Mrs P's Book of Secrets

by Lorna Gray

  But all the same, this sense of the smaller legacy of my loss must have been in me all along to have surfaced now. And it must be said that Robert Underhill hadn’t actually asked. He had been concerned for my welfare and he had meant it kindly. But it was the faint compliment that had been given in the unguarded moment afterwards that was really meddling with the way I chose to confront what had happened to me during the war.

  It made it impossible to consider that tomorrow I would simply be a representative of Kershaw and Kathay Book Press going to meet an author about her book. Because the author was a widow and, therefore, as far as my colleague was concerned – and anybody else who chose to worry about me – I must remember that I was one too.

  Chapter 5

  In spite of all those unhappy thoughts at three o’clock in the morning, I believe that the distress of a hard experience did sometimes give me the freedom to be clearer about what I really wanted.

  It must depend on the scale of the shock, naturally, but last night, once it had been established that I wouldn’t sleep until the traces of the nightmare had been shed, I whiled away the hour of wakefulness by beginning the manuscript of Miss Prichard’s book. Memory wove its way through every page; through her study of the written record for herbal medicines from centuries before, and through the life she’d led with the old doctor who had been brilliant in his field.

  There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance – and, in less Shakespearean terms, the herb represented the power to recall lives lost and lives present. It actually possessed certain properties that might help. In bygone years it would have been carried at weddings and set upon the coffin at funerals. It had no influence upon either happiness or sadness, it simply asserted the value of ever having met each other. And the importance of fixing their memory upon your soul.

  This morning, when I stepped out to catch the bus to Cirencester at twenty-five minutes past seven, I might have been a childless widow but I was also remembering that I was really enjoying the prospect of a day out.

  The day hadn’t yet fully dawned. A thin scatter of stallholders for the Tuesday market were grimly laying out wares with the air of people who knew that this was not going to be one of those bright busy days. Any townsfolk who possessed the energy for early morning bustle were climbing onto this bus, including a well-to-do gentleman in suit, raincoat and hat who was, as it turned out, Doctor Bates.

  ‘Mrs P,’ he said cheerfully by way of a greeting. He must have picked up this version of my name from Amy, only from him it sounded like ‘pea’ rather than simply the initial letter.

  He settled beside me on a seat that squeaked and received his little paper ticket from the conductor. I watched him fold it into a breast pocket in a way that made me certain he was going to misplace it for his return trip.

  Oblivious, Doctor Bates turned to me and asked, ‘Off on a pleasure trip?’

  I showed him the parcel containing the book.

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘You work hard at both extremes of the day, it seems.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘I saw that the lights were on late at the office last night. Your uncle’s got you handling a last minute rush before Christmas, has he?’

  This was the first time I had ever met the man on my own. In the two months since I had taken my job, I had stepped down into the shop on perhaps a dozen separate days to find him chatting with Amy. Today, I shook my head in the midst of making my own dealings with the conductor, and said calmly, ‘That was a late telephone call with the author I’m visiting today. Everyone else had gone home.’

  Yesterday, I had tried several times through the rest of the afternoon and into the evening to reach Jacqueline. At about seven o’clock she had finally answered, so I knew where I was going and that she would be there to meet me. To her credit, she had actually offered to make the journey herself and come to the office. But I hadn’t let her. I really was running away.

  The bus cemented my escape by rattling into the line of traffic heading south. The windows were steaming up already. Through the fog of too many people breathing in a confined space, Doctor Bates was remarking, ‘The place was lit on Saturday too.’

  ‘You really are determined to consider me overworked, aren’t you?’ I replied. ‘You probably saw the lights from the stairs. I had my sister visiting and the stairs are lethal in the dark.’

  ‘Lives locally, does she?’

  ‘No – in Worcester. We like to catch up.’ I realised at last that I was in a way blaming this man for that uncomfortable morning I’d spent gossiping about Robert. I made an effort to be more conversational. ‘Where are you going today?’

  He didn’t notice my change of tone at all. Instead he asked, ‘Is she an older sister?’

  ‘Rachel is a year younger. She and I shared rooms in Bristol for a few years while she was based there too.’

  I actually had three older brothers – two who had survived the war through working very hard in farming, and a third who had simply been very lucky abroad. Rachel had been followed by two even younger siblings, but I didn’t give Doctor Bates room to ask that. Given half a chance, the question would come, I was sure of it. It was what I believed everyone did. People who knew my aunt and uncle would discover this little detail about my other family and then, by degrees, move towards weighing and measuring my feelings about the history that had brought me to Moreton.

  And they particularly enjoyed discovering that my move to my aunt and uncle’s home had coincided with the conception of the child who had followed Rachel. Presumably they suspected, not unreasonably, that the family farmhouse would have been growing a little full.

  So, to cut him off at the start, I asked again, ‘Which stop are you travelling to today?’

  ‘Stow-on-the-Wold. I like to catch up with family too.’ Doctor Bates smiled at me. And then he made it clear that he had never been interested in probing the wholesomeness of my current relationship with my siblings because it turned out that the doctor was perfectly normal and self-centred, and had merely been thinking about his own concerns.

  In the next moment he was ducking his head to be heard over the roar of the bus, and saying with a sheepish kind of charm, ‘So, I know I shouldn’t expect you to tell me, but I can’t bear the suspense. What does your Mr Underhill think of my landlady’s little story?’

  His barefaced determination to oversee his landlady’s project amused me. It suited my mood this morning. Suddenly it was easier to see what Amy liked about this man – and it mattered what she thought because Amy had to be one of the kindest women I knew, even if she didn’t value bits of ribbon that came out of advent calendars.

  The dim lights that studded the ceiling of this bus were making his hair shine. It was very fair and drooping over his brow to cast a soft shadow across his eye. And the only part that didn’t quite suit him was that I couldn’t help thinking that eight o’clock – the time of his expected arrival in Stow – would be a very early hour to be bestowing visits upon any family.

  I told him flatly, ‘I don’t know what Mr Underhill thinks, or at least nothing beyond the fact he recommended that I should take a look. But I—’

  ‘He’s read it already has he? Or do you do the reading for him?’

  I let my eyebrows rise at that, quite pointedly. It made him grin. ‘All right,’ he conceded, ‘If you won’t let me examine the balance of work between you, your uncle and this other editor, what can you tell me?’

  ‘That Mr Underhill read the manuscript over the weekend? And now it’s my turn?’ I offered. And that amused him too.

  The doctor had a good smile. It offset the way he was one of those men who was more self-assured than generally suited my tastes. This was because, to be frank, in a north Cotswold town, his sort of cultured good looks tended to run hand in hand with a person exuding a certain degree of wealth and class, and expecting the same from his friends.

  In short, Doctor Bates was handsome without my finding him absolutely attractive, which wa
s a terrible thing to admit, really. Although, I didn’t imagine the doctor was thinking seriously of me either.

  He probably saw a woman with wavy hair and a decent figure, but wearing an office girl’s idea of slacks beneath a winter coat and lacking quite the right manner for higher calibre society. And that last thought was where my embarrassment crashed in.

  It rushed all of a sudden into my skin, and it came from the disconcerting realisation that I was thinking in this way at all – that I was thinking about my own attractiveness, I mean.

  I was acting as though it were natural to see my body as more than a mere count of limbs, when in truth my recent years had been consumed by a numb sort of sexlessness. And I couldn’t have entirely said at this moment which extreme I preferred.

  Either way, the effort of discovering this part of myself made me thoroughly self-conscious. I was even more thoroughly afraid that this man would notice my blush. He might think it was for his benefit.

  And in the space between one uncomfortable heartbeat and the next, the pressure of containing all this tipped me into saying recklessly, ‘Actually, I’ve just got to the part of Miss Prichard’s manuscript where she lists the chemical properties of nettles and sets them against a seventeenth century remedy for improving mobility. Miss Prichard is wonderfully scientific really, isn’t she?’

  ‘Well, yes. Her book is impressive. But you’re speaking to a doctor. I’m better qualified to give an opinion about treatments that have been founded in modern science, not the kind of quackery that stems from potions and lotions and old wives tales.’

  His reply was given in a way that made me think he believed we were speaking about a herbal recipe book. Clearly, he hadn’t actually read the manuscript.

  Now he was worrying if the distant gleam of light from a house ahead was a sign we were approaching his stop. We weren’t. The building was merely a farmhouse, grey and sagging.

  The farm flashed by and left me to notice belatedly that the doctor was saying in a very different kind of voice, ‘So when you make this sort of book, how much does the author get?’

  His sudden change of manner helped me to settle my self-conscious flush back to a sensible colour. I asked him, ‘How do you mean?’

  He had his hat set upon his knee with his fingers gripping its brim. His thumb smoothed a ruffled patch on the felt. ‘Well, if for example you sell one book, how much will Miss Prichard get from it?’

  It was a common enough question from our new authors or, indeed, their friends so I tried to meet him with equal steadiness. ‘It rather depends on where we sell it. If we sell it through our own shop, the costs for us are lower so she’d get marginally more. If it gets sold by another bookshop or if a wholesaler takes a box full or something, they have to take their cut too. And we have to send the books out in the first place. All those costs have to be accounted for.’

  This sounded unattractively dry, even to me as the woman who would be typing up the publisher’s letter, so I added, ‘Our authors do get a very good royalty rate from us though.’

  ‘So what you’re saying is that if the book sells for a few shillings, you’ll take your fee, the bookseller takes theirs and so will the postman and anyone else who claims to have a stake in it. And after all that, Miss Prichard will have to make do with the penny or so that is left over. Is that right?’

  My companion added on a wistful note, ‘I’m sure you know what you’re doing, Mrs P, but it does seem to me that authors really are the last person to make any money from their books.’

  It was remarks such as these which made me wish that more people looked at the books in their hands and tried for a moment to sense all the human lives who had contributed to the task of bringing it to them.

  I replied calmly, ‘If we’re recognising the bookseller and the postman and so on, you might also think of the typesetter, who will lovingly lay out all those lines of text. Or the hands that will direct the binding.’ I hesitated. ‘I don’t know if I should tell you this because it will sound too sentimental, but I think books are a beautiful monument to unity.’

  Whereas, by contrast, the bus driver’s handling of the road was rattling my teeth, and Doctor Bates had no idea of anybody’s united effort.

  My neighbour was only saying blankly, ‘Are you referring to Mr Lock?’

  Then he admitted, ‘If I’m honest, I’m really worrying about the fee your uncle is planning to charge Miss Prichard for the pleasure of seeing her book finished.’

  ‘In that case, I don’t know if I should tell you that none of us makes a lot of money out of selling books,’ I replied gently. ‘It’s perfectly true, though.’

  ‘Your uncle seems to be making enough to pay your wages. And for that man Underhill.’

  ‘Because without us, Uncle George couldn’t possibly manage all the work himself.’ I shouldn’t have said that. A painfully defensive note was creeping in as though I too thought it exploitative to expect our authors to pay their way when surely this might all be done simply for the love of books.

  I added feebly, ‘We’re a very small book press, Doctor Bates, and the war hasn’t been kind. Even in the years before every supply of paper and ink was rationed – when it wasn’t so hard to print enough books to make a title profitable – our reach was never as large as one of the big London publishers. We’ve always had to ask our authors to bear some of the risk just to make sure the project was viable.’

  This wasn’t helping. I tried a different tack. ‘We all have to charge people. How would you feel if I asked about your decision to buy your way into your present practice? You must have done it, after all, on the principle that you would make a reasonable rate of return?’

  It was an utterly foolish thing to say. I made him laugh. Then he countered cheerfully, ‘My whole livelihood is about to be adjusted to make things easier for people who have every need of my expertise but no means of paying the fee, just as soon as the new National Health Service comes in.’

  It was at times like these that I felt very much the newcomer to this town. I didn’t know this man very well and I didn’t know how honest I ought to be. Particularly when, to him, I wasn’t myself, as such. I was clearly being cast again as Mrs Lucinda Peuse, typist and telephonist and present representative of Kershaw and Kathay Book Press.

  I said more sensibly, ‘I’m sorry. I’m doing a terrible job of explaining how our style of publishing service is truly very valuable. In no small way, it is testimony to my uncle’s commitment to his work that the effects of the war have never made him miss a step. Our authors come to us because we still care to make the special books that mightn’t sell in the thousands but still are absolutely valuable to the reading world at large. I think Miss Prichard’s manuscript is set to become one of those special books.’

  And it was then that I realised that it sounded as though I had just reduced Miss Prichard’s effort to the level of frivolous nonsense. Only it wasn’t fair because I always seemed humbling myself at the moment and discovering that I didn’t know my job. I had thought that the feeling might be because I was a woman and I often seemed to be justifying myself to men. But actually, in this instance, the issue of gender was clearly irrelevant because in the next breath the doctor proved that he wasn’t trying to ridicule me. He betrayed his true interest. He was concerned about Robert.

  The doctor gave a brief smile that lightly bared his teeth. ‘You have to understand that I’m just trying to be a good friend to my landlady. But this Mr Underhill. He isn’t even a book man is he? He only joined your uncle’s business in the spring. He was going to be a doctor and then he was a prisoner of war. You can’t tell me that the Germans ran an extensive library in their camps. So how is a man like that even qualified to tell a person how to write a better book?’

  I didn’t like to say that I didn’t know how Robert had got the job either; that I didn’t even know the practicalities of how he had met my uncle.

  Instead I replied, ‘That is probably why he’s so goo
d at it, shouldn’t you say? He experienced all that and now he’s here. And I can ask you about bookishness since you really are a doctor. Didn’t you have to do an awful lot of reading when you were a medical student?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Doctor Bates. I saw it pass across his mouth – that urge to pursue his cause, followed swiftly by a certain degree of gratification for the compliment. That mouth conceded, ‘Well yes, I did have to read extensively. Great volumes of studies and all sorts of journals and so on. Medicine is a language all in its own right, you know. In fact, I’m sure you do know, Mrs P, because you’re observant. But …’

  I caught his sideways glance. Flattery could be applied as a counterattack too it seemed. Then he gave it up. He abruptly looked at the road ahead and used it as a cue to set his hat upon his head.

  In a voice that was suddenly brisk and undisguised, he remarked, ‘We’re coming into Stow. Thank you for answering my questions. Will you tell Mr Underhill that I’ve advised Miss Prichard to take another look at the offer she might have from Nuneham’s? Let’s help the old lady along a little at the very least, shall we, you and I?’

  ‘I thought you’d encouraged her to submit her work to us in the first place?’ I was thinking of that vague insinuation Robert had made.

  But the doctor only said, ‘No. She didn’t discuss it with me beforehand. So, what about that rival offer – will you tell him what I said?’

  The bus was swinging to a fearsome stop in a small town that seemed even colder and greyer than Moreton. And then he was rising to his feet and I was putting out a hand as if to check him, only to have to use it instead as a brace against the rim of the furthermost seat in front of me as the bus lurched towards the kerb.

  I was saying quickly, ‘Just a moment. Since we’re speaking of helping people, can you tell me if I need to worry about the health of my aunt or uncle?’

  It was only afterwards that I realised my plea had sounded like a barter for assistance. A trade of his particular knowledge for mine.