The paramedic was talking but my ears weren’t really taking anything in. The blood pressure monitor clenched, released, clenched my upper arm, and there was a clip on the middle finger of my right hand, now, bone-white against my sooty skin. I saw an arc of water, soon joined by another, going in through the shop window.
Books. Fire. Water. I closed my eyes and, as though I had given my permission, the ambulance doors closed and it moved away.
POETRY
2016
Oh, the people
Smoke inhalation doesn’t kill you – if you’re so-called lucky – but it sure as hell doesn’t make you stronger. I was feeble. It hurt to breathe and it hurt to cry, but I couldn’t stop crying. Confined to bed in hospital, I pretty much slept and coughed and sobbed for all of the next two days.
The police interviewed me and I managed to choke out Rob’s name and the little I knew about his illness. It seemed impossible that he had done what he’d done. My mind couldn’t get around it. I hoped he had thought the shop was empty.
Melodie came to see me. The bruise was nastier and yellower, and she hadn’t bothered with the makeup. She was wearing a man’s striped shirt over jeans and had a scarf around her head, like she was channelling land girl. I told her that she still looked worse than I did, but she didn’t laugh.
She said that Nathan had come back to the pub to see if I’d gone back there, and she and Archie and Vanessa had come with him when he’d returned to the bookshop. When they arrived, the fire was just getting hold. Melodie had dialled 999 but there had been no way of stopping Archie and Nathan mounting a rescue mission.
‘They like tigers for you, Loveday,’ Melodie said.
To give her credit, she wasn’t getting off on it. She had told the police what had happened at the poetry night – so much for ‘the only people who know Loveday’s story are a bunch of poets who will have forgotten it all in a fortnight’ – and, when they asked her about her eye, she told them Rob had done it. They were around at his place before you could say ‘Leonardo da Vinci’. He’d been arrested for reckless arson, and was being questioned. It looked as though he would go to prison. I’d explained to the police that I was hiding, that the lights were off, and he would have thought that the place was empty. Even so, the fact that he’d used an accelerant damned him. They assured me that he would have a full psychiatric assessment and that would be a factor in sentencing. I was furious with him, yet at the same time, I couldn’t help being sad for him, too. One moment. One match. The end of life as you know it.
I couldn’t think about the bookshop for long, in the way that I wouldn’t hold my fingers in a flame. Our beautiful, ramshackle, peculiar home-from-home was as good as gone. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that what the fire hadn’t wrecked, the water had. Melodie said that no structural damage had been done and the neighbouring buildings were okay; in terms of a building fire it wasn’t, apparently, that bad. In terms of a bookshop fire, obviously, it was a different matter. My experience of Archie was that he did a good job of diffidence, but I was fairly sure that the bookshop had been the most solid place in his life; he’d stayed there longer than he’d stayed anywhere else, and though he said that was simply because he’d run out of miles when he ended up in York, I didn’t believe him. He’d chosen the bookshop.
When I asked about Archie and Nathan, I was told that Nathan had been discharged the morning after the fire, having being kept in overnight for observation, and that Archie was ‘stable’, which I took to mean that he was in the same state as me: temporary physical wreck, hopefully no permanent damage done. I had burns on my forearms and lungs that felt as though they had been sandpapered and then soused in vinegar. My eyes ached and my nose bled.
I felt weak and stupid and angry. I lay, dozing and trying not to think about Nathan, thinking about the bookshop, instead. Archie was insured and so, although most of the stock would be going straight in a skip, we would be able to start again. New everything or, knowing Archie, old everything; we’d be trawling flea markets and antique shops for bookcases and a table, a desk to replace the one in the window where the till and all of the papers were kept.
I decided I would persuade him to have shelves built floor to ceiling all around the sides of the shop, chased to fit against the higgledy-piggledy walls so that we could make the most of the space. Then if he wanted to rescue sad old bookcases from junk shops to fill the central area, we’d both be happy. Well, happy wasn’t quite the word. Part of me knew that we just had to get on with it; another part was all about turning my face to the wall, closing my eyes, never walking down that street again.
And I was assuming that Archie would want to rebuild. He might not. He might decide it was time to go and sail the seven seas again, or whatever. I suppose I would just have to do what everyone else without a job did: apply for Jobseeker’s Allowance, put together a CV which said, in my case, ‘good academic qualifications, not much of a team player, has had one job, which she did pretty well, but only because she was left to her own devices’. Alternatively, I could hang a sign that said ‘unemployable’ around my neck.
Lying in my too-narrow, too-high hospital bed, I’d think like that for a while and then I’d give myself a kick and remind myself that Archie wouldn’t admit defeat and he wouldn’t abandon me. Maybe there were other alternatives. A book boutique, where we turned down all the crap and became properly antiquarian. Some sort of subscription library for academics. We could set ourselves up as book detectives. Archie would like that. We could hunt down obscure books and charge people a fortune for the privilege. Well, Archie wouldn’t, he’d smoke his pipe and say, ‘Loveday, did I ever tell you about the time when…’ and I would sort of zone out – listen to the sound of his voice but not the actual words – and do the work, and we would both be happy. Yes, he might go for the book detectives idea. We wouldn’t have to worry so much about restocking then.
Before I’d been able to talk myself down off this particular daydream, the nurse who I disliked least – she didn’t try to talk to me and her hands were gentle – poked her head around the door and said, ‘There’s a visitor for you. Are you up to it?’
‘Yes,’ I said, because I was sick of my carousel mind, and I hoped it might be Archie.
It was Nathan.
My head and my heart disagreed about whether to let him stay. He had known about my history and not told me. He had planted the books that freaked me out. He was never on my side, but he encouraged me to think that he was. And he had come into a burning building to save me, and gone back to rescue Archie. The world had shifted. Only a bit. I couldn’t decide what to do so I closed my eyes. Maybe he would make my mind up for me. I was still on the wrong side of tired.
His boots squeak-squeaked on the floor as he came towards the bed and touched my hand. I opened my eyelids and looked up at him.
I was used to being the pale one, but I was getting a lot of competition from him and Melodie all of a sudden.
‘Loveday,’ he said. He kissed my forehead. I didn’t stop him but I didn’t react.
‘Thanks,’ I said, ‘for getting me out.’
‘It was scary in there,’ he said. He sat down, and put his head in his hands. ‘The bookshelf that fell just missed Archie.’
‘The nurses told me,’ I said.
He didn’t say anything, just sat with his forehead resting on his palms. I noticed a bandage on his hand. I touched it.
‘What’s this?’ I said. I sat up, swung my legs down over the side of the bed. They dangled, because heaven forbid that anyone in a hospital be allowed to get in or out of bed with anything less than an undignified hop. I felt wobbly, vulnerable.
‘Oh, it’s nothing,‘ he said, without raising his head.
‘It doesn’t look like nothing,’ I said.
‘It’s a burn, that’s all.’
‘So you’re not badly hurt?’
‘No.’ He smiled. ‘I’m fine, Ripon Girl. You gave me a fright, though.’
He looked up, puzzlement painted onto his face. ‘What?’
I laughed, though it turned into a cough. I couldn’t believe his front. ‘You bastard,’ I started, but then I had to stop to pull in some breath.
‘What?’ Still the puzzled look. Not even the grace to admit he’d lied to me.
‘You know what,’ I said. ‘You knew about Whitby. I never told you I was from there. You knew. You lied to me and you put the books in the shop for me to find—’ I was just about to let go of everything I was holding – the pain, the fury – when something I wasn’t expecting happened.
Nathan looked straight at me and his eyes were full of anger. ‘For fuck’s sake, Loveday,’ he said, and his voice was quiet but it was oh, so furious. ‘Have you any idea what I’ve been through? Me. Not you. Just this once. And I don’t mean the fire.’ He got up, the chair scraping as it rushed back over the floor, and he paced to the window, back again, and stood too far away from me for me to touch. ‘I love you. I’ve loved you since I saw that notice you put up in the window. I’ve waited and I’ve put up with all your crap –’
‘No one made you,’ I said. I could feel that I was going to cry. I wanted to touch him but I was afraid he would shake my touch away.
‘You made me,’ he said, ‘because – because I loved you and I knew there was a reason. And then your poem, Loveday, your poem…’ He was crying, not moving, standing straight with tears running down his face. ‘I heard your poem and I thought, god. I don’t know what it’s like to have been through what you’ve been through, I can’t imagine, but it made you make sense. And I thought, now we can start. Really start.’ The rage went out of him as suddenly as it had filled him.
I hopped down from the bed and took a step towards him, took his hand. He didn’t hold it out to me but his fingers curled around mine.
‘Nathan,’ I said. I was crying too.
He looked at me, reached for my other hand. ‘And then you disappeared when I went to get the wine. The fire. I thought you were dead, Loveday. Can you imagine what that was like? We got you out. And now you’re accusing me of – of what, exactly?’
‘You knew,’ I said, ‘about Whitby.’
‘Not until – after,’ he said. He sighed, empty now, and sat down.
‘After what?’
‘After you –’
I saw that he was searching for the right word. I don’t mind that. I waited. He took a breath, looked me in the eye. ‘After you dumped me.’
Ouch. Well, probably the right choice of word. It was my turn to think of something to say, but then Nathan ploughed on, his gaze on his hands. ‘I couldn’t make sense of it, Loveday. I mean, I knew what you were like, but I was sure that you loved me.’
‘Yes,’ I said. It came out before I could stop it.
‘So I went to see Archie. Melodie had told me that you were in Whitby. I took him out for lunch and we drank a lot and I told him what had happened. He put me on my honour not to say anything to you, and then he told me about your parents.’
‘Archie doesn’t know about my parents,’ I said.
‘He does,’ Nathan said. ‘Oh, Loveday. He saw you put the pound on the table for Possession. He decided to give you a chance. Your foster-carer came to check him out.’
‘What?’ I said. Not very original, I know, but Nathan had just taken my very fragile world out of its protective covering and kicked it all around the floor. ‘I don’t understand.’
He stood up, and he moved next to me, and he kissed the top of my head, my greasy hair with the smell of smoke forever in it, and he said, ‘I know. Come and see Archie. He’s waiting for us.’
I had to go in a wheelchair, with something to hold the drip that was keeping me hydrated until my throat could cope with as much water as I needed. Archie was up a floor and I was still a bit shaky on my feet. Nathan’s boots squeaked us along the lino floor of the hospital corridor, and he went faster than most of the other patients, so we veered around people with walking frames and crutches. The rhythm of his footsteps calmed me down. He didn’t say anything. I’m not sure there was anything either of us could say. I’m not exactly verbose at the best of times but there was a big old shocked space in my head where the thoughts ought to be, and although I knew I must have questions – fury – things to say, there was no evidence of them, yet. Just the sound of the boots and the shape of his kiss on my scalp.
Archie looked wrong in a hospital bed. I know it’s said that people look smaller when they are ill, but Archie looked too big. I’d seen his bedroom, wandering around looking for an unoccupied loo at one of his parties. The room itself was vast, and his bed was big enough for at least three – no, I didn’t ask why – and pillowed and cushioned to all hell, like beds in country house adverts in magazines. Definitely an Archie bed, unlike the hospital single, with the bars and the plastic-covered mattress.
When we went in he was looking out of the window at the grey sky. He was on a drip, like me, and part of his face and one of his arms was bandaged. His eyes were bloodshot and he did look a little bit deflated.
When he saw me his face brightened. I suppose mine did too. ‘Loveday!’
‘Archie,’ I said. ‘How are you?’ It was one of the few times in my adult life that I actually felt as though I really, really needed to hug someone. But between the wheelchair and the height of his bed and my wobbliness and his bandaged arm and our two drip stands, I decided against, and reached out to hold his good hand. He raised it to his lips.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
‘I would never have forgiven myself if I’d lost you,’ Archie said.
I took a deep breath. I kept on doing that, forgetting how it hurt. ‘How are you?’ I asked again, when I’d recovered.
‘I’ll live,’ he said.
‘Thank you,’ I said again. And then I thought I was going to cry, but I didn’t, just sat there, so full of tears and questions that not a word or a sound would come out. Archie had tears running down his face and getting lost in his jowls, but he wouldn’t let go of my hand.
After what seemed like ages he took his hand back, pulled a handkerchief from the breast pocket of his pyjamas, and wiped his face. ‘Mr Avebury,’ he said, ‘would you be good enough to bring some tea? Then we can talk.’
‘Back in a minute,’ Nathan said, and Archie went back to looking at me. I felt fidgety under his gaze.
‘You knew,’ I said. I had to start somewhere, if only to get Archie talking – I don’t think he’d ever been quiet for so long, and it was disconcerting.
‘Yes,’ he said. And then, ‘Patience, Loveday.’ Which struck me as a bit rich coming from someone who gets bored by the time he’s got to Defoe if he’s tidying the classics.
‘I don’t feel very patient,’ I said. My voice was rasping; I sounded more annoyed than I meant to. Fortunately Archie is used to me sounding more annoyed than I mean to, and didn’t take any notice.
‘That was quite a performance,’ he said, ‘and quite a poem.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
Poetry night seemed like another age, another person. Being in hospital, the bookshop wrecked, made me feel as though I’d side-stepped into another life. It was a bit like when I went into foster care. I was me, but I wasn’t, because my surroundings had changed and my life had taken what a blurb writer might describe as ‘an unexpected twist’. And then another one.
‘Thanks for being there.’ I knew that he’d know I meant more than the poetry.
‘I wouldn’t have missed it,’ Archie said. ‘I was very proud of you.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. And then Nathan came back with three teas and three of those muffins that come in sealed individual plastic bags. I looked at Archie. ‘Well?’ I said.
Archie sighed. ‘Please, Loveday, hear me out.’
He started on the day I had to bring in the permission form to
work – I was fifteen – and Annabel had signed it. She’d added ‘foster-carer’ in brackets. He’d asked me if she was my foster-mother and I’d chewed his head off: she wasn’t my mother. I didn’t remember, but it sounded in character for me, at the time.
‘She came to see me, the next week,’ he said, ‘and I liked her immediately. She was nicely dressed and she was fierce with me. She was determined to protect you. I took her out to lunch. She gave nothing away. She was completely professional, although she was pale. I told her she looked like a weary Modigliani. She said she didn’t take kindly to flirting.’
I laughed. I couldn’t help myself. ‘Sounds like Annabel,’ I said, and then I was crying. Nathan had a handkerchief, and so did Archie. I had a tissue in my dressing gown pocket and I used that.
‘She talked about “safeguarding” and “vulnerability” and I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d asked to look at my teeth. I was tempted to tell her that if you’d got a weekend job in Sainsbury’s, the manager probably wouldn’t have allowed quite such a thorough investigation. In the end, I said to her, “Old Archie isn’t stupid, I can see that there are what you might call issues. There’s limited trouble she can get into in a bookshop and I’ll look out for her.”’
‘This was when I first started?’ I said. I thought of myself, getting on the train from Ripon to York every Saturday morning, imagining that I was temporarily free of the day-to-day grimness of being The Child Whose Mother Killed Her Father With a Pan Lid. Archie might not be stupid, but I was.
‘Yes,’ Archie said. ‘I told Annabel I wouldn’t tell you that she’d been to see me and we agreed to keep in touch. She came to see me when you were seventeen and your mother was going to be released and you were refusing to see her. She broke down in the middle of the shop, and I took her out for a drink, and that’s when she told me the whole story.’ He reached for his handkerchief.
The Lost for Words Bookshop Page 22
