Fast Fiction: The Actor
Would an actor choose a book which expressly excluded the theatre? Richard Mallinson tells of a mystery in a bookshop.
The man who came into my bookshop that afternoon was clearly at ease with himself and the world. His manner wasn’t exactly nonchalant but heading that way.
‘Do you possibly happen to have,’ he drawled, ‘a copy of C S Lewis’s English Literature in The Sixteenth Century Excluding Drama?’
Now as it is unusual for anyone to come in who can get both the name of an author and the title of a book exactly right I was inclined to be affable.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘an excellent piece of work. You are lucky, we do have one copy in stock.’
He paid me the modest price I had pencilled inside the front cover. (I’ll never make a fortune at this trade.)
‘Are you involved in the academic world?’ I asked politely.
‘Good Lord, no,’ he retorted, ‘I am an actor - you may have seen my face in The Bill.’
‘Sorry, I don’t watch -’
‘Or perhaps in Eastenders, quite a small part admittedly. No? Perhaps…but never mind. You must come to Chichester and see me in a revival of -’
‘The Deep Blue Sea,’ I filled in for him.
‘Yes, of course, that’s the one and now I must say goodbye to you.’
As I had just that week seen the revival of The Deep Blue Sea I knew that he wasn’t in in - which made me wonder how much more of what he’d said was false.
And why would an actor, if he was an actor, choose a book which expressly excluded the theatre?
All I knew was that if he ever walked into my shop again I would put certain questions to him.
Bluntly.
