by Hazel Gaynor
Olivia smiled, partly at his voice and mannerisms, which wouldn’t be out of place among the pages of a Wilde novel, and partly in relief as she realized who he was. “Actually, I’m not that busy. Nothing that can’t wait, anyway. Please, come in.”
Closing the door behind him, the man offered his hand. “Henry Blake. I thought I should look in sooner rather than later.” His eyes scanned the undisturbed shelves, the shop without customers, the expectant hush in the air. “I’m rather glad I did.”
Henry Blake was exactly as Olivia had imagined. Pigeon-gray hair. A generous mustache. Deep brown eyes that flickered with curiosity behind small circular spectacles. A yellow-and-blue spotted handkerchief sprouting from the breast pocket of a smart three-piece tweed suit. He reminded her of a younger version of Pappy, carrying that same joie de vivre like an extra item of clothing. She wasn’t a bit surprised to see that he carried a walking cane. He was perfectly put together from top to toe.
Shaking his hand, she introduced herself properly. “Olivia Kavanagh. I’m very pleased to meet you, Mr. Blake.”
“Henry, please.”
“Sorry. Henry. My grandfather mentioned you in a letter. I was planning to get in touch.” She pulled the scrap of paper from her cardigan pocket, waving it in the air as evidence. “I had your name written down to remind me to call you.”
“Then I’m glad I looked in. I don’t wish to interfere, but a promise is a promise, and here I am.”
Here he was. Her knight in light tweed armor. “Can I get you a cup of tea?”
He shook his head. “Never touch the stuff, which is peculiar and inconvenient of me, I know. You cannot imagine the consternation it causes when I decline. I only drink peppermint tea, you see, and most people have never encountered such a curious thing.”
“I have. I like it. I think I have some in the back.”
“Is that so? Then we shall get along marvelously, you and I, but do you mind if we skip the tea altogether? I fancy a stroll since it’s such a pleasant day.”
Olivia hesitated.
“Ten minutes?” Henry prompted. “I’m sure all your customers will come back tomorrow.” He winked.
Olivia relented. Much as she needed paying customers, she also needed Henry’s help.
As they stepped outside, Mr. Blake remarked on the empty cottage beside the bookshop. “Wasn’t Cormac trying to get his hands on that?”
Olivia sighed. “Yes, but his inquiries never came to anything. Nora Plunkett won’t lease it. She says she’d prefer to leave it empty.”
“Who?”
“Nora Plunkett. She’s the secretary of the local shopkeeping society, or something. Likes to shove her nose into other people’s business. Her husband used to run a furniture business. The empty cottage was his shop. Some of the shop owners think she does wonders, but Pappy never liked her—and he was always a good judge of character—so neither do I.”
They walked together along Little Lane, passing the shops and the bakery with its delicious aromas of vanilla and buttery brioche that made Olivia’s stomach grumble.
“What was Cormac planning to do with the empty shop?” Henry asked.
“I presume he wanted to expand. He didn’t talk about it much. He knew Nora wouldn’t budge. It’s probably for the best anyway. I don’t think adding any more debts to the business would have been a good idea.”
“Indeed. Your grandfather had a great talent for discovering rare books, but in recent years he wasn’t so good at selling them. All that dreadful business with Martha distracted him.” Henry paused, the click click of his cane filling the silence as they walked slowly on. “How is she, by the way?”
“She’s doing okay. I saw her yesterday. The strange thing is that she remembers the distant past quite well. It’s the present she struggles with: what she did a few minutes ago, or an hour ago, or yesterday. She gets terribly confused—forgetting people and places. Even the words she wants to use. She gets very upset.”
“I believe that can often be the case with her condition. Desperately sad. She was always such a vivacious woman.”
Olivia glanced at Henry. “Did you know her well?”
Henry smiled warmly. “I did, yes. Although I knew a much younger version of her. People change so much over time, don’t they? I couldn’t claim to know her now.”
“Nana might have changed, Henry, but I believe that same vivacious woman is still in there. Somewhere.”
Henry said it would be nice to think so.
They sat on a bench beneath the harbor wall, glad to be sheltered from the breeze as they watched the passenger ferries setting out toward England.
“How did you know Pappy, Henry?”
“We met when I was a young man, starting out in lecturing at Trinity. Cormac was a few years older than me and I looked up to him. We became friendly through a mutual love of books, I suppose,” he explained. “Cormac started collecting rare books as a hobby. It was always his dream to open a shop when he retired. I planned to do the same.”
“And did you?”
“Sadly not. Life didn’t quite turn out the way I’d hoped it would.” He ran his fingers across his mustache and took his handkerchief from his pocket to wipe his glasses. “I fell in love, as all young fools do, but the woman I loved couldn’t love me in return, so I took a teaching post in New Zealand. As far away from Ireland as it is possible to go before you start to come back. I lived there for nearly thirty years. Had a marvelous time. Beautiful country.” He perched his glasses on the end of his nose. “I never forgot her.”
Henry’s words were a pinprick to Olivia’s conscience. She acknowledged to herself how easily she’d pushed Jack toward the edge of her heart. Too easily. “What brought you back?” she asked.
“Oh, various things. A longing for home, mostly. I was happy over there. I had a grand life, but I never met anyone quite like her. I suppose you would call her my soul mate. Life always felt terribly off balance without her. I’m afraid this stick of mine makes a very poor substitute for the warmth of her beside me.”
Olivia was touched by Mr. Blake’s gentle humility. “That’s such a sad story, Henry.”
“In one way, yes, but in another, not at all.” He tapped a finger to his head. “I have my memories, you see, and those I can always cherish. Memory is a wonderful gift, which is why it is so cruel to watch someone try to live without it.” He returned his handkerchief to his pocket. “Anyway, I eventually tracked Cormac down here. I couldn’t believe how much his small collection in our shared office had grown into an actual bookshop.”
“And now it’s all mine.”
“So I believe. Cormac told me he planned to leave the shop to you. You know, when the time came.”
“I’m not sure how long it will be mine, Mr. Blake . . . Henry. I love books and I adore the shop, but I don’t know the first thing about the business side.”
“Then I suppose it’s fortunate that I do.”
His words were like a balm to Olivia. “Really? You can help me with all that?”
“Yes, dear. I can help you with all that—with a little help from my nephew. I’m afraid I couldn’t claim to be quite as sharp as I once was! It won’t be easy and there will be difficult decisions to make along the way, but you don’t strike me as the sort of person to shy away from a difficult decision.”
She thought about her phone at the bottom of the sea and all the decisions it had taken down with it. Decisions that would still be waiting for her when—if—she chose to resurface from this self-imposed exile in Ireland, but decisions she would be better able to make because of it.
“Difficult decisions are easy enough, Mr. Blake. The tricky part is deciding to make them in the first place.”
Henry peered knowingly at Olivia through his spectacles. “Quite so, my dear.” He checked his watch and mumbled something to himself. “And I’m afraid I must be going.”
“So soon? I can’t tempt you to that peppermint tea?”
He sa
w the worry in Olivia’s eyes. “You will do superbly well, Olivia. Cormac thought of you as a very special woman. He wouldn’t have entrusted his shop to you if he didn’t believe you were up to the challenge.”
“I don’t want to let him down, Henry. I feel such a huge responsibility to get the bookshop back on its feet. It just . . . well . . . it’s come at a strange time for me.”
Henry studied Olivia with understanding in his eyes. “Life getting in the way of life?”
She smiled. “Something like that.”
“Then perhaps by saving the bookshop, you might save an awful lot more. You’ve been given a beautiful gift. What could be more delightful than a shop full of treasured old books?”
“But nobody wants to buy them, Henry. People don’t value old books anymore.”
“Then your job is to remind them. Remind them what it’s like to hold a real book in their hands. Remind them of all the stories they loved as children. There’s magic in every bookshop, Olivia. You just have to bring people to it. The books will take care of the rest.”
Olivia laughed. “If only it were that easy.”
“But if it were easy it wouldn’t mean anything, would it? Our greatest struggles give us the greatest rewards.” He took hold of her hands, squeezing them tightly. “It was a delight to meet you, Olivia. You are very like Martha when she was younger.” He adjusted his hat and pulled himself up with the support of his cane. “I’ll pop by again in a few days, but do call if you need anything in the meantime.”
Olivia almost told him about London, almost said she didn’t know how long she would be in Ireland, but the words stuck to the roof of her mouth and she swallowed them down in a great guilty gulp and hoped she would never have to tell him.
As she watched Henry walk away, Olivia silently thanked Pappy for his good foresight and his good choice in friends. It was only with a distance between them that she noticed how pronounced Henry’s limp was, the extent to which he leaned to one side.
Whoever she was, he must have loved her very much.
RELUCTANT TO RETURN to the empty rooms of Bluebell Cottage, Olivia ate fish and chips on the harbor wall, dangling her legs over the side just like she used to as a little girl, even though it made her mam anxious.
The breeze nipped at the back of her neck and whipped up a fine sea spray that settled on her hands, leaving sparkling salt crystals as it dried. Fairy dust, she used to call it. She breathed in the fresh air and absorbed the view: tangerine sky and dove-gray sea, ripples on the surface of both, like dragon scales. She savored the sharp tang of vinegar on her tongue, letting her thoughts wander as the sun slowly melted into the sea, turning it to liquid gold. As a child chased the gulls behind her, she closed her eyes to listen to the rush of the waves, and there, among the crash of surf, she heard her mother’s voice, gently urging her to come away from the edge, to come and sit beside her on the seat where she could keep her safe and warm.
It was so easy sometimes to drift back over the years, back to the golden light of a summer’s evening and the comfort of her mother’s arms around her. As she let herself go there now, she heard—so clearly—the voice of a little girl who had once believed in fairies, and in that moment she knew that it was time to start believing in something far more important.
It was time to start believing in herself.
Seven
Ireland. Present day.
The decision to sell Bluebell Cottage didn’t come easily, but despite the sense of abandonment that nagged at her heart, Olivia knew it was the right thing—the only thing—to do.
She hated to say good-bye to the little house on the hill, picture-perfect with its white walls and hyacinth-blue door and the pink and white hydrangeas that bloomed like fat marshmallows in the front garden. It was Nana and Pappy’s fortress, and the thought of letting it go weighed heavily on her mind.
After the accident, Nana and Pappy had done everything they could to make her feel loved and safe at Bluebell Cottage, but it wasn’t a home in the way her friends had homes, with parents and siblings and arguments, and she’d always felt a little like a visitor on an extended holiday. In many ways, Something Old had always felt more like a home to Olivia. It was neutral ground. Hers for the taking. The bookshop was always where her real affections lay.
Once the decision was made, a steady stream of surveyors and estate agents arrived with cameras and measuring tapes and the FOR SALE sign went up by the end of the week. Olivia observed it all with quiet detachment as she bubble-wrapped the breakable contents of her grandparents’ lives and wished it were possible to bubble-wrap people. With each drawer she emptied and each black bin liner she filled with smart suits and pretty dresses that had once waltzed around the local dance hall, she felt both a little lighter and a little more heartsick.
When she wasn’t packing away her grandparents’ lives at the cottage, she began to transform the cluttered old flat above the bookshop, turning it into an acceptable living space, however temporary or permanent. It wasn’t much, with only a sofa bed, a desk, a wardrobe, a kitchenette, and a tiny bathroom—a far cry from the impressive penthouse apartment in London—but there was a lovely rustic charm about the lofty space. With a few scented candles and a jug of fresh flowers on the windowsill, it charmed Olivia, whispering to her through the cracks in the window frame, daring her to be happy there.
THE WARMER WEATHER and the burst of color from the new window boxes brought several customers to the shop. Casual browsers and tourists, rather than serious collectors who might single-handedly save the shop from repossession, but Olivia was grateful for their patronage all the same. Each time the door opened and closed, she felt the shop inhale and exhale, each customer breathing a little life back into the place as the books were opened, remembered, enjoyed. She loved nothing more than to see the neat rows of perfectly ordered spines messed up at the end of the day, loved the gaps left by the books that had gone to new homes.
In the long, silent hours between customers, she started to transfer Pappy’s catalog from his old ledgers onto a new website. She rearranged displays, and wrote up new information labels to replace the more dilapidated ones. Small changes, but big steps in the right direction. It still surprised her when someone brought a book to the desk and gave her money for it. Every time, she had to stop herself from hugging the customer in gratitude.
Most mornings, when Olivia arrived at the shop to open up, she found a note from Iris waiting on the doormat. The notes were often accompanied by a little white flower so that she now had quite a collection in her coffee cup vase, all of them obeying the instruction to Live. On his second visit to the shop, Henry Blake had told her they were rare white harebells that didn’t usually flower until later in the year. He couldn’t understand how they were in bloom this early, or where they could be coming from, suspecting Hemingway. Olivia preferred to believe that there was a more interesting explanation for the appearance of these little flowers than haughty cats.
Inspired by Frances’s memoir and the books and articles she’d found relating to the Cottingley fairies, Olivia decided to create a fairy-themed window display. She added Princess Mary’s Gift Book and Conan Doyle’s The Coming of the Fairies along with the Strand articles and several rare editions of Peter Pan and The Water Babies and other collections of fairy stories. She hung Iris’s letters and drawings on a line of string suspended from each end of the window—a laundry of correspondence—and started drawing a sign to add to the display, sketching out the words “Do You Believe In Fairies?” surrounding the letters with vibrant wildflowers and lush greenery, just like the visions from her dreams. It had been so long since she’d drawn for pleasure that she became completely immersed in her work and didn’t notice the time passing. Only the sound of the shop bell disturbed her.
She smiled as she looked up and saw who it was. “Well, hello, Miss Iris! You’re not lost again, are you?”
Iris giggled. “You wrote back! My letters are in the window!” She turne
d to call through the open door. “Daddy, come on.”
Ross stepped into the shop, his hands held out in helpless apology. “Sorry to bother you—again. She insisted we come back and say hello.”
“That’s okay. It’s lovely to see you.” She directed this comment at Iris, hoping the flush in her cheeks wouldn’t betray her. “I’ve been enjoying your letters, Iris.”
“We wanted to bring you a present to say thank you for helping me when I was lost.” Iris handed Olivia a purple gift bag covered in glitter. “I added the glitter myself.”
“Wow. Thank you.” Olivia glanced at Ross. “But you didn’t need to get me anything.”
Iris stood on her tiptoes, peering into the bag as Olivia took everything out: a miniature blue door, a tiny chair, and three tiny wooden stepping-stones. “It’s a fairy door,” Iris explained. “You put it somewhere and the fairies will come and visit. If you leave them a gift, they might bring you something in return.”
Olivia glanced at Ross, who winked. She knew it must be tough for him being Mammy and Daddy and all the fairies too. Even as a child, Olivia had understood that it was hard for her mammy, raising her on her own. She’d asked only once about her father. The question was met with a pause and her mother had said he couldn’t be with them and that she would do everything she possibly could to be the best Mammy and Daddy. She had done more than that. She had also been Olivia’s best friend.
“It’s lovely, Iris. Thank you.” She was genuinely touched by the gift. The fairy door was very sweet and the kindest thing anyone had done for her in an age.
She turned to Ross. “Thanks so much, but you shouldn’t have.”
He shrugged. “Nothing to do with me. Except the paying part.”
Olivia smiled. “Well, I love it. Where do you think I should put it, Iris?”
“In the window?”
“Great idea. Why don’t you go and choose a good spot.”
Ross lowered his voice as Iris wandered over to the window. “Listen. Thanks a million for writing the notes. She’s been through a tough time lately.” Olivia felt the pause as he steeled himself to say it. “I lost my wife last year. Iris’s letters to you and that photograph of the girl and the fairies are the first thing she’s shown any real enthusiasm for since.”