The Bookshop

by Penelope Fitzgerald

  Milo and Kattie – someone young, in any case, with bright red tights, so it could hardly be anyone else – were walking down the cliff path. When they got nearer, Florence could see that Kattie looked as though she had been crying, so the outing could hardly have been a success.

  ‘Why are you sitting on a doorstep, Florence?’ Milo asked.

  ‘I don’t know why I go out for walks at all. Walks are for the retired, and I’m going to go on working.’

  ‘Is there room on your step for me to sit down?’ Kattie asked. She was behaving nicely, trying to please and conciliate. Either she wanted Milo to see how readily she could charm other people, or she wanted to show him how kind she could be to a dull middle-aged woman, simply because Milo seemed to know her. Whichever it was, Florence felt deeply sympathetic. She made room on the step at once and Kattie sat down neatly, pulling her short skirt down over her long red legs.

  ‘Kattie wouldn’t believe that there were ruins in Hardborough, so I brought her to see,’ said Milo, looking down at both of them, and then at the pitiful houses. ‘They were all ready to move into, weren’t they? I wonder if the water’s still connected.’ He stepped over a pile of masonry into the remains of a kitchenette, and tried the taps. Rusty water, the colour of blood, gushed out. ‘Kattie could live here perfectly well. She keeps saying she doesn’t like our place.’

  Florence, wishing to change the subject, asked Kattie about her work at the BBC. It was rather disappointing to find that she had nothing to do with television but checked the expenses sheets for the Recorded Programmes Department, which she referred to as RPD. Surely that couldn’t be rewarding work for this intelligent-looking girl.

  ‘We’ve been to lunch with Violet Gamart,’ said Milo, balancing easily on the short grass at the very edge of the cliff. ‘It was a chance for her not to disapprove of us.’

  ‘Why can’t you ever say anything agreeable about anybody?’ Florence asked. ‘Does she still want you to run, or look as though you’re running, an Arts Centre in Hardborough?’

  ‘That’s a seasonal matter with her. It reaches a serious crisis every summer, when Glyndebourne and the Aldeburgh Festival get into the news. Now it’s January. The pulse is low.’

  ‘Mrs Gamart was very kind,’ said Kattie, hugging herself rather as Christine sometimes did.

  ‘I don’t like kind people, except for Florence.’

  ‘That doesn’t impress me,’ said Florence. ‘You appear to me to work less and less. You must remember that the BBC is a Corporation, and that your salary is ultimately met out of public funds.’

  ‘That’s Kattie’s business,’ Milo replied. ‘She does my expense sheets. We’ll walk back with you.’

  ‘Thank you, I’ll stay here for a little longer.’

  ‘Please come with us,’ said Kattie. She appeared to be racking her brains. ‘Won’t you tell me about how you manage to wrap up the books? I’m always so hopeless with paper and string.’

  Florence always used paper bags, and never remembered to have seen Kattie in the shop at all, but she agreed to accompany them back to Hardborough. Kattie kept picking little bits of plants and asking her deferentially what they were. Florence had to tell her that she wasn’t sure of any of them, except thyme and plantains, until the flowers began to show, and that wouldn’t be for a couple of months.

  One day, when the top class of the Primary School were having their free activity, which in cold weather largely meant sitting at their desks and amiably exchanging whatever dirty words they had learned lately, a stranger appeared at the door.

  ‘You needn’t rise from your seats, children. I’m the Inspector.’

  ‘No, you’re not,’ said the head boy.

  Mrs Traill, who had been checking the attendance register, came back to the classroom. ‘I don’t think I know you,’ she said.

  ‘Mrs Traill? My name is Sheppard. Perhaps you’d care to glance at my certificate of appointment from the Education Authority, which entitles me, under the Shops Act of 1950, to enter any school in which I have reasonable cause to believe that children employed in any capacity in a shop are at present being educated.’

  ‘Employed!’ cried Mrs Traill. ‘I daresay they’d like to be employed, but outside of family business and newspaper rounds, I’d like you to tell me what there is for them. You might like to try again at potato-lifting time. I don’t remember your ever coming here before, by the way.’

  ‘Due to staff shortages, our visits have not been as regular as we should like.’

  ‘Who suggested that you should come here this time?’ the headmistress asked. Receiving no answer, she added. ‘There’s only Christine Gipping who works regularly after school.’

  ‘At what address?’

  ‘The Old House Bookshop. Stand up, Christine.’

  The Inspector checked his notebook. ‘As I expect you’re aware, I have the right to examine this girl as I think fit in respect to matters under the Shops Act.’

  A storm of whistling broke out from the class.

  ‘I’ve brought a lady colleague with me,’ said the Inspector grimly. ‘She’s just outside, checking the car’s properly locked.’

  ‘There won’t be criminal interference, then,’ the head boy said placidly.

  Christine was unperturbed. She followed the female inspector, who hurried in, with explanatory gestures, from the yard, into the small room behind the piano where the dinner money was counted.

  To: Mrs Florence Green, The Old House Bookshop

  The Education Authority’s Inspectors have examined Christine Gipping and have required her to sign a declaration of truth of the matters respecting which she was examined. Although there is no suggestion of irregularity in her school attendance, it appears that consequent to the arrival of a best-selling book she worked more than 44 hours in your establishment during one week of her holidays. Furthermore her health safety and welfare are at risk in your premises which are haunted in an objectionable manner. I quote from a deposition by Christine Gipping to the effect that ‘the rapper doesn’t come on so loud now, but we can’t get rid of him altogether’. I am advised that under the provisions of the Act the supernatural would be classed with bacon-slicers and other machinery through which young persons must not be exposed to the risk of injury.

  From: Mrs Florence Green

  The Shop Acts which you quote only apply to young persons between the ages of fourteen and sixteen. Christine Gipping is just eleven, or what would she be doing in the Primary?

  To: Mrs Florence Gipping, The Old House Bookshop

  If Christine Gipping is, as you say, 11 years of age she is not permitted by law to serve in any retail business except a stall or moveable structure consisting of a board supported by trestles which is dismantled at the end of the day.

  From: Mrs Florence Green

  There is no room on the pavement of Hardborough High Street for boards supported by trestles to be dismantled at the end of the day. Christine, like a large proportion of the Primary School population of Suffolk, is, as you very well know, ‘helping out’. She will be taking her 11+ in July and I expect her to proceed to Flintmarket Grammar School, when she will have no time for odd jobs after school.

  No more was heard from the Authority’s inspectors, and this complaint, wherever it had originated, died away like the earlier ones into silence. A brief note of congratulation came round from Mr Brundish. How could he have heard about it? He recalled that in his grandfather’s day the Inspector had always come round the schools with a ferret in his pocket, ready to be of use in getting rid of the rats.

  But the Old House Bookshop, like a patient whose crisis is over, but who cannot regain strength, showed less encouraging returns. This was to be expected in the months after Christmas. There would be more capital in hand after the warehouse was demolished and she could sell the site. Wilkins was being very slow, however. He had never been a speedy man, and of course the cold weather was against him. These old places looked as though they’d
come down at a touch, but they could be stubborn. Florence was obliged to repeat this to the bank manager, who had asked her to step in for a chat, and had then asked her if she had noted how very little working capital she had at present.

  ‘You are converting the oyster warehouse from a fixed into a current asset?’

  ‘It isn’t either at the moment,’ Florence replied. ‘Wilkins says the mortar’s harder than the flint.’

  Mr Keble observed that it was not a very favourable moment, perhaps, for selling a small building site which had always been known to be waterlogged. Florence didn’t recall his having mentioned this when her loan had first been discussed.

  ‘Rather less activity, I think, in your business at the moment? Perhaps it’s just as well. At one point it seemed as though you were going to jolt us out of our old ways altogether. But all small businesses have their ups and downs. That’s another thing you find easier to grasp in a position like mine, where you can take the broader view.’

  Later that spring, Mrs Gamart’s nephew, the member for the Longwash Division, a brilliant, successful, and stupid young man, got his Private Bill through its first and second reading. It was an admirable bill from the point of view of his career. The provisions were acceptable to all parties – humanitarian, democratic, a contribution to the growing problem of leisure, and unlikely ever to be put into practice. Referred to as the Access to Places of Educational Value and Interest Bill, it empowered local councils to purchase compulsorily, and subject to agreed compensation, any buildings wholly or partly erected before 1549 and not used for residential purposes, provided there was no building of similar date on public show in the area. The buildings acquired were to be used for the cultural recreation of the public. Florence noticed a small paragraph about this in The Times, but knew that it could not affect her. Neither Hardborough nor Flintmarket councils had money for projects of any kind, and in any case, the Old House was in use for ‘residential purposes’ – she was still living there, although the words deflected her thoughts to the problems of upkeep. The winter had taken a large number of pegged tiles off the roof of the Old House, and a patch of damp was spreading across the bedroom ceiling, inch by inch, just as the sea was eating away the coast. There was more damp in the stock cupboard underneath the staircase. But it was the home of her books and herself, and they would remain there together.

  The subject of the Bill had not been suggested to her nephew by Mrs Gamart, although she was gratified when he told her, over lunch at the House, that the idea had come to him at that party of hers last spring. As a source of energy in a place like Hardborough which needed so little, an energy, too, which was often expended in complaints, she was bound to create a widening circle of after-effects which went far beyond the original impulse. Whenever she realized this she was pleased, both for herself and for the sake of others, because she always acted in the way she felt to be right. She did not know that morality is seldom a safe guide for human conduct.

  She smiled at her nephew over the lunch table, and said that she would not have the fish. ‘I’m afraid living in Hardborough spoils you for fish anywhere else,’ she said. ‘You get it so fresh down there.’ She was a very charming woman, well-preserved too, and had come up to London that day to press for some charitable scheme, nothing at all to do with the Old House Bookshop. Her nephew could not quite call to mind what it was, but he would be reminded.

  9

  AT Hardborough Primary School the eleven-plus exam was not marked in the usual way by the headmistress herself, after the children had gone home. The papers were exchanged with Saxford Tye Primary. This gave the necessary guarantee of impartiality to the closely observant little town, or, as Mrs Traill put it, saved her from being torn to pieces after it was over. She was, perhaps, not quite so sensitive in the matter of giving out the results. The acceptances from Flintmarket Grammar School came in square white envelopes. Those from the Technical came in long buff-coloured ones. Each child in the top form, when they arrived at school that summer’s morning, looked at their own desk, saw their envelopes, and knew their destiny at once. So, too, did everyone else in the class.

  Hardborough children, looking back in future years over a long life, would remember nothing more painful or more decisive than the envelopes waiting on the desks. Outside it was fine weather. Yellow gorse was in flower from end to end of the common. Summer had also invaded the classroom. The pupils had been asked to bring in some Nature for the elementary biology class. There were jam-jars of white campion, dog-roses and catchfly; loose straw was scattered on the teacher’s desk, and on the window-sill an eel was swimming uncomfortably in a glass tank.

  It was all over in a minute. Christine was one of the last into school. She looked at her envelope and knew at once that it was what she had always expected. She had a long buff one.

  Mrs Gipping called round herself to the Old House Bookshop – a concession worth noting since, with her busy day, she emerged only when she thought it strictly necessary. She had come to tell Florence that Christine would not be working for her any more, but she saw at once that Florence realized this and there was no need to deliver the message. Instead, they sat down together in the backhouse. The shop was shut, and this year’s holiday-makers could be heard faintly calling from the beach.

  ‘The old rapper doesn’t seem to manifest while I’m here,’ Mrs Gipping remarked. ‘That knows not to waste its time, I dare say.’

  ‘I haven’t heard it so much lately,’ said Florence, and then remembering the vintage marrow, she suggested they might have a drink together. ‘Let’s have a glass of cherry brandy, Mrs Gipping. I never do, certainly not in the afternoon, but perhaps just today.’

  She took down two small glasses and the bottle, which like many liqueur bottles was of a strange shape, defiantly waisted and curved, and demanding to be kept for special occasions only.

  ‘You got that in the church raffle, I suppose,’ said Mrs Gipping. ‘It’s been in three years without anyone drawing the ticket. The Vicar won’t know what to do without it.’

  Perhaps it would bring luck. Each of the two women took a sip of the bright red, terribly sickly liquid.

  ‘They say Prince Charles is fond of this.’

  ‘At his age!’ Then, knowing that it was her duty, as hostess, to come to the point, Florence said, ‘I was very sorry to hear about Christine.’

  ‘She’s the first of ours not to get to the Grammar. It’s what we call a death sentence. I’ve nothing against the Technical, but it just means this: what chance will she ever have of meeting and marrying a white-collar chap? She won’t ever be able to look above a labouring chap or even an unemployed chap and believe me, Mrs Green, she’ll be pegging out her own washing until the day she dies.’

  The image of Wally flitted through Florence’s tired mind. Wally had been at the Grammar this past year, and it couldn’t be denied that he had been seen about lately with a new girl friend, also at the Grammar. He was teaching her to swim. ‘Christine is very quick and handy,’ she said, trying for a brighter view. ‘And very musical,’ she added, remembering the dance at the Court of King Herod. ‘She’s sure to make something of her life, wherever she is.’

  ‘I don’t want you to think that anything’s being held against you,’ said Mrs Gipping. ‘That’s what I principally came to say. We none of us believe that Christine would have got her eleven plus, even if she hadn’t worked here after school. More than that, it may turn out to be an advantage. Experience must count. The school-leavers all say, they won’t take us without experience, but how do we set about getting it? But Christine, if she needs a reference, we tell her that she’s only got to come to you for it.’

  ‘Certainly. She only has to ask.’

  ‘She doesn’t want to give up earning altogether while she’s at the Technical.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘We’ve been looking around a bit. We reckon she might get taken on as a Saturday girl at that new bookshop at Saxford Tye.�
�

  Mrs Gipping spoke with a kind of placid earnestness. She finished her cherry brandy in a way that showed that she knew very well how to make a small glass last a long time.

  ‘That’s disagreeably sweet,’ she said. ‘Still, you can’t complain if it’s for the church.’

  After Mrs Gipping had gone, Florence took her car out of its garage in a disused boat-shed next to the Coastguards and drove over to Saxford Tye. She parked in the main street and walked quietly about in the dusk. It was quite true. In a good position, next to the smartened-up Washford Arms, there was a new bookshop.

  It had not been open long, so it could not account by itself for her diminished trade. She allowed the latest Trial Balance, hovering unpleasantly on the threshold of her mind, to come in and declare itself. In those days, the separate pounds, shillings and pence allowed three separate kinds of menace from their three unyielding columns. Purchases £95 10s. 6d, (far too high), cash sales £62 10s. 11¾d, wages 12s. 6d., general expenses £2 8s. 2d., no orders, returns inward £2 17s. 6d., cash in hand £102 0s. 4d., value of stock July 31 say £600, petty cash, as usual, inexplicable. The holiday-makers had not seemed to have so much to spend this year, or perhaps not so much to spend on books. In future, if they stopped at Saxford on the way through, there might be even less.

  Although she had no way of knowing this, Saxford Tye Books was not an enterprise like her own, but an investment on behalf of the simple-minded Lord Gosfield, who had sallied out from his fen-bound castle to attend Mrs Gamart’s party more than a year ago. Since that time, all his acquaintances seemed to be turning their spare cottages into holiday homes, and his first slow intention (since he owned a good deal of Saxford Tye) had been to do the same thing, but then that had proved impracticable, because no one had ever yet been known to spend a holiday there. Sunk between silos and piles of root vegetables, the village was unique in that part of Suffolk in not having even a picturesque church to offer the visitor. The church had, in fact, been carelessly burnt down during the celebrations of 1925, when the Sugar Beet Subsidy Act had been passed, saving the lethargic population from extinction. But the construction of a new main road had made the Gosfield Arms, which had two good coach yards, a reasonable stopping place for motorists on the way to Hardborough or Yarmouth. The adjoining properties could be developed as shops, and Lord Gosfield seemed to remember Violet Gamart, who, mind you, was a clever woman, saying something about a bookshop. He asked his agent whether this might not be a good scheme. In collusion with this agent, who had more wits about him than his master, the brewers had made it necessary for anyone who wanted to stretch their legs, in the sense of reaching the pub’s shining new lavatories, to pass the side window of the new bookshop. This displayed horse-brasses and ash-trays in the shape of sugar-beets, as well as a type of novel which Florence never intended to stock. The place was still open at half-past six. Undoubtedly it would be much livelier for Christine.