, after all, its only bookseller.

‘You work like you’re an android, and not a man,’ she’d told him, pleading that he take some time off to rest, even if he only observed Sunday mornings when the whole of Reykjavík was closed, but still, he’d get out of bed and walk to his shop while the church bells tolled.

Eventually she’d had enough, and last Christmas – when the bookshop holiday gift was an old joke and half forgotten, even though Magnús was edging closer to the top of the waiting list – she’d dumped him.

He’d simply accepted it. Of course she wanted nothing more to do with him. She’d accused him of becoming a boring robot of a man, and deep down he recognised that every single time they managed to grab a bit of lunch together or take a walk, he’d spoil things by stopping to peer in the windows of the other, thriving, bookstores, racking his brains to figure out why his seemed to be the only one without any customers and he’d get lost in self-pity, forgetting he was supposed to be on a date.

At least he understood now why he’d lost Anna. He’d bored her right out of his life. The mystery of why his shop failed was, however, still unsolved. Was the window display too drab? The ambience too cool and unwelcoming? Had he bought the wrong stock?

A good bookseller must be a composite: half curator, half mystic. They must buy up enough of the classics and the popular stuff to keep up with demand, as well as trying to predict new trends and catch up when the market surprises everyone with a breakout bestseller by an unknown author. Magnús had done all that, alongside trying to recommend books based on his gut feeling about the customers who he’d weigh up as they browsed the shelves.

He’d even catered for the tourists, hoping to entice them in with translations of Icelandic folk tales, sagas and songs, but all he’d really shifted were maps of Reykjavík. He could have set up a kiosk outside Hallgrímskirkja for that, instead of sinking his last króna and all his hopes into his own bricks and mortar store.

Ash and the Crash Bookshop had been his dream since high school, and it was a source of pure joy and satisfaction for him at first. Then it became a millstone, and suddenly, before it had a chance to really get off the ground, it was over.

Nobody had rented out the empty unit yet, as far as he was aware. His parents might well know, but they hadn’t mentioned it. He couldn’t bring himself to pass by it any more, walking down side streets to avoid it.

His shop, he imagined grimly, was standing unoccupied, a white box that couldn’t remember a thing about how beautiful it had been when stocked with books and with its doors flung open in summer. The indifferent tourists would still be rolling by on the red buses and never noticing it.

It was therefore understandable that tonight, while sitting in another man’s bookshop, Magnús would be somewhat forlorn. Nothing could penetrate his gloom. Not even the rich, dusty, papery scent that mixed in the air with the dried summer flowers clustered in vases – a gift from Minty’s estate gardens. Not even when the timer on the fairy lights ticked its way round to half past six and the window display had burst into a warm golden glow did he manage a smile. Even when Mrs Crocombe had bustled in a few hours ago with the gift of ice cream from her shop a little way Down-along and told him he’d better eat it up or it might freeze he hadn’t laughed at her joke, only staring dopily at the proffered tub between them.

The truth was, he loved ice cream, could eat tubs of the stuff, but didn’t know what to do with this kindness from a stranger. She’d shrugged and pushed past him, showing him how to light the fire in the little hearth near the shop counter. It had taken her a long time, longer than Magnús thought was needed – she really had made a meal of prepping the kindling and crumpling newspaper – and all the while she’d fired questions at him.

He hadn’t understood or liked the gleam in her eyes when he’d told her he was single. ‘I’m not interested in that kind of thing at the moment,’ he’d said, but she only chuckled and struck at the match.

After she’d shuffled off, leaving him alone again, the fire had brought a drop of comfort, and the ice cream – something called ‘rum and no raisin’ (again, he didn’t get it) – was really very tasty indeed, and quite, quite boozy for a dessert.

The shop itself was beautiful in its own way – nothing like the sleek, bright Ash and the Crash, of course, but mellow and aged. The place felt exceedinglyEnglishto Magnús. Once-white walls seemed tea-stained, the beamed ceilings eccentrically squint and oddly low, and the warped floorboards made him feel a little drunk whenever he tried to cross the room.

The shelves were reassuring, though. He knew where he stood with books. Even though he longed to be back in his own shop faced with row upon row of shiny new books by Icelandic authors printed in his own language, there was still the feeling of an abundance of choice, an embarrassment of riches when browsing the Borrow-A-Bookshop stacks.

He’d already put aside a copy of Heaney’sBeowulfand a Works of Ezra Pound which he’d take home with him to Iceland. He knew he’d find plenty of other irresistible titles in the coming days that would end up in his suitcase, too.

Magnús loved the absorption and distraction that reading brought him. He’d been at his happiest when sitting behind the till of Ash and the Crash with his head buried in the latest Arnaldur Indriðason – having promised himself he’d only take a peek at the opening pages before being helplessly drawn in to the story. He was at his happiest, that is, until he realised the time between interruptions to his reading by customers entering his shop was growing wider with each day that passed.

Still, the comforting sense of being surrounded by opportunities to escape – all he had to do was open the door into any one of these books and he’d dissolve away entirely – helped his mood. Maybe there was hope of some good things, some solitude and solace, in this strange spot in the south west of England after all.

Having spent his childhood immersed in Norse legends, he’d always been drawn to mythic stories, so tonight he picked out a copy ofMermaid Myths of Devon and Cornwallfrom the shelves marked ‘Folk Tales’ and read until the fire had lost its warmth and the coals in the basket were running low. He closed his eyes and slept right there in the shop armchair.

That night he dreamt – though he’d never remember it – of a beautiful woman with long white hair fanning out like unpicked rope. He gazed at her from a rock while beneath dark waves she flicked her long legs together like a tail, watching him with wide, appealing eyes, her mouth moving as though she wanted to call to him but couldn’t, then suddenly she was sinking and fading and no matter how he plunged his arms into the cold water, he couldn’t reach her. From the churning depths there suddenly emerged hundreds of printed pages rising off the seabed as though torn loose from books. They filled the water below his spot on the rock, all sodden and spoiled and obscuring his view of the sinking woman until he was sure she had gone to the bottom.

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