The Bookshop on the Shore

by Jenny Colgan

  He looked agitated, as if he hadn’t remembered to eat, which he probably hadn’t, and devoured two pieces.

  ‘Shackleton did,’ said Zoe.

  ‘Good heavens,’ said Ramsay. He looked at Zoe with new respect. ‘And you taught him that?’

  ‘It’s amazing what powers “controlling the internet” brings,’ said Zoe, smiling cheerfully.

  ‘Well, I never. Well done, Nanny Seven. I’m kidding, I’m kidding,’ he said as he saw her face cloud. ‘Honestly, Zoe, thanks. And I wanted to say thank you again about Mary.’

  Zoe felt the ground tilting slightly under her feet. Ramsay looked straight at her.

  ‘I have to ask you,’ he said. ‘Why have you been so kind to her? Mary has been absolutely horrible to you.’

  Zoe glanced up at him, amazed he’d asked the question.

  ‘Why is that her fault?’ she said. ‘Why would that ever be a child’s fault?’

  Ramsay coloured, and he looked away.

  ‘I don’t think it’s your fault either,’ she added quickly, aware she had injured him deeply.

  But he didn’t – or couldn’t – answer that and Zoe felt the moment slipping away.

  ‘Anyway,’ she said quickly, putting a brightness in her voice she didn’t quite feel. ‘I need to ask you about Mary.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She needs new clothes. For the winter.’

  Ramsay thought about it. ‘Of course. I keep forgetting she’s getting bigger . . . So much time has passed . . .’

  His face drifted away, lost in thought.

  ‘. . . and I’ll need some money to take her shopping.’

  He looked up, worried.

  ‘Ah,’ he said.

  ‘Not much,’ said Zoe. ‘Clothes aren’t that expensive these days, but she’ll need boots and a winter coat. I’ve had a look . . .’ she said, pre-empting his objections – she’d been through the boot room already. ‘There’s lots of old men’s coats. There’s . . .’ She wasn’t sure how to say this without sounding insensitive. ‘. . . no women’s clothes.’

  The sentence hung on the air, as a log slipped in the grate and crackled into life. Otherwise, the room was incredibly quiet with only some classical music in the background Ramsay had turned down as soon as she came in.

  ‘Yes. I see,’ he said, frowning. Then he sighed.

  ‘And there are other things we need?’ he said. They both thought back to the dishwasher.

  ‘You’re going to need a new washing machine,’ said Zoe. ‘And a new hoover probably – you could make Mrs MacGlone’s life a lot easier; that old upright is her age. And a coffee machine,’ she added quickly.

  ‘How could anybody possibly need a coffee machine?’ said Ramsay.

  ‘How could anyone possibly need a gardener?’ shot back Zoe.

  Ramsay blinked.

  ‘But Wilby is on legacy.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘He’s . . . I inherited him. He got a sum in my father’s will – an annuity. So did Mrs MacGlone. It’s how servants retire, didn’t you know that?’

  ‘Yes, I grew up with a hundred servants on my estate,’ said Zoe. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

  ‘So I don’t pay them. The estate does, from ages ago. They don’t have to work for the money – they’re both technically retired.’

  Zoe frowned.

  ‘And they come and work for you anyhow?’

  Ramsay looked rueful.

  ‘Um, it appears so, yes.’

  Zoe thought about that.

  ‘Mrs MacGlone comes in . . . when she doesn’t have to?’

  Ramsay looked awkward.

  ‘I have told her to take holidays but . . .’

  Zoe shook her head. ‘That’s . . . that’s . . . so you have no money at all? Does Larissa know that?’

  Ramsay blinked.

  ‘What on earth do you mean?’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Zoe. ‘Nothing. Pretend I haven’t spoken.’

  Ramsay frowned. ‘What’s Larissa got to do with anything?’

  Zoe stepped forwards. The room truly was beautiful. Behind the shelving was solid oak panelling that covered the walls and the ceiling too. Circular rough iron plain chandeliers – if you could really have such a thing as a plain chandelier – hung down from the roof, small lights burning in it. There were low green lamps here and there.

  She moved forward to the wall.

  ‘There must be,’ she said. ‘There must be some things here you can sell?’

  Ramsay looked pained and lifted his hands.

  ‘I feel . . . I feel they’re not mine to sell.’

  ‘The books own you?’

  Suddenly he looked like an overgrown version of the boy he must have been.

  ‘They built me,’ he said quietly. He looked around. ‘I’ve spent half my life in this room.’

  Zoe smiled.

  ‘What if I did it when you weren’t here?’ She looked up. ‘Mind you, I’m not sure I’d know where to start . . .’

  ‘There’s the almanac . . .’

  Zoe looked at him and he looked like he’d said more than he’d meant to.

  ‘What’s that?’

  Ramsay glanced at his messy desk. ‘It’s an annual list of rare books . . . what they might fetch, whether you have them.’

  ‘So I could go through the list, see what’s here?’

  Ramsay looked pained.

  ‘Do I have to watch?’

  Zoe shook her head. ‘I will be very, very gentle with them,’ she said. ‘And I won’t take anything away without permission.’

  She picked up the heavy almanac with its tiny print.

  ‘Oof,’ she said. ‘Maybe I can get the kids to help.’

  ‘No!’ said Ramsay suddenly in as sharp a tone as she’d heard. ‘The kids can’t be in here.’

  Zoe glanced up.

  ‘. . . Ookkkay . . .’ she said.

  Ramsay blinked.

  ‘There’s . . . there’s stuff in here they shouldn’t be touching,’ he muttered. Zoe looked around. It was such a beautiful place. It seemed a shame.

  ‘Okay,’ she said decisively. ‘I’ll do it. I’ll find some things to sell.’

  ‘When?’ said Ramsay. ‘You seem pretty busy to me.’

  ‘Multitasker,’ said Zoe, smiling.

  Chapter Ten

  Which is how, the next few mornings, before the children were even up – they still kept irregular hours; Zoe figured the fact that they were eating better and cleaning up after themselves meant she could save the bed time argument for better days – as the sharp autumn light shone through the bronzed leaves of the overgrown garden, Zoe would spend a neat little hour comparing, filing and tidying up.

  She found so much treasure: ancient atlases, when the world was full of pink; gramaryes of spells, as dispassionately laid out as if simply recipe books; recipe books too, some hand-annotated, full of old-fashioned dishes such as mutton jelly, and guinea pig stew. She found, with a cry of triumph, a first edition of Mrs Beeton, completely unsullied (Mrs MacGlone, she thought a tad sourly, obviously had no use for it). Some truly ancient Wisden’s, powdery with lost and impenetrable scores going down the ages.

  Ramsay grew used to her there, her dark head bent down over her notebook with a pencil behind her ear, a pensive expression on her face, occasionally a strand of hair falling loose over her face. She moved quietly, didn’t disturb him, slipped a cup of instant coffee onto his desk (the coffee was incredibly weak and often half-cold; he had no idea that she was trying to be passive-aggressive about it to lobby for the new coffee machine). They didn’t talk, although occasionally she would make a happy exclamation of surprise and he would look up, trepidatious, and she would hold up what she’d found.

  Mostly it was the local books she was looking for. Sometimes it was a tourist guide or map of the surrounding areas which weren’t valuable in their own right, only in the fact that she’d be able to sell it easily in the van at the visitor ce
ntre, in the ‘heritage section’, and it wasn’t really a loss at all.

  ‘And you still have, like, a bazillion,’ she’d remind him.

  But sometimes – as when she found a first edition of Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie, who’d known Ramsay’s grandfather, who was from just up the road – she gave a heavy sigh.

  ‘You know,’ said Zoe quietly, ‘you could probably fix the east wing’s roof with this.’

  ‘I think the birds’ nests are the only thing holding us all together,’ said Ramsay.

  ‘I see this library doesn’t have a roof repair section,’ said Zoe. ‘Did your father never suggest you took a building course rather than English literature?’

  ‘He should have done, shouldn’t he?’ said Ramsay.

  ‘You’d have made a good builder. Strong back. Big hands,’ said Zoe, then she blushed; she’d forgotten for a moment that she was talking to her boss.

  Ramsay hadn’t noticed and looked at his hands, which were splattered with ink. ‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘Do you think it’s too late to learn?’

  ‘I haven’t seen you climb up the stairs once without hitting your head on the stag,’ said Zoe, grinning. Ramsay rolled his eyes.

  ‘My mind,’ he said gloomily, ‘is generally elsewhere.’

  ‘I see that.’

  And he glanced at his watch and, as he did every morning, frowned and disappeared somewhere much more important – not that Zoe ever found out where exactly this was.

  Chapter Eleven

  One morning – a crisp day in October with a chill in the air, smelling of bonfires even when there weren’t any – Zoe sent Patrick and Hari out onto the lawn in some of the random wellington boots to collect a big bowl of leaves before breakfast; they came back with red, orange and yellow ones, glowing, a big bowl of happiness. They put them in an old polished pewter bowl and set them near the kitchen fire so that they would curl up and dry out and add a lovely smudge of colour to the plain surfaces in the kitchen, even as Zoe had started to cover the walls in colourful drawings the children had done. She whisked them up some hot milk with nutmeg to warm their frosty fingers, and then went upstairs just as Ramsay arrived.

  He had also been up to something else, and so they met along the passageway on their way to the library. They smiled at one another, falling into step on the long, faded rug.

  ‘So . . . I sold all those Gaelic tour guides,’ she said.

  ‘You didn’t?’ frowned Ramsay.

  ‘Sure did!’

  ‘Did they know they were in Gaelic?’

  ‘They were delighted! One of them tried to thank me in Gaelic.’ She paused. ‘I think it was Gaelic.’

  ‘What did it sound like?’

  ‘Someone singing a beautiful song then accidentally having to suddenly cough.’

  ‘Yup, that’s it. Tapadh leat.’

  ‘Tippa lit,’ repeated Zoe.

  ‘That’ll do.’

  ‘Well, anyway. We made a little money . . .’

  Zoe leaned over to the library door, putting out her hand for the big old key. Eyes narrowing, Ramsay handed it over and she twisted it carefully in the stiff old lock. The door swung open with its usual creak.

  ‘Ta-da!’ she said. Ramsay looked in, blinking in amazement. Zoe had gone down to the pub in Kirrinfief with the money she’d made and asked around for a window cleaner. She’d asked how many windows he’d do for the small amount of cash she had, and was happy that he’d just agreed to come and do the entire west wing (first two floors only), inside and out – although in fact she’d got so anxious about soap and splashes when he was doing the inside that she’d bounced up and down and teetered around him with old towels that she might as well have done it herself.

  When he’d gone, the extraordinary change in the light had shown up every cobweb and dusty corner, so she’d ended up getting Mrs MacGlone’s feather dusters (‘You’re in the library?’ she had said in very disapproving tones and Zoe had smiled as well as she could, and said, ‘Just helping you out, Mrs MacGlone!’ and run on her way and Mrs MacGlone had given her one of her famous sniffs, which Zoe was learning to ignore one way or the other and Patrick had stoutly put himself in her way, still in his wellingtons, with another feather duster in his hand, and said, ‘WE ARE ABSOLUTELY GOING TO HELP,’ with Hari nodding his head in agreement and Zoe had said, ‘Great, totally, you start downstairs in the drawing room,’ which had rather thwarted Patrick’s stepladder plan, but Zoe was carrying on with her new policy of just keeping on moving and had charged on).

  And now, she looked nervously at Ramsay’s face as he saw the room, flooded with light, clear and bright and shining.

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Goodness.’

  And he took off his glasses and put them back on again.

  ‘I haven’t . . .’

  He rubbed his eyes.

  ‘Well. It hasn’t looked like this in a while.’

  ‘I didn’t touch anything!’ said Zoe. ‘Well, you know. Apart from all the stuff I’ve taken away to sell. Which I’ve written down! So!’

  Ramsay tried to smile.

  ‘As long as you don’t leave any holes in the shelves,’ he said. ‘That I don’t like.’

  He wandered around, touching things.

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Thank goodness,’ said Zoe. ‘I was worried you’d be annoyed. Like it was Bluebeard’s den or something and no one could go in it.’

  ‘Bluebeard?’ said Ramsay. ‘Is that what you think of me?’

  ‘No!’ said Zoe. ‘Definitely absolutely not.’

  He stared at her.

  ‘Can we change the subject?’ said Zoe hastily.

  ‘Bluebeard?’

  Zoe grabbed the nearest book to her. It was a beautiful golden-edged copy of The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald.

  ‘Ooh, look at that,’ she said swiftly.

  ‘No, you don’t,’ said Ramsay, carefully taking it from her. ‘It’s beautiful, this book. I couldn’t give it up.’

  ‘I don’t want you to give it up,’ said Zoe patiently. ‘I was thinking for Mary.’

  ‘Oh! Of course!’ said Ramsay, handing it back immediately. ‘How is my girl?’

  ‘Did you not see her last night?’

  He grimaced. ‘I got in late; she was sleeping when I put my head round the door.’

  ‘Okay. Well, she’s been sleeping a lot. Drawing a bit. Reading. She’s very quiet but I think she’s ready for shopping.’

  ‘Is this the point where you tell me you’ve made some money for me and you’re keeping it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Zoe. ‘I’m going shopping with Mary.’

  ‘Good,’ said Ramsay. ‘Is she up to it, do you think?’

  ‘Well,’ said Zoe. ‘I don’t believe in girls being quiet and good and all that stupid stuff. None of it. But in Mary’s case . . . I think she has an excuse for calm, and peace and quiet. And maybe that’s just what she needs.’

  ‘But she still needs to go to school.’

  ‘Everyone deserves a chance to be normal,’ said Zoe.

  Ramsay blinked.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said again, looking around the bright, light library. There was a knock at the door. Ramsay grimaced. Zoe went to answer it, poking her head round.

  Patrick and Hari stood there.

  ‘CAN WE QUITE POSSIBLY COME IN?’ said Patrick.

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ said Zoe, feeling totally ridiculous at refusing them. They were holding up, the pair of them, another heavy pewter bowl filled with bright red leaves.

  ‘We did absolutely pick these for Daddy,’ said the little boy.

  ‘Well, thank you,’ said Zoe bending down. ‘I’ll take them to him.’

  They lingered.

  Patrick sighed. Then Zoe had a sudden thought.

  ‘Although,’ she said, ‘there is something else we could do . . .’

  And that was how, glowing with the success of her scheme, money in her pocket for the shopping trip, Zoe cheerfull
y showed up at Hari’s nursery with not one but two very excited, cheerful-looking little boys, Hari gazing at Patrick, his one true friend and protector, as if he couldn’t quite believe his luck; being, for the first time ever, happy to go to nursery.

  Chapter Twelve

  Zoe was trepidatious the following weekend when she left the van behind and took the little green car up towards Inverness, Hari in the back, Patrick having complained vociferously all day about being left behind with Shackleton.

  Zoe had gone and had a word with Wilby the gardener, pointing out that it was ridiculous that the boys sat around the house all the time and didn’t know how to garden. Wilby hadn’t found it ridiculous at all; he thought it much more peculiar that the sons of the house would be found working alongside him, very peculiar indeed, and his own father wouldn’t have liked it one little bit, but Zoe was a determined person and despite (and slightly because of) Mrs MacGlone’s constant complaining about her pushy and vulgar ways, found himself agreeing, which is how Shackleton and Patrick found themselves wrapped up in old clothes and out trimming hedges before she left for the day.

  ‘Get some roses in your cheeks,’ she said mischievously, even as Hari’s eyes filled with tears. The prospect of a day that involved being outside with Patrick, Best Person in the World, and a pair of gigantic scissors in the garden was absolutely irresistible, and he felt bitterly betrayed.

  * * *

  It was a long way to Inverness, through clouds that seemed to get lower as they went, the colours on the trees still extraordinary but hampered by the low light and the heavy feeling in the air, damp and pregnant, as if the clouds were just waiting to burst.

  They parked in the modern town centre car park, a drab multi-storey by the bus station that did no credit to the pretty town around it, nor the dramatic beauty of its setting in the shadow of the high hills beyond, and set off rather anxiously. Mary walked as far away from Zoe as was possible without actually falling off the kerb, and Zoe smiled to herself as she saw so much of the truculent teen she would become, as Hari padded along patiently beside her. She noticed with some surprise that for the first time Hari was keeping up, not pulling and holding her back, or sitting down or looking longingly at other children’s buggies.