The Interview: Tilly Lloyd

“If you want it, you must have it,” says Tilly Lloyd at one point, per­haps an hour into our intensely enjoy­able con­ver­sa­tion. Well, I enjoyed it any­way. After half a life­time spent in sales, book retail­ing, deal­ing with authors and pub­lish­ers while liv­ing in a small and fam­ously paro­chi­al vil­lage, she might have been dis­sem­bling like a demon. But I don’t think so. She has noth­ing to gain by me being here, tak­ing up this stormy Monday hol­i­day after­noon. And although Tilly strikes me as lib­er­al to the point of anarchy, it is also scream­ingly obvi­ous that, like all truly pas­sion­ate people, she would not suf­fer a fool in her com­pany for any longer than it took the first pot of cof­fee to be drunk.

And we are well into the second pot, and hav­ing ser­i­ous dis­cus­sions about the pos­sib­il­ity of gin, by the time that par­tic­u­lar quote appears. Lloyd is telling me about a few of the per­ils of retail­ing in gen­er­al, and run­ning a suc­cess­ful inde­pend­ent book­shop in par­tic­u­lar. You second guess one author’s pop­ular­ity incor­rectly, and you’re stuck with a bin full of stock at half price, try­ing to move it on to make room for the next best­seller or sur­prise smash hit. But get it wrong the oth­er way, and there’s a queue of punters out the door, ask­ing for a book you only thought to bring in a few cop­ies of.

In books, as with movies and music, you’re nev­er sure where the next big thing might come from, or what innoc­u­ous little paper­back from a first-time author might sud­denly explode in the pub­lic con­scious­ness. So, she says, you just have to back your­self and your staff to the hilt. Hence, “If you want it, you must have it.” It was first said to her by Unity Books founder Alan Pre­ston, just across the road from the shop’s cur­rent Wil­lis Street incarn­a­tion. Lloyd was unsure of a pur­chase. She loved the book in ques­tion her­self, but didn’t know wheth­er there would be a mar­ket for it. “But”, she says, “you just have to back your­self don’t you? It’s bloody scary at times, but what else can you do? Alan gave us that.”

“You know, I guess the Inter­net has been a chal­lenge for every bug­ger. But when the dust settles, it’s giv­en us – even us book­sellers – more than it’s taken. Yes, people can order a book online now. We’re right into it ourselves – our own Unity Books site goes gang­busters too – but, more than that, people are read­ing more now. And because of all the won­der­ful blogs and sites, they’re hear­ing about books that they might not have heard of before. And they’re sharp too. They’ll be in the shop on Monday, ask­ing us about some­thing they read about in the New York Times online the night before. I love it. Keeps us on our game.”

The steps to Tilly Lloyd’s house are nar­row, steep, made of ancient cement, and flanked by a broken and rust­ing hand­rail that looks like a dose of tetanus just wait­ing to hap­pen. It is the sort of ascent that would put off all but the har­di­est Jehovah’s Wit­ness, and scare any door-to-door sales type or pamph­let-drop­ping estate agent into try­ing their luck at some safer alti­tude down the road. Which is almost cer­tainly one of the reas­ons Lloyd leaves these steps in such an unabashed state of dis­repair. Most days I would enjoy the climb. I like people who value func­tion­al­ity over appear­ance, and the steps are noth­ing if not func­tion­al. But an hour before I’m due to inter­view Lloyd, the seabed bey­ond Castle­point has had a small tan­trum, the whole region is in a state of high nervous­ness, and these steps are lean­ing off to the north at an angle that would give an EQC inspect­or conniptions.

I fig­ure they’ve been like this for dec­ades, but I’m not chan­cing it today, and I jog up them sharp­ish. At the top, there is one of those views that we Kapiti coast types take annoy­ingly for gran­ted. On a bright day from here, Lloyd would be gaz­ing out at the top of the South Island, Kapiti Island, and even clear up to the Tarana­ki Bight if the weath­er was really play­ing ball. But today, we’re enjoy­ing a rare misty and rain­swept Janu­ary day. Kapiti is a half-glimpsed shad­ow, lit­er­ally loom­ing through a sod­den bank of clouds, and the islands and inlets that form the north­ern reaches of the Marl­bor­ough Sounds come and go through the squalls.

It is a beau­ti­ful day, in its own unseason­able and unex­pec­ted way, and Lloyd’s garden is a fine spot from which to appre­ci­ate it. And so, in a still howl­ing south­erly and the con­stant expect­a­tion of a major shake and an unsur­viv­able tsunami, and accom­pan­ied every step of the way by a small but ener­get­ic ter­ri­er with delu­sions of guard-dog­gery, I found myself knock­ing at Lloyd’s front door.

“We’ve a policy, at Unity Books,” she tells me. “I call it the foible clause: every­one is allowed one foible, and every­one else accom­mod­ates that foible, as they accom­mod­ate ours. It’s sin­gu­lar, of course. You might be a mum­bler, always one minute late back from lunch, not so flash at com­mu­nic­at­ing some­thing intric­ate with the cus­tom­ers, or you might spend longer in the bath­room than any­one else, but that’s all OK. Because everyone’s dif­fer­ent, and get­ting to know and trust someone is the pro­cess of learn­ing their foibles, and learn­ing to work with them. And as long as I’m accept­ing of yours, then you will be accept­ing of mine. It’s not about bad beha­viour, because the staff are abso­lutely bloody won­der­ful. If any­thing, it’s about hon­esty, and people who are pre­pared to let them­selves show. As long as you’re hon­est, we’ll work with it. We might even find a way to cel­eb­rate it. Any­way, if you ever meet any­one who seems per­fect, they’re the one who will let you down, eh?”

    “What’s yours?” I ask. “Your foible?”

Tilly looks at me curi­ously for a moment, and appar­ently decides that either I’m not yet ready to hear the answer to that, or that if I can’t work it out for myself, I should just shut up until I can. A foible is surely what oth­er people see in you, and not what you see in your­self. But I make a men­tal note that Lloyd’s foible is a com­plete inab­il­ity to com­plete one story before rico­chet­ing off into another.

“Are you going to focus on the bit of shit on the wind­screen,” she says, “or are you going to look through it to the road ahead?”

It is becom­ing an after­noon of pithy man­tras, and this one might be my favour­ite yet.

“I used to work for a mar­vel­lous man, back when I was just start­ing out, when I was rep­ping for a pub­lish­ing com­pany. I was hav­ing a dis­pute with a cli­ent – I can’t even tell you wheth­er it was an out­let or a pub­lish­er, because it doesn’t mat­ter. Any­way, I was young, and I let this idi­ot get under my skin, the way we do when we’re young and everything seems so bloody import­ant. And my sales man­ager took me aside said that to me – ‘Are you going to focus on the bit of shit on the wind­screen, or are you going to look through it to the road ahead?’ – I love that. And it’s got me through a lot of days since. Because you have to remem­ber, you have to believe, that what you are doing is worth it. And as long as you are doing some­thing that’s worth it, then are you really going to let one dis­pute or prob­lem dis­tract you from what you’re actu­ally sup­posed to be doing?”

I loved the emphas­is on ‘sup­posed’ – and it comes through loud and clear on my record­ing. Because there is no doubt at all that Tilly Lloyd is sup­posed to be selling books.

Two things about Tilly Lloyd: she pours a strong gin, and she looks a bit like Meryl Streep. These facts might not be unconnected.

Or at least, she looks like Streep’s stouter colo­ni­al cous­in: all in black, a slash of lip­stick, cheekbones just this side of haughty, and an out­stand­ing – upstand­ing – vaguely leon­ine blonde mane.

It’s there in the house of course, which looks like the second-hand book­shop of your dreams. It’s a simple place, built around the bones of a 100-year-old bun­ga­low, but expan­ded side­ways and upwards until you’d think it was some taste­ful, under­stated, mod­ern­ist pile from the mid-1970s. The ceil­ings are high, and the walls – what you can see of them – are a plain white. But what you can see of them isn’t that much. There are book­shelves built into every room, each one full to burst­ing. Lloyd has divided them up roughly into sec­tions, which would be the only way of hav­ing even a fight­ing chance of find­ing the one book you might be after. She swings her glass in a wide arc, ice clank­ing, ges­tur­ing at vari­ous points on the shelves: “That’s his­tory, Pacific, mod­ern New Zea­l­and stuff I like, all of that up there is sex basic­ally, and I’ve put polit­ics right next to it.”

“God, the last few years have been tough on Wel­ling­ton,” she says. “I really see it with some of our reg­u­lars. Gor­geous people, pub­lic ser­vants, busi­ness people, beau­ti­fully read, hungry for any­thing, great taste. I’d see some of them three times in a week, and they’d always leave with a pile of great stuff. Now, some of those same people are com­ing in once every couple of months, and maybe only buy­ing one or two. We lose a few to the Inter­net of course, but they come back. They look all bloody sheep­ish and tell me they’ve been play­ing away. Hah!

“But it’s sad to see the ones you know would still be reg­u­lars, but they’ve been down-sized or shoved out, and they’re hav­ing to cut back. It’s nev­er the young ones either. Noth­ing against them, so many of them are won­der­ful too, but it feels like we’re gut­ting a gen­er­a­tion that actu­ally know how to get things done. Free-thinkers a lot of them, won­der­fully know­ledge­able about all sorts of things. But that doesn’t fit in with today’s bloody paradigm does it? What a loss.”

“Let’s not talk about child­hood and all that shit,” she says. “It’s just anoth­er rur­al alco­hol­ic story any­way. God knows there’s enough of them, and they don’t sell.”

Amen to that.