The Loneliness of the Long Distance Book Runner (4 page)

A simple offer to buy it might raise suspicion. The thought to pocket it does cross my mind. Who would miss it? These books are for just for show, aren’t they? I could try to justify the theft but I can’t bring myself to actually steal a book. It feels wrong; it being a betrayal, as it were, of my trade. My moral compass, in spite of its innate dodginess, draws a distinction between a book and, say, a Cadbury cream egg whisked surreptitiously into a young boy’s pocket. What to do? Maybe I should come clean and offer to go halves with the pub on any profit accrued from its future sale. I finish my pint and leave with the intention of returning tomorrow with a canny plan.

I don’t need one.

Eddy has anticipated my prevarication. The following day in the Montparnasse McDonald’s, over a greedily consumed McBacon roll, the book is plonked down before me. He’d simply asked Simon, one of the bar staff with whom he is on friendly terms, to take home the book. As easy as you like.

It has a firm binding with no leaning to its spine, which is unusual given its previous resting spot. The book contents are in very good condition; no spotting or any marks. I get lucky in London. A dealer in Virginia Woolf pays over the odds because he has an authentic dust jacket lacking its book. Being a highly sought after title, its sale generates a good deal of wonga which I happily share with Eddy. A good proportion of his share will be spent on beer… in Corcoran’s.

The sun is shining for once and it’s great to be tramping about this windswept green field in Wales. We arrive late and so have the excuse to lunch on local lamb burgers washed down with tea. Emily is eating candyfloss and Matty is absorbed in adding to his collection of Disney films. Making the most of this small window of pester free time, I look through a box of history books. I also notice some Enid Blytons and an Oxenham. None of them have dust jackets but the lady selling them says that she only wants £15 for the lot. Fair enough.

Later that afternoon, with the help of the internet and some reference books, it becomes clear that the Oxenham, despite its less than pristine state, is highly collectable. There isn’t another copy for sale on any of the main book websites.

After further deliberation and research, I upload the following details to my list of books in cyberspace.

The book sells four months later and I try to justify my profit. How many car boots have I visited in order to find this gem of a collector’s item?

The buyer in Australia might be a seller or a collector. I
have no way of knowing. She may well intend to sell the book on, providing that she has a customer or a better judgement of the book’s value. A hierarchy of knowledge, the fundamental setter of price, determines the chain of book transactions.

(Distance travelled: 15 miles. Profit: £465. Fact learned: My business success is as unpredictable as Anglesey’s weather.)

The room is packed with objects and people milling about them. I am slightly apprehensive. This is my first auction and I’m late which means there is only time for a cursory glance at the various lots. Beneath a settee, there is a box of books, which I crouch down to assess. There are plenty of Folio paperback classics and I consider them worth a bid. I’ve got increasing confidence in my judgement of French books.

The auction soon starts and the auctioneer is rattling through the bids. His voice lulls me into a trance-like state out of which I am jolted upon hearing the words ‘
boite du livres
’. I thrust my hand skywards and soon discover that nobody else wants to bid. Sixty francs is all I’ve offered and I feel slightly exhilarated to have participated and triumphed at my first attempt.

Successful bidders are expected to assemble fairly promptly at a desk near the hall’s entrance where payment is made. In handing over the money, I am then puzzled when the auction ‘ushers’ walk straight past the box of books. They go instead to a massive mahogany headboard, which they need two men to carry. My mistake dawns on me.

‘
Bois du lit
’. Idiot. Attempting to appear unfazed, I lead the assistants outside to my van into which they heave the bed. I feign contentment with my purchase until I drive out of their sight whereupon I unleash a volley of expletives.

(Distance travelled: 3 miles. Profit: None. Fact learned: A little knowledge in French can lead easily to humiliation.)

Drawn to this smart town with a reputation for good bookshops, I am not disappointed. The owners at Kernaghan Books, situated in Wayfarers Arcade, are friendly and much of their stock is reasonably priced (by my definition) in that it can be bought and sold on. I willingly part with £10 to own the works of Voltaire and the diary of Jules Renard in the Bibliotheque de la Pleiade.

My next port of call is Broadhursts, established in 1926. The shop covers four floors and is a delight for any bookworm or bibliophile. Some of the rooms have a museum feel about them and they get me thinking. Broadhursts boasts an impressive array of
Biggles
and
Just Williams
. Many other books – including modern firsts – are struggling to fetch prices achieved in previous decades. W. E. Johns and Richmal Crompton have resisted this trend but for how long? The rule of supply and demand dictates but demand has no inherent hold on stability at the best of times. Collectors covet certain books because other collectors have previously done so and are continuing to do so. Someone is buying a book whose ‘value’ is
based upon other people’s assessment of its monetary worth. A philosopher acquaintance and former customer points out that these books as an investment are dependent on a third party’s investment decision. He has me scratching my head and wading through Keynesian theories of economics in the tertiary sector.

The city is roofed in local slate – Penrhyn purple – which imbibes somehow the grey skies, something of a meteorological default setting in North Wales. To compensate, there is the timeless melancholic beauty of the mountains.

Bangor is really a small town although its compact cathedral confers upon it official city status. It has an old university (by today’s standards) and a proud, friendly working class community. There is an absence of snobbishness but Bangor is still, in other respects, a microcosm of Britain, and somewhat schizoid in nature; PhD meeting KFC: professors intoxicated by the abstruse, lads on lager overload, seaweed from Japan for sale in Upper Bangor’s health food shop while, below, the city’s High Street is awash with the country’s regulation fare. Seagulls gorge on the leftovers. A plethora of chippies but no fishmonger. Packed pubs at weekends. Drunk students, skunked students, but studious ones too, that, I hope, will buy second-hand books. Some locals resent their presence and the mess of their rubbish spilling out of discarded bin liners. But they are the lifeblood of the city, and in the High Street, at the cheapest end, I open a bookshop prosaically called ‘Bangor Bookshop’.

I make a stab at targeting the university market but the margin on academic texts is, after a student discount, fifteen per cent at best. It makes more sense to concentrate on used books. Rents and rates mean that I have to conjure, from book sales, some £800 a month before I’ve made a penny. I’m struggling from the start.

The truth of it is that not enough people buy my books. Unhesitatingly, the public buys newspapers and magazines. But not books. Arnold Bennett in the 1920s announced that he had ‘scarcely ever met a soul, who could be said to make a habit of buying new books. Most people look upon money spent upon books as money wasted: the public hates to spend money on books, although they do not hesitate to spend lavishly on such ephemera as newspapers and magazines.’
Plus ça change
…

A pub opposite, The White Harp, makes me think if only people could get drunk on books, ordering one after another. Hey, this Rankin is the business, bookseller, serve me up another three more Rebuses and a Dexter chaser.

On the ‘viewing’ eve of the monthly antiques sale in Colwyn Bay, an oak Welsh dresser distracts me from the purpose of our visit. Anne gets me back on track by spotting
The Speaking Picture Book for the amusement of Children by Image, Verse and Sound.

Lot 278 intrigues. The pages are inside a carved wooden
box upon which is a colour pictorial label. At the front of the book are eight fine chromolithograph illustrations, each facing a page of text. Next to each page of text is an ivory knob that, when gently pulled, causes a different animal sound to be produced (cock, donkey, lamb, birds, cow, cuckoo, goat and mamma and papa).

I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s a half book half toy antiquarian oddity. We return home and the internet sets my pulse racing. Haining (
Moveable Books
, p. 136–7) calls this ‘the piece de resistance of any collection of moveables’ and adds that few complete and fine copies have ‘survived youthful hands’. The guide price in the auction catalogue is £250–£300 which is well out of kilter with valuations on various websites. There are copies going on abebooks.com for well in excess of £1000.

I rush back to Colwyn Bay to convince myself that it is the book that was published in Sonneberg, Germany by Theodor Brand in 1880. All evidence indicates that it is. The label on the cover notes that this is ‘A new picture book’. Inside the front cover is a printed label at the bottom of which reads ‘A German edition is also appearing.’ It also notes that it is patented in Great Britain, the United States, Germany and Austria. The thought of a patented book appeals to me.

The next morning in the salesroom I wait nervously for Lot number 278. I have my card at the ready. On arrival you register your details at reception and they provide you with a bidding number on a card. This is what you raise to the auctioneer’s attention when you want to place bids.

Wondrous items abound but I’m transfixed by the possibility of owning
The Speaking Picture Book
. The auction is in full swing. The salesroom is heaving. Rogers Jones’
employees hold phones to their ears; their faces tensed up with concentration. They bid on behalf of what I imagine to be wealthy dealers in locations rather more exotic than Colwyn Bay. It creates a buzz of excitement. Prices rocket. The gavel is thumped down with theatrical glee.

We are up to Lot 30 when a couple of middle aged men push down to near the front where I anxiously stand. Almost immediately one of them begins to bid with reckless extravagance, or so it seems to me. Spending thousands of pounds on furniture, jewellery and old grandfather clocks, his budget seems limitless. He wasn’t at yesterday’s evening ‘viewing’. In his hand is an unblemished catalogue, with nothing scribbled down in the way of notes and prices. I get the impression that he is in the business of making instantaneous assessments. Lot 278, by chance, is displayed on a table within three metres of us. Minutes before the auctioneer comes to it, the Big Spender steps up to give it the once over. The ‘viewing period’ is clearly over but the auctioneer tolerates this minor disregard for convention.

As with most of the items, the auctioneer talks up the book in his pre-bid spiel. And suddenly, we’re off. ‘Let’s start at £250.’ Nobody bats an eyelid and the price drops to £80 before anyone will offer a starting bid. It is me. Two other people also express interest and the bidding reaches £210 before they drop out. My heart beats hard. The auctioneer is appealing for more bids. ‘This seems cheap to me. Going…’ Damn. The Big Spender lifts up his card. The bidding advances in £10 intervals. Trying to out bluff my competitor, I hold the card aloft, not bothering to bring it down after my bid. But he does the same. The price races to £350, my top bid figure or so I’d thought. Breaking this promise to myself, I go to £420 before conceding defeat.

The auction ends and the Big Spender is swigging from a can of Coke while counting cash with his colleague. Strangely, I feel like congratulating him. I want to tell him about the book’s history but all I say in parting is ‘That’s a nice book.’

‘Aye,’ he replies in a thick Glaswegian brogue. ‘I just liked the look of it.’

(Distance travelled: 40 miles. Profit: None. Fact learned: Knowledge is power, but it can be trumped by big money.)

This isn’t the antiques sale, rather the general household. They’ve made a mistake. Intensive rummaging of four boxes of mixed books has produced nothing but dust and disappointment. But then I come across Lot 56, assigned to a box of old children’s books, most of which are in a sad state of disrepair. Amongst these and in fairly good condition is the classic
The Square Book of Animals
by William Nicholson. It is what it says. It has a marvellous symmetry about it, even its publication date – 1900. It is a picture book of British animals explained in rhymes by Arthur Waugh. A £15 bid allows me to leave with the box and all the books therein.

Later that evening, I type up the following description:
William Heinemann 1900, First Edition Boards VG Some shelf wear and corner wear. Complete with 12 plates by Nicholson. Offsetting of plates to facing text pages, otherwise, clean. Two plates with a small brown spot in margin.

In 1897 Nicholson made a woodcut of Queen Victoria which established his name with the public. During the same year he worked upon
An Illustrated Alphabet
for the publisher William Heinemann. It was reasonably successful commercially, but more importantly, it provided Nicholson with an opportunity to develop his talents as an engraver. There is something immensely appealing about his work. I’d like to keep
The Square Book of Animals
but my finances preclude ownership. It reminds me of the format of my first alphabet books. John Burningham’s
ABC
with an apple, birds, etc., through to xylophone, yacht and zoo. One letter on each page is shown in both upper and lower case, along with a relevant word. On the facing page is a simple illustration in pastel colours.
The Square Book of Animals
is an ancestral version of the format.