The rain started on Sunday and didn’t let up for a week. It was so windy on the Wednesday that the large oak on the corner of Smith and Giles fell over, blocking the road and taking a telephone line down with it. On Thursday morning my father phoned. He needed someone to run down to the shops and pick up a few odds and ends for Father Thomas and collect a package from the book store for him. I would have said no, surely someone else could do it, except for the book store. That sweetened the deal somewhat.
I got around to the store at about eleven, walked in and browsed around. There’s something about second hand bookstores which I love: they smell different for a start, a kind of musty, dusty, woody smell. This store I knew well and soon meandered towards the back. There were a few new books in the war section and one which I had read before but not in a while. I picked up the hardcopy with a grey slip cover, The Memoirs of Field Marshal Montgomery, and started paging through it. I needed a little courage.
“Hi Angus, what you doing here?”
“Oh, hi, Nancy. Nothing really, just running an errand for Father Thomas.”
Nancy Littleton. Brunette with lily white skin and a musical voice. She didn’t talk, she sang. I was a bit besotted.
