I have one friend. He's called Ron. Although, to tell the truth, I don't believe he actually likes me much either.
Ron lives in the vestry of an architecturally important, semi-derelict church which he bought 20 years ago with his redundancy money. When he first moved there (he'll go absolutely radio rental if he finds out I've written about him), Ron had all sorts of ideas for making money out of the place, but they all fell on stony ground and invariably culminated in a visit from the bailiffs. Several times Ron saw his worldly goods being carried out of the church by hard-faced men wearing long dark overcoats. But he noticed that whatever else they took, the bailiffs always left his books. It wasn't that they had anything against reading, they said, it was simply that, as far as they were concerned, books just weren't worth the trouble. Too much fetching and carrying for too little return, they said.
So Ron turned his church into a second-hand bookstore. A cabinet maker by trade, he constructed hundreds of yards of tall, beautifully dovetailed bookshelves and filled them with books which he bought by the pound from local auction rooms and elsewhere. When word got about that Ron was on the look-out for books, his neighbours left boxes and bin liners full of them outside the church. Ron has been making a sort of living from them ever since. He is still troubled with bailiffs from time to time, but they don't even glance at his books. They would sooner dismantle the shelves and take them away, Ron says, than stagger up and down the church steps with boxes full of old books.
For years I walked past Ron's place without really noticing it, resigned to the belief that there was no second-hand bookshop in town. So when I finally noticed the sign and wandered in, I felt as if I were walking into an Aladdin's cave. There must be well over 50,000 books in there today, and I can find almost any book I am looking for (and at a ridiculously low price), no matter how obscure the subject or how neglected the author.
There are first editions simply crying out for a good home. The last time I was there, I found a pristine first edition of CK Scott Moncrieff's translation of Proust's Du C?t? de Chez Swann and a first edition of A Farewell to Arms. They were marked ?2 and ?1.50 respectively. When I tried to pay him, Ron said I could buy him a coffee instead. Ron's like that. He says he gets more pleasure seeing people come out of his church with a smile on their face than he does in making a profit.
The church opens 24 hours a day. While browsing among Ron's books late at night, however, one has to be careful not to tread on the sleeping tramps. For Ron is what he likes to call an "old-style" socialist which, among other things, means that anyone who wants to sleep under his roof is welcome to do so. Tramps and other homeless people make little nests for themselves out of old blankets and doss down on the floor in the secluded "Crime and Mystery" alcove, or in the "Classics" section surrounding the altar.
Jim is one such tramp and one of Ron's regulars. Although I doubt if he calls himself a tramp, he is everything one imagines a tramp to be. He smells of ammonia, his face is black with dirt, he can hardly move because of all the clothes he's got on, and he is cheerful, practical and exceptionally well-read. Mention any classic novel and Jim has read it. Not only read it, but he can remind you of the plot.
He stays at Ron's most years, between January and March. During the evening he sits on Ron's sofa reading with the aid of a surprisingly expensive-looking pair of gold-rimmed spectacles. Nowadays he reads indiscriminately, he says with some shame. His test of a good novel is whether or not he finds the story plausible. He told me once that his all-time favourite novel was The Broad Highway by Jeffery Farnol. Never heard of it, I said.
Literate tramps, runaway teenagers, the occasional battered wife-any of these may be glimpsed stepping furtively between the bookshelves, like timid creatures of the forest. Last summer there was a young Mexican girl called Eve. Nineteen, extremely attractive and obviously insane, Eve strolled around the church at night with nothing on, causing consternation among the tramps. The first time I knew of her existence was when she appeared to me among the biographies, suddenly, like an apparition. She was wearing Ron's dressing gown and green wellington boots. She tapped me on the head with a home-made magic wand and gave me an old cigarette card with a picture of Stephenson's Rocket on it. I could have wrapped her up and taken her home there and then. Ron, who is 65 and disabled, was beside himself with lust for the entire three months she was staying there. But he nobly stayed his hand-even, he told me, when Eve came to his vestry one night and offered to slip into bed beside him.
Recently, Ron has diversified into second-hand tools. To my sad mind, the only thing as exciting as a box of second-hand books, is a box of second-hand tools. Give me a church full of both, inexpensively priced, open 24 hours, featuring nude Mexican sorceresses, "old-style" socialists and well-read vagrants, and you can call me religious if you like. (Please, God, may Ron not read this.)
