Tom Rachman - The Rise & Fall of Great Powers

After opening the shop, she made an early sale.

“Find all you wanted, Mr. Thomas?”

“No, thank you.”

“Can I help you find something else?”

“No, thank you.”

“See you again, Mr. Thomas.”

“Well, best be off now.”

Fogg arrived with their shared newspaper, but without his customary cappuccino. He’d grown jaded about the quality of coffee at the Monna Lisa Café, he told her, so Tooly brewed tea for them both. He accepted his with thanks, flapping open the newspaper, front page devoted to rebellions around the world that summer. “Must be said,” he remarked, “that everyone should live through at least one revolution.”

It was such a wonderful Fogg comment — declaiming on global affairs as the two of them sipped tea inside a bankrupt rural bookshop. Yes, bring on the revolution!

“Why are you smiling?” he asked.

“Just the idea of a revolt here in Caergenog. Who would we overthrow? The fiendish village council with their dastardly plan to mend the overturned fence posts on Dyfed Lane?”

“Yes, yes, I know — you think I’m beyond stupid.”

“I was smiling because I liked what you said,” she protested. “Don’t say that — that’s an awful thing to say.”

Among Fogg’s charms was that nothing wounded him for long. “To be brutally honest,” he resumed, pursing his lips importantly, “I’m not even sure I’d know how to start a revolution.”

She suppressed her smile, lest he misread it once again. And perhaps she had inadvertently belittled him in the past. Why had she? That’s just how she was. But damn how she was! She didn’t accept that how one was is how one must remain. Consistency in character was a form of tragedy.

She resolved to blunt her flintier side, not to assume that she understood people entirely, and to accept that to be surprised or disappointed or even betrayed was not a catastrophe. It could be a revelation to learn that you were wrong, as she had been about Fogg, a notion he confirmed with what he said next.

“I have something to show you.”

She walked around the servery to see what he indicated on the computer screen. It was a database of some sort.

“What is that?”

“It’s that,” he answered, pointing to each aisle of the shop in turn. “Took me millions of hours, and still not done.”

While she was away, he had occupied himself compiling a catalog of the entire stock and posting it online, then publicizing it on various bibliophile blogs. A notable American antiquarian had emailed for prices, expressing particular interest in the vintage cookery volumes and animal books that Tooly had amassed. For walk-in customers, Fogg would have settled on a pittance for most of these editions. But, shrewdly, he had consulted competing prices online, and adjusted accordingly. By the next afternoon, he’d made his first Internet sales, almost eight hundred dollars from a single email. The dealer, delighted with his purchases, gave a favorable write-up of World’s End Books on his blog, followed by a rave on Twitter that encouraged his followers to check out the shop’s wares. Now, Fogg explained, a good deal of each workday was spent handling overseas orders, responding to emails, going back and forth to the post office.

“Fogg,” she exclaimed, “this is incredible!”

“Actually earning a bit of money.”

“This means the shop is even more yours now.”

He raised counterarguments, but her attention kept drifting to the window. How she had ached for a proper hike while away — she must go for a scramble right this instant. “Sorry,” she interrupted, “but it’s going to rain later. Would it be okay if I dashed out for a walk? I’ll be back, and we’ll continue this. I promise.”

“Or I could come along.”

“What about the shop? Then again,” she remarked, “how much walk-in business are we really going to lose.”

When he caught up with her at the ridge summit, Fogg was breathless, raising his hand. “Completely out of puff.”

Previously, Tooly would have marched ahead. But she waited till he was ready. When he apologized for his slow pace, she reduced hers. “Nice to have a calm wander for a change,” she said. “No point running ourselves ragged.”

“Look!” He pointed out a hare darting through the gorse.

They watched, and when Fogg turned to her, aglow with pleasure at his sighting, she hopped over to hug him.

“Physical harassment,” he joked, blushing.

By the time the weather had changed, they were in the little old Fiat, trundling back to Caergenog. And by the time she’d parked opposite the shop they had reached agreement: although Fogg refused to take full possession of the shop, he might take half. That is, he’d accept nothing officially, but she would proceed on the assumption that each owned fifty percent of World’s End and that any profits (even to mention such a possibility was extraordinary) would be split. “That’s non-negotiable,” she insisted. “Really, you should have it all. With my business acumen, this place would’ve been bankrupt ages ago.”

Later that week, Duncan phoned. After Humphrey’s death, he had encouraged Tooly to return home and pledged to take care of the paperwork. He called now to update her on the disposal of Humphrey’s possessions, having traveled down to Sheepshead Bay and glanced through everything, finding only garbage, junk mail, tons of old pill containers.

“Humph was a pharmacist once,” she explained. “He liked to keep all sorts of cures around to help people. When you throw away the drugs, I think you’re supposed to pull off the labels so they don’t get misused on the street.”

“They were pretty much empty already.”

“No,” she corrected him, “did you check under the cushion of his armchair? There was a bunch of heart medication there. I saw it recently.”

“I checked there. Just empty bottles.”

When could Humphrey have taken all those? Tooly had gone out that morning. He knew well the effect of those drugs.

“So, in theory,” Duncan continued, “you’d get anything.”

“What? Sorry, I was thinking of something else.”

“Just saying how Humphrey left no will. But if there’s anything left in his estate you’ll get it as his daughter.”

She wasn’t sure how best to explain, after all this time, that Humphrey was no relative of hers. “Sounds like there’s nothing of value anyhow.”

“That’s pretty fair to say. Given the outstanding bills for that surgery he had,” Duncan said, “we’ll move toward declaring him insolvent upon death. I’m going to Sheepshead this weekend to oversee the removal of his junk.”

She hated that strangers would rummage through Humphrey’s belongings, then toss it all away. “Should I come back and deal with this?”

“Seriously, it’s fine.”

“If there are fees, you have to bill me.”

“Don’t worry.”

“Duncan,” she said.

“It’s fine.”

He couldn’t accept gratitude, so changed the subject to talk of the winter break. His kids were still grumbling about not having gone anywhere that past summer. Unseriously, he and Tooly chatted about the family coming to visit Wales the following year. She offered free lodgings at World’s End — he’d been so generous to her, and the inn rooms would accommodate them all for as long as they liked. But his family was a closed circle again, she an outsider, one whose lifestyle had initially looked like novelty to the McGrorys, briefly like inspiration, and finally like subtle criticism. Sometimes it was best to leave the past where it lay.

During this period, Tooly kept her grief over Humphrey to herself. She contemplated him when opening books, speculated about his opinion, imagining how it would have been to show him around the shop, which really was his. She kept busy, working with Fogg to complete the database, dealing with online sales, which were not quite as rampant as he’d suggested but kept them afloat.