The Bookshop of Second Chances

by Jackie Fraser

  What a gorgeous day. I feel my spirits lift further. You could almost say I was happy. I don’t like to address this thought head on, though, because if you look at happiness it usually disappears, a shy creature. And also – it’s just a layer, isn’t it, a moment’s joy, come from nature, sunshine and seaside, overlaying everything else.

  Since I’ve been up here, I haven’t ever been as unhappy as I was in the first month or so after Chris left. It would be impossible, I think, to sustain that level of misery. It’s a slow journey but things will improve; have improved – but I also know that in some ways I’m avoiding having to deal with my feelings. It’s easy not to think about it because I’ve come somewhere else. That ‘change of scene’ they talk about. Being busy in a new place allows you to avoid looking at things you should maybe look at. There are things I need to work on and I worry that this is merely displacement. That when I go home to my horrible flat, which is costing me money despite its emptiness, I’ll be back where I was when I left; none of it addressed or fixed at all. I shiver, as though the sun has passed behind a cloud, although there are no clouds, the sky a dense and brazen blue in every direction.

  * * *

  I’m lying on the beach peering at shells when Edward runs past me, leaping over patches of pebbles, dropping a towel on an exposed rock and wading out into the water. He doesn’t edge cautiously in but flings himself carelessly into the waves. I should think the water’s still cold, even if it is nearly August. I sit up and watch him as he front-crawls, rather splashily, across the bay. I’m jealous; I can’t remember the last time I swam in the sea.

  Holding my now-heavy bag, into which I have gathered interestingly striped stones, limpet shells worn away to narrow loops and rings, and some pale blue-green sea glass, I walk down towards the water. There are three-toed gull footprints on the sand. And smaller ones – oystercatchers? Lacy wavelets ripple towards me and I look out to sea and the distant swimmer, and step into the water, which is, as anticipated, freezing. At first it seems too cold but I quickly accustom and walk out, jumping over the wavelets as I did as a child. Soon the water’s halfway up my calves and a larger wave slaps against my knees, making me gasp and laugh. My toes dig into the sand, my ears are full of the sound of the waves and again I am conscious of a precise moment of happiness.

  * * *

  Back at the Shed, I empty my finds into the sink to wash the sand off them, and then arrange them on a plate which I put on the lawn in the sun. I poke about in the hot silence, opening the bathroom door – the smell of sun-warmed wood, a view through the top half of the window, which is clear glass, contrasting with the bottom half, which is frosted, of the trees on the edge of the property. A large old-fashioned basin, a toilet. Clean but basic. There’s no actual bath, just a shower pan with a curtain in the corner. The shower itself is just one of those rubber tubes that you to attach to bath taps. There’s only one tap – I assume because there’s no hot water. A cold shower in Scotland seems unnecessarily harsh, but I suppose it’s good enough for rinsing salt out of your hair. There’s an old white-painted medicine cabinet on the wall, and above the sink a mirror on a chain, rectangular, with angled edges, vaguely deco. Perhaps it’s been hanging there since the Shed was built. Etched with flowers, it reminds me of the one my Hamilton grandparents had in their bedroom. It amuses me to think that, just possibly, it might have been bought in the same shop.

  Opposite the bathroom, another door, which I open. The room is dark, the window still shuttered. I open the door wider to allow in as much light as possible. There are faded curtains in a splashy seventies flower print. The bed is larger than a single, but not as big as a double. Did Edward’s parents sleep in here? With the boys in the main room? It’s hard to imagine Lord and Lady Whatsit in here. There’s a small, slightly wonky wardrobe, a bookcase stuffed with paperbacks, and a chest of drawers, all in smooth, yellowy wood on stumpy legs. On top of the chest of drawers, a selection of shells and rocks, and something which, as I peer at it, I decide might be a whale’s vertebra. There’s an old Kilner jar half full of beach glass. Folded on the neatly made bed are towels and blankets. The room smells of dust and pillows. On the back of the door, a bright orange waterproof jacket, a mirror that matches the one in the bathroom, and hanging beside it a framed photograph of a woman, sitting outside the Shed, shading her eyes against the sun. Her hair and outfit – loose-fitting white dress but with shoes and stockings – put her somewhere in the twenties or thirties. Edward’s grandmother, is my guess; wife of the man who built the Shed.

  I love how quiet it is. The silence, the smell of warm wood. The distant waves. Uncle Andrew’s is quiet – in fact probably quieter, since there’s no ocean – but this feels more isolated and empty. I know Edward said there are more holiday homes further round, but you can’t see them from here. And I’ve a theory that when you go to a place with somebody else, and that person leaves, it’s quieter than a place you’ve gone to alone.

  I go back outside and shade my eyes, looking out to see if I can spot Edward. I can’t see him anywhere, and am just about to feel slightly anxious when his head appears above the rocks as he climbs back into the garden.

  ‘Hey. Good swim?’

  ‘Fantastic, thanks. I feel suitably invigorated. And I’m starving. Ready for lunch?’

  ‘Oh yeah, sure. Let me help.’

  ‘Okay,’ he says, ‘you can fetch things if you like. Plates. Frying pan. Some sort of’ – he gestures – ‘implement. I was going to make a tomato salad, so you could chop up tomatoes. I usually drag the table over to the barbecue. I’ll go and get dressed; won’t be a mo.’

  He rubs his head briskly with the towel as he moves away. The dark hair on his legs and belly is uncurled by the water, pulled dead straight. It’s odd to see someone mostly naked, difficult to know where to look. Previously I’ve never seen his feet, or even his forearms. He has swimmers’ shoulders, broad and muscular in an understated way, and an unexpected scatter of freckles across his arms and chest. I try not to look at him, feeling embarrassed. I’d be deeply resentful if I was in a bathing suit myself and thought someone was thinking anything at all about my body. Jesus.

  Eleven

  Later, as we sit on the bench looking out over the bay, eating pan-fried mackerel and tomato salad, I ask him if he often brings people here in the summer.

  ‘People? No, hardly ever. Usually come by myself. Brought Rory and one of his mates down last year. We got very drunk.’

  ‘Gosh, really?’

  ‘Yes, tragic isn’t it. They could be my kids.’ He slices his fish into pieces and avoids my eye.

  ‘Well…’

  ‘Mm. Pretty tragic. Wasn’t the plan, but they brought some beer, and…’

  I consider this. ‘Rory doesn’t seem like a drinker.’

  ‘But he’s young though, isn’t he? Even if you’re not a drinker, you can still drink a lot at eighteen. Or seventeen. More than I can, anyway. I was sick as a dog.’

  ‘So no drunken parties down here this year?’

  ‘I’m a solitary creature,’ he says. ‘Mostly.’

  * * *

  After lunch, we lie on blankets on the grass, shaded by the parasol. It’s unbelievably hot, and I’m drowsy. I feel my eyes close and my head nod.

  ‘Sleepy?’

  ‘Looks like it.’

  ‘Have a nap. I’ll wake you in an hour. If you like.’

  ‘Seems a waste,’ I object, but I’m drifting.

  * * *

  When I wake up, I feel quite odd, uncertain of where I am, self-conscious in case I snored. My neck’s stiff and I blink unsteadily at the distant sea. Edward’s not beside me any longer. I sit up awkwardly and look round for him.

  He comes out of the Shed. ‘Ah,’ he says, ‘there you are. Champagne?’ He hands me a tumbler. ‘Sorry, those are the only glasses I’ve got. Except pint glasses.’

  ‘I do usually drink champagne by the pint.’

  He laughs. ‘Oh yeah?’
<
br />   I stretch, shifting on the blanket. ‘Thanks. God it’s warm.’ I raise my glass to him and then sip my champagne. ‘This is the life though.’

  He grins at me. ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s just lovely; you’re very lucky.’

  ‘Hm. Am I? I suppose I am.’ He looks away, closed off again, I wish he wasn’t so touchy. Never quite himself, always… It isn’t that he’s awkward, exactly, or I don’t think it’s that anyway. There’s just something strange about him, an indefinable tension.

  He sighs. ‘We used to come down most weekends in the summer, when I was a kid. I always thought my father was most able to be himself down here. At the house, it’s a bit more formal.’

  I raise my eyebrows, amused. ‘A bit.’

  ‘And it was worse, of course, in those days. My grandfather was a formal sort of chap. He died when I was eight. I imagine he ran things the way his father had and so on, or tried to, although we were down to three staff by then. My father was more of a free spirit. Sort of. He was drinking a lot, then. They used to fight.’

  I watch him. This is a lot more than he’s ever told me before.

  ‘Once my father inherited the title, it was as though he’d been taken over by the’ – he pauses, pulling up grass – ‘weight of history, or something. He stopped drinking, but by the time I was fifteen we were having almost exactly the same fights I’d listened to as a child.’

  ‘That’s quite depressing.’

  ‘Yeah. Yeah, it was.’

  ‘And, um – how old were you, then, when he died?’

  ‘Twenty-five.’

  ‘And you…’

  ‘I’d already decided I was going to give it up, when I was still at university. He went predictably nuts, when I told him.’

  ‘But surely,’ I say, ‘I mean, your brother–’

  ‘I can’t imagine how much more furious he’d have been if I was an only child. Or, God forbid, Charles had been a girl. It would probably have killed him.’

  I think about this. ‘Well, but Charles isn’t a girl, and you weren’t an only child, and it didn’t kill him.’

  ‘No. And I know it was the right thing to do. But he wouldn’t even try to understand it. Never forgave me.’

  ‘Does that… Is that a thing that worries you?’

  He flicks grass off the rug. ‘No. Sort of. Sometimes. Mostly not.’

  ‘I suppose it’s only to be expected, that you might feel ambivalent about it. But you don’t miss the house? Or regret not being, you know, Lord Thing?’

  ‘Jesus, no. No.’

  ‘There you are then. You can’t please everyone, and parents are weird. And even parents without any history are peculiar, so…’

  He frowns at me. ‘What are your parents like?’

  ‘Oh, well, they’re okay. They potter, you know; retired. Although they’re not pottering at the moment, the mad bastards. They’re halfway through a trip round the world. I think they’re in Cambodia. Or Laos.’ I shake my head at the idea of it.

  ‘Are they? Shit, you never tell me anything, do you?’

  I grin at him. ‘Sorry, boss. Anyway. I don’t think they ever had any particular expectations of me, so I haven’t been able to let them down too much.’ I smile to show I’m joking, although I don’t know if I am, really.

  ‘There’s just you? Or have you got brothers and sisters?’

  ‘No, there’s just me.’

  ‘And your dad’s from up here?’

  ‘Not really. Grandad moved to Birmingham before the war, and then down to Chichester, that’s where he met my grandmother. He was an engineer,’ I add. ‘He didn’t fight. Reserved occupation.’

  ‘Is that where you live? Chichester?’

  ‘It’s where I grew up.’ I’m not sure where I live now. I don’t say this though.

  * * *

  ‘Another glass?’

  ‘Oh, go on then. I don’t usually drink during the day; I should be careful.’

  ‘Careful?’ He raises an eyebrow, almost flirty.

  ‘I don’t want to be hungover at half seven. Ghastly feeling.’

  ‘Always a risk.’ He gets up to fetch the champagne from the slate-lined hole in the ground and tops up my glass.

  ‘Cheers. Do you really sleep outside when you stay here?’

  ‘Sometimes, depends on the weather.’

  ‘Isn’t there, like, dew?’

  He laughs at me. ‘Yes, but I can handle it. And the sofa’s very comfortable, if I’m feeling delicate.’

  ‘It’s just the ground seems to be getting harder and harder,’ I say, ‘or it feels like it.’

  ‘I’ll get you more cushions, if you like?’

  I shuffle about, and stand up to stretch. ‘Maybe I should go for a walk. But then my drink would get warm. Oh, it’s difficult.’

  ‘Take your drink with you,’ he suggests. ‘If you walk for about fifteen minutes, there’s another bay.’

  ‘Fifteen minutes? I’m not sure I can be arsed with that. Anyway, I’ll finish my drink before I get there and be tempted to throw the glass in a bush so I don’t have to carry it.’

  This makes him laugh a lot. ‘You could put it on a wall and pick it up on the way back.’

  ‘Don’t enable my laziness,’ I tell him. ‘I’ll just walk on the beach.’

  * * *

  When I get back to the garden, slightly cooler from paddling and with my empty glass, Edward has moved the parasol, following the sun, and is leaning against the wall of the Shed, legs stretched out on the rug, his book spread open on the grass beside him and a tray in his lap. He looks up and pushes his sunglasses onto the top of his head.

  ‘Better?’

  ‘Yes, thanks. What are you doing?’ I drop my sandals on the grass. The empty champagne bottle stands on the table, an open bottle of wine beside it. I look at this, thinking, then make a decision and pour some into my glass. He holds the tray out towards me, so I can see the contents. It’s what we used to refer to as ‘paraphernalia’ – a packet of cigarettes, adorned with a cancerous lung; a torn Rizla packet, an assemblage of cigarette papers. I’m mildly surprised.

  ‘You don’t mind, do you?’ he asks.

  ‘God, no.’

  ‘There’s something about a sunny afternoon,’ he says.

  I watch him for a moment, and sniff. ‘Is it skunk? I hate skunk.’

  ‘No, it’s just homegrown, not very strong. You’d be able to smell it, wouldn’t you, if it was skunk.’

  ‘I suppose.’ I think of the white-painted windows of the greenhouse in the garden at the shop. ‘Did you grow it?’

  ‘No. Get it off a bloke. D’you smoke?’

  ‘Not for years.’

  He licks the edge of the papers and seals the joint closed. ‘Want some of this?’

  ‘Dunno.’ I sit beside him, back against the warm wood. ‘Didn’t have you down as a stoner.’

  ‘Jesus Christ. I’m hardly a stoner.’

  I laugh. ‘You’re easy to wind up though, aren’t you? Maybe you should allow the essence of stoner into your life. You need to relax.’

  ‘I am relaxed.’

  I snort. ‘Yeah, right. Riddled with tension.’

  ‘I am not riddled with tension.’

  ‘Gosh, no, sorry, must be thinking of someone else.’

  ‘You know you’re extremely cheeky.’

  ‘It’s good for you,’ I tell him.

  He lights the joint and inhales. ‘Is that so?’ he says through a cloud of smoke.

  ‘Everyone takes you so seriously, don’t they? It can’t help.’

  ‘Help?’

  ‘Help you not be an arse.’ There’s a pause, long enough for me to wonder if I’ve been horribly rude.

  ‘Am I an arse?’

  I feel sorry for him, suddenly. ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘I think it’s a pose, isn’t it? Anyway, you’ve been very kind to me. Today especially.’

  ‘I have, haven’t I?’

  ‘It was lovely of you to i
nvite me.’

  ‘I suppose it was. Mind you, I’d be here on my own if I hadn’t.’

  I watch him for a moment as he smokes. ‘Are you lonely?’ I’ve wondered about this.

  There’s another long pause while he considers. ‘No. I think one has to like people more than I do to be lonely.’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s true. Even if you don’t like people much, you can still be lonely. But you’re not, so that’s good.’ I pull my knees up and rest my wrists on them, lacing my fingers.

  ‘What about you? Out in the middle of nowhere by yourself. Not what you’re used to, surely. I didn’t expect you to stay for so long.’

  ‘No, neither did I. Anyway, that’s one of the reasons I decided I should get a job. I’m not used to being on my own. I wouldn’t say I was lonely though.’

  ‘And what about Mr Mottram? Is he lonely without you? I wouldn’t be happy if my wife buggered off for months at a time.’

  I’m not sure what to say to this. Perhaps I should just tell him, it’s not like it matters. ‘I doubt he’s lonely,’ I say. ‘He lives with someone else.’

  There’s a brief silence. I listen to the waves and the faint crackle of the burning cigarette paper as Edward draws the air through it. He frowns at me through the smoke.

  ‘What, as in–’

  ‘We’re, um… He left,’ I say.

  ‘Recently?’

  ‘Not that recently. January.’

  ‘God. You didn’t say. Why didn’t you say?’

  I shrug. ‘That’s one of the reasons I came here. Well, I’d have had to come up anyway. But that’s one of the reasons I’m still here. I mean, I didn’t have to go home. Because I don’t live there; someone else does.’