The Last Bookshop in London

by Madeline Martin

  To her surprise, Mrs. Weatherford did not protest when Grace’s hand closed around her soft forearm. In fact, she offered no reaction whatsoever.

  “Mrs. Weatherford?” Grace said again, this time slightly louder. “How was it?”

  But even as she asked the question, the tension squeezing at Grace’s chest told her she wouldn’t want to hear the answer.

  “Hmm?” Mrs. Weatherford’s brows lifted with great exaggeration.

  “Did you see the men?” Grace asked, unable to stop herself. “Of the BEF?”

  Mrs. Weatherford nodded slowly. “I did.” She drew in a deep breath and lifted her head, her vision going distant once more. “It was...it was...it...” She swallowed hard. “It was awful. Those men looked near death.” Her voice quavered. “Their eyes were filled with horror, and all of them were so tired they were falling asleep as they chewed the boiled eggs and apples we brought for them. I’ve never in all my life seen such defeat.”

  Grace had been anticipating bad news, but the details hit her hard. Colin was stationed in France. Had he been at Dunkirk as well?

  But she didn’t voice such concerns, not when they matched the worry carved on his mother’s face.

  Every day thereafter, Mrs. Weatherford went with the other WVS ladies to aid the BEF returning to London, and every night she returned depleted of all her energy and spirit.

  The few times she was home, the phone rang seemingly without end as women with sons and husbands in Colin’s division in France exchanged horror stories and gossip from some of the few men who had returned.

  The accounts were grisly with soldiers being stranded on the beach without cover as Nazi planes sprayed bullets. Men swam miles to boats, only to find them bombed and their salvation lost. They were fleeing in retreat—or as Mr. Stokes had called it, a bloodbath.

  Yet through it all, Mrs. Weatherford clung to hope with a white-knuckled grip.

  Despite the other woman’s forcedly happy demeanor, Grace could only guess what Mrs. Weatherford was going through when Grace herself couldn’t stop imagining Colin amid such violent chaos.

  Gentle Colin, who wanted only to help animals, whose heart was as golden as they came. If it so happened that he had to kill someone to save himself, it would be him taking the bullet. And if a man needed help, Colin would never leave him behind.

  War was not meant for tender souls.

  Most especially not ones such as Colin’s.

  All over Britain, telegrams were being delivered to front doors, sharing painful messages of men who had been killed or taken prisoner.

  As more soldiers swept into London on the trains, no telegram was presented to the townhouse door on Britton Street. The silence was a blessing as much as it stretched out their expectation, so much so that every pop or creak of the house settling made Grace and Mrs. Weatherford jump.

  It wasn’t until two days later that Churchill addressed the enormity of their loss. Over 335,000 men had been saved from the Germans with casualties expected to be around 30,000 including those missing, dead or wounded. A staggering number to every mother and wife and sister waiting anxiously for news of her loved one.

  But it was not only men Britain lost; equipment had been abandoned, given up to spare lives. A worthy sacrifice, as Grace saw it, but still costly and dangerous.

  Even such dismal numbers, however, were met with a positive slant by the newspapers and radio, for the civilians with fishing vessels and personal watercraft who helped bring thousands of BEF over the Channel to safety were touted as heroes. A symbolic gesture that declared Britain would never surrender.

  There was power to Churchill’s voice as he spoke that made determination pound in Grace’s chest and brought tears to Mrs. Weatherford’s eyes as she nodded to the new prime minister’s message.

  Yes, there had been a great defeat, but they would carry on.

  The spirit of his words charged through London like lightning, crackling with power.

  Days continued to tick by. It was on a rare quiet afternoon that Mrs. Weatherford appeared in the parlor where Grace was reading her latest book, Of Human Bondage, an incredible tale of a man who grew up at the mercy of life’s worst cruelties. It pulled at a wounded part of Grace that had been buried deep, a place she suspected everyone kept inside themselves, that remained tender despite one’s victories and strengths.

  Grace looked up to find Mrs. Weatherford wearing Colin’s old clothing, now dirt-stained from their many toils in the garden as they dug for victory. “Have you seen the gloves?”

  “They’re in the Andy with the trowel and watering can.” They really ought not use the Anderson shelter for a gardening shed, but setting gardening tools on the bench inside was quite convenient, especially when the floor was practically flooded by the recent rain and no use for anything else at that point. And with only the two of them in the townhouse, there was plenty of room for a few tools inside.

  There had been air raids from time to time, yes, but they all had been without cause. A friendly aircraft mistaken for a German plane or something of that ilk. Most people didn’t even go to their shelters anymore. What was the point?

  Grace pulled the quilt from her lap in preparation to join the older woman in the garden. “Let me change and I’ll help.”

  “Don’t trouble yourself, love.” Mrs. Weatherford waved her off. “You’ve done more than your fair share lately, and I only need to do a bit of weeding and watering.”

  Grace gave her a grateful smile and settled the blanket back over her legs, nestling deeper into the cushioned seat of the sofa to resume her reading. However, she did not get far into the next page when a horrendous shriek came from outside. In the rear garden.

  Mrs. Weatherford.

  Grace darted from the chair in a tangle of quilt, nearly tripping over the book she dropped in her haste, and bolted toward the kitchen’s back door.

  Had the Germans arrived?

  There were rumors of how parachutists had dropped into the Netherlands dressed like nuns and policemen before shooting citizens where they stood, using trust as their greatest weapon. Granted, the rumor had been told by Mr. Stokes, but Grace would take no chances. She paused on her way out the kitchen door to grab a large knife.

  Mrs. Weatherford stood several paces from the lettuce bed with her gloved hands curled in front of her as she stared in horror at the plants.

  “What is it?” Grace rushed to her side, blade extended toward the garden.

  Mrs. Weatherford let out a long, slow breath, closed her eyes and shuddered. “Worms.”

  “Worms?” Grace asked, incredulous. She had been expecting Nazis in the garden, machine guns at the ready to do their worst to the people of London.

  “I went to see why the lettuce was wilting...” A shiver racked through Mrs. Weatherford. “I’ll go fetch the leaflet on pests,” she said weakly and turned back toward the Anderson shelter where the public informationals to encourage Dig for Victory were neatly organized in a blue painted tin.

  With great apprehension, Grace crept toward the nearest head of limp lettuce and lifted a leaf with the point of her knife. Thick, brown things wriggled and coiled among the base of the plant like plump sausages, near bursting from their gluttony. An especially fat one dropped from the leaf above and landed with a plop on the flat of the blade.

  Grace gasped in horror and leapt backward, dropping the knife.

  Some hero she was.

  Mrs. Weatherford ducked out from the Andy with a leaflet in hand. “It’s right here. They’re called...” She squinted at the page. “Cutworms. Heavens, that sounds terrifying.” Her gaze darted over the page. As she read, her mouth slid down her face in a disgusted grimace.

  “What is it?” Grace tried to peer at the leaflet. “How are we rid of them?”

  Mrs. Weatherford grimaced. “We’re to cut them in half, squish them or ri
p them apart.”

  They both scowled in horror and turned toward the lettuce. The knife lay before the plant Grace had been inspecting, its blade glinting in the sun.

  “Maybe we ought to stick to beans?” Grace suggested.

  “I’ve never been partial to lettuce myself,” Mrs. Weatherford replied. “I’ll go to the chemist to see if he can suggest something to kill those foul creatures and we can be done with the lot of it.”

  The chemist did indeed have something, a white powdery substance he warned must be washed thoroughly from the leaves before consumption, not that there was anything left of it after the cutworms finally succumbed to the poison.

  * * *

  In the second week of June, Italy joined the war in support of Germany, and the unspent energy crackling over London found a source to exact its potency. Grace and Mr. Stokes were patrolling the darkened streets of London later that night when an efficient clip of footsteps was heard across the street followed by a scuffle and a cry.

  Adrenaline shot through her and drew her attention toward the scene. Her eyes searched the dark. She withdrew the hooded lamp from her pocket, a bell-shaped thing that cast a muted light on the ground. They didn’t use it often, however, as Mr. Stokes insisted they maintain their night vision.

  The blackout sadly brought out the worst in people, presenting too many temptations for theft and assault by the sinister sort. Mr. Stokes put himself between Grace and the sound as they waited to see if they might be required to intervene with their limited authority and sharp whistles.

  During her time in the ARP, Grace had learned to read movement in the darkness by the subtle shadows cast by the moon. Though it was only a sliver that night, she could make out two police officers and a man with a suitcase beside a woman.

  It was no robbery at all, but an arrest.

  The man’s words were spoken rapidly, not in English, but what sounded like Italian.

  “We don’t wish to use violence,” one of the officers declared in a dull tone. “Come along at once.”

  The man turned from the woman toward the police as if he intended to go with them. She reached for him, letting out a broken sob.

  “What’s happened?” Grace asked.

  “It’s none of our concern.” Mr. Stokes indicated she ought to walk onward.

  She did not. “They are arresting him?”

  “Of course they are,” Mr. Stokes replied with an impatient whine. “The men at least for now. They’re taking all the Tallies out of England so they can’t spy on us for Hitler.”

  A crash came from down the street, followed by the tinkling of glass. Together, they rushed toward the sound and found a group of more than twenty men climbing through the shattered window of an Italian café, shouting hostile slurs against the Italians for having sided with the Nazis.

  Grace was frozen in stunned shock. She had eaten at the café several times with Viv. The owner and his wife had always been kind, expressing their own fears for London and offering extra biscuits for their tea, even with the ration on. And now the establishment the immigrants had run for more than twenty years was being ransacked.

  A man exited the broken window with a chair in his hands.

  “A robbery.” She lifted her whistle to her lips.

  Mr. Stokes settled his hand over hers and pushed the metal from her mouth. “A retaliation.”

  She jerked a sharp look at him, making out his glittering eyes in the semidarkness. “I beg your pardon.”

  “Italy staked its loyalty,” Mr. Stokes replied dryly. “And it was not with us.”

  She stared at him, appalled. “These are British citizens.”

  “They’re Italians.” He lifted his head higher as another man exited with a sack of what might have been flour. “Most likely spies.”

  “These are store owners who worked hard to build a business for themselves in London, who love this city as much as we do.” Grace’s voice pitched higher with vehemence even as her thoughts swirled at the madness of it all.

  “We must put a stop to this.” She marched forward, but Mr. Stokes caught her arm again and gently pulled her back.

  “Miss Bennett, be sensible,” he hissed. “There are more than a dozen men and you are only one warden.”

  She glared up at him with tears burning in her eyes. “Only one?”

  He slid his gaze from hers.

  Another crash sounded from the café, followed by a glow of light as a fire erupted within the building.

  “Cease this at once,” she shouted into the night.

  Her order was met with laughter and jeers.

  “Mind yourself, lest you be seen as a Nazi supporter.” Mr. Stokes’s voice was low and filled with enough caution to give her pause.

  She clenched her fists as tears leaked hot down her cheeks in anger for her crippling helplessness. She shoved Mr. Stokes away from her. “How can you stand this?”

  “Put that light out,” Mr. Stokes called to the men in a dispassionate, grating voice. “You don’t want bombs dropping on us.”

  He didn’t look at her again as the fire was doused and a startling blackness took the place of those brilliant flames so fueled by hate.

  * * *

  After her shift, she could not find sleep. Not only in her worry over Colin, who had still not been heard from, but for her own impotence.

  She’d joined the ARP to help. But that night, she had not helped. By not being able to stop the men from looting the café, she had been part of the problem.

  She tried to read, but found that even books could not ease the burden on her soul.

  The following day she was off from the bookshop, and Mrs. Weatherford had remained home as the BEF had ceased trickling in from Dunkirk. Her hope had begun to fade with the number of arrivals, especially considering how few had returned from Colin’s division.

  Grace spent most of the morning in the garden, pulling weeds and inspecting the plants. Yellow blossoms had sprung on the tomato plants while those of the squash had begun to swell with yellow-green orbs. She had hoped the activity with the plants and the fresh air might take her mind from things, but she found herself continuing to prod at her wounded thoughts, leaving them raw and angry.

  Upon completing her task, she tugged off her gloves and stepped out of her clogs before going into the kitchen to wash the residual grit from her hands. She was just finishing when a knock at the door sounded over the gush of the tap. Her blood went cold.

  They were expecting no visitors.

  The post would be pushed through the mail slot at the door.

  There would be no reason for someone to be knocking, unless...

  Grace flicked the water from her fingers and hastily dried her hands. Her pulse whooshed in her ears, but was not loud enough to quiet the sound of Mrs. Weatherford’s tentative footsteps heading toward the front door. Grace pushed out of the kitchen as Mrs. Weatherford accepted something from the delivery boy in a rectangular orange envelope.

  A post office telegram.

  The breath pushed painfully from Grace’s lungs.

  There were few reasons why Mrs. Weatherford would receive a telegram, and none were good.

  Mrs. Weatherford closed the door with an automatic movement, her gaze fixed on the orange envelope. Grace approached carefully, but the older woman didn’t acknowledge her presence.

  They both waited a long moment, neither one of them speaking. Neither one of them even breathing, locked in a suspended moment that might change the rest of their lives.

  Grace should offer to read it, and yet there was a part of her that was too much of a coward to see the print on the telegram within.

  Mrs. Weatherford took a deep breath and slowly let it out so the envelope fluttered in her shivering grip. Guilt pinched at Grace, a whisper of an emotion by comparison to her fear, but enough to nudge her re
sponse. After all, to expect Mrs. Weatherford to face the task was cruel.

  Grace braced herself for what she was offering and whispered, “Do you want me to open it?”

  Mrs. Weatherford shook her head. “I should—” Her voice caught. “We have to know.”

  Her hands quivered with such force, it was a wonder she could slide a nail under the flap and draw open the envelope. Before she even realized what she was doing, Grace held on to Mrs. Weatherford’s arm, clinging as the message inched out to reveal the words “Deeply regret to inform you...”

  Mrs. Weatherford sucked in a sharp inhale and slowly unveiled the remainder of the telegram.

  The message was written in a strip of white, the letters in bold capitalization as it declared the words that would change their lives irrevocably.

  “Deeply regret to inform you that your son Pte Colin Weatherford is now reported to have lost his life in the attack at Dunkirk—”

  The envelope and telegram dropped from Mrs. Weatherford’s hand and swirled to the floor. It didn’t matter. Grace didn’t need to see anything else.

  Colin was dead.

  “My son,” Mrs. Weatherford whimpered. “My son. My son. My sweet gentle boy.” She looked at her trembling hands, now empty of the letter, as if in disbelief it had ever been there.

  The aching knot at the back of Grace’s throat balled tight, choking her with bitter tears.

  The enormity of his loss gaped like a chasm inside her. Anger and sorrow and helplessness, all overwhelmed her. Colin shouldn’t have died in such a manner. He was too extraordinary to merely be one of the 30,000 lost.

  Never again would he bring home another wounded animal to heal or greet her with a shy blush. Their dark, dark world needed his light, and now it was forever snuffed out.

  A low keening filled the room as Mrs. Weatherford fell to her knees, blindly grabbing the envelope and crumpling it in her fist as if it could somehow keep the earth from flying out beneath her.

  All around Britain, thousands more women were getting similar telegrams where a few typefaced words would rip into the tenderest places in their chest, forever altering their lives with gaping loss.