The Bookshop

by Penelope Fitzgerald

  On wet afternoons, when the heavy weather blew up, the Old House was full of straggling disconsolate holiday parties. Christine, who said that they brought sand into the shop, was severe, pressing them to decide what they wanted. ‘Browsing is part of the tradition of a bookshop,’ Florence told her. ‘You must let them stand and turn things over.’ Christine asked what Deben would do if everyone turned over his wet fish. There were finger-marks on some of her cards, too.

  Ivy Welford called in to have a look at the books somewhat before her visit was due. Her inquisitiveness was a measure of the shop’s success and its reputation outside Hardborough.

  ‘Where are the returns outward?’

  ‘There aren’t any,’ Florence replied. ‘The publishers won’t take anything back. They don’t like sale or return arrangements.’

  ‘But you’ve got returns inwards. How is that?’

  ‘Sometimes the customers don’t like the books when they’ve bought them. They’re shocked, or say they’ve detected a distinct tinge of socialism.’

  ‘In that case the price should be credited to your personal account and debited under returns.’ It was an accusation of weakness. ‘Now, the purchases book. 150 Chinese silk book markers at five shillings each – can that be right?’

  ‘There was a different bird or butterfly on each one. Some of them were rice birds. They were beautiful. That was why I bought them.’

  ‘I’m not questioning that. It’s not my concern to ask you how the business is run. My worry is that they’re posted in the sales book as having been sold at fivepence each. How do you account for that?’

  ‘It was a mistake on Christine’s part. She thought they were made of paper and misread the price. You can’t expect a child of ten to appreciate an Oriental art that has been handed down through the centuries.’

  ‘Perhaps not, but you’ve failed to show the loss of 4s. 7d. on each article. How am I supposed to prepare a Trial Balance?’

  ‘Couldn’t we put it down to petty cash?’ pleaded Florence.

  ‘The petty cash should be kept for very small sums. I was just going to ask you about that. What is this disbursement of 12s. 11d.?’

  ‘I daresay it’s for milk.’

  ‘You’re absolutely certain? Do you keep a cat?’

  By September the holiday-makers, with the migrant sea birds, showed the restlessness of coming departure. The Primary School had reopened, and Florence was on her own in the shop for most of the day.

  Milo came in and said he would like to buy a birthday present for Kattie. He chose a colouring book of Bible Lands, which Florence considered a mere affectation.

  ‘So Violet isn’t going to get her own way,’ he said. ‘Has she been in here yet?’

  ‘We haven’t been open very long.’

  ‘Six months. But she will come. She has far too much self-respect not to.’

  Florence felt relieved, and yet obscurely insulted.

  ‘I’m hoping to reopen my lending library quite soon,’ she said. ‘Perhaps Mrs Gamart –’

  ‘Are you making any money?’ Milo asked. There were only two or three other people in the shop, and one of those was a sea scout who came every day after school to read another chapter of I Flew with the Führer. He marked the place with a piece of string weighted down with a boiled sweet.

  ‘You really need something like this,’ Milo said, not at all urgently. Under his arm he had a thinnish book, covered with the leaf-green paper of the Olympia Press. ‘This is volume one.’

  ‘Is there a volume two?’

  ‘Yes, but I’ve lent it to someone, or left it somewhere.’

  ‘You should keep them together as a set,’ said Florence firmly. She looked at the title, Lolita. ‘I only stock good novels, you know. They don’t move very fast. Is this good?’

  ‘It’ll make your fortune, Florence.’

  ‘But is it good?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Thank you for suggesting it. I feel the need of advice sometimes. You’re very kind.’

  ‘You’re always making that mistake,’ Milo replied.

  The truth was that Florence Green had not been brought up to understand natures such as Milo’s. Just as she still thought of gravity as a force that pulled things towards it, not simply as a matter of least resistance, so she felt sure that character was a struggle between good and bad intentions. It was too difficult for her to believe that he simply lapsed into whatever he did next only if it seemed to him less trouble than anything else.

  She took a note of the title Lolita, and the author’s name, Nabokov. It sounded foreign – Russian, perhaps, she thought.

  6

  CHRISTINE liked to do the locking up. At the age of ten and a half she knew, for perhaps the last time in her life, exactly how everything should be done. This would be her last year at the Primary. The shadow of her eleven plus, at the end of the next summer, was already felt. Perhaps, indeed, she ought to give up her job and concentrate on her studies, but Florence, for fear of being misunderstood, could not suggest to her assistant that it might be time for her to leave. The two of them, during the past months, had not been without their effect on one another. If Florence was more resilient, Christine had grown more sensitive.

  On the first evening of September that could truthfully be called cold they sat, after the shutters were up, in the front room, in the two comfortable chairs, like ladies. Then the child went to put on the kettle in the backhouse, and Florence listened to the drumming of tap water, followed by a metallic note as the red Coronation tin containing biscuits was banged down on the dresser.

  ‘We’ve got a blue one at ours. It’s Westminster Abbey the same, but the procession goes all the way round the tin.’

  ‘I’ll light the heater,’ said Florence, unused to idleness.

  ‘My mam doesn’t think those paraffin heaters are safe.’

  ‘There’s no danger as long as you’re careful to clean them properly and don’t allow a draught from two different sides at once,’ Florence replied, screwing the cap of the container hard down. She must be allowed to be in the right sometimes.

  The heater did not seem to be quite itself that evening. There was no draught, as far as that could ever be said in Hardborough; and yet the blue flame shot up for a moment, as though reaching for something, and sank back lower than before. It went by the perhaps extravagant brand name of Nevercold. She had only just managed to get it adjusted when Christine came in seriously with the tea-things, arranged on a large black and gold tray.

  ‘I like this old tray,’ she said. ‘You can put that down for me in your will.’

  ‘I don’t know that I want to think about my will yet, Christine. I’m a business woman in middle life.’

  ‘Did that come from Japan?’

  The tray represented two old men, fishing peaceably by moonlight.

  ‘No, it’s Chinese lacquer. My grandfather brought it back from Nanking. He was a great traveller. I’m not sure that they know how to make lacquer like this in China any more.’

  By now the Nevercold was burning rather more steadily. The teapot basked in front of it, the room grew close, and the difference in age between Christine and Florence seemed less, as though they were no more than two stages of the same woman’s life. In Hardborough an evening like this, when the sea could only just be heard, counted as silence. They had, therefore, warmth and quiet; and yet gradually Christine, who had been sitting back, as totally at ease as a rag doll, began to stiffen and fidget. Of course, a child of her age could hardly be expected to sit still for long.

  After a while she got up and went into the backhouse – to make sure of the back door, she said. Florence had an impulse to stop her going out of the room, which was proved to be ridiculous when she came back almost immediately. A faint whispering, scratching and tapping could now be heard from the upstairs passage, and something appeared to be dragged hither and thither, like a heavy kitten’s toy on a string. Florence did not pretend to herself, any more
than she had ever done, that nothing was wrong.

  ‘You’re quite comfortable, aren’t you, Christine?’

  The little girl replied that she was. Unaccountably, she used her ‘best’ voice, the one urged by her class teacher on those who had to play Florence Nightingale, or the Virgin Mary. She was listening painfully, as though her ears were stretched or pricked.

  ‘I’ve been wondering if I could help you at all with your eleven plus,’ said Florence conversationally. ‘Something towards it – I mean, we might read something together.’

  ‘There’s no reading to do. They give you some pictures, and you have to say which is the odd one out. Or they give you numbers, like 8, 5, 12, 9, 22, 16 and you have to say which number comes next.’

  Just as she had failed to understand Milo, so Florence was unable to tell which number came next. She had been born too long ago. In spite of the Nevercold, the temperature seemed to have dropped perceptibly. She turned the heater up to its highest register.

  ‘You’re not cold, are you?’

  ‘I’m always pale,’ Christine replied loftily. ‘There is no need to turn that thing up for me.’ She was trembling. ‘My little brother is pale as well. He and I are supposed to be quite alike.’

  Neither of them was prepared to say that they wished to protect the other. That would have been to admit fear into the room. Fear would have seemed more natural if the place had been dark, but the bright shop lighting shone into every corner. The muffled din upstairs grew into a turmoil.

  ‘That’s coming on loud, Mrs Green.’

  Christine had given up her Florence Nightingale voice. Mrs Green took her left hand, which was the nearest. A light current seemed to be passing through it, transmitting a cold pulse, as though electricity could become ice.

  ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’

  The hand lay in hers, weightless and motionless. Perhaps it was dangerous to press the child, and yet Florence overwhelmingly felt that she must make her speak and that something must be admitted between them.

  ‘That’s going down my arm like a finger walking,’ said Christine slowly. ‘That stops at the top of my head. I can feel the hairs standing up properly there.’

  It was an admission of sorts. Half rigid, half drowsy, she rocked herself to and fro on the chair in a curious position. The noise upstairs stopped for a moment and then broke out again, this time downstairs and apparently just outside the window, which shook violently. It seemed to be on the point of bursting inwards. Their teacups shook and spun in the saucers. There was a wild rattling as though handful after handful of gravel or shingle was being thrown by an idiot against the glass.

  ‘That’s the rapper. My mam knows there’s a rapper in this old place. She reckoned that wouldn’t start with me, because mine haven’t come on yet.’

  The battering at the window died to a hiss; then gathered itself together and rose to a long animal scream, again and again.

  ‘Don’t mind it, Christine,’ Florence called out with sudden energy. ‘We know what it can’t do.’

  ‘That doesn’t want us to go,’ Christine muttered. ‘That wants us to stay and be tormented.’

  They were besieged. The siege lasted for just over ten minutes, during which time the cold was so intense that Florence could not feel the girl’s hand lying in hers, or even her own fingertips. After ten minutes, Christine fell asleep.

  Florence did not expect her assistant to return; but she came back the very next afternoon, with the suggestion that if they had any more trouble they could both of them kneel down and say the Lord’s prayer. Her mother had advised that it would be a waste of time consulting the Vicar. The Gippings were chapel and did not attend St Edmund’s, but the minister would be of no use either, as though ghosts could be read down or prayed out, rappers could not. Meanwhile, it must surely be time to wash the dusters.

  Florence regretted what seemed a slight on the gracious church whose tower protected the marshes, and whose famous south porch, between its angle buttresses, had been laid in flint checkerwork, silver grey and dark grey, by some ancestor of Mr Brundish. She wished that, when she spoke to the Vicar, the subject did not have to be money. She had been glad to give some of her stock to the harvest festival, although wondering a little how Every Man His Own Mechanic, and a pile of novels, could be considered as fruits of the earth and sea. It must be a burden – she realized that only too well – for the Canon to have to devote so much time to fund-raising. She wished she could see him for a moment simply to ask him: Was William Blake right when he said that everything possible to be believed in was an image of Truth. Supposing it was something not possible to be believed in? Did he believe in rappers? Meanwhile she went to the early service at St Edmund’s, noticing, on the way out, that it was her turn to do the flowers next week. The list stared at her from the porch: Mrs Drury, Mrs Green, Mrs Thornton, Mrs Gamart for two weeks, as having a larger garden.

  Mrs Gipping, whose house was between the old railway station and the church, was pegging up. Seeing Christine’s employer walking down from early service, she signalled to her to come into the backhouse. Gipping, glimpsed between rows of green leaves, was tending the early celery, which would stand fit until Christmas.

  In the damp warmth of the washday kitchen, Mrs Gipping was reassuring. She had been told about the rapper’s visitation; but in her opinion there were disadvantages in every job. ‘You’d like a drink, I expect, before you open up your business.’ Florence was expecting some Nescafé, to which she had grown accustomed, but was directed to a large vegetable marrow hung over the sink. A wooden spigot had been driven into the rotund and glistening sides of the marrow. It was boldly striped in ripe green and yellow. Cups and glasses were ranged beneath it, and at a turn of the spigot a cloudy liquid oozed out drop by drop and fell heavily into the nearest cup. Mrs Gipping explained that it hadn’t been up for long and wasn’t at all heady, but that she’d seen a strong man come in and take a drink from a four-week marrow and fall straight down on to the stone floor, so that there was blood everywhere.

  ‘Perhaps you’ll give me the recipe,’ said Florence politely, but Mrs Gipping replied that she never did, or the Women’s Institute, against which she appeared to have some grudge, would go and put it in their collection of Old Country Lore.

  Opening the shop gave her, every morning, the same feeling of promise and opportunity. The books stood as neatly ranged as Gipping’s vegetables, ready for all comers.

  Milo came in at lunch-time. ‘Well, are you going to order Lolita?’

  ‘I haven’t decided yet. I’ve ordered an inspection copy. I’m confused by what the American papers said about it. One of the reviewers said that it was bad news for the trade and bad news for the public, because it was dull, pretentious, florid and repulsive, but on the other hand there was an article by Graham Greene which said that it was a masterpiece.’

  ‘You haven’t asked me what I think about it.’

  ‘What would be the use? You have lost the second volume, or left it somewhere. Did you ever finish reading it?’

  ‘I can’t remember. Don’t you trust your own judgment, my dear?’

  Florence considered. ‘I trust my moral judgment, yes. But I’m a retailer, and I haven’t been trained to understand the arts and I don’t know whether a book is a masterpiece or not.’

  ‘What does your moral judgment tell you about me?’

  ‘That’s not difficult,’ said Florence. ‘It tells me that you should marry Kattie, think less about yourself, and work harder.’

  ‘But you’re not sure about Lolita? Are you afraid that the little Gipping girl might read it?’

  ‘Christine? Not in the least. In any case, she never reads the books. She’s an ideal assistant in that way. She only reads Bunty.’

  ‘Or that the Gamarts mightn’t like it? Violet still hasn’t been here, has she?’

  Milo added that the General had told him, when their cars were both waiting at the Flintmarket level crossing
, that his wife didn’t expect Lolita would ever be sold in a dear, sleepy little place like Hardborough.

  ‘I don’t want to take any of these things into account. If Lolita is a good book, I want to sell it in my shop.’

  ‘It would make money, you know, if the worst came to the worst.’

  ‘That isn’t the point,’ Florence replied, and really it was not. She wondered why this matter of the worst coming to the worst seemed to recur. Only a few days ago, down on the marshes, Raven had shown her a patch of green succulent weeds which, he said, were considered a delicacy in London and would fetch a high price if they were sent up there. ‘That might help you, Mrs Green, if things don’t work out.’

  ‘We’re doing quite respectably at the moment,’ she told Milo. ‘I shall take good advice about Lolita when the time comes.’

  Milo seemed vaguely dissatisfied. ‘I should like to read Bunty,’ he said. Florence told him that there was a large pile of Bunties in the backhouse, but she couldn’t part with any of them without Christine’s permission, and school wasn’t out until half-past three.

  After six months of trading Florence calculated that she had £2,500 worth of stock in hand, was owed about £80 on outstanding accounts and had a current bank balance with Mr Keble of just over £400 – a working capital of £3,000. She lived largely on tea, biscuits, and herrings and had spent almost nothing on advertising, except, for she couldn’t disoblige the Vicar, in the parish magazine. Her wages bill was still twelve and sixpence a week, thirty shillings during the holidays. She didn’t allow discount, except to the Primary School. Despatch was not at all the same as it had been at Müller’s. The inhabitants were all used to dropping things in as they passed by. Everyone on two or four wheels, not only the obliging Wally, was a potential carrier. She herself was going to take the ferry across the Laze, as it was early-closing day, to deliver thirty Complete Wild Flower Recognition Handbooks to the Women’s Institute. Remembering this, she took the top book off the crisp pile and looked through the illustrations for the green marsh plant which Raven had shown to her. It was not mentioned.