She heard him humming and decided to simply sit and enjoy this delightful little adventure. But he was back in just a moment and extended a book in her direction. ‘Ta da! A good book, this,’ he said and his smile was almost as wide as his extended arm was long. ‘This is for you,’ he said. The book was small, covered in red leather and more than a little tattered. It was essays by Charles Lamb. Claire didn’t much like essays, but she certainly was not going to refuse the book. She reached for her purse. ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘This one’s on George Eliot.’ The cat jumped into his lap as he sat down.
‘Oh, I couldn’t,’ she said, really confused.
‘Certainly you can,’ Toby told her. ‘You’ll feel indebted and that will cause you to come back and then you’ll have to buy something else. And it will all work out splendidly well.’ He grinned at her. ‘You’re not the first,’ he said.
‘Well, thank you,’ Claire said. How had all of this happened to her? She’d bought plenty of books in New York but she’d never had an adventure like this one. In fact, the bookstore clerks usually knew less about the stock than she did. She wondered if Toby might need an assistant, though it didn’t look as though he had many customers. As if that thought created one, the bell tinkled.
‘Hello,’ Toby called out and threw a light switch on. It seemed he only illuminated when necessary. A portly man, stuffed into his tweed jacket and trousers, joined them.
‘Hello, Stanton. Engaged with seducing the ladies again, are you?’
Toby smiled. ‘In my small way,’ he said.
Claire didn’t know whether to be embarrassed or pleased and decided on both, though she didn’t like to think of their little encounter as business as usual. She had to remember herself. She had probably overstayed her welcome. It wasn’t anybody else’s job to entertain her. This had been a charming diversion – very charming. But she must remember not to impose. The fact that she had nothing else to do did not mean that others were in the same situation. ‘Oh,’ she said, standing up, ‘I must go.’ She gathered her purse and closed her raincoat buttons.
‘Come, take a seat, Harold,’ Toby told the stout gentleman and Claire moved aside so he might take hers.
Toby rose. ‘Don’t forget your book,’ he said to Claire.
‘Yes. Yes thank you.’ She tried to put it in her bag but the needles and yarn made it difficult to fit all the way inside. ‘Thank you.’ She would have liked to have taken a look at the other books, but felt too awkward now, it might look like she was trying to prolong his hospitality. The light in the aisle went off and all of the shelves of books were in semi-darkness. It must be on an automatic timing device. For a moment she did not know where to go but Toby hit the switch and the center aisle was illuminated.
‘Come again soon,’ he said. ‘Let me know what you think of Charlie.’
For a moment Claire thought Toby was talking about the portly man but then she remembered he was Harold. ‘I’ll let you know,’ she said and walked past all the delicious-looking old books, up the few steps and out the door.
Once on the street, just steps away, she was surrounded once again by the bustling, thrilling atmosphere of London. And she felt more a part of it than ever before. She had spoken with someone who loved books as much, or possibly more than she did. Someone at least as interesting as Michael Wainwright. And though he wasn’t attractive in the same obvious, American good-teeth-Brad-Pitt way, he had … charm. He was … interesting looking and fun to talk to. For a moment, Claire was hit with an unexpected stab of pain, as she recalled the fun she had had with Mr Wonderful. But then she looked down at the book in her hand and smiled. It was hard to believe that the interval she had experienced was real. It really had been straight out of Mary Poppins. But it had happened. Still, she doubled back just to be sure the store was there and carefully wrote down the address in the front cover of her guidebook. She would certainly return.
She spent the rest of the day sightseeing and almost every sight delighted her. Of course, there were tourists everywhere but Claire had the satisfaction of thinking she was not just a tourist. She was traveling, and didn’t know how long she might stay on. She wasn’t in a tourist hotel and she wasn’t taking tourist buses. She spent the day as an explorer might, charting her course on the underground and bus lines, following her map and looking everywhere. She decided not to bother with the Tower of London or Madame Tussaud’s. She wanted instead to walk down normal streets, stop into normal shops and see how normal people lived. It was a long morning and afternoon. At last, sated, Claire made her way back toward Camden.
TWENTY-FIVE
Claire didn’t realize how good all the walking would be for her spirit or her body. All she knew was that near the end of the day she was ravenous – the tea and biscuits from Toby’s shop had hardly made a meal.
To conserve her money, she decided she would eat in her room. She remembered that close to Chamberley Terrace was a small, slightly dingy grocery. She decided to stop in. As she approached, she read a sign in the window: ‘KEENEST PRICES IN CAMDEN.’
The store wasn’t a delicatessen, nor was it a supermarket, nor was it like the Korean stores in New York. It was long and narrow but instead of being neatly crammed with goods the way New York stores were, there seemed to be a little of this and a little of that. Claire walked up and down the three aisles, amusing herself with the different brand names, the small sizes of everything, and the odd placement of items. The cans all seemed tiny compared to American ones, and the juice and the soda were in what looked like miniature six-packs. It reminded Claire a bit of her favorite toy when she was young – a little grocery store with pretend boxes of soap and bottles of catsup and jars of pickles. Here, small portions of pickles came in a plastic wrap, like the way frankfurters were packed. And beside them, in the refrigerator, were sandwiches already made, sliced in triangles, and set in plastic containers exactly the right shape. She looked at the ingredients: tuna salad with corn, tomato and shredded cheese, sliced egg and cress. They all seemed odd. Claire felt as if she’d like to try them all anyway but decided that a homemade ploughman’s would have to do. One loaf could last her for three or four dinners. She was delighted, however, when she found brown relish exactly like the kind she had had in the pub.
She continued looking and nearly laughed aloud at some of the juxtaposed positions of products. She wasn’t sure if what she was looking at was typical, or unique to this little shop, but having the beans beside the detergents struck her as peculiar. After three trips up and down the aisles, Claire selected a small loaf of bread, the relish, a wheel of cheddar and a bottle of something that looked like a fizzy juice. While she browsed people had come in and gone back out, but when she got to the counter she was the only customer.
The woman behind the counter was small, compact and had a long braid of shiny black hair that reached below her middle. Above her head was a sign that read ‘CASH POINT’. She wore a smock over a blue sari and peered through a pair of glasses at Claire. ‘Will this be all?’ she asked and though she was obviously from India, or someplace close to it, her English was perfect.
‘Yes, thank you.’
‘We have a special on bread. You’d do better with the Smith’s loaf. It’s organic as well.’
‘Thank you,’ Claire said and then had to ask where she would find it. Before she returned with the exchange a teenage girl with two children beside her came running out of the back of the store.
‘Mummy, they won’t take any notice of me,’ she said.
Claire had to smile. The girl sounded exactly like Wendy in Peter Pan.
‘That’s very naughty of you,’ the counter woman said to the smaller boy and girl. ‘You must respect your sister.’
‘But I want to watch the telly,’ the little boy said.
‘You’ll have square eyes,’ she said, shaking her head.
‘Mummy, they haven’t finished their homework.’
‘What do I do with you?’ their mother asked. ‘If
you don’t do your lessons, there’ll be no sweets.’ The little boy began to object. ‘You can’t have the penny and the bun,’ the woman scolded. She looked up at Claire. ‘Do you see this? I am busy with my work and these children have no respect. They interrupt. I am most sorry.’ Claire was about to tell her that it was perfectly all right when the woman turned back to her children. ‘Do you see what you are doing? Apologize to the lady.’
‘Oh, that’s all right …’ Claire began. But the children had already begun to sing-song an apology and their mother was shooing them back to the door.
She shook her head. ‘Safta is studying for her GCSEs. She doesn’t have time to muck about, but there’s no one else to watch them in the evening.’ Before she could think, Claire volunteered.
‘I’d be happy to do it,’ she said. The woman narrowed her eyes.
‘Why?’ she asked.
‘Well, I’m new here and I thought, well, I like children.’
‘You’re American, aren’t you?’ the woman asked her. Claire nodded, not sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. ‘Why would an American girl want to work for me?’
‘Oh, it doesn’t have to be work,’ Claire said. ‘I mean, you don’t have to pay me.’
The Indian woman’s eyes narrowed further. ‘What would a rich American want with my children?’
Claire blushed. ‘I’m not rich,’ she said. ‘I just thought, well, they seem like such nice kids. And if you don’t want to pay me, that’s fine. Maybe I could look after them a bit and you could …’ she paused and looked around. ‘You could give me some groceries.’ The woman looked at her with even greater interest.
‘Are you hungry?’ she asked.
Claire smiled. ‘Well, just for a sandwich.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I’m not homeless or anything. My name is Claire Bilsop and I’ve just moved in on Chamberley Terrace and I need to get a job so …’
The woman stopped her. ‘My name is Mrs Patel,’ she said. ‘Come back tomorrow at this time and perhaps we could talk.’ She looked around. ‘Would you be willing to sweep up?’ she asked.
‘Of course,’ Claire said.
Mrs Patel regarded her for a moment, blinking behind her thick glasses. Then she rang up Claire’s items. Claire handed her a note and took back the change. It was only after Mrs Patel put her groceries into a bag that Claire saw the swelling under her smock. Mrs Patel was obviously pregnant. Perhaps she really did need help. Claire could hardly believe her good luck.
Mrs Patel handed her the bag. ‘See you tomorrow, then.’ Claire nodded and walked out into the dark. She’d found a job, no matter that it was a very minor one. Certainly, she wasn’t a tourist but when would she go home? She’d been in London five days and she knew she’d like to stay another five but she’d have to return sometime. Still, the richness of her days’ adventures – the bookstore, her exploration and now this unexpected encounter – made her feel that five weeks, maybe even five months wouldn’t be enough.
TWENTY-SIX
Claire sat in bed and in the dim light cast by Mrs Watson’s lamp finished casting on the sixtieth stitch for a simple scarf and set down both needles on the chair beside her bed. Some people cast on with their hand, rather than the second needle, but Claire felt nothing but contempt for that. To keep the stitches uniform in spacing and tension it was much better to cast on with a needle, though it did take a little longer.
She had gotten home, made herself a frugal dinner and then bathed. She hadn’t felt comfortable walking down the hallway to the bathroom in her nightgown and robe, but she had encountered no one since Maudie. Other guests must have been staying there however because she found their relics – soap slime in the tub and beard bristles inside the sink. She had to clean everything carefully before she was comfortable enough to get into the bathtub. As it was, it still felt odd to be bathing where a stranger had been. She and Fred had shared a bathroom at home and she had often had to clean up after him but somehow a stranger’s leavings were a lot skeevier than a brother’s. Still, the water was hot, and the little bottle of bath gel that she had taken from the hotel had filled the room with a scent of lilacs.
As most of us know, odors can be more evocative than anything, releasing memories with a sometimes-stunning strength. For Claire the smell brought back bathing in the beautiful bathroom at the Berkeley. She had felt so very pampered and so completely – and as it happened, unrealistically – happy. For a moment she could actually feel Michael’s arms around her and hear his whispered ‘angel’. Before tears could rise to her eyes she pushed the thought from her mind. Instead she thought of her encounter with Toby, then about poor little Maudie, and Mrs Patel and her children. Claire could go on without a liar like him.
Now, lying in bed, she found herself strangely contented. She would, she decided, use ribbing stitches on the ends of the scarf but run cable along the length of it and use one of her newly purchased slightly larger needles. A scarf knit in London, on English needles, by her, for her to wear when she took the tube or rode a double-decker bus. Claire smiled. She could not have imagined this moment a week ago, yet being in it seemed completely natural.
As she knit she tried to plan the next day. She had taken her guidebook into the bathroom and had looked through it while she soaked. She thought that she might begin by taking the tube to St Paul’s, seeing the great dome and the crypt and then walking west to Leicester Square and through Mayfair. She shouldn’t go to any museum that charged admission, at least not until she had some kind of job. But Claire was making an exception just this one time. But if she could work – even as a babysitter – she might be able to eke out just enough to stay on, at least for a while. And perhaps tomorrow she could look around and see if another job presented itself. She had surprised herself with the confidence she’d shown with Mrs Patel. Maybe she could do that again. After all, she had nothing to lose.
She put her knitting away and reached for the book Toby had given her. But since the bulb was so dim that her eyes had trouble adjusting to the light, she decided against trying to read the small, old print. Instead she took out the guidebook and continued from where she had left off after her bath. Tomorrow she thought she would have to get a plate and a knife. And she would also have to get a brighter bulb. The thought of spending the money made her a little nervous, but she had never owned her own dish and it might be fun to look through the tables and tables of them to select the one just right for her.
She looked around the room. The wardrobe door was open, and she realized that each thing, each object, each belonging was something she had selected and was perfect just for her: her shoes, the silk blouse, her few pieces of jewelry, even the raincoat. She had somehow collected these few, treasured objects and had dropped the dross behind her. She thought of her closet and drawers back home, filled with things she didn’t want, didn’t need, that didn’t fit or didn’t suit her. It felt so wonderful to know that she had just what she needed and could fit it all into the wheelie bag under the bed. I have to remember this, she thought. She thought of Tina’s constant shopping and all the bags of ‘bargains’ that the women back at Crayden Smithers ‘had to have’. Claire had never been guilty of that kind of shopping for sport, but somehow even she had gotten bogged down with more possessions than she needed – and the wrong ones.
She looked around again and pulled the thin blanket securely up around her shoulders. Hard to believe that the morning before she had woken up next to Michael Wainwright, on Egyptian cotton sheets in the most magnificent place she had ever slept in. And the thought of him wiped out the pleasure of her small adventures. How foolish of her to be so pleased about a cup of tea in a used bookstore and an opportunity to sweep up in a dirty grocery. In case she needed proof that she was humble, unimportant, all she had to do was imagine what he might be doing now and where he was. She wasn’t envious of him – not exactly – but the thought of him made her and her life seem so very, very small.
But, she reminded herself, things h
ad changed at least a little. She had done something different – very different from what she usually did. She had turned her back and walked away. Since then it seemed she had left her old life behind, along with Michael Wainwright. She had explored a new place and may have made a friend, and possibly even found a little job.
Crayden Smithers! The realization made Claire sit straight up in bed. She’d missed work – they’d expected her today – she had to let them know she was taking more of her vacation days. But whom would she call? She didn’t want to speak to Joan, and it was inappropriate to leave the news with Tina. Claire looked around the room and at the sight of her guidebook she remembered Abigail Samuels. She could call Abigail.
Claire wrapped herself in her robe, grabbed the guidebook and walked quietly down the hall to the phone. She only hoped that Mrs Watson was tucked in bed so that Claire wouldn’t be watched like a disobedient child. She flipped to the inside front cover to find where Abigail had written her home number, at least she hoped it was her number. She’d have to call collect, because she had no idea how to do otherwise. And the time difference – it was probably around five or six in the evening there, but she’d have to take the chance Abigail would be home from work. It took Claire a little while to find out how to do it, but at last Abigail’s phone was ringing in New York.
‘Hello?’ a voice said. It was Abigail’s.
‘Miss Samuels? It’s Claire. I’m sorry to bother you at home, but …’
‘Actually, I’m quite relieved to hear from you. I thought the worst.’
‘The worst?’
‘Well, not the absolute worst. The fact that Mr Wainwright made it in to work, but you didn’t, made me wonder and when they call a man a lady-killer it’s for a reason. I didn’t think Wainwright had actually killed you but, well, emotionally …’
Wish Upon a Star Page 17
