Trowchester Blues 01 - Trowchester Blues (6 page)

Brass astrolabes glinted in spare corners and a distant alcove held a great Pegasus of glittering glass. He looked up and laughed again because yes, there was an embalmed dragon hanging from the ceiling, and it was giving him a peculiarly reptilian sneer.

The sound of his laugh brought movement from the distance. He walked forwards, saw more steps down into a further series of cave-like rooms where a young man with blue hair was just edging himself out from behind a large desk half taken up with a steampunk monstrosity of a till.

The young man straightened, looked at May, and froze for a long, telling moment. Not a bad-looking lad, but with a round scar on one cheek that spoke of having been bottled in a bar fight. Toned physique, square hands with tattoos over the knuckles, something indefinable about him that said gay, and something much, much stronger that said ex-con, but May was keeping an open mind on the
ex
. Maybe it was the flinch, or the way he had obviously IDed May as a copper and was now wondering what to do about it, but they recognised one another as predator and prey at a glance.

Except that May wasn’t a copper anymore, and he had better not forget it. He swallowed down the stab of grief just as the shop clerk swallowed down his own reaction and said, “Can I help you?”

He should have expected that question and had an answer prepared. Instead he was thrown. “I . . . uh. I don’t know.”

“No, you can’t help this gentleman, Kevin,” a voice came from behind him. An older voice, amused, urbane. Just a little touch of Irish accent. “This is a man who needs something he himself doesn’t recognise. Something he can’t express. Am I right?”

Now May was amused too, because yeah, he’d just said that, but when this guy rephrased it in his intellectual doublespeak, with that smooth voice, it sounded deep. It sounded like he was here on some kind of quest. He turned with a smile to meet the person who was obviously the wizard in charge of this establishment.

The guy was shorter than him. That was always a pleasant surprise. But whereas May was wide enough across the shoulders to feel square, this guy was perfectly shaped for his height. He should have looked small, delicate even, but something about his personality turned it around, made him seem lean, capable, beautifully built and proportioned. Made everything else in the world seem out of scale.

He wore pale flannel trousers and a tweed jacket with a crescent moon tiepin worn in one lapel like a brooch. His white shirt was unbuttoned to the top of his waistcoat, his oak-blond hair cut in a floppy 1920s’ style. Right down to the clever, ironic expression in his green eyes, he could have stepped out of an episode of
Poirot
, and though May had seen young intellectuals in London attempt the same look often enough, this was the first time he’d seen it really pulled off.

This vision of elegance waved a hand dismissively at his clerk. “Be off with you.”

From the corner of his eye, May watched as Kevin took the hint. Stopping to haul a box of books out from under the desk, the young man disappeared through a distant door with a nervous backwards glance in May’s direction, trying to look like he was busy doing his job and not running away.

Rocking his weight back on his heels, the wizard considered May with a small smile, as though May were one of his pieces of art, or a volume he was appraising to buy.

“You liked what you saw?”

May could have dealt with camp easily enough. This wasn’t quite camp, or if it was, it was camp done sideways, undermining itself. He had no idea what to make of the man’s attitude or demeanour. He thought he was being checked out, but he honestly couldn’t tell for sure.

The guy’s impish smile spread at his confusion. “The book in the window?”

“I like it,” said May. “But it can’t be real, right? You’d never put a real medieval manuscript out in the sunlight like that.”

“Well, well.” Everything about the guy seemed calculated to be soft. The oatmeal-coloured trousers, the whimsical fringe of his hair, and the lowered, lilting voice. But May got the impression that he was marshmallow wrapped round barbed wire. He liked it.

“They do say ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover,’” said the wizard approvingly. “It’s obviously true in your case.” He held out an ink-stained hand for May to shake. The grip would have crushed his bones together if he hadn’t expected it and braced beforehand. “I’m Fintan. Fintan Hulme, the proprietor of this marvellous emporium. Call me Finn, why don’t you? Everyone does.”

“Michael. Michael May.”

“What can I do for you, Michael May? More to the point, why haven’t I seen you in here before? A man who knows enough not to expose a valuable manuscript to the light, but can appreciate a more robust copy . . . I would have thought a man like that would have had the good taste to come in sooner.”

Okay, so now he was pretty sure he was being flirted with. A long way away from home with no career to lose and no one to disappoint, he was being hit on by an extraordinary guy. It occurred to him with a thrill of wonder that he didn’t have to shut this down, and then with an accompanying thrill of terror that he didn’t know how not to. He glanced aside, discovering that someone had drawn a mousehole on the skirting board with a little cartoon mouse beside it.

He admired the whimsy of it, wished he had something equally offbeat and interesting to say, but could think of nothing but the truth. “I . . . um. I just moved in. Into town. My dad died, left me the house. Though I’m actually in the narrowboat at the bottom of the garden.” Catching himself rambling, he ducked his head, tried to pull himself back together. “And you don’t need to know that, do you? Sorry. But I arrived yesterday evening. You were closed then.”

When he looked up again, ashamed of his inarticulacy, his bald, unimaginative earnestness, Finn was so close he could see the faded freckles over the bridge of the guy’s nose, laughter lines like spidery writing in the corners of his eyes. They were blue, close to. Blue with scatters of yellow spots around the pupil that made them seem green at a distance. And they were full to the brim with amusement.

Finn leaned in even closer, making May freeze, afraid to do anything in case he got it wrong.

“I’d open anytime for you.”

Finn laughed at the expression on May’s face. Nipping his upper lip between his teeth as if to stifle a triumphant smirk, he retreated and let May catch his aborted breath, struggle to slow his runaway heart. Wow.

Teasing. That had been teasing, nothing more. But shit. The visceral need to grab hold with both hands and taste that mocking mouth was brutal. Like nothing he’d ever felt before. He almost . . . It was almost scary. So unexpected, so unprecedented. He didn’t know where to go from here, what he should say or do to put things back to normal. He covered his face with his hands to try to hide the fact that it was burning.

Silence from Finn, and then footsteps approaching him. He startled as a narrow hand wrapped around his wrist and tugged, making him uncover his face.

Finn looked older, with the impish expression dropped to make way for concern. Lines on his forehead and bracketing his mouth said he was about the same age as May, just doing a better job of not crumpling under the years. “I’m sorry,” he said gently. “That was too much, wasn’t it? You’re bereaved. I shouldn’t make fun.”

Embarrassingly enough, May had to pull his hand back and cover his face again as his eyes stung. He didn’t care about the old bastard dying. He didn’t. But bereaved just about covered everything else.

“Let’s find you a book.” Finn touched his wrist gently again, leaving a fleeting impression of warmth. “Books cure all ills. What will it be?”

May rubbed his knuckles under his eyes to be sure they were dry, raised his head in time to see Finn trailing his fingertips lovingly along the polished wood of the bookshelves. Maybe age and experience was why he wore the clothes well—because for him they were a self-expression rather than a costume.

“I would recommend a happy ending, but there are too few antiquarian books where things work out well for men like us. So . . .?”

He turned to give May a quizzical look. In the muted light of the globe lantern that hung overhead, the posture bared the long line of his throat. May wanted to touch it so much he could hardly think of a reply, but inspiration came at length. “I— I have a boat I want to renovate. Have you got anything on boatbuilding?”

He braced himself for Finn to reduce him to the level of a tongue-tied teenager again with some kind of quip about being good with his hands. But Finn just beckoned.

It looked like the bookshop pierced the terrace of shops only to expand out in either direction behind them. There was a warren of rooms back here, all as idiosyncratic as the first. Mostly books, but with two or three beautiful things on pedestals in each room, vases that seemed to shine from within, automata that turned to watch them as they passed and that May found intensely creepy.

They stopped in a room that put him in mind of the Natural History Museum, where single-page illustrations, magazines, plans, and maps were stacked in sliding teak chests of drawers. Finn went directly to one and brought out a leather document folder which he pressed into May’s hands.

May opened it with the care it deserved, conscious of the stiffened, cracking leather, the brittleness of the paper. It wasn’t a book on boat repair; it was a plan for building a new one from the keel up.

“It’s a traditional colliery barge,” said Finn with an air of academic approval, “which is a little more spacious than a narrowboat but still fits in the locks. What better way to learn how to repair something broken than to build something better from scratch?”

“I . . . uh.” May felt as if he was hanging halfway down a cliff. Finn, on the top of it, was holding on to the rope that was the only thing preventing him from falling. It was intensely unsettling to feel something so strong, so essential, for a man he hadn’t known existed ten minutes ago. He also had no idea what to say about it, defaulted to the safest option, which was trying not to let it show at all. “How much?”

Finn tilted his head so that his asymmetric fringe fell entirely over one eye. A quizzical, birdlike look, as if he were a raven wondering if May was yet dead enough to be safe to eat. “Well, that’s quite a question. If you follow this plan to the letter from beginning to end, not only will you end up with a new boat—a habitation, a form of transport, of freedom—but you will also have taught your hands and your body and your mind a dozen skills you never had before. In this plan you have the seeds of a new life, a new business, a new you. So you tell me. How much is that worth?”

The voice was peaty as whiskey and just as warm. May would have said it wheedled or cajoled, but those words were too weak to give the proper taste. It enchanted, and it filled the world with wonder. He found himself laughing at it as he had laughed at the warning on the window. Charmed and willing to go with it.

“How about you try again including the facts on what you paid for it yourself?”

“Oh!” Finn touched two fingertips to his mouth as if to hold in his own laugh. “You philistine. You wound me. And really, such a dreary way of estimating a thing’s value. No wonder there isn’t much joy in your life.” He brushed his lopsided hair out of his eye with a theatrical gesture. “But if you insist. It cost me five pounds. Such is the folly of mankind, that inestimable knowledge is valued a little less than a burger and fries.”

“I’ll give you a tenner for it then. Hundred percent profit, you can’t say fairer than that.”

Finn opened another drawer. This one full of glossy leaflets, some of which May recognised from the local tourist information board. He brought out one that had been edged in silver, like a posh party invitation, and held it to his waistcoat as he gave May a sly look. “Are we bargaining?”

“I guess.”

“Very well, then. How about you give me fifteen, and then you will value it all the more.”

May laughed again. This guy was outrageous, and he knew it himself, and he still managed to pull it off somehow. “I don’t think you know how this bargaining thing really works.”

“I’m using the auction-house method.” Oh. Finn didn’t like having his competence questioned, even in jest. May found the brief coldness in the guy’s voice a little reassuring. There was something real under the play, and he wasn’t ashamed to show it. Good. That was good, because the only people May had ever met who were unfailingly pleasant all the time had been the most careful of psychopaths.

He stepped back, lowered his head in acknowledgement and heard the guy’s tone warm right back up, though his words still gave no quarter. “I think you should quit while you’re ahead.”

“Fair enough.” May leafed through the plans again. They were pretty extensive. Scale them up and he could see how all the pieces would fit together. He’d need a big, flat bare space to lay it all out in, but the disputed land was exactly that. None of it looked beyond his technical capabilities. With the first stirring of excitement since leaving London, he handed over fifteen pounds.

Finn gave him the flier in return. “I run a book club,” he said, watching as May read the details. “Here on Friday evenings. We concentrate mostly on queer literature, and so in practice we are also Trowchester’s equivalent of a gay club. You should come. Unless I read you wrong?”

May considered for a moment saying,
Yeah, you did. I’m straight as an arrow.
But he couldn’t find the impetus to lie. So he’d never been out in his life? Then maybe it was due. “Apparently I’m an open book.”

“I value that.” Finn gave him a smile that was a little less like a weapon than his previous smirk, and leaned in to press the folder against May’s chest. “So I’ll see you there? We generally buy in fish and chips, so don’t eat dinner first.”

That jogged May’s memory, which had been clouded by the experience of being leaned against confidingly by a perfectly shaped armful of mature, bohemian gentleman. He shook off the urge to reach out and grab the back of Finn’s blazer, drag him close, and crush the plans between them. “Ah. No, I’m having dinner with my neighbours, Friday. Ah, I can’t.”