Honest Abe wanders into the shop around noon, cursing about the price of the bus and reeking of beer. He observes me for a few moments, not in silence because he’s still giving out about the bus but not making himself known either.
“What are ya at?” He finally asks.
“I’m writing a blog.”
“A what?”
“A blog. About the bookshop. That people can read about online. A written record of life in one of the last independent bookshops in Ireland.” I'm content that it’s a good idea. Surely other bibliophiles would like to see the bookshop from the other side of the counter.
“Who the feck would want to read that?” Honest Abe cries. “You’re boring. An auld oddball trying badly to sell books in this day and age. You can’t even get any customers in here, ya gobshite.”
“Well this might help to increase footfall.”
Honest Abe observes me in his sceptical way, shaking his head and muttering something about inbreds under his breath.
“I don’t think anyone bothers with books anymore,” the Stout Trout suddenly says from around the corner.
“Jaysus, I forgot you were here.” I had forgot all about him. He’s been in the shop since morning and has been uncharacteristically quiet.
“It’s a fairly small shop and he’s a fairly large man,” Honest Abe hisses. “How would ya miss him? Like putting an elephant in a garden shed.”
“All I’m saying is that maybe people have grown out of books,” Trout says coming around to the counter, knocking several hardbacks off their shelf with his ample belly. He’s been silently filling out one of my crossword books and now hands the defiled sales item back to me. “Maybe you should get with the times and close down. Or sell something else.”
Abe starts grinning. “I’ve a great idea. Why don’t you try selling some of these books you have here?” He doubles over with laughter and then starts coughing up phlegm on the carpet.
“Look it lads, independent booksellers have existed for over three thousand years. It’s a long lineage from the time of the scribes to the great library at Alexandria to the great tradition of Islamic bookshops to the book stalls on the banks of the Seine and in St Paul’s Churchyard. It’s not going to end with us.”
“But they didn’t have Netflix’s back then,” Trout says. “Or Sky.”
“Netflix. YouTube. Sky. None of them will outlive the humble book. Did I ever tell you about the Florentine bookseller who….”
“Yes,” they both sigh.
“… closed up his shop when Gutenberg developed the first mass printer because he thought it meant the end of books and….”
“Yeah, yeah. He was wrong,” Honest Abe moans. “How many bloody times do we need to hear this story? I bet that Florentine bookseller wasn’t nearly as boring as you though.”
I shake my head and get back to typing, trying to hide behind a wobbly wall of paperbacks.
“It’s not that we think you’re wasting your life,” Trout begins but then can’t seem to find any words to follow up with. Instead he pretends to read the title of an Oscar Wilde first edition that I have hanging above the counter.
“I do,” Honest Abe mutters.
“I didn’t invite either of you here sure.”
“Ah now, It’s not our fault that books are going extinct,” Trout says defensively. “Book sales are up.”
“Not in here,” Honest Abe sniggers.
“Well maybe on the kindle,” Trout concedes.
“No kindle sales are down and real book sales are up.”
“Well I don’t read books,” Trout grumbles.
“Why do you bother coming to a bookshop so?”
“To keep you company,” he says.
“Someone has to,” Abe laughs. “Not like you’ll have a load of customers.” He sniggers some more in between bouts of hockering phlegm onto my poor abused carpet.
“I have plenty of customers. Anyway, someone might read the diary of a demented bookseller. It’s been done before. Shaun Bytell brought one out a few years ago. And then there was Orwell’s Bookshop Memories. That was a classic.”
“I knew Orwell,” Honest Abe says, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world to say.
“You didn’t know George Orwell.”
“I bloody did,” he shrieks. “He was a personal friend of my late father’s. I helped him with his writing.”
“Orwell died in 1950.”
“He was a good friend of my family.”
“You don’t half tell lies.”
“How dare you,” Abe screams. “I’m not a bloody liar.”
“No? What about the time you said you invented chainsaw clothing?”
“I didn’t say I invented it. I was just part of the team that tested it out. They used to make me wear the trousers and then try to cut through my leg with a stihl.”
“And you said you were shot during a bank raid?”
“I was,” he cries. “In the head? Point blank with an AK47?”
“It was either that or not do my job. Security is a vocation. I was lucky the bullet missed the brain.”
“You said you were Chris De Burghs bodyguard too.”
“I was!”
“Oh I love Chris De Burgh,” Trout murmurs.
“You’re a bloody liar Abe.”
“And you’re the worst bookseller I know,” he screams.
“I’m the only bookseller you know!”
"What was the name of that song Chris De Burgh sang with Bono?” Trout ponders.
Honest Abe’s face has turned strawberry red and there’s a vein about to pop in his forehead. “I knew booksellers when you were still in nappies, ya shite, and they actually sold books!”
“Like George Orwell?”
“I think it was a Christmas number one, was it?” Trout goes on oblivious to everyone else.
“No one’s going to read a blog about a quare hawk selling auld books out of a run down shed in the middle of nowhere,” Abe screams.
“Look it, I’m going home to bed. You’re after really annoying me. I feel a migraine coming on.”
“Abe, what was that song Chris De Burgh did with Bono?” Trout shouts after him.
“Ask me bollix,” comes a faint reply.
“Ask me…. That’s not it. Is it?” Trout looks to me for some sort of sense.
I duck back down behind the leaning tower of paperbacks and try to avoid his glare, carefully telling myself that I’m not mad and that bookshops are still viable.
“Come here,” Trout whispers. “Do you have any books on Chris De Burgh in here?”
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