The Second-Hand Shop Where Books Were Exchanged For Stories

As usual, the bookshop smelt of incense and cigarettes.

If the owner had hoped the aroma of the former would mask the odor of the latter, he was mistaken. But, knowing Solomon as I did, I knew that the sandalwood was no attempt to hide his nicotine habit. He didn't need to. This was his shop; if the customers didn't like the pungent tang of his tobacco they could go elsewhere. Solomon would rather lose potential custom than his Camels.

During this period of my life, I was a smoker myself. So the smell didn't bother me. Even if it had, I would have still braved venturing inside. For Solomon's shop was the single greatest monument to literature I had ever encountered.

The irony was that I was a bookseller myself. Except, I spent my days in a huge, pristine, well-organized shop just off Oxford Street in the very middle of London. The majority of my shifts involved pointing out where the A to Z's of the Capital lived to tourists. I'm not sure anyone had ever asked me where they could find Orwell or Fitzgerald or Rumi.

All authors you could find in Solomon's palace.

Well, you'd have to ask him where they were. Whereas my shop was ruthlessly organized along strict alphabetical lines, Solomon used a different method to classify his shelves. One only he knew. In the one year I was a regular visitor, I'm not sure I even begun to understand how the shop was ordered.

The thin, three-floored establishment sat in between a sex shop, and a delicatessen, and lay largely hidden off one of the main thoroughfares of Soho. Just as it is now, this part of London remains one of it's most exciting, at turns cheap, filthy, and low-market and then eye-wateringly exclusive; modern yet shrouded in history.

The sex shops, bars, and theaters nestle on streets that have witnessed highwaymen and fascist marches, gangsters and some of the most bohemian spirits in history.

Solomon seemed to be the perfect reflection of all this. No-one I'd ever met had come as close to being the perfect, living, breathing encapsulation of the multi-headed hydra that is London better than him. The irony was that he didn't even herald from the City. His voice was tinged with an accent I could never place, so I once asked him where he was born.

"Somewhere near Turkey," was his enigmatic response.

Considering Turkey's geographical location, this could have meant Syria, or Barcelona, or Berlin. I never found out which of these places it was.

For reasons I will come to later, this particular today is etched in my memory. Due to those reasons, I remember what I brought him that day distinctly; a small cappuccino from his favorite Italian coffee shop a few streets away. Why did I bring him coffee? Because that was his payment. Solomon never once asked me for money. Coffee or cigarettes would suffice.

As would a story.

"Thank you," he said, as I handed him a coffee.

"What is it today?" I asked.

I saw the tell-tale flash of orange as he lifted the book. My heart instantly leapt; it was another Penguin Classic. As Solomon well knew, I was an avid collector of the orange-covered paperbacks. It wasn't simply that - to my eyes - in between those bold covers you could find the greatest words ever committed to paper, it was also that orange was my favorite color. Always had been.

As a child, whilst all my friends wore pink, I was the only girl to be clad in orange. I drove my mother mad. Everything had to be orange. You'll be pleased to hear that I've since grown out of this phase. Orange remains my favorite colour but I no longer require all of my possession to be that shade.

However, given both my predilection for books, and the bright, sunburst color, it was inevitable I would be drawn to the Penguin Classics range. And, my ownership of the majority of them was due to Solomon.

I had originally found the bookshop by accident, a short time after arriving in London. Knowing no-one in London, and not having the money to buy my own place, I had taken a room in a shared house. The three girls I lived with remain my best friends even now, twenty years after we had shared our final bottle of cheap, red wine in that rundown townhouse in the very north of the city.

I had just started work in my big, chain-store book emporium, and was due to meet my housemates for a drink after work in Soho, who - like me - all worked in the heart of London. My shop was only a stone's throw away from the bar we had arranged to meet at, so I had time to kill before they arrived. I'd yet to explore the delights of Soho, so - instead of sitting alone, nursing a glass of wine - I decided to be brave.

I found Solomon's shop within a few minutes. I didn't explore any further.

All the books were second-hand, and a bit tatty. I loved that people before me had actually read them, savoring those wonderful words. That day I intended to buy a copy of Burgess' 'A Clockwork Orange.' Solomon commended me on my choice, but said I could have the book in return for a few cigarettes. It was the best bargain I'd ever encountered in my life.

Two days later I exchanged my freshly - and specifically - bought pack of twenty cigarettes for two Graham Greene's, one Evelyn Waugh, and one Stella Gibbons.

On my next visit, Solomon told me he also liked coffee.

And listening.

If I didn't have either coffee or nicotine, he would barter in the form of stories. Obviously, to begin with, I told him short, impersonal vignettes. I instantly liked him, but he was also a middle-aged stranger; initially I kept my cards to my chest. I am ashamed to admit that I even made some stories up. To be honest, I didn't have much of choice.

I had spent my entire life in a small town in the north of England; I'd even gone to university in the very same town. I hadn't lived much of a life, so really didn't have many stories to tell.

But he did.

I told him about family holidays to Blackpool. In return, he told about the day he rode across a desert on stallion with his father. I told him about a childhood birthday party in McDonalds'. He regaled me with the first time he'd eaten shark.

It never felt strange talking to him. It felt... I don't, it just felt very 'London', I suppose. They did things differently to how they did in my tiny, native Yorkshire town. It seemed perfectly normal in that way that nothing in London is ever perfectly normal.

I'd visit him after work for a few hours, and we'd chat, smoke, and drink coffee. Sometimes he'd briefly leave me in charge of the shop, and buy the refreshments himself. And then we'd talk a bit more. I'd then take the brief walk to Leicester Square tube station, carrying my latest orange-covered treasure.

Solomon quickly become my most prized friend.

And this day he had something very special for me: The book Solomon held was 'East of Eden' by John Steinbeck. As ever, he'd remembered.

A few days before I'd told him that my knowledge of European writers far outstripped that of their American counterparts. That day he'd given me 'We Have Always Lived In The Castle' by Shirley Jackson. It had been some introduction.

I had finished the book in two days, partly because my commute was so long. I'd lived in the very north of the city, out by Wembley - as a result, two hours of my day was spent on the Underground. With Solomon's books for company.

I was already excited at the prospect of spending some of that time in the dust-bowls of the mid-West, cocooned in Steinbeck's spartan prose. All I had to do was tell Solomon a story.

There was no counter in Solomon's shop. Just an ancient, imposing wooden desk. Perched at one end was the cash register that, in 12 months, I never saw him once open: How the bookshop survived as a business remains a mystery. He sat, feet on the desk's surface, on one side; his footwear was almost indescribable - the best I can manage is to call them 'brightly-colored exotic, tasseled slippers.' I lowered myself onto the battered wooden chair that lived on the opposite side.

And I told him about the latest mind-numbing day in the front-line of retail.

Looking back now, I wish I'd had something more profound to tell him. I wished I'd told him something truly personal.

Because this was the very last time I ever saw him.

The next day, I received a telephone call at work. It was my sister; our mother had suffered a severe stroke in the night. I jumped on the next train to Leeds where I stayed for the following month. Blessedly, my mother made a full recovery. And, having used all of vacation days, I had to return to work. And London.

Once I had deposited my suitcase back in my Wembley home, I took the tube into central London. To see Solomon. It goes without saying I was armed with both cigarettes and caffeine.

I was too late.

His shop was boarded up, and the tell-tales wisps of black that snaked around the wooden planks affixed to the shopfront told me what had happened. According to the owner of the delicatessen next door, the fire had started with one rogue cigarette butt. Given the papery contents of the shop, the fire had taken hold quickly.

Solomon had been trapped upstairs on the third floor, in the tiny apartment he lived in at the very top of the building, as the fire had raged below. By the time the firefighters had managed to reach him, he had already died from smoke inhalation.

A few days later, the event was written about in one of the free papers London was swamped with at that time. I discovered that he was aged sixty-four when he died. But there was no mention of where he had been born. I will never know that secret. However, friends are allowed to keep the odd secret; I will never begrudge him that.

Certainly not given the pleasure he brought into my life courtesy of his strange, chaotic shop.

The books in Solomon's shop were all second-hand, but thoroughly pre-loved. It seems almost insulting to call any of his stock 'thrift' yet, a short time ago, I calculated that, over the course of the year I knew him, I had become the owner of forty-two Penguin Classics for what would to amount to - in today's money - less than twenty pounds.

My outlay might have been 'thrifty' but what I got in return wasn't.

They hold pride of place on my bookcase. I've added to them since, and every-time I buy one, I think of that strange, inscrutable bookseller. I think of the stories I do now have to tell him. Of travelling the world. Of marriage. Of having children. Of finally being able to call myself a writer. How he would have loved each of those tales.

I've long since given up the cigarettes, but an image of him still swims into my mind whenever I take a sip of coffee.

And I miss him. I always will.

To Solomon - the strangest, most enigmatic bookseller the planet has ever seen, and the owner of the single greatest thrift shop in history: Thank you.

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