“Mmm?”
“Why do you think Albert H. Montgomery gave this place up?”
He shrugged, joggling his hammock. “Old age?”
“He’s not much older than Mum.”
Michael thought about this. “New adventures?”
“ARGHOW,” said Property.
“You all right, Prop?”
Property fought the Gunther off her face, and persuaded him to settle on her stomach instead. “Yes. I think this cat likes me.”
“Rather you than me,” said Michael, rolling over comfortably in his hammock.
“Don’t you think it’s odd, though? He could have sold this place for a lot of money.”
Michael said something about running away from killer kittens that only half made sense, so Property knew that he was falling asleep. The Gunther was asleep too, it seemed. He was either snoring, or he had swallowed a small drill.
Property wished that she was better at words. She couldn’t quite name the worry that she felt, which made it hard to share, and even harder to get rid of.
She was comforted by the darkness in the Emporium, which was a deeper shade of black than the darkness at the White Hart, and wrapped around her snugly. The Gunther was comforting too, warm on her belly. She shut her eyes, and did her best to ignore the nameless worry, thinking instead about all the rooms that surrounded her – hundreds and hundreds of them, suspended in the darkness – just waiting to be called. It really was an Object of Wonder.
Rooms that she had seen that day started to get muddled up in her mind with rooms that only existed in her dreams, and her breathing started to slow. Little by little, breath by breath, Property Jones stopped paying attention for the day, and drifted off to sleep.
All around her, the Emporium slept too, waiting for the morning.
ELIOT PINK
Property woke early to find the Gunther on her face, and a wriggling deep in her belly. She wasn’t sure whether the wriggling was excitement or worry, but whatever it was, it wouldn’t let her go back to sleep. She moved the Gunther on to her shoulder, swung out of her hammock and padded across the sand to the shop floor.
Two long windows set into the front door let in two slices of morning light, which turned the wood a rich honey colour. There must have been traffic on the roads outside, but inside it was completely silent. The Emporium was still.
The stillness didn’t last for long.
When they opened the doors at nine o’clock, there was already a queue of customers outside. By ten o’clock, the shop was packed. Property had never realized that there were so many people in the world who wanted to buy books. It wasn’t even raining.
She was by far the quickest of the Joneses at understanding the picture-dials, so she soon found herself in charge of calling up the rooms. For those few happy hours she forgot all about her secret: in this bookshop, she could find her way around better than anyone else.
While Property ran from room to room, Netty organized the queues at each door, and Michael sat at the till. He was beaming so widely that he had trouble saying words properly, and spent a lot of the morning saying, “Enjoy your beak!” to people, which puzzled them. (You try saying ‘book’ while smiling. You’ll see what I mean).
Calling up the rooms was a lot of fun, but Property wished that there was time to linger in them. The most spectacular one to arrive that morning was the Room of Ocean Tales, which turned out to be a glass tank filled with fish of every colour, and eels, and seahorses, and crabs, and even a billowing stingray. There was a tunnel through the middle that you could walk down, and the books were lying in wooden chests, like sunken treasure. She couldn’t wait to show it to Michael that evening.
All morning the shop floor was filled with the chattering of customers and the grinding of rooms and the fluttering of hundreds of book pages. Everywhere Property turned, there was a confusion of movement and sound. And that was why she noticed so particularly the man who arrived at noon: he was completely silent, and completely still.
Apart from that, he wasn’t remarkable. He was mostly made of a long grey coat, with a long grey face perched on top, and shabby shoes underneath. He stood waiting in the middle of the shop, as if he expected someone to come and greet him. The crowd poured around him like a river around a stone.
A new room was needed, so Property turned away to help, and never saw the man move. The next thing she knew he was at the counter, speaking to Michael. She paused to eavesdrop on her way across the shop.
“Hee can I help ye?” asked Michael. (He meant “How can I help you?”, but you will remember the smiling difficulty).
“You can’t,” said the man. “Where’s Montgomery?” His voice was deep, and sounded like it had been put through a cheese grater.
Michael explained about Montgomery retiring to Florence in Spain, except that Florence isn’t in Spain, so maybe he was in Italy, which is where Florence is. The man’s face didn’t change, but his fists made angry lumps in his coat pockets. Property had a feeling that he wasn’t very interested in Spanish geography.
“I see,” he said. “And who owns the shop now?”
“We do!” said Michael, practically singing. “We won it,” he explained. “In a raffle,” he added.
The man’s left eyebrow rose a fraction. “I see,” he said again. And then Netty started waving at Property to get a move on, and Property had to stop eavesdropping and get on with turning the rooms. She didn’t get a moment’s peace after that, but as she ran around the shop, she kept an eye on the counter. The man had a long conversation with Michael. Then he had a long conversation with Netty, who looked fiercely sensible. Michael wasn’t smiling any more.
The Gunther bit Property’s ear hard to get her attention, then spat in the man’s direction, just in case Property hadn’t realized that he was trouble.
“Ow! I’d already guessed,” said Property. “Any more of that and I’ll put you back on the floor, OK?”
MAWR, said the Gunther. He licked his nose in shame.
The long conversation at the counter finally finished, and Netty came hurrying over. “Prop, love,” she said, “could you tell the customers that they’ve got five more minutes, and then we need to close the shop?”
“Why?”
“Nothing to worry about. I’ll explain in a minute,” replied Netty, and she hurried away again to start shooing customers out. Property was not reassured. “Nothing to worry about” was what Netty had said when she found a five-year-old girl in her lost property cupboard. From Netty, “Nothing to worry about” could mean anything from a sneeze to the total collapse of space and time. But there was nothing to do except wait patiently for five minutes to find out more.
Of course, people didn’t leave within five minutes, because people are famously a nuisance. The Gunther helped by nibbling at people’s heels if they were too slow, but it was still half an hour before the last customer had been rounded up and sent away. One woman locked herself in the Room of Prison Stories, and had to be lured out of her cell with book tokens. At last, the shop floor was empty, apart from the Joneses and the long grey man. Netty shut the front door.
“What’s going on?” said Property.
“Property,” said Netty, “this is Mr Eliot Pink.”
“Hello,” said Property. If Eliot Pink heard her, he didn’t let it show.
Netty carried on. “He sold the Emporium a special book, and he hasn’t been paid yet. Montgomery was going to sell it on first, you see, and it seems he never did.”
Everyone was looking very serious. Property was puzzled. How bad could it be? Books didn’t cost all that much.
“Was it an expensive book?” she asked.
Netty looked helplessly at Michael.
“It’s the script for a Shakespeare play,” Michael explained, wide-eyed. “Handwritten by Shakespeare himself. It’s a new discovery. It’s the only one in the whole world that is actually in his handwriting.”
Property didn’t know much about Shak
espeare, except that he had a shelf to himself at the White Hart, and people always said his name in a special hushed voice. “Is that a big deal, then?” she asked.
Eliot’s left eyebrow rose slightly, and he spoke at last. “Quite a big deal, yes. I sold it to Montgomery for forty-three million pounds.”
Property gaped at him. That was an incredible amount of money. “Forty-thr— but … we don’t have anything like forty-three million pounds,” she said.
“So I gather,” said Eliot.
“It’s all simple, and fine, and simply fine,” said Netty – although she didn’t sound convinced. “We just need to find the play. That’s all.” And she looked around at the dozen doors of the Emporium, each one with hundreds of rooms behind it.
Property remembered a room full of yellowing books and dust and the smell of vanilla. She remembered Montgomery shoo-ing her out of there. She thought two things at once, but she only said one of them out loud.
What she said was, “I know which room it’s in.”
And what she thought was: But I have a feeling that this isn’t going to be that easy.
The others were hugely relieved. “Oh well done, Property,” said Netty. “That’s wonderful. Wonderful! You lead the way then, love!” She turned to Eliot. “Do have a seat, Mr Pink, and we’ll be back in a moment. Help yourself to something to read.”
But Eliot stayed standing. Property led the Joneses to the Room of Old Books. The Gunther stayed behind on the counter to guard Eliot, lying on his back with his legs in the air and glaring at him upside down.
There was an almighty groaning and sighing from the Emporium when Property called the room, and it took much too long to come. At last, it arrived with a sorry wheeze. The three of them stepped inside.
“Right,” said Netty, “one wall each.” And she started scanning the left-hand wall.
Michael took the back wall. With a familiar flush of panic, Property turned to her right. Her secret was being a nuisance again. How would she know an old Shakespeare play when she found one?
Pushing down the panic, she picked up the nearest book and began to search for clues. It was a creaking, fat book bound in broken leather, and it felt very important. The words picked out in gold on the spine looked long and difficult. When she opened it, it sighed enormously, and a pile of loose pages and dust came tumbling out on to the floor.
She picked one of the pages up, and examined it. It was a worn yellowy brown. It was not any sort of paper that she was used to: it was thicker, and rougher.
The room was dim, so she held the sheet up to one of the lamps to get a better look. There were straight lines running across it, faint marks that glowed in the light. Was that any sort of clue?
“Michael,” she said, “what are the lines on the paper?”
Michael didn’t look up from sorting papers at lightning speed. “If it’s handmade paper, there’ll be marks from the frame mould that was used to make it. We didn’t start using machines to make paper until the 1800s.”
“Oh.” Property was pretty sure that Shakespeare died ages before then, so this was a start: she was looking for hand-made paper. But that was most of the room, by the looks of it, so she would need something else. “Why does it smell of vanilla?”
“There used to be a thing called lignin in paper. It smells like that when it gets old.”
“Oh.” Property tried out the word lignin in her head. It was a lovely, sing-song word. But it didn’t really help.
She tried a different line of thought. If it was so valuable, it wouldn’t just be lying around on one of these careless piles. And Montgomery hadn’t wanted her to find it, so he would surely have hidden it away somewhere.
There were some cupboards along the bottom of the wall. Most had keys in the lock: old-fashioned iron keys with twisted heads. She opened them one by one, but they were full of huge leather books – much too big to be a single play.
The last cupboard didn’t have a key. Happily, locks were as easy for Property as the mechanical bookshop had been: they were just a matter of paying attention. She pulled a hairgrip from her head, eased it in, and felt for the telltale grooves of the lock. With a little work, it swung open.
The thing inside was not a leather book. Property wasn’t sure what it was.
She took it out. It was the same yellow-brown shade as all the other old paper, but it was blotchy, as if something had been spilt on it. A couple of pages fluttered from the top, tattered and torn, covered in a mess of smeared ink. It looked as though someone had tried, unsuccessfully, to peel these pages away from the rest, which were stuck together. This stickiness was puzzling. It didn’t smell of glue. Or of vanilla, for that matter. Instead, it smelled like lemons and sugar, with a sickly scent that reminded Property of liquorice.
She looked in the cupboard again. The only other item was a bottle. She took it out. It was an almost-empty bottle of lemonade.
“Mum,” she said.
“Yes?”
“I think” – and Property looked at the useless, ruined pages in her hand, and took a deep breath – “Mum, I think Albert H. Montgomery might have spilled a bottle of lemonade all over his important play.”
Netty and Michael turned to look. For a long time none of them said anything.
“This is definitely it,” said Michael, looking at one of the loose sheets. “You can make out the first bit of ‘Shakespeare’, if you squint at it a bit.” His squint made him look startlingly like the Gunther. “Well,” he said, when no one else spoke, “this explains a lot.
Montgomery couldn’t possibly sell this. He’s run off because he can’t pay that horrible man, and he’s left us to clear up the mess.”
“Could it still be worth something?” said Property.
“No,” said Netty. And her mouth twitched a few times as if she was trying to find something else to say – something sensible and kind – but nothing came out.
“So … so what happens?” Property asked.
“Well, Eliot said if we can’t pay, he’ll take whatever we have,” said Netty, in a very small voice. “The Emporium, of course – and our savings – and the White Hart.”
Michael banged his fist on one of the tables, sending up a cloud of dust. “Ow,” he said (because he’d overdone the banging), and then, “I hate Albert H. Montgomery! He should be the one paying Eliot. How could he just run off like that?”
No one had an answer to that. It was a cowardly thing to do. But Property found that she felt a bit sorry for Montgomery. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and he went and spilt lemonade all over it. Property had to admit that she wouldn’t fancy sticking around to explain that to Eliot Pink, either.
They trooped back to the shop floor, where he was waiting. There were now another six men with him, all with droopy faces and wispy moustaches. They looked like unhappy walruses that had accidentally put on overalls.
“These are the Wollup brothers,” said Eliot. “They work for me. They’ll be clearing the shop, if you can’t pay.” He looked at the Joneses one by one. “And, judging by your faces, I’m guessing that you can’t?”
Netty explained the situation. Eliot’s eyebrows twitched at the part about the lemonade, but he didn’t get upset. Instead he just shrugged, gave some instructions to the Wollups, then turned back to Netty. “We need to discuss what else you own. That cat looks valuable, for a start. I will have my partner, Mr Gimble, draw up the paperwork, and we can sign in the morning. You can stay until then, but get ready to leave first thing tomorrow.”
And with that, Eliot steered Netty to the counter, while five Wollups lumbered towards five doors, clutching boxes. The sixth picked up a crate and looked uncertainly at the Gunther. The kitten bared his teeth.
“I can’t watch this,” said Michael, and he went to sit with the dictionaries for a while.
Property couldn’t blame him. It was horrible to see the Emporium being torn apart. Within a few short hours, the first dozen rooms were just empty, gaping holes. Box
es of books filled the shop floor, lamps lay in piles, and one crate was stuffed full of unhappy woodland creatures. The only comfort was that, so far, the Gunther had escaped capture (the sixth Wollup had taken a break to weep nervously in an armchair).
The whole time that the Emporium was being taken apart, Eliot Pink stood in the middle of it all, still and silent and grey, like a shadow that has come unstuck from someone’s heels.
“If I were you,” Property said to him, “I’d have kept it as a bookshop. It was much nicer.” But he curled his fists up in his pockets again, and didn’t answer. So Property went to join Michael in the Room of Dictionaries instead.
She sat next to him, and he put his arm around her. “All right, Prop?”
“Not really. I wish we’d never left the White Hart.”
Michael sighed. “Me too.”
“What are we going to do, Michael?
Where are we going to live?”
Michael looked helplessly down at the dictionary in his lap, as if it might have the answer. But this was not that sort of question, so he was forced to say something that Property had never heard him say in her whole life. Three small words that sounded wrong in Michael’s voice:
“I don’t know.”
PROPERTY PAYS ATTENTION
That night, Property couldn’t sleep. For the first time that she could remember, the Joneses hadn’t read together that evening. Netty had gone to her hammock early without saying a word, and Michael had said that he didn’t really feel like reading that evening, and got into his own hammock soon after. Now they were both breathing deeply. Only Property was awake.
The Wollups had stayed the night. They had tried to use the Room of Bedtime Stories, but as soon as they lay down the air-conditioning in there had turned itself on to its coldest setting, and refused to be turned off. Now they were dozing under their coats on the shop floor, snoring enormously. Eliot had stayed too. If he was asleep – and it was difficult to tell – then he had fallen asleep standing up.
The Bookshop Girl Page 3
