by Debbie Young
“Smart move,” put in Hector, paying attention again now that we were discussing enterprise.
“Ha, that’s easy for you to say. But what started out as a smart idea left me feeling like I was on the wrong end of a see-saw. I was left permanently in the air, with Damian and the rest of the cast all sitting on the other end. They spent increasing amounts of time away from where I was working, only returning to sleep on my floor between gigs and freeload from my fridge. They basked at French seaside resorts, while I slaved in Paris, even through August.”
Hector looked dubious. “And you don’t miss living abroad? You’re not sorry you moved to Wendlebury? You’re not tempted to go back if you get bored here?”
I frowned. “No. I may not be a natural nomad like my aunt, but I had the good sense to move on when the time was right.”
“And the good sense to have an aunt die and leave you a house to live in,” he murmured, too quietly for Joshua to hear. Then he had the decency to look abashed for being so insensitive. “I’m sorry. I know it wasn’t really like that. Did she leave you the royalties too? If so, you might not even need to work for a living. Her royalties must be quite decent, the amount of books she sells. And, though I hate to say it, her sales will probably rise, at least for a little while, following her death. Copyright lasts seventy years after an author’s death.”
I glanced at Joshua, wondering whether he’d somehow persuaded her to leave them to him.
“Seventy years, eh? That would see me out.” Joshua sounded thoughtful. Surely he hadn’t bumped her off for her royalties without even knowing how long they lasted?
I shrugged. “I’ve no idea. My dad’s been dealing with her probate. I don’t really know how royalties work or whether they’d amount to much. I’m just grateful she left me the cottage.”
I returned to work without further remark, washing up Joshua’s cup as he headed out of the door, laying the tables ready for the next customers , and wondering why Dad hadn’t told me about the royalties. It seemed awfully odd to me.
14 Taking Stock
I was ready for the day off on Sunday. I needed to find the local supermarket and stock the larder up with a little more variety than the bread, honey, tinned soup and local fresh eggs that had been my staple diet all week. I also had to plan my new pupils’ first lessons. I had three children booked in for English coaching, one each afternoon on the Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, for half an hour soon after the end of the school day.
Hector had given me a couple of helpful brochures of academic books for primary school age children. Poring over these brochures at Auntie May’s desk, I realised how little I knew about the current English school curriculum. Before going any further, I thought it best to set up a meeting with someone from the village school to make sure that the support I provided was appropriate, and that offering private lessons would not affect relations between the bookshop and the school. I didn’t want it to seem as if I was accusing the school of inadequate teaching.
I decided to call in at the school the next day to make an appointment to visit their headmaster or headmistress. This excused me from any further preparation in the meantime, other than rereading the brochures Hector had given me.
I appreciated Hector’s thoughtfulness. He could easily have told me to teach in my own time at home, rather than in the shop, and I wouldn’t have blamed him. Damian had never been this helpful, going out of his way to make a noise when I’d had private pupils back to my flat, or leaving coffee cups on the small desk where I did my teaching. I’d tell myself he was just being a forgetful theatrical type, but now Hector’s example showed Damian in a less flattering light.
To help prepare my visit to the school, I looked up its website. The school seemed pleasant enough, though very different to the luxurious international schools I’d been used to working in. These were all privately owned and run, funded by vast fees from the globetrotting businesspeople whose children attended them. Modern, spacious and comfortable facilities were the least standards expected by parents used to staying in five-star hotels and flying first-class.
Wendlebury Barrow Primary School was, by contrast, housed in a shabby Victorian building. Attached was the cottage formerly occupied by the head teacher in the days when a single member of staff would have been all it employed, regardless of the number of pupils. Headmistresses would have been single, because, as the website informed me, female teachers were required to give up their posts on marriage. Now the school was run by a headmaster, plus four teachers, for around a hundred pupils. Despite the tumbledown building, the children looked happy and shining with health in their neat little blue and grey uniforms.
For a moment, I felt guilty for having to myself a cottage that would have once housed a family. Auntie May had been born and raised there, along with her three siblings, by her parents, with the two bedrooms between the lot of them. And there was me having thought the cottage, with its low ceilings and narrow doorways, was a bit on the small side.
I spent the rest of the day pottering about the house, unpacking the rest of my possessions, and allowing them to be absorbed among hers. I thought that should make the house feel a little more like my own. But sitting down at Auntie May’s writing desk that evening, I felt like some kind of ghost in reverse, haunting with my presence where Auntie May really belonged. I felt like an imposter, not least when I opened the notebook containing my latest piece of writing: a few lines about my break-up with Damian.
With the critical eye that comes only when you’ve set a piece of work aside for a few weeks, I picked up a red biro from the carved sandalwood pencil pot on top of the desk, slashing through superfluous words and awkward phrases until the page looked like the scene of a massacre. I sat back and sighed. Maybe I was trying to write the wrong thing.
I looked on top of the desk for inspiration. Considering how many souvenirs from May’s travels were dotted about other parts of the house, I thought it seemed surprisingly empty with just the pencil pot and the telephone. I decided to personalise it with some photos and went upstairs to fetch some from the only bag I hadn’t yet unpacked.
I’d stowed it under Auntie May’s high brass bedstead, so I pulled it out and heaved it on top. In an old jiffy bag was my small store of photos, including one picture of me and May when I was about five, another with my parents at my graduation, and a selfie of me with Damian beneath the Eiffel Tower. We’d taken this picture on his return from his trip to the French coast without me. I’d never noticed till now how strained both our smiles looked.
Suddenly it struck me how hugely supportive I’d been to have tagged along with Damian so blindly. It’s not as if the other members of his drama group were welcoming. They used me only to do the jobs they didn’t want to do, like selling programmes and taking tickets. You’d have thought I was some sort of intern rather than the person subsidising them.
I climbed onto May’s bed and sat back against the big soft pillows, staring at the photo for a bit, trying to see Damian with the admiration and love that I’d felt before. After lying there for a little while, I removed the photo from its frame, put it in the jiffy bag, returned the jiffy bag to the suitcase, and stowed it back under the bed. Then I went downstairs to put the other framed photos on the desk, as well as the now empty frame.
I’d come to a critical decision: I was now recruiting for a replacement for Damian. But where on earth would I find one in a village populated only by families, the elderly, mad men and murderers?
15 Teaching the Teachers
At 8.50 the following morning, I detoured to the village school to introduce myself to its secretary, almost getting mown down in the rush of small children, scooters and dogs on leads racing to arrive before the school bell rang. The current staff had clearly tried to make the squat, dark building look as welcoming as possible within the constraints of its heritage status. The spooky Gothic windows were redeemed by cheerful pieces of children’s handicraft on deep windowsills: wobbly clay pots
and papier-mâché animals, each as different as the children now swarming around me on their way to the playground.
I didn’t need to ask directions to the office, as someone had helpfully painted bright orange footprints from the school gate. These led to a bottle green wooden door at the centre of the building between two arched entrances marked “Boys” and “Girls”. I wanted to mark this one “Don’t Know”.
I found myself in a dark narrow passage with identical doors either side, one marked “Office” and the other “Head”. It reminded me of the corridor that Alice finds when she falls down the rabbit-hole. I half expected to find a table in the hall bearing a bottle labelled “Drink Me”.
The Office door was already open. Beyond were two mums waiting their turn to speak to a competent-looking secretary fielding a phone call behind an old oak desk. She looked about my age, her long dark hair was tied back in a neat ponytail, and she wore a practical slate-coloured linen shift.
“No, it’s definitely forty-eight hours after the last episode of vomiting before Timmy can come back to school, Mrs Evans, even if you do have a hairdresser’s appointment this morning. I’m sorry, but that’s the rule.”
The two mums were exchanging knowing looks.
“Quite right too!” said one. I waited patiently while she handed in an outgrown school uniform for the spare clothes box and the other raided the Lost Property box, grumbling.
“What I don’t understand is why he didn’t notice he’d come home in only one shoe.”
She found the missing shoe, and also pulled out three other items labelled with her son’s name. They each smiled at me as they left the office, their missions accomplished.
“Ooh, hello, Miss Sayers, we’ve heard about you,” said the shoeless boy’s mum. I hoped it had all been good.
The secretary greeted me in a friendly manner before excusing herself to brush past me into the hall. I watched through the open door as she hauled on the bell-rope to signal to the children that the school day was about to begin. It struck me as dangerous to have a rope like that hanging within easy reach of young children.
Through the other window I watched dozens of pupils line up in the playground. Several latecomers hurtled past, book bags flying behind them. Then the secretary returned to her desk, and I waited a moment while we both savoured the subsequent calm. She picked up a bunch of lavender that had been left in her in-tray by an anonymous benefactor, stems wrapped neatly in tin foil, held the posy up to her face and breathed in its heady scent.
“Mmm, the perfect aromatherapy treatment for a busy school office.” She smiled at me. “Now, what can I do for you this morning? You’re new to the village, aren’t you? I don’t suppose you’ve brought a bevy of primary-school-age children to enrol here?”
“Sorry, can’t help on that one.”
“Pity. Our numbers will be falling at the beginning of next term. The joining class is five fewer than the leavers’ class. I’ve got to the point now where I assess every newcomer for their fecundity, hoping they’ve got a huge brood of under-elevens.” She sighed. “The window-cleaner gave me a funny look after I asked him about his family plans the other day. I hope he didn’t think I fancied him.”
I laughed. She didn’t seem like my idea of the average school secretary. “I’m Sophie Sayers, by the way. Very much single and childless at the moment, but never say die. I may only have just moved to the village, but I might end up staying and having dozens of children eventually. Can’t promise any in time for this September, though.”
She held out her hand to shake mine. “Ella Berry. School Business Manager. Welcome to the village. Hmm, Sophie Sayers. Would you be related to May Sayers, by any chance?”
I nodded.
“Thought so. We loved May. She used to come in to speak to the children about her travels and her books. She could rustle up a handy talk for any topic. Africa, India, America. There weren’t many places she hadn’t been, and she always brought plenty of show-and-tell items to illustrate talks. She was invaluable for World Book Day, sharing her love of books with the children and encouraging them to read and write. Are you also a writer? Have you inherited her writing talent? Or her itchy feet?”
“The itchy feet, certainly. I’ve spent the whole of my career so far teaching English around Europe. And I do love books, and reading and writing. I’ve yet to publish anything myself, I’m hoping to eventually.”
“Oh good, let us know where you’ve lived and we’ll rope you in when we’re doing topics about European countries. With so few staff, we’re always on the scrounge for volunteers’ time. Is that what you’re here for today? Come to join our team of volunteers that hears children reading?”
For a moment I felt wrong-footed. Instead of seizing the opportunity to empty parents’ pockets, should I just be offering my services free of charge to the community?
At that point an immaculately tailored woman who had presumably become a mother relatively late in life appeared in the doorway, a crocodile-skin purse in one hand.
“I am in receipt of your text message about Felicity’s dinner money,” she said, opening her purse and elbowing me aside in one slick movement. “I assume you have change?”
“That’s £23.50, please, Mrs Absolom,” said Ella, consulting a spreadsheet on her computer screen.
Mrs Absolom scrabbled in her purse. “I hope you have change of a fifty.”
Ella opened a drawer and pulled out an old-fashioned cash box marked “Dinner Money”. She counted out the change in one pound and fifty pence coins.
Mrs Absolom looked disdainful. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with those.”
Her dismissive attitude to so much money gave me hope that at least some village families might be wealthy enough to pay my coaching fees. Then she pointed imperiously to the lavender.
“And you shouldn’t have dreadful stinking flowers like that in school. So bad for hay fever. Just attracts pests.” Without waiting for a reply, she stalked out, coughing pointedly.
Ella grinned as Mrs Absolom slammed the front door behind her. “Hmm, I guess that means Mrs Absolom isn’t my secret admirer. I reckon some Year 6 boy picked them from the school garden and wrapped them in foil from his packed lunch. A few of them have got a bit of a crush on me just now. Goodness, those boys are more than ready to move up to Big School. They need to meet girls closer to their own age.”
She peeled off the foil, revealing tell-tale scraps of cheese and tomato among the lavender stems. She picked them off patiently and dropped them in the bin. “Still, peace at last! Now, what can I do for you?”
I explained my new coaching practice to Ella and enquired whether the school might be happy to make referrals. She couldn’t have been more supportive.
“So, you’re working for the lovely Hector, eh?” I couldn’t stop myself flashing a glance at her left hand to check whether she was single. “Your coaching sounds a great idea, and the bookshop is a perfect setting for paid lessons. You’ll be ideal for those that need more individual attention and time than we can offer within the school day. The Head will be happy for you to chat with our teacher in charge of literacy for a steer on the curriculum. Let me know when you want to make an appointment. In the meantime, I can give you the crib sheets we’ve distributed to parents with tips on how to help their children with reading and writing. You’ll have to get government certification to confirm that you’re safe to work with children, but I can give you the application form for that. I don’t know whether you had it before you moved abroad, but even if you did, you’ll need to reapply, because the rules change every five minutes.”
She turned to open the low filing cabinet behind her, instantly finding the right pocket and pulling out a neatly formatted double-sided sheet of paper to give me.
“And if, in return, you’d like to spend any time volunteering to help us revamp the school library, I’m sure you’ll be especially welcome.”
She gave me her business card. Not for nothing
was she School Business Manager rather than secretary, I realised. I scribbled down my own contact details on a scrap of paper and invited her to join me in the tearoom for a coffee any time she fancied one. She seemed the first truly sensible, straightforward, ordinary person that I’d met since I’d arrived in the village. That was suspicious in itself. There had to be a catch.
16 Lesson Time
I headed back down the High Street to Hector’s House.
“I’ve just been up to the school,” I announced. “That Ella Berry, the School Business Manager, seems nice. She’s asked me to go and do what my auntie May did at school.”
Hector, already installed behind the counter and tapping away at his laptop as I came through the door, looked up and stopped typing for a moment.
“If you’re going to be their writer-in-residence, doesn’t it require that you actually write something first?”
I groaned. “Is that what she was? I thought she just went in to talk to the children now and again.” I realised it was confession time. “The thing is, I’ve written loads, but I’ve never shared it with anyone before, apart from Damian, my ex. I’m still at the polishing stage.” To be honest, I was more at the writing-and-screwing-up-and-throwing-in-the-bin stage. “And anyway, if I’m in there helping with their library as a volunteer, it’s pretty certain that when they need more books, they’ll order through your shop.”
“They do that already anyway,” said Hector.
I set my bag down behind the counter in time to turn the coffee maker on before the morning mums came in.
With no customers spoiling our peace and quiet after the morning rush, Hector carried on bashing away at his keyboard. I couldn’t believe how long he spent fussing over his accounts. I hadn’t appreciated before how much administrative work went into running a bookshop – I’d assumed that bookshops, like libraries, were oases of calm and order. But it appeared that behind the scenes there was frantic activity keeping the place afloat.
