Richard had gone to meet Eddie in the Socialist People’s Party bookshop on the top floor of a tenement building in Queen Street. As usual, there was no one there except whoever had volunteered to man the till. Today it was Linda McPherson, who had doomed herself to sit in the store for hours with little prospect of a paying customer.
There wasn’t a huge demand for the sort of books stocked by the Socialist People’s Party bookshop. They were mainly thin revolutionary pamphlets that preached only to the converted. Or, at the other extreme, academic tomes probably only read by the writer and his publisher.
Once, Richard’s attention had been caught by one of these mighty works, bound in three hefty volumes – A Revolution Betrayed: The History of the Soviet Union from 1917 to 1956. He imagined it might be interesting to read this to get an insight, from a non-capitalist viewpoint, of what had gone wrong, and understand what had gone right. But after struggling through two pages of academic sociology-based language, Richard had slotted the book back where it belonged – to gather dust on the top shelf. As usual, Eddie was dressed in the uniform of the party: a black donkey jacket and dark blue jeans. His thinning black hair was combed tight onto his scalp. His eyes blazed angrily through thick-rimmed black glasses. In his own mind, he had earnestly avoided following any of the current fashions. In doing so, he had spectacularly failed to avoid the fashion peculiar to the Socialist People’s Party.
He went to open the back room and found it was locked. “Hey Linda, we need tuh get through ra back.”
Linda, in her guise as a post-feminist punk dominatrix, condescendingly unlocked the door to the back room to allow them through. She was in charge today. She scowled at them through her thick, dark make-up.
“Next time let me know when you want tae use that room,” she said in a voice that could curdle milk.
“Sorry Linda. You know ra both ay us anyway,” said Eddie.
