Not Yet Booked Out
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday September 13, 2014

The sight of so many books made my heart skip. Thousands of them sat pressed together on tables, a sea of spines, filling the University of WA’s Winthrop Hall. A smiling fellow with a silvery moustache stood by the door in a black apron. “Half price today,” he said. “We’re open ‘til 9.30 tonight.”

A hushed crowd inched along the tables, heads bowed over the vast array of titles. I could hear the gentle fluttering of pages, the murmurs of quiet conversations, an occasional soft thud as a heavy book was shut. The ceiling fans circled lazily.

I wandered over to a table piled with old tomes. I prised free a mottled-green volume. It was a book of Robert Browning’s poetry, printed in 1908. I ran a finger over the embossed gold lettering and opened the cover, inhaling the musty sweetness of its ageing paper. The flyleaf was inscribed with a beautiful handwritten cursive, all graceful loops and flourishes: ‘Mary – Ad finem fidelis – George’

The kindly doorman in the black apron happened to be standing behind me and craned over my shoulder. ‘Faithful to the end’, he said quietly. I smiled my ignorant thanks and admired George’s penmanship anew.

The pages of Robert Browning’s verse felt thick and coarse. They were handcut, some snipped a centimetre shorter than their neighbours. As I fanned through them, a rose petal slipped from between two pages and fluttered to the floor. Featherlight in my palm, the petal had once been crimson, but was now yellowed with age and puckered from the weight of a hundred pages. It had been pressed against a poem on page 138, ‘The Last Ride Together.’ I was intrigued.

…What if we still ride on, we two

With life for ever old yet new,

Changed not in kind but in degree,

The instant made eternity, — ”

Had the petal been pressed by George or by Mary? Or by some later owner? Did this gift mark the beginning of a love story or a reconciliation? I decided good books don’t give up all their secrets at once, and tucked Browning under my arm to ward off other browsers.

Standing to my left was a matron who’d picked up a scuffed leather-bound book with loose joints and torn hinges. She was elbowing her husband and tittering. Her husband was feigning interest but he himself was absorbed in a book about submarines (fancifully titled Up Periscope).

Tired of trying to hold his attention, she caught mine instead and proffered the ragged book. “Have a look at this!” she said. “It’s priceless!” I read the cover: The Witches Broomstick Manual. On the frontispiece, the illustrator had attempted a flattering portrait of a hag astride her broomstick, silhouetted against a full moon. The subtitle read: The Construction, Care and Use of the Witches’ Broom; Complete with a Course of Flight Instruction.

“Just what I need!” I replied. “The broom I’ve got at home is useless!”

I flicked through the soiled and spotted pages, stopping at a chapter on “Air Safety.” I read aloud to her: “Only fly at night. Avoid areas of military or political sensitivity. Study the stars and learn to guide by them. A small flashlight will be of immense value aloft. Your speed and height are limited only by atmospheric pressure and the prevailing weather. Be warned: daytime flying will cause trouble.”

“No kidding,” she said and we both giggled. The next paragraph concerned seatbelts: “A strong belt or rope tied around your waist should be fastened to the Besom (broom), so that you may be rescued after a possible separation. It may seem undignified to come in for a landing dangling at the end of a rope, but pride is no substitute for safety.”

“Marvellous!” she said. Her husband turned to me and sighed: “Please don’t let that book come home with us!”

I wedged it carefully back into the pile and the couple drifted to another table. All around the hall, people were moving in slow rotations, engrossed in the quiet pleasure of book inspections. Most had a selection concertinaed along one arm. Those with too many to carry were offloading books into boxes, stacked in clumsy pagodas against the wall.

Perhaps, despite our gadgetry, we will always turn to books for comfort? For consolation, or stimulation or escape. Maybe books are the only true magic? I headed for the exit and handed over the book of poetry wedged in my armpit.

“Aah Robert Browning!” said the woman at the counter. She admired the cover, then gently opened it to find the price. The book fell open at George’s Latin inscription to Mary and she looked at me quizzically. “Faithful to the end,” I said. “How lovely,” she said. “That’ll be $6 please.”