Robert had come to assume that he was too old for love. Not in the strict sense of the physical act — though there was a narrative beginning to build there — nor in his ability to show genuine affection for others, even if that had also been less in demand over the recent past. No. The passion he believed beyond him was that kind of juvenile, spur-of-the-moment attraction which took you by surprise, knocked you off your feet. To be more accurate, it was less that he had assumed such emotion impossible, but rather realised it had gradually and imperceptibly sidled away from him, as if, in becoming stale and recognising it was no longer needed, it had hung its head in defeat and walked from the stage.
Yet now here he was, a man in his mid-fifties, in the middle of a bookshop, and finding all the air had been sucked out of the room. Young again, he was assailed not by memory but by the reality of something having entered the building, rushed up the stairs, and extracted the breath from his lungs.
He had been standing at one of the square display tables and browsing in his usual fashion, mentally ticking off the books he had read — and occasionally lifting ones he had not — when he became aware of a presence diametrically opposite him. Robert had glanced up; an innocent enough action, and one empty of expectation.
She was wearing loose-cut powder-blue jeans with a pale canvas belt and a plain white shirt. Also casually cut, the shirt was fastened to within two buttons of the top, revealing a narrow gold chain about her neck. The sleeves were rolled up without any precision. Over the top of the shirt was a beige knitted waistcoat hanging open, and on one shoulder a long-handled canvas bag. Lacking any kind of ostentation, it was an ensemble which seemed to exude a quiet confidence, not only in the figure of the wearer — around average height, shapely without being voluptuous — but also in the personality to whom the figure belonged. Her hair, just on the pale side of brown, was full and long and yet relatively unremarkable, though in that instant — the moment in which Robert, in spite of everything, found himself taking her all in — it seemed almost magical.
It was a moment in which he seemed to shed the vast majority of his history, as if a wizard had arrived in the room and waved their wand, taking him back to a version of himself he had forgotten had ever existed.
“That’s excellent,” this newly reincarnated Robert offered across the table.
She looked up from the cover of the book she was holding, and he was crushed again: by the vacuum in the bookshop, by her beauty, by feeling himself so much younger — yet also by the realisation that he was probably old enough to be her father.
“I read something else by him,” she offered smiling, glancing down to the book again, “but I wasn’t convinced.”
“I’ve read most of his stuff. Some of it’s a little impenetrable I’ll grant you, but that’s the best. In my opinion anyway. For what it’s worth.”
Glancing back to the table, she returned the book to the top of the relevant pile. He felt rejected as if he too had been casually tossed aside. Tangentially he remembered his first term at university when he had still been a boy.
“What else is good?”
She rescued him, edging towards one of the sides of the table that delineated the gulf between them.
“The Ishiguro,” he suggested, “or the Swift. Waterland is wonderful.”
“And do you only read male authors?”
It was a question in another register, coming to him almost as if from a different universe. He wondered if it might be possible to stop time, knowing he would be happy to be frozen right there, just at that moment. If it were to prove to be his ‘Groundhog Day’ then he would have been content.
“Of course not.” He tried a smile, partly to prove that he understood she was already making fun of him, mining her own history and experience in order to do so. And then he wondered if she might be humouring him because she knew he was not a threat. “I tried the Ella Ferrante but I’m afraid I couldn’t get on with it — not that that means anything, of course.”
“It means you’re a man.” She smiled again.
And that was the moment. The moment when he wished he could have walked to her side and taken her into his arms; to have felt the touch of her lips on his, the press of her body against his; to be stirring — for both of them to be stirring — at the prospect of what would soon be happening, not there in the bookshop but elsewhere, back in his house or hers, the buttons on the white shirt undone, the belt loosened — his belt loosened too — and then to fold into each other, forcing the air from their lungs, she coaxing him back to a time when he had been someone else, someone new, the person for whom everything had still been possible.
Even love.
Anthology submission opportunity
At time of publication earlier this year it seemed likely that New Contexts: 7 would be the final edition in our anthology series. Largely that position was taken when reflecting the impact of AI on creative writers & editors. However, we live in hope of the triumph of man over machines, and so....
I enjoyed this. Lovely way to start the morning.
Lovely description of a chance meeting to read on a busy morning.