The books hadn’t been added to for more than a year, though the mood came easily back in which they had been stolen. Standing in the downstairs department where he couldn’t be seen, he had slid each week’s choices one by one between the undone buttons of his shirt. The smell of damp paper from row upon row of cellar-stored books was pungent in wet weather almost to the pitch of ammonia, and the coal fire burning in the corner grate of another room through the archway only seemed to make it more intense. He spent half an hour of search and excitement, a bliss in which he was lost, heightened by the stark fact reaching at him now and again that sooner or later he would have to load up and walk with them into the street, and for three hundred yards to the bus stop expect the manager’s cold hand to tap him on the shoulder and say: “Would you mind taking them books out of your shirt and coming with me to the cop-shop?” He went through the threepenny boxes, the sixpenny tables, the more expensive shelves, marking possibilities for his short list, and hoping other customers walking about wouldn’t buy them in the meantime.
There were rare occasions when no books interested him, and once, so firm was the procedure fixed in the ammoniac smell of the shop that he nevertheless came out with a French hymnbook, a Hindustani grammar, and a set of nautical tables, feeling as relieved and happy with his load at the bus stop as if they were books he had wanted to get his hands on for years.
He browsed through the boxes, looking at each title, opening the covers of some, knowing that sooner or later he must slide out the books he wanted — three, and sometimes as many as four or five if they were thin ones — and make off with them. In the far-off days when he paid for the books — no more than threepence each, though — he came one Saturday morning with Bert and browsed while his cousin impatiently flipped through the magazine table. Brian took his time, was at the mercy of his title-chasing eyes and page-checking fingers, so that the minutes ran into Bert’s brain and needled him to find Brian and say: “Got owt yet?” “These two”—he held them up, also picked out a guide to Belgium: “I’d like this as well, but it’s half a dollar.” “Let’s get going then you’re ready,” Bert said, “or we’ll miss the picture.” Hold on a bit, Brian was going to say — but his mood broke and he turned: “Let’s scram, then.” At the picture-house queue Bert handed him the book he’d wanted but couldn’t afford. “You’re my favourite pal,” he said, gripping his shoulders tight. “Here y’are: I’d do owt for yo’.” Brian was overjoyed, clutched at the small red book, bent its flexible gold-lettered covers, and saw its marbled pages. “Thanks, our Bert. I sha’n’t forget a favour like this.”
He didn’t: from that moment he never looked back as he stood by the shelves in the bookshop cellar department. Though feeling as if he were visible to all, since the tremble of hands and knock of knees seemed to give him a luminous shining quality, his fingers nevertheless hooked slyly out to the target his blue eyes fixed on. He stood without courage but with the gamble of a green-eyed cat on his shoulder, set in the circle of irresistible temptation, his fierce and quietly burning purpose to augment the bookshelves in his room while leaving the reading of them to whims of boredom and curiosity. His eyes were lights of panic, though kept quiet by an inner will which made his hands accurate in their sly split-second motion of simple extension and drawing-back loaded with a prize towards his shirt. One, two, three — they were safely in, and he walked up the stairs, not thinking about what was hidden between shirt-cloth and chest-flesh for fear he would fall top-heavy back and break his neck with guilt crash-bang at the stair bottom. With an abstracted air, as if dazed legitimately by the jewelled sight of so many books, he handed his pair of threepennies to the girl assistant, mumbling: “How much?” “Sixpence,” she said, and he thanked God at the first whiff of outside fresh air and petrol fumes, letting himself free into the roar and shoulder-knocks of Saturday crowds.
It was too good to last. Not that he became careless, he always had been. It was simply that his luck ran out and he was more ashamed afterwards at the thought of what a loon he must have looked to the girl assistant who saw him stuffing maps and books into his shirt, than for the crime, now revealed because he was caught, of stealing. At the cashbox he asked how much for a couple of mouldy Walter Scotts, and heard her say, the biggest shock he’d had for a long time: “You’d better take them books from up your jumper.” He did so, silent and white-faced: three books and two cloth-backed maps. “What’s your name and address?” No one was by the cashbox at that moment. He told her, but she didn’t write it down. Borstal, borstal, borstal were big words drum-beating against his brain. You’ll get sent to borstal for three years, and not the same one Bert’s bin in for the last six months, you can bet, so you’ll have no company. He stood. She looked at him. She was thin and bloodless, too, in a blue overall, young and old, eighteen and sixty, dying eyes and hands that slid the pile of books away and back on to the table when the manager emerged from a not-too-far-off doorway. Her heart he only knew the value of when she said softly: “Go on out, and don’t ever come in here again.” If the coppers had searched the house and found his book hoard he’d have been up for five years solid, but luckily the girl knew whose side she was on, and afterwards he wondered how much better the world would be if everybody stuck up for each other in that marvellous fashion.
He whistled a tune from “The Arcadians,” getting dressed on a Friday night in the full blood of his sixteen years, not thinking of a criminal life but gazing at his books. The cupboard they stood in was a present from his grandparents when they decided it wouldn’t fit into the new abode of the Woodhouse. It still carried a smell of spices: curry and cinnamon, thyme and mustard seed, camomile and sennapods and pepper, not yet killed by the more pungent odours of damp and aging paper.
White shirt flew on to him like a bird of peace, drawn together at the neck by a blue-dotted tie. He felt spruce and warm in his suit, the garb of a labouring man whose face was pale but whose muscles were hard enough to carry him along with confidence anywhere. He slammed the doors of his bookcase, put on his jacket, and ran downstairs. “Don’t be late,” his mother called as he let the back door of the scullery clatter to.
It was spring in the street, late sun coming from the tops of snow-clouds, children running in and out of air-raid shelters that blocked any clear view from up to down. The mass of close-knit factories and houses was spread on the steady slope of a hillside, though this was hardly noticeable with feet firm on cobblestones taking him energetically towards his meeting with Pauline. He lit a fag and flicked the match on to a window-sill (a notice within said: WREATHS AND CROSSES MADE TO ORDER AT SHORT NOTICE), catching sight of his greased-up quiff that made him look, he laughed, as handsome as the day was long. People were still rolling home from work by the time he hit the boulevard. A toffee paper blew towards him in the wind, fastened itself like a badge on a tree trunk.
She’ll be out any minute, he thought, approaching the factory, because the machines were switched off, leaving the high-sided street calm and quiet. It was a long, red-bricked, and straight-windowed building, a hundred years old though still in its prime. This sort of workpile had driven a nail of terror into him when he passed it as a child, not knowing what all the noise was about; but he knew now right enough, and wasn’t afraid of it, though on nearing any strange enormous factory at full blast he still felt a curious memory of half-fear stir in him at such compacted power that seemed pressing at every window ready to burst out like some fearful God-driven monster. Funny, he thought, how once you got in one it didn’t bother you, was peaceful almost because then you were on its side.