The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend (15 page)

We never really had that kind of problem in Broken Wheel. It's probably just because we didn't have any black people. John was the first to stay. I think he belongs here. That day I got him drunk, he said it was the first place he hadn't felt afraid.

Do you understand now? How can something like that be forgiven?

Best,

Amy

ON THE FIRST
morning, George gave Sara a ride to the bookshop. She had decided, for no good reason at all, that ten would be the perfect time for her shop to open, but today, she was already there at half past nine. George seemed to understand the gravity of the moment, because he hovered slightly behind her as she unlocked the door, letting her go in alone, the very first time she had properly entered her own bookshop.

She stopped in the middle of the floor, George still hesitating in the doorway behind her.

‘It scrubbed up well,' he said, and Sara smiled though she knew he couldn't see her.

She walked slowly around, switching on the standard lamp by the armchairs and the little table lamp on the counter next to the till, patting the armchairs. She ran her hand along her magical, bright yellow counter before going round and standing behind it. She was, in some way, taking possession of the shop.

She glanced around.

‘Well, then,' said George, ‘I think … I'll go for a cup of coffee.'

Sara nodded.

She had taken a dusty grey shop and transformed it into a charming, cosy little bookshop, and if that didn't mean she had achieved something with her life, she didn't know what did.

It was as though she could breathe more easily behind her counter, as though the bookshelves and the counter and the display window were keeping her anchored, making her sharper around the edges, making her stronger.

The majority of the books were paperbacks, so the shelves looked bright and colourful. She could see the cheerful, scrolled lettering and soft pastel colours of the chick lit; the tougher-looking black covers and cool, metallic titles of the thrillers; and the beige, grey and white of the more sober novels. Here and there, a hardback rose like a mountain among the paperbacks, and several of the non-fiction and photography books were sticking out over the edge of the shelves, or lying down if they were too big.

It was, in many ways, her dream bookshop. Not least because all the books had already been read.

Books which had already been read were the best.

She hadn't always thought that. When she first started working at Josephssons, she had longed for a pristine, shiny bookshop. One of the big chain shops, with enormous piles of new titles, a paperback section where there were ten copies of each title – covers facing out, with books from the charts displayed on special shelves (which weren't greyish white), with proper plastic labels instead of sloppily written signs made from yellow paper, hastily laminated in the little office behind the shop. Thrillers. Novels. Paperback Chart. New Titles. That's what it would say on the shelves.

If she was honest, she had never been able to watch
You've Got Mail
without secretly thinking that Fox & Sons' latte and book emporium was more attractive than Meg Ryan's claustrophobic little shop. Akademibokhandeln on Mäster Samuelsgatan in Stockholm was probably about as close to an emporium as you got in Sweden. The smell of lattes drifting over from Wayne's Coffee, dark leather armchairs which Jen would have liked, people with piles of shiny new books beside them, and entire sections devoted to specialist non-fiction, in case you ever felt the urge to impulse buy a book about particle physics.

But that kind of thing only worked on a large scale. Could you see Fox & Sons in a small shopping centre in the suburbs? Hardly. A local shopping centre needed a bookshop which also sold rolls of fax paper and refills for ballpoint pens. They needed a fax machine which still sent faxes abroad, and a stand full of useless objects you could buy as ugly little gifts for your children. White plastic boxes full of damaged and dusty paperbacks, in which you could find half-price treasures from the nineties.
That
kind of bookshop.

She had always loved paperbacks. One of her favourite stories was about Penguin Books. Its founder, Allen Lane, had the brainwave of producing quality paperbacks one day when he was travelling and had nothing to read. The only thing you could buy from kiosks at that time were newspapers and cheap romance or crime novels. Allen Lane dreamt of good literature in simple, cheap editions; books which cost no more than a packet of cigarettes and could be bought everywhere you could buy cigarettes. Sara had always thought that was such a great principle, and it was a shame that in Sweden today, even with the tax on tobacco included, books were more expensive than cigarettes.

The first Penguin paperbacks had arrived in the summer of 1935, and consisted of works by Ernest Hemingway, André Maurois and Agatha Christie, among others. They had been colour-coded, with orange representing novels, blue biographies, and green crime. They had cost sixpence. The same price as a packet of cigarettes.

Then – and this was why Sara was thinking about the story of Penguin – they had started the ‘Armed Forces Book Club' to spread a little joy and entertainment among the soldiers, far from home, from their families and their friends. Best of all was the fact that the smaller paperback format fitted easily in their uniform pockets. ‘It was especially prized in prison camps,' Penguin's official history claimed. Which Sara had always thought was a particularly sad sentence.

But still, it said something about the power of books. Not that they could somehow lessen the pain of war when someone beloved had died, or create world peace or anything like that. But Sara couldn't help thinking that in war, like in life, boredom was one of the greatest problems, a slow, relentless, wearing-down. Nothing dramatic, just a gradual erosion of a person's energy and lust for life.

So what could be better than a book? And a book which you could fit into your jacket pocket at that?

She was convinced that as soon as they started reading, the inhabitants of Broken Wheel would be much the better for it.

She wasn't nearly done yet, just because her bookshop was ready. On the contrary, she was just getting started. She didn't for a moment doubt that she would get the people of Broken Wheel to read, regardless of what they thought.

WORK ON THE
bookshop had changed the mood in town. It was tempting to think that there was a new determination in the air, but truth be told, that had been there long before. Caroline and Jen were living proof of that. Maybe it was simply that this determination had found a new outlet, maybe it was because people had something to gather around for a change. In any case, the fact was that for a few days, Broken Wheel felt almost like a town.

Once the bookshop was ready, though, no one really seemed to know what they were meant to do with it. What did they need a bookshop
for
? No one had any intention of buying the books. Not for themselves, anyway.

‘John might like one?' Jen said to Andy, for example. They were standing outside, looking hesitantly at the shop. Sara was behind the counter, waving awkwardly to them. Jen waved back. ‘Now that Amy –' she broke off. ‘I mean, he might need something to do.'

‘Sure,' said Andy. ‘And George has plenty of time for reading.'

‘That's exactly what I was thinking.'

‘Don't really have time myself …'

‘Absolutely not. The kids …'

‘The bar …'

They parted company soon after, having mumbled ‘John' and ‘George' to themselves once again.

‘Come on,' said Grace. She was sitting wide-legged in one of the armchairs, looking around her as though she found the fact that she was in a bookshop absolutely fascinating. ‘You'll never break even. No one buys books here.'

Sara wasn't the least bit worried. It wasn't about breaking even. All towns needed a bookshop.

‘Believe me, this isn't a town worth staying for. No town is. They drag you into their problems, and then they want to take charge of you, and then they spit you out. Though not always in that order, of course.'

Sara didn't bother to say anything. Instead, she just arranged a pile of books on the counter that didn't particularly need rearranging.

‘And now you're stuck here. Maybe I shouldn't have sent you to Caroline that day.' She shrugged. ‘Not that you're my problem.'

Sara averted her eyes. ‘Obviously I'm not going to stay. I'm just … repaying everyone. And thinking. A bookstore is a good place for thinking,' she added defensively.

‘Especially an empty bookstore,' Grace remarked laconically.

Gertrude was even more merciless. She and May were at her place, chewing over the latest developments. They lived less than five minutes apart, in remarkably similar apartments. There were differences when it came to the detail, of course. May preferred embroidered tapestries with messages on them, messages of the sort that Gertrude called ‘idiotically cheerful'. Gertrude liked paintings, in oils or acrylics. What they depicted wasn't important, so long as you got plenty of frame and painting for your money.

May liked delicate, light furniture; Gertrude had always chosen the sturdy and reliable. Otherwise, they were confusingly similar. Both apartments were small and dark, mainly because the windows were swamped by curtains and an assortment of plants, and both were filled with far too much furniture, a consequence of downsizing when they had become too old to get used either to new furniture or to throwing things away.

They spent a considerable amount of their time together, almost always at Gertrude's. Her ceiling and walls were used to the cigarette smoke. On the rare occasion they did actually go to May's, she would subtly try to air the apartment, which meant that Gertrude mistakenly believed that May's apartment was horribly draughty, and that she should do something about the windows.

‘A collection's all well and good,' said Gertrude, lighting a new cigarette. She smoked as though every cigarette might be her last.

She had donated an armchair which had found itself in quarantine because of the stench of cigarette smoke. Oh well, it was the thought that counted. ‘But if she thinks anyone from round here is actually going to buy her books, she's crazy.'

‘Maybe a love story …?' May said. She looked out of the window as she said it, wondering whether the weather was nice enough for a walk. She could walk along Main Street and just happen to pass the new bookstore. Not even Gertrude could say anything about that.

‘Bah!' Gertrude snorted. ‘Immoral.'

May fiddled with her blouse. ‘A nice love story, I meant,' she said quickly. ‘Nothing … indecent.'

There was a certain longing in her voice.

‘That's exactly what I meant,' said Gertrude. ‘They've been leading girls astray for years. Prince Charming and all that. Frogs, too. Nothing but lies.'

George split his time between Grace's and the bookshop, and could often be seen sitting in one of the armchairs with
Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason
in his hand. It was just as incomprehensible as the first one, and every now and then he laughed with delight at her latest bout of madness, before reading on, fascinated.

Andy wasn't quite so easily impressed. He came by, of course, glancing around critically before sitting down next to George and looking at the books with deliberate disinterest.

Sara stood up straight behind the counter.

‘Have you sold any yet?' Andy asked.

George heard the challenge in Andy's voice, closed his book and mumbled something about ‘lunch'. It wasn't even eleven yet. He was gone before Sara even had time to decide whether to answer truthfully or not.

While she tried to come up with an answer, she put two books out on the shelves, more so that she had something to do than because she really needed to. It still felt like she was just playing shop. Not that she would ever let on to Andy.

‘I'm sure I will,' she said.

He laughed.

Andy, she thought, would be taking some books away with him even if she had to hide them in his bag.

He looked around the shop again. ‘You should get a little gay erotica,' he said. ‘Then even I might buy a few books.'

She clenched her fists in frustration. ‘Why did you help out with all of this if you don't even believe in it?'

‘Ah, it doesn't do any harm.' He winked at her. ‘Plus, Caroline was in favour of the whole thing. You've got to pick your battles where she's concerned.'

‘She seems … tough?'

‘Caroline's an unemployed former teacher. She practically ran the school before they shut it down.' He hesitated, glanced around and whispered: ‘She was a damn good teacher.' Sara looked uncomprehendingly at him. ‘She took care of the kids.' He lowered his voice further and leaned forward in his chair, as though he was afraid that Caroline might come marching through the doorway at any moment, scolding him for praising her qualities as a teacher. ‘One-third mother, one-third social worker, one-third –'

‘Teacher?'

‘Prison guard. You laugh, but now she's completely wrapped up in taking care of Broken Wheel full-time. Same philosophy.'

‘She's always been nice to me,' said Sara.

‘If you don't watch out, she'll take control of your entire life.'

She smiled faintly. Perhaps someone should.

‘What is it with her and Grace?'

‘History. Their history is nothing compared to their relatives'. Caroline's mother couldn't stand Grace's grandmother. They used to drive one another crazy.'

‘One second,' she said, squeezing between the boxes of books to get to the cubbyhole. She came back a couple of minutes later with two mugs of coffee. She handed one of them to Andy and sat down in the armchair next to him.