The Bookshop on the Shore

by Jenny Colgan

  ‘Cleaning up,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t seem like Mrs MacGlone gets the chance for a proper spring clean. Or an autumn clean!’ She stepped forward. ‘Want to help?’

  Mary glared at her.

  ‘Why did you move stuff?’

  ‘Because,’ said Zoe sensibly, ‘everyone has to live here. Isn’t it nicer if it’s a nice environment?’

  Mary gazed at her, eyes full of hatred.

  ‘This is how it’s meant to be,’ she said. ‘This is how it’s meant to be. You’re ruining it! You ruin everything!’

  And she charged off through the front door, and vanished into the garden.

  ‘She does that a lot,’ said Zoe with a sigh. Patrick came forward.

  ‘Well,’ he said in a voice too practical for his years. ‘You know. You are absolutely moving stuff Mummy put there. And Mary absolutely does not like it.’

  It was the first time Zoe had heard any of them volunteer information about their mother. She moved forwards and knelt down.

  ‘Don’t you think,’ she said as gently as she could, ‘that your mum would maybe have liked the house to look nice? And clean and lovely for you all?’

  Patrick shrugged.

  ‘I don’t remember,’ he said in the tiniest voice imaginable, and Zoe went to take him in her arms. It was a completely natural gesture, but the boy flinched backwards immediately, almost stumbling in his rush to get away from her, and she cursed herself for attempting to move so fast.

  She turned her head.

  ‘Hari,’ she called quietly. The little boy stepped forwards.

  ‘Do you maybe think you could lend Patrick your bear?’

  Without question, Hari came forwards holding out the moth-eaten old antique, and without looking up, Patrick took it and buried his face in it. Zoe announced she was going to make everyone pancakes for breakfast in the jolliest ‘everything is totally fine’ voice she could muster, expecting Patrick to follow her through at least out of curiosity, which he did, and had stopped being upset enough to recover his appetite by the time the pancakes had arrived.

  Most curious of all was Shackleton. He was standing in the kitchen and came forward to watch as she cooked. Then he cleared his throat – he was at the age where his voice could jump from deep to high and back again within the space of the same sentence – and said, carefully, ‘I’d like to help.’

  Zoe whirled round. She hadn’t been expecting this.

  ‘You mean it?’

  Shackleton shrugged, his mouth full of pancake.

  ‘Might as well,’ he said, shrugging. ‘Have you fixed the Wi-Fi yet?’

  ‘Um,’ said Zoe, who didn’t know how to make it work again. She’d tried, but no joy.

  ‘Soon,’ she said. ‘If you help me clean out the house, I’ll totally definitely fix the Wi-Fi.’

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  So they spent the rest of the long, breezy Sunday hauling things out, dusting, cleaning and, for Patrick and Hari, mostly chasing spiders. Mary came back in from time to time to make sure they weren’t moving anything, and Zoe gravely showed her the large chest in which she was saving anything – keys, broken watches, sole earrings, random scarves – that looked like it might be important, and displaying the bin where she was getting rid of everything else – old paintbrushes and tennis balls, odd socks, junk mail, Christmas cards, broken crayons and unstrung rackets.

  Mary didn’t say anything, just kept a beady eye on proceedings. Zoe wondered, as she watched her go, whether it would have helped had Hari been a little girl; someone with whom she could have played, or petted, or taken at least an interest. Zoe looked at her again. The poor thing, her bedraggled hair spilling down her back, could barely take an interest in herself. Zoe quite sternly set her to washing windows so she didn’t have to come inside with them if she didn’t want to and, after clearly considering a stand-off, Mary finally set to it in as grumpy and half-baked a manner as she could which was still, Zoe thought, getting things done, so there was that.

  Patrick fell with delight on a huge dark chest of old toys that had somehow been kicked behind an ancient sofa in the living room – why did they never go in there? Zoe wondered – and pulled it open, and within two minutes, Patrick and Hari were marauding around in cowboy outfits, shooting toy pistols at each other. Patrick was making the peow peow sound, and Zoe listened carefully just in case – but, nothing. They had found utterly ancient old horse heads on sticks with wheels and were galloping about, getting in the way. There was a gradual but absolutely definite improvement in the lower rooms as Zoe whipped off all the cushion covers and ran them through the washing machine. The sheer amount of grime to be found in the shelving was quite disturbing, and all of them got dirtier and dirtier, with smuts of grime on their faces, and Shackleton was, amazingly, being incredibly helpful, climbing ladders and getting through endless cloths with vigorous energy and good humour. Zoe smiled; she wouldn’t have thought he had it in him.

  ‘I think doing without the Wi-Fi is doing you good,’ she teased, and he shook his feather duster at her in a joke-threateningly way.

  * * *

  Ramsay was returning from London, feeling unutterably weary and washed out. It had been a very difficult couple of days. He carried the new Sotheby’s catalogue, full of work he couldn’t afford and hoped to find something rather nice that he could sell but wouldn’t be very sorry to part with.

  Of course it wouldn’t be enough. It was never enough. Not with what the house needed. What the children needed. His father’s ancient lawyer had suggested he consider selling part of the estate, that they’d received interest – it would make a nice luxury hotel apparently – but he couldn’t. He just . . . No. He couldn’t. They’d find a way through somehow.

  Why did he have to be the one who hadn’t taken a proper job, unlike those idiots he’d been at university with who’d all gone and made a fortune in the city? He’d always loved books, that was all. Hadn’t really thought too much about money really, which, he allowed, was totally his own fault for growing up in privilege. Not that they’d been so well off – his father had never had any money either. Growing up in a house like The Beeches was supposedly its own reward – or burden – and it took absolutely everything just to keep the lights on.

  He’d hoped, once upon a time, to make it a happy place; transform its dark spaces and tired decor and make it somewhere wonderful for his family to grow and run wild, just as he had done with his friends when he was younger – fishing, wandering every day for hours down to the water or paddling across the loch or building tree houses. That was why he’d agreed to keep it on, take over the sacred trust. And then his father had died and he was kind of stuck with it.

  And, when his father went, so did the glorious haven he had dreamed of building for his own children, just as it had been for him.

  That, he sighed, as he did whenever he thought about it, had been very much derailed.

  As he came up the driveway in the old Land Rover, however, something struck him, and for a moment he couldn’t figure it out. Then, he realised. The front door was open. At first, he was worried – had something happened? Had someone been there? Had someone come?

  Then he realised that the shutters in the downstairs drawing room were pulled back too, and that you could see into the room for the first time in . . . well, a very long time. Was that Shackleton up a stepladder? And, oh goodness, was that Mary with a sponge in her hands?

  Rubbing his tired eyes with his large hands, Ramsay did his best to take in the sight. He parked and slowly got out of the car. There was . . . music, and was that Patrick laughing? Wilby’s stupid dog had got free again and was gambolling about the place.

  ‘Daddy!’ shrieked Mary and ran to him, burying her head into his tummy as she always did, climbing up him in that slightly desperate way he knew well.

  ‘Hello, sweetheart,’ he said, lifting her up even though she was – was she getting heavier? He was so used to her being as light as thistledown. Well, tha
t would be a good sign. He held her in his arms and she clung on like a baby monkey.

  ‘What are you up to?’ he said.

  Zoe’s heart had been pumping in her chest as she heard the car draw up over the noise of the radio. Would he be cross? Furious? Indifferent? It was so difficult. She was used to parents having lots and lots of very precise opinions over what they wanted their children to be doing. This was all new. She had absolutely no idea what was going on in his head.

  She needed to have a word with him, she knew she did. This wasn’t benign neglect. Letting children eat toast all day . . . not go to school . . . wearing clothes that didn’t fit them. This was perilously close to actual neglect. She needed to talk to him about it. She was absolutely definitely going to.

  Her first thought was how exhausted he looked. This annoyed her for reasons she couldn’t put her finger on; it wasn’t fair, if he’d just driven a long way. But how hard could fiddling about with old books be really? He wasn’t even trying to sell them to people like she was. And he was hardly doing the heavy lifting with the children.

  She hadn’t thought for a second how utterly filthy she was until she saw him staring at her face and suddenly realised she was just covered in muck. She rubbed her nose, which had a large black stain on it, wondered if she’d made it worse (she had) and then wondered whether to take the old scarf out that she’d tied to keep her hair back, or whether that would look odd too.

  ‘Um,’ said Ramsay.

  ‘Daddy! Come see!’ said Patrick, wearing the cowboy outfit with a princess dress thrown over it – exquisitely made, not supermarket nylon at all – which must have been Mary’s, long ago. It looked handstitched. Mary caught her staring at it and turned her head into her father’s shoulders.

  ‘WE DID CLEANING!’

  Ramsay looked at the little chap and, for the first time, smiled. It changed his face, Zoe thought, and realised how relieved she felt. There had been the chance that he might turn up furious and start screaming at her for touching his things. She had no idea who this man was, nor why his wife had left him. But she couldn’t bear it, truly; couldn’t bear living somewhere so utterly grim. So.

  She realised she’d folded her arms and must look like a rather cross Mrs MacGlone, give or take a few decades. She unfolded them straightaway.

  ‘I see that,’ he said, and passed into the hallway, with the floor scrubbed clean and shining, the coats neat in a row, the paintings dusted and straightened, the walls washed down and the windows sparkling (after Zoe had gone over everything Mary had done).

  ‘Goodness,’ muttered Ramsay. Then they showed him into the drawing room and he turned away.

  He remembered suddenly, with piercing clarity, the day he’d brought her home . . . It had been a bright breezy day too, with the promise of summer on the air, the seasons turning, and everything then had been sparkling, or felt sparkling and new, and everything was full of possibility and hope . . .

  ‘You don’t absolutely LOVE it?’ said Patrick, puzzled. Hari had dived behind the sofa and was hiding there. Tall men scared him.

  Ramsay blinked, looking at something that simply wasn’t there.

  ‘I . . . I do,’ he said. ‘I . . . I do like it.’

  He looked at Zoe. ‘Thank you . . .’

  ‘Nanny Seven,’ supplied Patrick helpfully.

  ‘Um . . .’ Ramsay searched his brain. Goodness, she really was grubby. Did she know how dirty she was? What was her name again? ‘. . . Zoe.’

  ‘You’re welcome,’ said Zoe. She looked around. They were nearly finished. Ramsay and Shackleton could move the furniture back as she stretched the covers over the old cushions and straightened up the sofas neatly. She looked at the old curtains which had been hoovered but really now looked shabby compared to the rest of the room.

  ‘These could do with a clean too.’

  Ramsay moved forward to have a look, then his large foot slipped on the wet, now polished floor and he went straight over onto the sofa and landed, looking very surprised, on Zoe’s newly plumped cushions.

  Zoe watched him carefully. It was the kind of thing – a loss of dignity – that would make many men cross, and find it essential to cover up. Men that really were scary, that really did mean harm, couldn’t bear to be funny.

  Ramsay burst out laughing to find himself in such an awkward position. Then he squinted.

  ‘Did you . . . clean the chandelier?’ he gasped in amazement, and was then even more amazed when Zoe indicated that it was Shackleton who had managed it.

  He grinned even more broadly. ‘Well, I’m glad I tripped over my stupid big feet then,’ he said, screwing up his eyes. ‘Because I am telling you, everything is looking a lot better. Especially from this angle.’

  Patrick jumped up on his father’s chest.

  ‘Can you stay there and be a horse?’ he yelled. Zoe looked at Ramsay, his curls falling back off his tired face, his gentle expression, as his eyes closed briefly before he said, ‘Of course,’ and as Zoe went off to get the tea ready she was surprised to see Hari peek out from behind the curtain – not joining in, but certainly watching the fun.

  ‘You know,’ she said in a voice she tried not to make sound bossier. ‘It’s really good when you hang out with the children. You really ought to do it more often.’

  Everyone froze. Ramsay stood up very slowly.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, his tone now icy. ‘Thank you for your advice. I’m so glad we hired an expert on my family.’

  And he turned and walked away.

  Zoe cursed to herself: she had hoped Ramsay might join them for supper so she could ask him about a dishwasher, a thing they most desperately needed. But they didn’t see him again all evening.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Mrs MacGlone, of course, was absolutely furious.

  If, up until then, Zoe had managed to keep on fairly neutral territory with her – mostly because Mrs MacGlone didn’t expect her to stay; didn’t expect anybody to stay and deal with Shackleton’s sloth, Mary’s unbelievable rudeness and Patrick’s non-stop chattering (she could not have known how bittersweet but still welcome a noisy child was around the place to Zoe’s ears) – this was like a declaration of war; on Mrs MacGlone’s turf, no less. She’d let Shackleton touch the chandelier!

  Of course she realised she wasn’t able to keep the house up to the standards old Laird Urquart would have found acceptable. There were three housemaids in those days, a cook, a laundress, a housekeeper and a butler as well as the garden staff. That’s what it took to keep things straight, whatever thing this slip of a girl thought she was doing. Suppose she thought she was very smart, showing up Mrs MacGlone as lazy or sloppy, which she most certainly was not; it was everything she could do to keep the kitchen, bathrooms and bedrooms more or less straight, the carpet vacuumed and their clothes clean, doing everything the way she’d always done it, since she was not much older than Mary was now. By the time she’d sorted out food and done the shopping, there wasn’t a second left to spare.

  She had quite the furious speech all ready to make to Ramsay the following day so it was doubly annoying when, as was his wont, he shut himself up in his library all day and was nowhere to be seen.

  And if young missy thought she was going to get round those children with fancy food and pancakes and filling them with all sorts of nonsense, she had another think coming. Bribing them would never last for long; she’d seen it before. Maria-Teresa had tried to bribe them with all sorts of sugary junk which had ended up in Patrick losing a tooth because she didn’t supervise teeth brushing, and Mary refusing to eat anything at all and a stand-up row between all of them that had ended, inevitably, with Maria-Teresa and her bag at the end of a drive. Sometimes the girls hitchhiked out. Maria-Teresa had, not altogether unstylishly, driven the green Renault to Inverness station and ditched it with the key in it. Nobody had stolen it by the time Ramsay had got Lennox to drive him up there to fetch it.

  She approached Zoe early in the morning b
efore they entered the kitchen.

  ‘What’s been going on here then?’ she sniffed.

  ‘Oh,’ said Zoe, smiling nervously. ‘I thought we could give you more of a hand round the house?’

  ‘So you don’t think I’m up to it?’

  Mrs MacGlone’s mouth was a hard line.

  ‘That’s not what I think at all! I think you do an amazing job!’ said Zoe. ‘I just thought it might be good for the children to . . . help?’

  ‘So you’ve been here five minutes and you know what’s best for them?’ said Mrs MacGlone. Zoe bit back the retort that little could be worse than the huddle of awkward people she’d stumbled across, like a tiny lifeboat of stragglers left after a shipwreck, washed up, clinging to the kitchen tiles.

  Mrs MacGlone stepped up to her.

  ‘People come and go frae these children’s lives,’ she said in a voice made more threatening by its low tone so nobody could hear her. ‘They come in, they faff about, they make nothing better – and then they leave and we’re right back where we started. The less you do and change, the better, missy.’

  ‘Maybe I’m not like that,’ said Zoe, her voice quivering.

  ‘Och aye, you’re different,’ said Mrs MacGlone. ‘Here you come, on your holidays frae that London, dragging that wee laddie, looking for a free bed. You’ll be here and as soon as you’re back on your feet, you’ll be off again, back to England.’

  She said ‘England’ as if it were a swear word. And the children slouched past on their way to breakfast and didn’t bother saying good morning and it was like nothing had changed at all.

  Chapter Twenty-nine