by Debbie Young
“I was meant to follow them around Europe. It worked out the other way round. Instead of homing in on the hotspots for expats, where English-language plays might be welcomed, they gravitated towards wherever I was working as I moved from one international school to another.”
I took a sip of green tea.
“Damian’s version of the situation was that we were helping each other. He’d advertise my services to the audiences of his English-language plays, provided I sponsored the printed programmes. But I never got a single new pupil whom I could trace to one of his audiences. I tried to get more involved by writing skits and sketches for them, but Damian never took my writing seriously.”
I laid my hands flat on the table to calm myself.
“I tried to make light of his derision, to tell myself it didn’t matter, that he was right and that I wasn’t really a writer. Even though Auntie May had always told me I had her writing genes, Damian completely undermined my self-confidence. While I was off travelling with him, I saw less and less of Auntie May, and so her belief in me lost its hold.”
Hector reached across the table and covered my hands with his. I kept my eyes downcast, trying to hold back my tears. These things weren’t easy to confess.
“It took Auntie May’s death to make me realise how unhappy I had become. And your encouragement to get me writing properly again. May’s legacy of her cottage was a welcome escape route. If she had lived to be a hundred, who knows when I’d have come to my senses about Damian?” I looked up. “Or met you?”
As I slipped my hands free of Hector’s to dry my eyes on my serviette, he began to arrange slivers of cucumber and shreds of roast duck across a paper-thin pancake. Then he drizzled it with plum sauce and rolled it up with tight precision. I realised I was smiling through my tears.
“I think you’ve been spending too long in the bookshop’s origami section.”
“Yet another heathen religion, Neep would say.” He leaned over the table to offer me a bite. I gladly accepted, savouring the cool, slithery cucumber against the spicy, hot meat.
Emboldened, I added an impromptu epilogue to my story. “And then I met a very nice man in a bookshop with whom I thought I might find a happier ending. Or at least share an interesting chapter or two.”
Hector smiled faintly, busy toying with the frayed ends of a spring onion. It was cut so artfully that it wouldn’t have looked out of place on a gift-wrapped parcel.
“Your turn now,” I said gently, touching his hand. He looked up briefly, brow furrowed.
“OK, here goes. My story is similar, but different. I met Celeste in my final year at university.”
Celeste? My heart sank. She sounded like an angel.
“Both reading English, we first noticed each other during a seminar in which we enjoyed a lively debate about Milton.”
When he glanced up for reassurance, I tried to hide my dismay, but how could I compete with someone who could discuss Milton with him?
“That might not sound like a fast-track to romance, but it did it for us. We planned a gap year of travelling together after graduation, then we were going to return to do MAs, and maybe even doctorates, if we could both get places at the same university.”
I was feeling stupider by the minute.
“While we were hitchhiking south through Spain, Celeste started to have abdominal pains. At first we assumed it was food-poisoning, or too much sun and sangria, but by the time we got to Gibraltar, on our way to Africa, she had lost so much weight that she could hardly stand. Everything seemed to go straight through her, of what little she could keep down in the first place.”
He sat back to allow one waiter to light the plate-warmer in front of us, while another one deposited a cast-iron dish of sizzling beef in black bean sauce and an aluminium bowl of special fried rice.
“It turned out she had a rare stomach illness resulting in a growth the size of a grapefruit. By this time, she was so thin that I don’t know how it fitted inside her.”
I spooned some rice into my bowl, unsure about the beef.
“We cut our travels short, and on returning to England, she was rushed in for emergency surgery. At first it was touch and go as to whether she would survive. At the height of her illness, I proposed, saying I’d marry her whatever the prognosis. She played for time, saying she’d rather wait till she looked better in a wedding dress.”
With a name like Celeste, I bet she’d look like a supermodel even in sackcloth.
“While she underwent prolonged treatment and several operations, I got a job in a local bookshop, but it didn’t pay enough to support us both. Celeste was too ill to work, of course. So I thought I’d try my hand at writing books to earn extra income. Romance might not seem the obvious choice for a man, but I knew the genre sold in vast quantities.”
This was certainly true in Hector’s House.
“I never found a publisher or an agent willing to take me on, but I still kept at it. I suspect it was also wish-fulfilment. It’s comforting to lose yourself in fictional happy endings when you’re plummeting towards tragedy in real life.”
He picked up the rice spoon and set it down again.
“You know George R R Martin’s famous quote, ‘The man who reads lives a thousand lives, he who doesn’t read lives only once’?”
I didn’t, but I nodded anyway.
“Well, it works for writers too.”
He took a deep breath. I sensed the worst was yet to come.
“By the time she was given the all-clear, we’d given up our plans for further study. Eventually she regained her lost weight, and her drive and her energy too. She took a job in our local public library, which was just right for her – not too strenuous, but quiet and rewarding – and we muddled along happily enough for a bit.”
When he paused to tip some rice into his dish, I realised I’d been monopolising the beef and held the last piece up to his mouth with my chopsticks. He slipped it off with his teeth.
“Then one day out of the blue she announced that she was leaving me for someone else – one of the doctors she’d met in hospital. They’d been seeing each other ever since she’d been discharged, but she felt so obliged to me for my support during her illness that she didn’t like to tell me.”
Indignant on his behalf, I threw my chopsticks down on the table with a clatter. “Not so obliged that she wouldn’t be unfaithful, though!” Secretly I was thankful, for without her infidelity my relationship with Hector wouldn’t even have got this far. “So where is Celeste now?”
I watched him chase a fragment of noodle around his bowl with his chopsticks. Then he shrugged. “Australia somewhere.”
The distance and vagueness of her location reassured me. She was even further away than Damian.
“Apparently it was easy for them to emigrate and start a new life there. They’re always happy to have qualified doctors in places like Australia and New Zealand. I daresay she’s got citizenship now. I don’t know whether they have since got married. I’m not sure same-sex weddings are allowed down under.”
“Same sex?”
“Oh, sorry, didn’t I say? The doctor she ran off with was another woman. So you can see now why I’m cagey about relationships. She made me feel a failure as a man. I know I’m being stupid, but that’s the way it is.”
I covered my mouth with my hands. I hadn’t seen that detail coming.
“After that, I couldn’t bear to stay in our flat, and I quit my job in the bookshop too.”
He fell silent for a moment, toying with his napkin, then forced a stiff, brave smile.
“But to look on the bright side, I’m thankful that I had those few years there, because it taught me enough to be able to set up my own independent bookshop. And the banter with the customers kept me going while Celeste was so ill. People were mostly very kind when they heard about my circumstances. Although like any bookshop, we had our fair share of nutcases. Can you believe a man once tried to get his money back on an Agatha Christie
mystery because he’d worked out who the murderer was before he’d reached the end?”
I sensed that Hector needed to laugh after that gruelling confession, and so did I.
“And of course, the usual would-be authors demanding we stock the dreadful books they’d written, just because they lived nearby. Don’t get me wrong, there were a few that were terrific. But the others just provided a work-out for my diplomacy muscles. Memoir writers are always worse than novelists, because they feel you’re rejecting not only their books, but their lives. Strangely, we don’t have many local authors wanting us to stock their books at Hector’s House.”
“Except one, but I hear his books are OK.” I pointed to him and laughed. “Or rather hers, Miss Minty.”
“Ah yes, well, present company excepted, of course. And maybe one day you, too?”
I pulled a face, not yet sharing his confidence in my ability as a writer. Despite having won two prizes, I was far from being a proper award-winning author.
“So an optimist would say I have a lot to thank Celeste for, because without her departure, I’d never have returned to the village to set up Hector’s House. Her timing was spot-on, too, because my parents were just coming up to retirement. They wanted to give me their antiques business as a going concern, but I didn’t have the requisite knowledge. I’d have sunk it in no time.”
I nodded. I couldn’t picture Hector running a dusty old antique shop.
“But I did know how to sell books, and I knew the village well enough, having grown up here, to curate the right mix of books to appeal to local customers, so they agreed to let me turn their antique shop into a bookshop.”
I wondered what his parents were like, and whether I’d ever get to meet them.
“I moved back in to the flat over the shop with my parents while they looked for a retirement bungalow by the seaside. By the time my parents had their new home organised, we’d disposed of their stock and I’d refitted the shop with bookshelves. All that remains now from those days are the book display tables and the tearoom furniture, plus a few bits and pieces of vintage kitchenware and pictures.”
I sat back in my chair, feeling full. “And what about your writing?”
“By this time, the technology had come in that allowed me to self-publish my romantic novels and sell them as ebooks.” He laid down his chopsticks. “Once I’d mastered that, I started producing paperbacks too. I made sure, of course, that they were every bit as good as the others in the shop. Within about a year of moving back here, I started to make a reasonable profit.”
I thought of all the other books in the shop besides Hermione Minty’s.
“But how did you afford to buy in all the stock to start it up? That can’t have been cheap.” Once, during a quiet morning, I’d counted up roughly how many books were in the shop, and there were thousands.
Hector seemed impressed that I’d thought of that.
“I didn’t like to ask my parents. They needed all their spare cash to buy their new bungalow. So I sought a sleeping partner to invest in initial stock.”
I decided against making a joke about sleeping partners.
“May had always been a family friend, and she turned into my fairy godmother, loaning me enough to buy a start-up stock. My real godmother, Kate Blake, helped me with the refit. She’s addicted to women’s magazines and likes to think she’s an interior design expert. To be fair to Kate, she did a good job. So there we are.”
I hadn’t realised that Hector and I would have so much in common. We’d both had the courage to start afresh, on the run from rubbish romances, taking refuge in a village that we regarded as a safe place.
33 Just Desserts
The waiter soon returned, this time bearing pale sorbet in frozen whole lemon skins. As we began to mine them with tiny spoons, Hector looked up imploringly.
“I’d appreciate it if you never mention Celeste to anyone, by the way. No-one else in the village knew what happened with her, apart from Kate and May and my parents. Everyone else thought I’d just come back to take over the shop so my parents could retire. No-one in the village ever met Celeste. She kept finding excuses to avoid meeting my parents, even at Christmas. I realise now that was because she had no intention of continuing our relationship long term.”
I set down my spoon and sat back. “You know, I never brought Damian here, either. He wasn’t interested in villages. He’s more the city type, which I’m glad about now.”
I was also glad Wendlebury could therefore be ours and ours alone.
Hector said he’d call for the bill. “Where’s our waiter gone?” He surveyed the room.
“Was it that one over there?” I pointed to a short man dispensing lychees to a middle-aged couple in the far corner. I’ve never fancied lychees. They look like some bodily organ that’s been surgically removed, though the waiter had tried to press them upon us as having aphrodisiac properties.
Hector shook his head. “No, he was taller with a little toothbrush moustache. I can’t believe you didn’t notice it. It’s not a very common style these days.” The kitchen door swung open, and we both turned to look. “Ah yes, that’s him.” Hector raised his hand, and the waiter nodded and went to prepare our bill.
“Gosh, you don’t see many toothbrush moustaches like that these days, do you?” I mused, unable to take my eyes off it now that Hector had pointed it out. “Surely they went out of fashion with Brylcreem. I can’t remember the last time I saw someone with one.”
“Nor can I,” said Hector, pulling his wallet out of his jacket pocket. “Wait – hang on. Yes, I can.”
He slammed his hand down hard on the table, rattling the teaspoons in the sorbet dishes. Other diners looked across, probably wondering whether we were arguing over the bill.
“Picture this for a minute: the Reverend Neep, but with very short cropped black hair instead of the straggly white locks he has now, and beneath his long thin nose, the waiter’s moustache. Do you know what that image conjures up for me?”
I tried to think of a famous person with short, dark hair and a toothbrush moustache. “Hitler?”
He shook his head. “No, but close. It reminds me of an author, leaning over the counter in the bookshop where I used to work, trying to press me to stock his dreadful memoir, and then practically spitting with rage when I refused.”
“How funny!” I pulled a face.
“No, not funny at all,” said Hector slowly. “Because this was no ordinary dull autobiography.”
The waiter came and placed the bill in a little folder on a silver dish in between us. Hector picked it up, swept aside the mint chocolate sticks on top of it, glanced at the total and laid down five ten-pound notes.
“He’d been on trial accused of killing his wife in a bonfire in his back garden on Guy Fawkes’ Night. There were no witnesses, and he claimed she’d fallen into the bonfire while he was indoors making a cup of tea. But whoever heard of someone having a bonfire party without inviting any guests? Although he proclaimed his innocence, forensic evidence strongly suggested that he’d done it, but some procedural cock-up by the local constabulary made it inadmissible, so he got off.”
“Were there any children involved?” I asked.
“Fortunately not, but it was particularly galling for his late wife’s brother, who was in the police force himself, but not allowed to be involved in the investigation due to their relationship. The poor man had a nervous breakdown after the trial was over and had to be sectioned. There are always more victims of a crime than meet the eye.”
I arranged the chocolate sticks into a little pyramid that reminded me of a tiny edible bonfire. I thought they’d make a good cupcake topping, mentally noting the idea for the bookshop tearoom for subsequent Guy Fawkes’ Nights.
“How awful,” I said, letting Hector ramble on, thinking it would be a relief for us both to change the subject from Celeste.
“The author tried to sell his side of the story to the papers, but the whole business was so
scurrilous that not even the tabloids would touch it. If he’d had any sense, he’d have thanked his lucky stars and slunk away to live quietly out of the public eye. Instead he wrote a book about it and got umpteen copies produced very badly by a vanity press. Once I’d refused to stock it, I never saw him in our shop again, and I presumed he’d left the area to start a new life.”
I wasn’t sure where Hector was going with all this and why he was telling me in such detail.
“There was a rumour that he’d gone mad with remorse for murdering his wife and killed himself, but I never believed that. He came across as too self-righteous, or at least too deluded.”
“Hmmm,” I said, now idly wondering whether Hector would notice if I ate more than my half of the chocolate.
“I never saw him again, until the day Mr Neep walked into Hector’s House.”
“What?” I choked for a moment, my eyes watering as I took a swig of cold green tea. “You mean that was Mr Neep?”
Hector nodded.
“Yes, that must be why he instantly took against me. He recognised me as one of the many booksellers who’d turned him down. I didn’t make the connection until now, but why should I? An author doesn’t meet many booksellers, but a bookseller meets hundreds of authors and publishers’ reps over the years. He must be living in fear that I might remember him, despite his efforts to change his appearance.”
I set down the tea cup and leaned back in my seat, drying my eyes with my napkin.
“Gosh. I’d never have thought a clergyman could be capable of murdering his own wife, or anyone else, for that matter.”
Hector looked at me steadily. “The thing is, he wasn’t a clergyman at all. He was a low-grade civil servant, working for the council. His only knowledge of the clergy was from his involvement with the amateur dramatic society, where he played the vicar in the Agatha Christie play, The Murder at the Vicarage.”
I sighed. “Oh God, not another actor. Honestly, I’ve had my fill of dramatic types. I don’t care if I never see an actor again.”
Hector raised his eyebrows. “That’s going to make your nativity play a bit tricky, isn’t it?” He pursed his lips. “Of course, I could be completely mistaken. I might have misremembered the whole thing, as it was a few years ago. I’ve got no evidence that our Mr Neep has done anything wrong apart from being annoying. It’s only you that thinks he was the Grim Reaper, and even if he was, cutting a cable was hardly a criminal act. I’m being silly. I’m just letting my instincts run away with me.”
