me he’d been a Sunday school teacher at the church when he was in his twenties, been married in it, had his children baptized in it and played the organ at decades of harvest festivals and carol services, and last year his wife’s funeral service had been held there. He dabbed at the tears in his eyes and gazed into the hallway, as though he could, by a tremendous feat of mind over matter, conjure his memories back into reality: himself and his wife, young and beautiful on their wedding day and those very stone flags strewn with confetti; babies, decades of Easter and Christmas celebrations and a lifetime of Sundays; more recently, his wife’s funeral, her coffin being wheeled on a trolley across the same stone flags.
At last he twisted his face at me. His mouth writhed and was ugly. ‘And now, this...’ he hissed through his teeth, ‘in my church. What is it? Some kind of shop, selling dirty books. It isn’t right. It isn’t right. It’s wrong.’
He stood up, pushing away my attempts to steady him, and teetered out of the church.
A man with a briefcase came to ask if I had a licence, said I’d have to get one, running a small business, something something. Depressingly, I supposed because of the economic climate of unemployment and hard times, there were odd bods who came in to sneer. At the tooth. To say it wasn’t even a tooth, it was a bit of bone or even melamine, or it was the tooth of a dog, in any case it was a fake and no more real than King Arthur’s footprints at Tintagel or the shroud of Turin or whatever... and one very scary middle-aged man, literally broiling with hatred for all the world and the injustices which had been dealt him, who told me in a voice trembling with anger that he’d been to The Who’s so-called last-ever concert in Southampton way back in the 80s and bought a commemorative programme which was going to be priceless, and then of course they’d been touring ever since and were still doing concerts nearly thirty years later and his programme was worthless... like the tooth, a hoax, a trick, a crock of shit, just a fucking scam... he went out of the church and into the outside world, on fire with anger, looking for somewhere else to vent it.
Glory be, for the believers, for whom, as I’d said to Rosie, it wasn’t the reality of the tooth which was important, but the belief it inspired.
Like my Beatles bathwater. I’d bought a bottle and it had been precious to me, it was my bit of George, my favourite. And when he died, I searched and searched everywhere and found it, strangely half-gone, mysteriously evaporated although the lid was still tightly screwed on, and no more than a swill of grey scum. The day he died, I held the bottle in my hand and felt the warmth in it still, as though George had just got out of his bath and pulled the plug and here it was, a few drops of his bathwater. And I’d cried.
Belief. Believe. There were people coming into the shop who believed, or at least they wanted to believe. Not many, but a few, they bent over the tooth in its satin-lined, purple velvet box, on its presentation table, under the lamp, and they peered at it through the magnifying lens. They held their breath. Their eyes glistened. And so, when they bought a book, I stamped the inside page with my new rubber stamp, Poe’s Tooth Books, and slipped in a bookmark with the very words which Dr Barnsby had written to record that he’d kept a tooth from the mouth of Edgar Allan Poe and slipped a penny under the little boy’s pillow... and the customer, the believer, went out into the cold simply glowing with the heat of inspiration.
And the crow helped. I helped. Chloe helped. We were a team.
The bird had an easy job. Whenever anyone came in, it flapped to the highest bookshelf and peered down from it, as though judging from the demeanour of the person how appropriate it might be to make a dramatic entrance. And then it would snort through its bristly carrion-crow nostrils, just
At last he twisted his face at me. His mouth writhed and was ugly. ‘And now, this...’ he hissed through his teeth, ‘in my church. What is it? Some kind of shop, selling dirty books. It isn’t right. It isn’t right. It’s wrong.’
He stood up, pushing away my attempts to steady him, and teetered out of the church.
A man with a briefcase came to ask if I had a licence, said I’d have to get one, running a small business, something something. Depressingly, I supposed because of the economic climate of unemployment and hard times, there were odd bods who came in to sneer. At the tooth. To say it wasn’t even a tooth, it was a bit of bone or even melamine, or it was the tooth of a dog, in any case it was a fake and no more real than King Arthur’s footprints at Tintagel or the shroud of Turin or whatever... and one very scary middle-aged man, literally broiling with hatred for all the world and the injustices which had been dealt him, who told me in a voice trembling with anger that he’d been to The Who’s so-called last-ever concert in Southampton way back in the 80s and bought a commemorative programme which was going to be priceless, and then of course they’d been touring ever since and were still doing concerts nearly thirty years later and his programme was worthless... like the tooth, a hoax, a trick, a crock of shit, just a fucking scam... he went out of the church and into the outside world, on fire with anger, looking for somewhere else to vent it.
Glory be, for the believers, for whom, as I’d said to Rosie, it wasn’t the reality of the tooth which was important, but the belief it inspired.
Like my Beatles bathwater. I’d bought a bottle and it had been precious to me, it was my bit of George, my favourite. And when he died, I searched and searched everywhere and found it, strangely half-gone, mysteriously evaporated although the lid was still tightly screwed on, and no more than a swill of grey scum. The day he died, I held the bottle in my hand and felt the warmth in it still, as though George had just got out of his bath and pulled the plug and here it was, a few drops of his bathwater. And I’d cried.
Belief. Believe. There were people coming into the shop who believed, or at least they wanted to believe. Not many, but a few, they bent over the tooth in its satin-lined, purple velvet box, on its presentation table, under the lamp, and they peered at it through the magnifying lens. They held their breath. Their eyes glistened. And so, when they bought a book, I stamped the inside page with my new rubber stamp, Poe’s Tooth Books, and slipped in a bookmark with the very words which Dr Barnsby had written to record that he’d kept a tooth from the mouth of Edgar Allan Poe and slipped a penny under the little boy’s pillow... and the customer, the believer, went out into the cold simply glowing with the heat of inspiration.
And the crow helped. I helped. Chloe helped. We were a team.
The bird had an easy job. Whenever anyone came in, it flapped to the highest bookshelf and peered down from it, as though judging from the demeanour of the person how appropriate it might be to make a dramatic entrance. And then it would snort through its bristly carrion-crow nostrils, just
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