Three Things You Need to Know About Rockets

by Jessica Fox

  Euan opened up the side door of the van and stood aside for me to grab my things. I struggled with all my bags, and followed him past the two columns of spiralling books into the dark interior of the Bookshop. A sweet, clear clang rang out as we passed through, and I looked up to see a golden bell. I held my breath. It had been just like the one in my dream and was hanging delicately above the door, as real as the pavement beneath my feet just a moment before.

  Set aglow by the setting sun, the magic of the Bookshop was on display. Dark wooden shelves stuffed with books surrounded me as the room opened into a large gallery. My nostrils were filled with the musky aroma of old pages and dust. There were original fireplaces set into the walls, hardwood floors that seemed to stretch on and on, chandeliers overhead, and, in the shadows of the evening, I could see that there were little treasures and trinkets everywhere to reward the observer, creating an atmosphere that was both intimate and grand. Oil paintings rested against walls while random antiques – a bowler hat here or a stuffed pheasant there – were artfully and often humorously set on display. Through another doorway, past the Children’s section and into a long hall, Euan pointed above me and I looked up to see a skeleton hanging from the ceiling, playing the violin.

  “This is amazing; it can’t be real,” I had repeated like an incantation. Euan laughed at my American enthusiasm.

  “I’m glad you like it.” His eyes twinkled and I could tell he was pleased.

  “How big is it? It goes on for ever,” I said as Euan led the way.

  As we continued further in, rooms opened on to each other, each with its own character. “The Transportation Room” was a small stone room off the main hall filled with books on transportation of all kinds. Under the room’s wooden floor Euan opened a trap door to reveal a working model train, which rode through a replica of Wigtown’s square – it was so secret and hidden that no one would have known it was there. Further down was the large “Scottish Room”, with shelves that rose to the ceiling filled with books on all things Scotland, including a whole section dedicated to Sir Walter Scott. The hall then led to a door into the garden, where there was a small stone building aptly named “The Garden Room”, stuffed full of more books and antiques.

  Back in the main bookshop, as we walked through the winding hall towards the staircase, there were even more fireplaces and interesting nooks and crannies to get lost in. The setting was like something out of Harry Potter. It was, indeed, the ideal bookshop.

  Sweeping up a gracious, bookshelf-lined flight of stairs, we stopped at the first landing, which opened onto a hallway, connecting different rooms. A large stag’s head looked down on me disapprovingly as I stood taking it all in. The hall, too, felt grandly eccentric, decorated with oil paintings of dark and mysterious landscapes in gilt frames. I craned my neck, looking up through the stairwell to see two more flights topped by an arched ceiling that seemed to go to true cathedral height, lined with ornate cornicing.

  “This is incredible,” I said, immediately feeling like a broken record. “Sorry I keep on repeating myself, but your house is making me speechless.”

  Euan laughed again. I blushed but secretly felt jubilant. I had no idea I was so amusing.

  “I promise to give you a proper tour tomorrow, when it’s light,” he said, opening the door to his right. “For now you must be hungry.”

  I smiled politely but had absolutely no desire to eat. All I really wanted to do was explore the stacks of books downstairs. The impulse that had brought me here, my dream, had suddenly taken on a life of its own, showing me things that were beyond and better than anything I could have imagined. Having followed the white rabbit, I was now tumbling down the rabbit hole and I wanted to see everything it had to offer.

  Euan opened the door to our right and the soft murmur of chatter escaped into the hall. Other guests? Faced with such unexpected socialising, my excitement drained away and I felt all of a sudden incredibly tired. Euan beckoned me to follow. Obediently, I slipped through the doorway and found myself in a large, charming, dimly lit kitchen with cream-coloured walls and mint-green cabinets. On one side of the room laundry hung from an old-fashioned wooden rack, attached to the ceiling on a pulley. A large schoolhouse clock hung over a flower-filled mantelpiece and a cast-iron stove glowed in the fireplace. Candles flickered on the table, among a mass of empty bottles and glasses.

  Around the large wooden table were seated four guests, two women and two men, and they all looked up expectantly. The men quickly stood when they saw me. I couldn’t have imagined the same kind of gentlemanly courtesy in America, let alone at an LA dinner party.

  In a tangled chorus of friendly hellos, the guests viewed me with curiosity. One of them, a young woman with long blonde hair and blue eyes, pushed out a chair.

  “Don’t be rude, Euan,” she said with a secret delight all of her own and watched as Euan made his way to the table. Her voice was musical, with a rounded Wigtownshire accent. “Be a good host and get the American a drink. We’ve been waiting for you. Come sit by me. I’m Hannah. Have some pie.”

  As commanded, I found a chair near Hannah and she slid over a plate of bramble tart. Her beautiful, open face was as disarming as her manner. My fork dipped into the pie but I was exhausted. Jet-lag had now firmly taken hold.

  “That’s Hannah,” Euan said and stressed the next words. “My employee.”

  “Favourite employee,” she interrupted.

  Euan shook his head. “Troubled employee.”

  I laughed and Hannah pretended to look offended while Euan shot me a playful glance. On the other side of Hannah, sat a woman in a thick fuchsia jumper that clung to her curvy figure. She had long dark hair and looked young, though I guessed she was in her late thirties, like Euan.

  A man in his forties with pretty, almost feminine features, extended his hand awkwardly. “Hi, I’m Eliot.” To my inexperienced American ears, Eliot didn’t sound Scottish but had an accent like Bingley in Pride and Prejudice: posh and from London.

  “Eliot,” the woman in the fuchsia jumper had piped up, “is the festival dictator.”

  “Director,” Eliot corrected quickly.

  “And I’m Laura, Euan’s friend,” she said, then added, “Euan’s only friend.”

  “What about me?” Hannah smacked her in the arm.

  “You’re more like my enemy,” Euan said.

  Hannah smiled, satisfied.

  If I had thought NASA was full of different languages, this room proved to be even more complicated. No one spoke with the same accent and my ears kept on retuning, adjusting to the ever-changing inflections.

  “Hello, happy to meet you.” The last guest chimed in with a thick Northern Irish accent. “I’m Callum.” He was tall and broad and peered at me through his wire-framed glasses. Callum extended his hand and I shook it, with a firm, friendly confidence.

  “Shall I relight the fire?” Euan asked, handing me a glass of wine. No one answered. All eyes and ears were upon me.

  “So where do you come from?” Callum asked.

  “America, duh.” Hannah rolled her eyes and tried to kick Euan, who was opening the old iron stove, filling it with kindling and newspaper.

  “Well, recently?” I tried to speak through a mouthful of bramble tart. “I’m from LA.”

  “We couldn’t tell.” Laura had been staring at my “I heart LA” tank top. My face flushed and I suddenly wished I hadn’t worn it. If my accent and manners hadn’t been screaming American, my apparel was.

  “Well, anyway, happy to see that you’re real,” Callum smiled, toasting me with his beer. “We thought you may be a figment of Euan’s imagination.”

  Hannah shot across the table, trying to smack him on the arm. She seemed to like hitting people. “Ignore him, do continue.”

  “I am a film director. Well, I actually work for NASA.” It never got easier trying to explain what I did.

  “So you came to Wigtown?” Eliot’s eyebrows furrowed.

  “I wanted
a holiday where I could stay in a usedbook-shop in Scotland.”

  “And you got stuck with us lot, the poor dear,” Laura teased. Though sharp, there was a warmth to her wit. I liked her immediately. “Euan’s lured you…”

  “I haven’t lured anyone,” Euan yelled in protest from the fireplace.

  “…into the middle of nowhere in this freezing house,” Laura ignored him. “That’s okay. You have your American optimism to keep you warm.”

  “I’m trying to light the fire as fast as I can,” Euan’s muffled voice shouted.

  “Why did you choose Wigtown?” Eliot looked horrified.

  “You know why,” Hannah said. “We all read the emails.”

  I suddenly felt embarrassed. There didn’t seem to be much privacy in Wigtown.

  “What were you doing for NASA?” Callum sat back and took out a small tin from his pocket. He opened it, revealing tobacco and smoking papers inside.

  “Euan, you seem to have a talent for convincing attractive young women to come to Wigtown.” Eliot poured himself more wine. “Any chance your dream included working at a festival?”

  Laura smiled and winked at me. I had never been good with teasing but this was different. Perhaps it was the large dose of British comedy that I had watched while growing up, but I got the rhythm and sense of humour immediately. Though I couldn’t dish it, I could take it, and that seemed to be enough to get me accepted. I looked around the room, my mouth full of pie, and smiled.

  In high school, people had written in my yearbook that I was “nice” – no other adjectives, nouns or verbs. Perhaps they did not know me well enough to be more explicit. I hadn’t been weird enough for the drama crowd, or mainstream enough for the cool kids or even academic enough for the nerds. I slipped into the cracks between groups, blending into the background of the suburban high school landscape, and because I was neither this nor that, I never felt part of anything. I would smile my “nice” smile, butterflying my way through the school cafeteria in social purgatory, never sitting with anyone in particular.

  I thought this would change in college. Anne of Green Gables, on growing past her teenage years, had said that kindred spirits weren’t as rare as she used to think. After a month at the liberal arts college of Franklin and Marshall, I saw Anne was right, but not in the way I had anticipated. I had desired a community, my very own gang, but instead found kindred spirits scattered randomly, and often in the most unlikely of places. There was the one boy from class, another girl down the hall, a handful of my professors. I found kindred spirits in the voices of some of the authors I was reading, and even in some of the fictional characters that they wrote about.

  But for all my adventures since college, I still craved that sense of belonging. Though I was lucky enough to have close friends in various parts of the world, it just wasn’t the same as having a group, a gang, a clan. Now, as I sat among Wigtown Book Festival’s witty, self-effacing elite, in a stranger’s house above a bookshop, halfway across the world, in a remote part of Scotland, I marvelled that I might finally have found a taste of that long-desired sense of community.

  What was certain was that, if this was my personal Algonquin round table, I was currently its soberest member. After another half-hour of their acrid irony and drunken teasing, I pleaded exhaustion and climbed the stairs to my room, where, lulled by the laughter and chatter below the floorboards, I fell quickly into a deep, contented sleep.

  *

  In the dim light of the morning, as the memory of the previous night echoed in my mind, I became aware of the silence within the house, and the growing sound of a morning chorus outside.

  Raised in the suburbs of Boston, the sounds that had greeted me in the mornings were usually human – the soft drone of someone pushing a lawnmower, an angry beep from a frustrated driver, my sister’s muffled radio, my father singing in the shower or my mother’s light steps on the stairs. Living in LA, I had grown used to silent mornings. I had been so high in the hills, in a new, sound-proofed, earthquake-friendly construction, that nothing, not even the sound of traffic from nearby Sunset Boulevard, seeped through.

  I had assumed that in the Scottish countryside I would wake to equally silent mornings, but I had assumed wrong. I listened with keen interest to the orchestra outside my window. It was magical to hear so many different birdcalls, mixed in, of course, with the occasional baritone moo.

  I slipped out of bed, braving the cold, and opened the curtains. It was a brilliant, bright day outside and an assortment of Wigtown rooftops greeted me. It was the most unexpected and enchanting sight – slated rooftops of different shapes, colours and sizes stretched before me; grey green and blue, each stone house was unique, filled with personality, age and a weather-beaten history. Crooked little chimneys climbed on for ever, covered with stubborn flowers and wisps of grass, a reminder of Galloway’s wet, temperate climate.

  To the right, I could peek into neighbouring gardens, as cobbled and quaint as the rooftops. Each one seemed to reflect the inner life of the owners who lived there: some were low maintenance, mostly paved and decorated with potted plants, others were overgrown and forgotten, and many were lush and manicured, with laundry hanging to dry and little spots for repose. Stone walls and fences separated the gardens, some new, some Victorian, time-battered and ivy-covered. Beyond the gardens, a vibrant green hill arched into the sky. Atop sat a tall stone monument. Cows and sheep were grazing on the hill, standing in stark contrast to the blue sky beyond. I was in sensory heaven. Everything was so beautiful, so clean, green and fresh.

  I looked down to see light-green lichen on the stone window sill. Its rough silvery fronds crawled along the outside of the window. They were a sign of good air, a friend had once told me. “You’re not in Kansas any more, Dorothy,” I said to myself again, thinking of the familiar thick cloud of smog that hung over Los Angeles.

  I slid open the window and took a nice deep breath. My starved lungs sang and my head buzzed. I turned to my left, and outside on the buttress, near the gutter, I discovered a small stone-carved face. It must have been very old. The carving was weatherworn, tinted green and smiling with eyes shut, reflecting perfectly if not my expression, then my mood.

  When was the last time, I asked myself, that I had rested my ears? They drank in the silence and birdsong as greedily as my lungs did the air. My thoughts were free to ramble, uninterrupted. I was completely disconnected and off the grid here without a list of to-dos, without a car, without even a cell phone. A growing, mysterious sensation warmed my body despite the cold air, though it quickly disappeared the moment I thought about how many emails would be piling up in my inbox.

  Chapter 9

  “Bypasses are devices that allow some people to dash from point A to point B very fast while other people dash from point B to point A very fast. People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are often given to wonder what’s so great about point A that so many people from point B are so keen to get there and what’s so great about point B that so many people from point A are so keen to get there. They often wish that people would just once and for all work out where the hell they wanted to be.” – Douglas Adams, THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE to THE GALAXY: Fiction section, front room, under A in hardbacks.

  During my first few days in Wigtown, I would wake early and go running. It was the same every morning. Greeted by the cool crisp early-autumnal air outside the Bookshop, I would survey the landscape – my eyes slowly taking in the empty street, sun pouring over the silent, colourful stone walls of the houses and the flowers, dew-covered in their small hanging baskets. You could see the whole of Wigtown, from one end to the other, if you stepped out into the middle of the main road. This did not make me feel claustrophobic, in fact, quite the opposite. I found the small village liberating. Instead of being stuck in wall-to-wall traffic, here I had open space.

  I would slip on my earphones and take time selecting the perfect track on my iPod. I’d turn left, jogging lightly in my Americ
an Apparel short shorts, down Wigtown’s only road.

  Today the large, empty town square was covered by a massive white tent. A wind had blown in, and the empty tent flapped in the breeze, anxiously waiting for the festival to begin. There was only a week to go until the ten-day literary event that took place every year in Wigtown from the last weekend in September to the first weekend in October. It was supposed to transform this sleepy town into a bustling, book-filled sanctuary for the UK’s literary elite, and I could already see evidence of the metamorphosis everywhere.

  The Bookshop, as if foreshadowing the changes to come, had morphed from a quiet refuge into a hive of activity, filled with Hannah’s and Laura’s energetic chatter. Catering equipment arrived and folding chairs seemed to be on constant parade, going up and down the stairs. The shop was increasingly packed with tourists and festival volunteers. Time suddenly felt like it was speeding up in some strange quantum anomaly, and I had to remind myself that after the festival, I would have just one further week to enjoy Wigtown, before heading back to hot Los Angeles.

  A creature of habit and ritual, I found morning runs were the key to helping me adjust to my reality. The Bookshop had appeared so like my vision of it – even, to my shock, having a long wooden counter that you could sit behind, like the one I had seen in my daydream in LA, and a window that looked out onto the street. The crossover between dream and reality could easily have given me a god-like complex, but Wigtown exceeded my expectations and repeatedly surprised me, reminding me that I was just an explorer along this journey, not its sole creator. The place had a spirit, energy and mystery all of its own.

  On one of my runs, a few days previously, the rare sound of tyres on gravel had interrupted my rambling thoughts. I had just sprinted over a bridge, under which flowed a small brook that went through marshlands out to sea, and there wasn’t much room to manoeuvre. I moved onto the grass embankment to let the car pass.