Looking around, she saw that there were neat quotes in black cursive letters on the brief spaces of wall which weren’t covered by books. Callie read a few of them to herself.
“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies.”
“Books are for people who wish they were somewhere else.”
Callie smiled and then her eyes sought out the books again and there were shelves and shelves of them from the floors to the ceilings. The first room was a lovely big square one looking out onto the street. A till was tucked away on a corner table and that, too, was covered in books. There was also a pair of ornate library steps on either side of the room so that it was possible to reach the perilously high top shelves, and a long table stood in the middle of the room with a range of brightly-coloured fiction packed upon it for the idle browser who just happened to walk in off the street and who didn’t want to crane their necks or crook their heads to examine book titles.
There was a narrow passageway leading off the front room and it called to Callie to walk down it and explore. It led to a smaller room which was completely book-lined and wonderfully silent now that the low-level bustle of shoppers and traffic had been left behind. She stood looking at the shelves, taking in the travel journals, and the literary memoirs which the narrow passage housed. She then walked on into the back room in which two small squashy sofas sat. There was an elderly gentleman with a shock of white hair sitting on one and he looked up as Callie came in, nodding absent-mindedly before returning to his book.
A staircase led up from the back of the room and each stair was loaded with books. Callie peered up it and saw a “Private” sign at the top. She then noticed that there was an open door to the right of the room and curiosity got the better of her and, to her delight, she discovered a tiny kitchen area with a sink and a draining board and a little worktop on which sat a few cheerful Penguin mugs in orange and white, a blue kettle and a sea-green Fortnum and Mason tin of biscuits. Everything was so bright and colourful. There was something to delight the eye wherever it rested, she thought with a smile as she recognised the delicious aroma of Earl Grey tea and ginger biscuits.
It was then that she heard footsteps on the stairs.
‘Hello there,’ a voice said and Callie watched as a dark-haired gentleman wearing glasses descended. He was wearing a sky-blue shirt which was open at the neck, a Tweed jacket, a pair of dark jeans and he had a slightly quizzical expression on his face as if he was surprised to see a customer in his shop. ‘Can I help you with anything?’ he asked as he approached her.
‘Oh, no thank you,’ Callie said.
‘Were you after a cup of tea, perhaps?’ he asked, motioning towards the kettle.
Callie’s face flushed as she realised she was practically inside the kitchen. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m very nosy, I’m afraid.’
‘It’s no trouble,’ he said.
‘No, really, I’m just browsing.’
He nodded, the quizzical expression still in residence on his face. ‘Grandpa, didn’t you see the nice lady in the shop?’
‘I did,’ he said.
‘And did you not think to offer her a cup of tea?’
‘She seemed to be getting on with things herself,’ he said, not looking up from his book.
The younger man turned back to Callie. ‘You’ll have to excuse Grandpa Joe,’ he said. ‘Once he’s got his nose in a book, well, you couldn’t shift him if his feet were on fire.’
Callie smiled and she couldn’t help noticing the intense look in the brown eyes behind the grandson’s glasses. They held not quite a sadness exactly, but a kind of weariness, perhaps, as if he’d seen more of the world than he would have liked to.
‘Well,’ he said at last, clapping his hands together and making her jump out of her thoughts. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’
She watched as he left the room, walking into the book-lined passageway that led to the front of the shop and she suddenly felt awkward about being left alone there with Grandpa Joe. She cleared her throat.
‘This is a wonderful place,’ she said.
‘Oh, yes,’ he said quietly, his eyes stuck to the pages in front of him.
Callie walked around the room, admiring the colourful spines of the books and the beautiful displays the owner had created. There was an old-fashioned music stand which held open a large hardback book about mythological creatures, its open pages revealing two finely illustrated dragons. Then there was a long shelf on which had been placed, facing out, several old books about flowers, each one’s cover so enticingly beautiful that Callie felt her fingers itch to touch them and turn over every single page, but she resisted. Instead, she turned her attention to the ornate fireplace on whose mantelpiece stood a row of art books. She cocked her head to one side to take in the titles.
‘The Raphael isn’t for sale,’ Grandpa Joe’s voice came from behind his book.
‘Pardon?’
‘The book on Raphael. It’s mine.’
‘Oh,’ Callie said. ‘Why’s it here then?’
‘It fits,’ he said without further explanation.
‘Aren’t you scared somebody will buy it?’
The old man shook his head. ‘They wouldn’t dare,’ he said. ‘Besides, it’s alarmed.’
Callie blinked in surprise and turned back to look at the precious title. Was it really alarmed? Her fingers once again started to itch to touch it, but she didn’t dare. Leaving the beautiful room and Grandpa Joe, Callie walked through to the book-lined passageway, stopping to check out the titles and hoping that none were alarmed. Taking a chance, her arm stretched up and her fingers reached out to pull down a volume. She cursed her shortness of stature for which she was always penalised in such places, but she just managed to reach the book she’d spotted and brought it down for her inspection.
It was a rather handsome hardback with a blue and gold spine featuring a huge ship, its sails full and ready for adventure.
‘On the Banks of the Amazon,’ she read,
Whenever Callie was in a secondhand bookshop, there was a strict order of things which she did. She would have one quick look around, determining the overall size and layout of the shop and then she would slow things down a bit, going back to the places and the volumes which had caught her eye, taking her time examining them. This she did now with the blue and gold book, taking in the cover and the spine before opening it up and inhaling.
Ah, yes! That unmistakable, unmissable smell of an old book; how it hit her every time. It was a scent that she never tired of and yet it was always subtly different depending on the age of the book and its heritage. This one was very delicate, whispering its age across the decades, and Callie took a moment to embrace it, wondering about the life of this little tome and what stories it could tell in addition to the one between its covers.
She wasn’t sure how long she had been standing there sniffing the book, but she slowly became aware that she was being watched by the man she’d seen coming down the stairs – the man she only knew as Grandpa Joe’s grandson.
‘Oh, I erm– ‘ she stopped. What did she think she was going to say? How on earth would she explain what she was doing? She could feel her face heating up and knew to her mortification that she was blushing.
‘It’s okay,’ he said with a grin. ‘I do it all the time. In fact, if you want a really good one, try this.’
She watched in bemusement as he reached up above her head and brought down a wonderfully old hardback in sage green. It was a 1925 edition of a collection of plays by George Bernard Shaw.
‘Go on – sniff that!’ he said, his dark eyes twinkling with mischief as he handed the book to her. She took it from him, wondering if he was just toying with her or if he was in earnest but, when she opened up the ragged fawn-coloured pages, she knew that he was serious.
‘Wow!’ she said. ‘That’s good.’
‘Isn’t it?’ he said. ‘I’m actually hop
ing nobody buys it because it’s long been a favourite of mine.’
‘It’s like an ancient building where the fire has only just gone out.’
His smile widened and he nodded.
There then followed a strange few minutes in which the two of them went along the shelves, pulling out volume after volume and sniffing them.
‘This one’s good,’ she said, holding it open for him to inhale.
‘What about this one?’ he asked.
She nodded in appreciation. ‘I don’t know what book it is, but I’d buy it for the scent alone.’
‘You don’t get that experience with an e-reader,’ he said.
‘No!’ she said. ‘I was trying to explain that to a friend of mine, but she just didn’t understand.’
‘Maybe they’ll invent a scented e-reader one day – one for us old book fans,’ he said as he handed her another title for her delectation.
‘Have you tried placing an e-reader in between a couple of old books?’
‘I can’t say that I have,’ he said. ‘In fact, I’ve resisted buying one so far. I just love real books too much.’
‘Oh, well I do too,’ Callie said, fearful that he might think she was a traitor to the printed word, ‘but there’s room in my life for both.’
‘I’m Sam, by the way,’ he said, probably feeling that it was only proper to introduce himself after having shared so intimate a pastime as sniffing books. ‘Sam Nightingale.’
‘Hello,’ she said. ‘I’m Callie.’
‘Good to meet you. Welcome to Nightingale’s. I’ve not seen you in here before, have I?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ve only recently moved to Suffolk.’
‘Oh?’
‘From London,’ she said and then silently cursed herself in case he thought she was one of those rich people who was coming into the county buying up all the pretty properties but not actually living there. ‘I live here – all the time!’ she added.
‘Well, good,’ he said with a nod.
‘I mean, this is my home now,’ she said, telling herself to calm down and act like a grown-up. Why did she even want this man’s approval anyway?
Sam was still holding a book but returned it to its proper place now.
‘I often think that the smell of books is like a good wine,’ he said and Callie was glad he’d turned the conversation back to books. ‘They have a vintage and just get better with age. Take this 1953 Penguin paperback. A very modest little novella, but get a whiff of that,’ he said.
Callie took a sniff. ‘Oh, yes!’ she said. ‘That’s very good.’
‘Indeed it is. So, what do you make of Kingston’s On the Banks of the Amazon, then?’
‘Subtle but delicious,’ she said. ‘Very slightly smoky.’
‘I thought that too.’
‘I wonder what its story is?’ she said. ‘Do you remember how it came to be here?’
‘It came from a man who was clearing out his father’s house. If I remember rightly, he turned up at the shop with three enormous boxes of books. There wasn’t really much of value in them. A couple of nice volumes. This was one of the nicer books,’ he said.
‘That must be exciting,’ Callie said. ‘Never knowing what you’re going to find in a collection.’
He nodded. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘You never know if you’re going to get lucky and discover a first folio Shakespeare amongst the Reader’s Digest anthologies and the Encyclopaedia Britannica.’
Callie laughed.
‘Actually,’ Sam said, ‘this book shouldn’t be here at all. It’s fiction.’
‘Really? It’s not autobiography?’ Callie asked.
‘It’s written in the manner of an autobiography, but Kingston wrote a whole series of adventures for boys. See here?’ He showed her the list of other books just before the title page.
Callie nodded. ‘Ah, yes,’ she said. ‘It’s a lovely book. I adore the mottled pages.’
‘Foxing,’ he said. ‘That’s what we call it.’
‘Yes, I know,’ Callie said, ‘but I prefer ‘mottled’. It’s more poetic, I think. It doesn’t sound so much like some affliction.’
He smiled. ‘Have you seen the little book plate in the front?’
‘Yes!’ Callie said, turning to look at it again. It was a very pretty little plate decorated with ivy berries and an illuminated ‘P’ for the word ‘Presented’. It had been presented to one ‘R Webb’, and had been the second prize ‘for regular attendance at Bible class’.
‘I wonder what the first prize was,’ Callie said.
‘Probably a bible,’ he said.
Callie laughed. ‘I think I’d prefer the adventure story.’
‘Me too,’ he said. ‘You know, it’s books like this that make my job a daily joy. It’s not particularly old or rare and it’s not the sort of book that’s going to fund my retirement or even a decent meal out, but it’s still a privilege to handle it – to take in the beauty of its production and to think about its previous owners – its little history.’
Callie nodded, understanding completely. ‘And look at the colour plates,’ she said. ‘Aren’t they wonderful?’ She flipped through the pages again, taking in the exquisite scenes of jungle life and one of a storm at sea in which you could almost feel the coldness of the waves.
‘Have a look at the titles inside the back cover,’ he said.
Callie opened the book from the back and saw a neat page of titles and authors.
‘Recognise any?’ he asked.
Callie’s eyes scanned the names. J Macdonald Oxley. E Everett-Green. Angela Brazil. Lilian Timpson.
‘Oh! Louisa M Alcott!’ she said at last. ‘Look – Little Women.’
He nodded. ‘Just one name remembered out of all those books published,’ he said with a little shake of his head. ‘I often wonder what happened to the other authors. Were they just one-book wonders? Why didn’t their titles span the decades to still be alive today?’
‘Luck?’ Callie suggested. ‘Who’s to say what makes a title resonate with its readers? You’ve only to look at any bestseller list to find a title which you truly believe has no place there.’
Sam nodded. ‘Indeed. Or the dreaded celebrity book club recommendations,’ he said. ‘Always good for the bookselling business, but not always good for the soul. I do think people should find their own books and learn to develop their own reading habits.’ He held out his hand for the book she was still holding.
‘Oh, no!’ she said quickly. ‘I’m going to have to buy it now,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t possibly leave without it.’
He smiled and she decided that he had a very nice smile which went a long way to softening that little edge which his eyes held.
‘You’re going to read it?’ he asked.
Callie looked thoughtful. ‘You know, I’m not sure, but I’ve got lots of books that I love which I haven’t actually read.’
‘Me too,’ he said.
‘And just look at the enjoyment we’ve already got from this book without even reading a single word of the story.’
He laughed. ‘Indeed,’ he said, making Callie smile. He liked that word, didn’t he?
‘You know that book very well,’ she added as she followed him through to the front of the shop. ‘Do you know every single book in your shop so well?’
He smiled. ‘Pretty much,’ he said.
‘I’m impressed.’
‘I shouldn’t be if I were you. It’s just my job.’
‘But there are thousands of books here and your stock must change all the time.’
He shrugged. ‘What can I say? Books are my thing.’
‘Mine too,’ she said. ‘In fact, I was wondering if you might have a first edition of a title I’ve been after for a while.’
‘Try me,’ he said.
‘It’s a children’s book called Perdita’s Key by Callie Logan.’
‘That’s quite a new title, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It fi
rst came out three years ago, but the first print run was very small.’
‘Well, I don’t believe we’ve got one in stock. Would you like me to try and get a copy for you?’
‘It would have to be a first edition,’ she said.
He nodded. ‘Let me take the details down.’ He walked over to a table where the till was and Callie watched as he opened a book and grabbed a pen. It was a beautiful black fountain pen with a gold nib.
‘No computer?’ she asked, half-amused, half-bewitched.
‘Upstairs,’ he said. ‘I don’t like it in the shop and writing things down helps fix them in my mind.’
Callie smiled. As a writer, she had always preferred the keyboard to pen and paper, only using notebooks for ideas she needed to jot down quickly. But, looking at the slow movement of black ink on the creamy white paper of his notebook, she fell in love with the idea of going back to basics. Maybe actually holding a pen in her hands would kick start her inspiration, she thought. It had to be worth a try at least.
‘Perdita’s Key by Callie Logan,’ he read once he’d written it. ‘First edition.’
‘Please.’
‘So it’s just the one title you’re after?’ he asked.
‘Yes. I have the others.’
‘You collect children’s books?’
‘Kind of,’ she said, biting her lip and not wishing to confess her little secret just yet.
‘So, how do I get in touch with you?’
‘I’ve got a card,’ she said, reaching into her bag.
‘Nice bag,’ he said.
Callie looked up in surprise. Was he teasing her? He didn’t appear to be. ‘Oh, thank you,’ she said, remembering all the churlish remarks she’d had from Piers about it. ‘I can fit everything inside it. It’s been known to hold up to six paperbacks.’
‘What more could you ask from a handbag?’ he said, his dark eyes sparkling with humour.
‘The only problem is, I can never find anything in it,’ she said as she rummaged around in its depths, her hand encountering sunglasses, purse, lip gloss, hairbrush, notebook and umbrella before finally finding the little wallet in which she kept her business cards. ‘Here!’ she said in triumph. ‘I’ve just had them made.’
The Book Lovers Page 2
