“Yes, I know. He was never short of female company. But it would have been nice for him to have met someone special.”
“He was a happy man, Emilia. You could tell that.”
“I always felt guilty. That perhaps he stayed single because of me.”
“I don’t think so. Your dad wasn’t the martyr type. I think he was really happy with his own company. Or maybe he did have someone special but we just don’t know about it.”
Emilia nodded. “I hope so . . . I really do.” She’d never know now, she thought. For all of her life it had been just the two of them, and now her father had gone, all his secrets with him.
2
1983
The bookshop was on Little Clarendon Street. Away from the hurly-burly of Oxford town center and just off St. Giles, it was bedded in among a sprinkling of fashionable dress shops and cafés. As well as the latest fiction and coffee-table books, it sold art supplies and had an air of frivolity rather than the academic ambience of Blackwell’s or one of the more cerebral bookshops in town. It was the sort of bookshop that stole time: people had been known to miss meetings and trains, lost among the shelves.
Julius Nightingale had started working there to supplement his student grant since he’d first come up to Oxford, just over four years ago. And now that he’d completed his master’s, he didn’t want to leave Oxford or the shop. He didn’t want to leave academia either, really, but he knew he had to get on with life, that his wasn’t the sort of background that could sustain a life of learning. He hadn’t a clue what he was going to do.
He’d decided to spend the summer after his MA scraping some money together, working at the shop full-time. Then maybe he’d squeeze in some travel before embarking upon the grueling collation of a CV, job applications, and interviews. Apart from a top grade, there was nothing much to make him stand out from the next candidate. He’d directed a few plays, but who hadn’t? He’d edited a poetry magazine, but again—hardly unique. He liked live music, wine, pretty girls—there was nothing out of the ordinary about him, except the fact that most people seemed to like him. As a West London boy with a posh but penniless single mother, he’d gone to a huge inner-city comprehensive. He was streetwise but well-mannered and so mixed easily with both the toffs and the grammar-school types who had less confidence than their public-school peers.
It was the last weekend in August, and he was thinking about going up to his mother’s and heading for the Notting Hill Carnival. He’d been going since he was small and he loved the atmosphere, the pounding bass, the pervasive scent of dope, the sense that anything could happen. He was about to close up when the door opened and a girl whirlwinded in. She had a tangle of hair, bright red—it couldn’t be natural—and china white skin, even whiter against the black lace of her dress. She looked, he thought, like a star, one of those singers who paraded around as if they’d been in the dressing-up box and had put everything on.
“I need a book,” she told him, and he was surprised at her accent. American. Americans, in his experience, came in clutching guidebooks and cameras, not looking as if they’d walked out of a nightclub.
“Well, you’ve come to the right place, then,” he replied, hoping his tone sounded teasing, not tart.
She looked at him, then held her finger and thumb apart about two inches. “It needs to be at least this big. It has to last me the plane journey home. Ten hours. And I read very fast.”
“Okay.” Julius pondered a moment. “Well, my first suggestion would be Anna Karenina.”
She smiled, showing perfect white teeth.
“‘All happy families are alike. Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’”
He nodded. “Okay. What about Ulysses. James Joyce? That would keep you quiet.”
She struck a theatrical pose. “‘Yes I said yes I will yes.’”
She was quoting Molly Bloom, the hero’s promiscuous wife, and for a moment Julius imagined she was just how Molly had looked, before reminding himself Molly was a work of fiction. He was impressed. He didn’t know many people who could quote Joyce. He refused to be intimidated by her apparently universal knowledge of literature. He would scale his recommendation down to something more populist, but a book he had long admired.
“The World According to Garp?”
She beamed at him. She had an impossibly big dimple in her right cheek.
“Good answer. I love John Irving. But I prefer The Hotel New Hampshire to Garp.”
Julius grinned. It was a long time since he had met someone as widely read as this girl. He knew well-read people, of course: Oxford was brimming with them. But they tended to be intellectual snobs. This girl was a challenge, though.
“How about Middlemarch?”
She opened her mouth to respond, and he could see immediately he’d hit upon something she hadn’t read. She had the grace to laugh.
“Perfect,” she announced. “Do you have a copy?”
“Of course.” He led her over to the bookshelf and pulled one out.
They stood there for a moment, Julius holding the book, the girl looking at him.
“What’s your favorite book?” she asked.
He was flummoxed. Both by the question and the fact she had asked it. He turned it over in his mind. He was about to answer, when she held up a finger.
“You can only have one answer.”
“But it’s like asking which is your favorite child!”
“You have to answer.” He could see she was going to stand her ground. He had his answer, but he wasn’t going to give in to her that easily.
“I’ll tell you,” he said, not sure where his boldness had come from. “If you come out for a drink with me.”
She crossed her arms and tilted her head to one side. “I don’t know that I’m that interested.” But her smile belied her statement.
“You should be,” he answered, and walked away from her over to the till, hoping she would follow. She was capricious. She wanted a tussle and for him not to give up. He was determined to give her a run for her money.
She did follow. He rang up the book and she handed over a pound note.
“There’s a band on tonight,” he told her. “It’ll be rough cider and grubby punks, but I can’t think of a better way for an American girl to spend her last night in England.”
He slid the book into its bag and handed it to her. She was gazing at him in something close to disbelief, with a hint of fascination.
Julius had always been quietly confident with girls. He respected them. He liked them for their minds rather than their looks, and somehow this made him magnetic. He was thoughtful, yet a little enigmatic. He was very different from the rather cocky public-school types at Oxford. He dressed a little differently, too—a romantic bohemian, in velvet jackets and scarves.
“Why the hell not?” she said finally.
He told her where to meet.
“I’ll be there at eight,” he told her. “And I’m Julius, by the way.”
He held out his hand and she took it. “Rebecca,” she told him. “I’ll see you later.”
—
It was twenty past eight by the time he got to the pub. She was nowhere to be seen. He couldn’t be sure whether she was late, too, or had come and gone. Or simply wasn’t going to turn up at all. He wasn’t going to let it worry him. If it was meant to be . . .
He ordered a pint of murky cider from the bar, tasting its musty appleness, then made his way out to find a bench in the last of the sunshine. It was a popular but fairly rough pub he loved for its unpretentiousness. And it always had good bands on. There was a sense of festiveness and expectation in the air, a final farewell from the sun in this last week of summer. Julius felt a change coming. Whether it would be to do with the girl with the red hair, he couldn’t be certain, but he had a feeling it might.
At nine, he fel
t a sharp tap on his shoulder. He turned, and she was there.
“I wasn’t going to come,” she told him. “Because I didn’t want to fall in love with you and then have to get on a plane tomorrow.”
“Falling in love is optional.”
“Not always.” She looked serious.
“Well, let’s see what we can do to avoid it.” He stood up and picked up his empty pint glass. “Have you tried scrumpy yet?”
“No.” She looked doubtful.
He bought her half a pint, because grown men had been known to weep after just two pints of this particular brew. They watched the band, a crazy gypsy-punk outfit that sang songs of heartbreak and harvest moons. He bought her another half and watched her smile get lazier and her eyes half close. He wanted nothing more than to tangle his fingers in her Pre-Raphaelite curls.
“Where are you staying tonight?” he asked as the band started packing up and tipsy revelers began to make their way out of the pub into the warm night.
She put her arms around his neck and pushed her body hard against his. “With you,” she whispered, and her mouth on his tasted of the last apples of summer.
Later, as they lay holding each other in the remnants of the night’s heat, she murmured, “You never told me.”
“What?”
“Your favorite book.”
“1984.” She considered his answer. “By George Orwell,” he added. She punched his arm lightly.
“I know who it’s by. Good answer.”
“Yours?” he asked.
“What do you think?”
“I’ve got no idea!”
“Come on. It’s not hard to figure it out.” She spread her arms out and indicated herself.
He thought for a moment, then grinned. “Is it by Daphne du Maurier by any chance?”
“Of course it is.” She gave a secret smile, closed her eyes, and fell asleep.
Rebecca, he thought. Rebecca, Rebecca, Rebecca.
—
He woke the next morning, pinioned by her lily-white arm. He wondered what time her flight was, how she was getting to the airport, whether she had packed—they hadn’t discussed practicalities the night before. He didn’t want to wake her because he felt safe with her so close. He’d never experienced such a feeling before. A feeling of utter completeness. It made so many of the books he had read start to make perfect sense. He had thought he understood them, on an intellectual level, but now he had a deeper comprehension. He could barely breathe with the awe of it.
If he stayed very still and very quiet, perhaps she wouldn’t wake. Perhaps she would miss her flight. Perhaps he could have another magical twenty-four hours with her.
But Julius was responsible at heart. He didn’t have it in him to be so reckless. So he picked up a tress of her hair and tickled her cheek until she stirred.
“Hey,” he whispered. “You have to go home today.”
“I don’t want to go,” Rebecca murmured into his shoulder.
He trailed a hand across her warm, bare skin. “You can come back.”
He touched each of her freckles, one by one. There were hundreds. Thousands. He would never have time to touch them all before she left.
“What time is your flight? How are you getting to the airport?”
She didn’t reply. She picked up his arm and looked at the watch on his wrist.
“My flight’s at eleven.”
He sat up in alarm. “Shit. You need to get up. You’ll never make it.” He was grabbing for his clothes, pulling them on. She didn’t move.
“I’m not going.”
He was doing up his jeans. He stared at her.
“What?”
“I made up my mind. Last night.” She sat up, and her hair tumbled everywhere. “I’ll just call home and tell them I missed my flight. I can stay on a few more days.” She laughed. “It’s okay. They’ll wire me the money to buy another ticket. It’s no big deal.”
Julius couldn’t imagine being so cavalier. Or extravagant. Or so certain that one was going to be looked after.
“You’re crazy,” he said, but he felt a frisson of excitement at her reckless spontaneity.
“You better make it worth my while,” she told him.
Julius scratched his head. “That’s all very well, but I’ve got to go to work.” He was aware how dull and boring he sounded in comparison.
She rolled her eyes. “Tell them you’re sick. Tell them you ate a bad . . . crab.”
“We’re a bit short on crab round here. We’re pretty landlocked.” He thought about it. “Kebab.”
“There you go!”
“But if I’m supposed to be ill, I can’t be seen around Oxford.”
“Well, we’ll have to go somewhere else, then,” she said firmly.
Julius shook his head in bemused disbelief. “You’re crazy,” he repeated, but a plan began forming in his head. “You better go and get your stuff and bring it back here. Then pack a small bag. There’s not room for much luggage.”
“Where are we going?”
“Wait and see.”
—
Julius buried his guilt about lying to the bookshop. He hadn’t missed a single day since he’d started work there, and he knew other people who skived off all the time. His boss was sufficiently sympathetic and reassuring.
“Take your time,” he said. “We certainly don’t want any germs.” Two days off wouldn’t hurt, Julius told himself. Then he threw a couple of shirts and some clean underwear into a bag and found his car keys. He’d bought the red MG off another student last summer, and kept it in a garage down the road. It was almost as if he’d bought it knowing that one day he would have a beautiful girl to whisk away on a magical mystery tour. Though he prayed it wouldn’t let him down. He knew next to nothing about what went on under a car’s hood. He was glad he had been saving his wages all summer, too. His nest egg was supposed to be for his future, but somehow today felt important, so he ran to the bank before she got back and took out some money.
Julius kept the roof on until they were out of town and on the A4 south, then he pulled over and threw it off. As they drove away into the autumnal sun, Rebecca’s hair streamed behind her and she laughed with the thrill of it.
“Where are we going?” she demanded.
“I told you. Wait and see.” Julius tightened his grip on the steering wheel. She was going to be amazed.
It took them six hours to get there, but Rebecca’s face as they drove down to the little harbor at Fowey was worth every moment of discomfort—the MG might look glamorous, but its seats were not. An orange blob of sun was curtseying into the sea, and dozens of tiny boats bobbed in the evening breeze.
They found a bed-and-breakfast in a fisherman’s cottage down one of the tiny winding streets. Their room was at the top of the house, and if they leaned out of the window, they could see the sea twinkling in the distance. Rebecca breathed in the briny air with a sigh.
“You’re amazing,” she told him.
“This isn’t the best bit,” he replied. “Not yet. Wait till tomorrow.”
“For what?”
“My, you are impatient,” he teased. “Come on. I’m going to treat you to a traditional British gastronomic feast.”
They ate fish and chips out of newspaper, sitting on the harbor wall, watching the last of the fishermen come in with their catch. He kissed the salt from her lips, untangling her hair with his fingers.
“I should be landing in New York right now,” she whispered. “I can’t believe I’m here with you.”
He pulled her in so tight he could feel her heart beating. Her fingers linked behind his back. He could feel her mouth on his neck. Longing and exhilaration and joy welled up inside him. No one had made him feel this kind of infatuation. Adoration, even. He’d felt desire and lust and admiration in t
he past, but this was something else.
They wandered back to their bed-and-breakfast. The room was nothing special—tired old furniture, a lumpy bed, and faded sheets—but none of that mattered. They fell asleep in each other’s arms, the breeze from the open windows kissing their naked bodies.
—
“Is it really Manderley?” Rebecca’s voice was barely above a whisper, and her eyes were wide.
It was the next morning, and they were on the outskirts of a tiny village two miles from Fowey. They were standing by a little stone lodge that guarded a set of gates. The gates were firmly locked, two stone pillars standing on either side, and a long sinuous drive stretched out behind them.
“It was the inspiration for Manderley,” Julius told her. “It’s called Menabilly. Du Maurier rented it with the proceeds from Rebecca. She fell in love with it when she was a young girl, and then when the film was a success, she came back. She lived here for years with her family, but she was never able to buy it.”
He felt like a tour guide. He knew about it because he’d come here with his mother once, when he was about fifteen. He’d been bored at the time, but now he was grateful Debra had been as curious about du Maurier as Rebecca clearly was.
“Can’t we go in?”
“No—it’s private. Strictly out of bounds.”
He saw a flash in her eyes. A flash of defiance and spirit that would have done justice to her namesake.
“But I want to see it.” She rattled the lock. Julius put a hand on her arm.
“Don’t. We’ll probably get shot at. Or ravaged by a dog. People don’t take kindly to trespassers in this country.”
Rebecca stood staring down the drive, at the dark trees and the undergrowth.
“Nobody understood Rebecca,” she said, and Julius wondered if it was a sentiment she shared about her own self.
“Come on. Let’s go for a walk on the cliffs. Work up an appetite for lunch before we drive back.”
For a moment, her face darkened, and he began to wish he hadn’t brought her, because he couldn’t let her do what she really wanted. He felt as if he was taunting her, showing her something and then snatching it away. Menabilly was so close and yet so far.
How to Find Love in a Bookshop Page 3
