There, now. Two birds with one stone. She would buy a rug, in (she almost hugged herself with pleasure at the thought) a shop, and it would be the sort of rug Kiss would like. Persian or something. She could stand a coffee-table on it so that she wouldn’t have to see it, but he would still know it was there.
Problem; although all Oriental carpets looked exactly the same to her, she was sure she remembered something about each one being unique, and some sorts being wonderfully marvellous works of art, and others being the sort of thing that’s left unsold after a church bazaar. Obviously, it was incumbent upon her to buy one of the approved models.
Why is life so complicated?
The thought had scarcely crossed her mind when she caught sight of a book on the arm of the sofa. It was big and fat, and on the cover it had a photograph of a Persian rug. She picked it up.
It was written in Arabic.
That aside, it was promising; it was full of pictures of rugs, all of which looked pretty well identical to her, but it stood to reason that nobody, not even an Arab in the grips of vanity-publishing mania, would go to the trouble of producing a chunky great tome full of pictures of just one rug. Even if he was desperately attached to it, he’d probably just have its portrait painted and let it go at that.
Therefore, she argued, this must be a book, belonging to Kiss, on the subject of rugs; approved rugs, presumably. All she had to do was go to an emporium, find a rug which looked tolerably similar to the pictures in the book, and buy it. Problem solved. She dumped the book in her bag and went out.
Arguably, a more perceptive person might have noticed the wires coming out of the spine, and wondered what business a book had with sockets and electrodes.
The young man (his name was Justin) was tall and thin. L.S. Lowry would have hired him as a model without a moment’s hesitation. He was wearing a hairy tweed jacket whose sleeves appeared to have eaten his hands right down to the middle joints of the fingers. He seemed nervous.
But not as nervous as the other man (his name was Max). If Justin resembled a golf club, Max was a dead ringer for the ball.
“Now you’ve got the number?” Max said.
“Yes, Uncle.”
“And you’ll phone me if there’s any problems? Any problems at all?”
“Yes, Uncle.”
“And you know where everything is?”
“Yes, Uncle.”
Max chewed his lip. “The key to the safe is in the coffee tin on the top shelf of the stockroom, just under the—”
“Yes, Uncle.”
“And you’re sure you’ll be all right?”
“Yes, Uncle.”
There’s only so much you can do, thought Max; and I’ll only be gone two hours, and there’s never any customers on a Thursday afternoon, and all the prices are clearly marked, and I’ve told him nineteen times not to let anybody haggle…”
“Justin.”
“Yes, Uncle?”
“Remember, don’t let anybody haggle. The prices as marked are non-negotiable. You’ve got that?”
“Yes, Uncle.”
…Twenty times, so what could possibly go wrong? no, don’t even think that. Just keep everything crossed, and hurry back as soon as possible.
“Oh, and Justin.”
“Yes, Uncle?”
“Don’t buy anything.”
“No, Uncle.”
It’s impossible, Max reassured himself, completely out of the question, that the boy could be as dozy as his mother. For a start, he seems able to remember to breathe regularly without anybody having to remind him. The shop will be in safe hands. Everything’s going to be all right.
“Is there anything,” he said, taking a deep breath, “you want to ask before I go?”
“No, Uncle.”
Max shut his eyes, broadcast a prayer to any passing gods and smiled wretchedly.
“Right,” he said, winding his scarf round his neck, “it’s all yours.”
He took three steps towards the door, stopped and looked round. Of course he would see it all again, and when he came back everything would be all right. But there was no harm in taking one last, long look, just to be on the safe side.
"Bye, Uncle.”
“See you, Justin.”
The bell on the door clanged and Justin was alone with the shop, the till, the books and seventy square miles of the choicest, rarest, most valuable Oriental carpets in the whole of the United Kingdom.
He sneezed.
Carpets attract dust, and dust played hell with Justin’s sinuses. The next two hours, he just knew, were going to be very, very long.
He sat down behind the desk and found his place in his book, trying his best to breathe in through his mouth only. He hadn’t read more than five or six pages when the bell tinkled. He looked up.
“Can I help?” he asked, and froze.
During the previous night, when he’d been lying awake fretting about having to mind the shop on his own the next day, he had finally managed to reconcile himself to the thought that there might be customers. He had squared up to that one, looked the impostor Fear straight in the eye and stared him down. It hadn’t occurred to him, however, that there might be female customers. Young female customers. If the thought had crossed his mind, come to that, he wouldn’t be here now.
“I expect so,” Jane replied, looking round. “I want to buy a rug.”
“Gosh.”
“Looks like I’ve come to the right place.”
“Crumbs.”
“I mean,” Jane went on, with that awful feeling you get when you know you’ve got to keep talking because the silence that’ll follow when you stop will be too embarrassing to contemplate, “you look like you’ve got a very wide selection.”
“Have we? Yes.”
Jane subsided. What she really wanted to do now was leave the shop and never come back; but it looked like there was a sporting chance that the implied rejection would drive the young man behind the desk to slash his wrists, if he didn’t break his thumbnail getting the big blade out first. She was stuck.
“Gosh,” she said, selecting a carpet at random, “what have we here?”
The young man said nothing. His expression seemed to suggest that as far as he was concerned, all carpets were too ghastly for words and he wanted nothing to do with them, ever, not in this world or the next.
“No,” Jane muttered, “maybe not. Or rather,” she added quickly, in case the negative vibes might just be the final shove that would send him over the edge, “it’s a really nice carpet, but not quite in keeping with… Yes, this one’s even nicer. Don’t you think?”
The young man lifted his head and gazed at the example she’d put her hand on. “Do you want to, er, buy…?”
His tone of voice suggested that Jane was trying to seduce him into committing some luridly unnatural act. “Well,” she mumbled, “I do quite like…”
“I’ll look,” said the young man, “in the book.”
He ducked under the counter, and for on awful moment Jane wondered if he was ever going to reappear. Just when she was steeling herself to go and see what he’d done to himself under there, he bobbed back up again with a shoebox full of tatty notebooks.
“It’ll be inhere somewhere,” the young man said hopelessly.
Oh Christ, Jane thought, I’m going to be here for the rest of my life. Kiss, where the devil are you when I need you? Beam me up quick.
“Look, if it’s any trouble…”
The young man favoured her with a look that wouldn’t have been out of place on the face of a sheep in an abattoir. “I’m quite capable of looking it up, thank you very much,” he said, with a sort of hideous mangled dignity that made Jane wish very much that her father had never met her mother. “I’ll try not to keep you.”
“I’ll buy it anyway,” Jane whimpered, “if that’s all right with you, I mean.”
The young man didn’t reply. He was nose-deep in the box. It looked very much as if he was going to be there for some considerable time.
Eventually, just as Jane was wondering whether she could surreptitiously roll herself up in the carpet like Cleopatra, wait till he’d gone and then make good her escape, the young man lifted his head and coughed nervously.