Rebuilding Coventry by Sue Townsend Read Free Book Online Page A

It used to be famous. It kooks empty and rigid. It’s
surrounded by a wind which drags and pushes people around its concrete walls. I would like to be inside Centre Point, in a room on my own at the very top
of the building looking down, because I don’t know where London begins or ends.
Can I walk round it in a day, or would it take a week or a month?
    As I
walk down the Charing Cross Road I see two young men in business suits kissing.
One jumps onto a slow-moving bus. The man remaining on the pavement continues
to blow kisses until the bus is out of sight. I see a middle-aged woman,
dressed immaculately in black and red. She catches the high heel of one shoe in
a crack in the pavement. She stumbles and shouts, ‘Oh bollocks!’ She pulls the
shoe out of the crack and looks despairingly at the torn suede. I see an old
man, dressed in a trilby hat, ragged clothes and wellingtons, as he takes a
saxophone out of a distressed case and starts to play ‘Blue Moon’. A Japanese
tourist takes the musician’s photograph, stops to listen and applauds at the
end of the number. He then requests ‘Stars Fell on Alabama’. The saxophonist
sways inside his wellingtons and goes into a routine, lifting his instrument,
then lowering it, then inclining it from side to side. I can imagine him
twenty-five years ago. I think that he wore a spangled tuxedo and played with a
big band and never thought that he would get old… .
    The
Japanese tourist claps his hands and smiles and bows, but walks away without
dropping money into the open case. ‘I wish I could give you something,’ I say
to the old man, who is trying to catch his breath. ‘You’re very good.’
    ‘No, I’m
not good,’ he says, wiping his cloudy eyes with the end of his
check-patterned tie. ‘I’m a very wicked man. God is aware of my many sins and
is punishing me. I’m in hell. This is hell,’ he says, indicating the exterior
of a bookshop and half of the Charing Cross Road. ‘I’m an object of pity, I
have lost my dignity.’
    I say, ‘No,
I meant that your playing is good.’
    ‘My
musical abilities have deteriorated considerably. I have painful arthritis in
my fingers. God gave me the arthritis to remind me of my many sins. I can’t
afford the aspirins for the pain,’ he adds. He puts out his hand; he is wearing
a copper bracelet on his scrawny wrist.
    ‘I
haven’t got anything,’ I repeat. ‘Not one penny.’
    ‘Then
go away,’ he says. ‘You are distracting me from my work. Aspirins are
seventy-nine pence a packet.’ As I walk away he begins to play ‘As Time Goes By’.
    I’ve
always loved books. I’m passionate about them. I think books are sexy. They are
smooth and solid and contain delightful surprises. They smell good. They
fit into a handbag and can be carried around and opened at will. They don’t
change. They are what they are and nothing else. One day I want to own a lot of
books and have them near to me in my house, so that I can stroll to my
bookshelves and choose what I fancy. I want a harem. I shall keep my favourites
by my bed.
    The
Charing Cross Road is a celebration to books: they are everywhere, lolling
about in piles. Displaying themselves in windows. Artistically arranged in
pyramids. Fanned on tables. Thrown into boxes. Stacked to ceiling height and
heaped on floors. As I look into the shops my mouth waters and my fingers itch.
I want to handle the books, caress them, open and devour them.
     
    A party of foreign
schoolchildren passed me; they were carrying plastic bags. Most of them were
eating. One boy was wearing a plastic policeman’s helmet. The elastic keeping
the helmet in place was cutting into his chin.
    As I
watched, one of the children threw a paper-wrapped half-eaten hot dog into the
gutter. If I’d been quicker I could have retrieved it and stuffed it into my
mouth but I hesitated and a taxi squashed the hot dog and drove away with the
remains stuck onto its front wheel.
    I
followed the children, hoping for