by Ivan B
He ignored the comment.
“And thirdly I’d have to put a large hatch in the hall ceiling. There’s no way I could get my A0 printer up that staircase, even if I do make it wider.”
He hesitated and then added.
“And I’d probably want to put a shower cubicle in Josie’s bedroom.”
She held his hand.
“You wouldn’t mind living here?”
“Not one little bit. By selling my house we can probably easily buy off your brother and do the alterations and have a whizzo holiday.”
Mary sighed.
“Then we’d better tell mum. I just can’t understand what’s made her want to move next to Eileen.”
Helen had another pot of tea ready by the time they got downstairs. Mary gave her a hug.
“Robert likes it, but…” She sat her mother down. “But if we take you to the doctors and…”
Helen laughed and finished what Mary was saying.
“And if I’ve got something dreadful then the deals off. I’ve got kidney stones; I made Cathy take me to the hospital in Devon and they did and x-ray and one of those scan thingamajigs. It’s kidney stones and they say their small and should disperse easily, so you can relax.”
Mary rolled her eyes.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Helen smiled.
“Because I’ve never seen you looking so happy and the news would wait.”
Robert suddenly jumped to his feet.
“Josie! Good grief it’s nearly three o’clock!”
Mary tossed him the car keys and he shot off. She turned to her mother and kissed her.
“Thanks mum.”
Helen cuddled her.
“That’s what mother’s are for, solving their children’s problems.”
Mary whispered.
“But if you do get ill; you’ll come back; promise?. I couldn’t bear the thought of you seriously ill in a home.”
Helen kissed her on the cheek.
“Promise.”
They sat holding one another, Mary enjoying the comfort of her mother and Helen enjoying her last real chance of having her daughter to herself.
The following morning Mary parked her car out the back of the library, took a deep breath, and walked in. She got as far as the lifts before she was spotted by Serena, who anxiously hurried over.
“Am I glad to see you, Ms Shropshire from the supermarket has been screaming to come and see us and John’s daughter has sent an e-mail saying that she wants you to ring her at eleven.”
Serena suddenly took a step back.
“My you’ve changed your hair, it looks great.”
Mary smiled.
“That’s not all I’ve changed.”
She held out her right hand and Serena’s eyes widened.
“An engagement ring? Who’s the lucky man?”
“Robert, the architect who was here inspecting the top floor.”
Serena put her head on one side.
“My, that was fast work.”
Mary grinned as she walked into the lift and pressed the ‘hold’ button.
“Give me ten minutes and then come up and brief me.”
The lift doors closed and Olga swiftly appeared by Serena’s side.
“Was that Mary dressed in blue and with blonde hair?”
Serena giggled.
“Yes, she’s obviously had a change of style.”
Olga whispered.
“And was she showing you a ring?”
Serena laughed.
“She’ll probably tell you in her own time, but she’s engaged.”
Olga looked amazed.
“Who’s the poor fella, I mean with a tongue like hers who needs a carving knife.”
Serena gave her a scowl.
“Don’t be unkind, she may be acerbic at times, but she keeps us employed.”
Olga nodded.
“So you say, but I’ve never even seen her with a man, let alone be with one long enough for him to pop the question.”
Serena didn’t reply, but she had to admit that Olga was right, just where did she meet him and how long had they been going out?
Half an hour later Mary put her pen down.
“So apart from our Ms Shropshire it’s all been dead quite and you’ve had no problems.”
Serena half nodded.
“But… well I… to be honest I’m not sure about Charlotte.”
Mary raised her eyebrows.
“Problems?”
Serena leant forward.
“Not as such, but she keeps disappearing, not for long, maybe for five minutes a couple of times an afternoon.”
Mary pondered the information.
“Is she popping out for a smoke?”
Serena shook her head.
“She doesn’t smoke, I checked.”
Mary looked at the clock.
“Our Ms Shropshire is coming over in five minutes, would you like to stay, I have a feeling it’s about books.”
Ms Shropshire appeared on time and Mary offered her a chair by the desk and the three of them looked at one another. Mary indicated Serena.
“This is Serena Krüll our book-shop manager. Now how can we help you?”
Ms Shropshire nodded and said to Serena. “Call me Sue” before putting her elbows on the desk.
“Actually I’ve come to ask you to sign a waiver for the council to say that you don’t mind if we sell books.”
Serena let out a half-laugh and Mary suppressed a smile.
“Why would we do that?”
Sue rolled her eyes. “The building we are in is owned by the council and we’ve still got five years to run on our lease, but Mrs Church, she’s a councillor, spotted a clause in our contract that says we mustn’t sell anything that other shops leased by them sell without prior agreement from the other shop.”
Mary nodded.
“All the council leases are the same, we had to agree to the charity shops selling second-hand books, but they haven’t invoked or mentioned that clause for years.”
Sue sighed.
“They want to prove us in breach of contract and lever us out. At the Council meeting last week they agreed that the College was the wrong place for a public library as it was out of town and badly served by the busses. Our building is the next obvious target, ergo lever us out and put a library in.”
Sue leant back.
“So it’s actually in your interest to sign.”
Mary nodded.
“But I want something in return.”
Sue turned pink.
“But it’s in your interest, you can’t possibly want a library just up the road, you’d be out of business in no time!”
Serena kept quiet and watched Mary, she leant forward.
“And you probably don’t want to go down in history as losing a store. So here’s the deal; we sign and you sell books, if you must, but only travel books and coffee table type books.”
Sue’s mouth dropped open.
“But I need the loss leaders to get people to look at the books in the store in the first place!”
“Then find a different loss leader, CDs or DVDs or bananas, but not books.”
Serena interrupted.
“Hang on.”
She looked at Sue.
“You could sell westerns and cheap romances, we don’t sell either as the profit margin for us is too low to make the allocation of shelf space worthwhile.”
Mary nodded in agreement.
“Good point, I’d be happy with that.”
Sue considered her options and then held out her hand.
“It’s a deal.”
Mary shook her hand.
“I take it the piece of paper you are holding is the waiver?”
Sue nodded and Mary turned to Serena.
“Will you fill it in and sign it on our behalf?”
Serena was slightly surprised as Mary usually kept all the paperwork close to her chest, but she didn’t argue and to
ok Sue downstairs to fill in the form.
As Serena and Sue left, Mary looked at the clock and picked up the ‘phone. She consulted the e-mail on her computer screen and dialled the number, she only hoped that it wasn’t what she had first feared when John had first told her that he was going to visit his daughter in Australia; that it was really a prelude to him closing the library. She held onto the phone as it rang a few times and then it was answered and Mary wondered at the clarity, it seemed like his daughter was in the next room.
“Hello, Joanna, it’s Mary from the library, you asked me to ring.”
There was a silence followed by:
“It’s not Joanna, it’s her daughter, I’ll go and get her.”
There was silence and the sound of footsteps and a dog barking. All of a sudden the receiver at the other end was picked up and Joanna came on the line.
“Hello Mary, sorry about that, daughters expecting calls from boyfriends and all that.”
Mary furrowed her brow.
“Surely Brenda can’t be old enough for boyfriends.”
Joanna laughed.
“She’s sweet sixteen and hoping to be kissed.”
The tone of her voice suddenly changed and the hairs on the back of Mary’s neck rose.
“Mary, I’m sorry, but I’ve got some bad news, dad died on Sunday.”
Mary was stunned and managed only to mutter.
“Died?”
Joanna said in a wooden sort of a voice.
“He went to sleep on the patio after we had a barbecue and just slipped away, we had no warning.”
There was a pause as she composed herself.
“At least he went peacefully.”
Mary swallowed as her world did a quick orbit.
“Oh Joanna, I am sorry.”
More silence from the other end followed by the sound of a nose being blown into a handkerchief.
“We’re having the funeral out here once the coroner releases his body, I’ll let you know when it is.”
“Please, I’d like to send some flowers, John was more than good to me.”
There were some peculiar hiccup noises and then the voice changed to Norman’s Sunderland accent.
“Sorry ‘bout that Mary, Joanna’s rather upset, it’s all been a bit of a shock.”
Mary didn’t know what to say, so she stated the obvious.
“Tell her I’ll sort anything out at this end for her.”
Norman spoke a few words to his wife with his hands partially over the receiver and then came back on line.
“John told us that the library is at a sort of financial stalemate at the moment.”
Mary wondered what to disclose and then decided that Norman would probably either be her new boss, or close the place down.
“I hope it’s only temporary, but we’ve just bought some new Internet equipment and furniture. Currently the second-hand value of our library stock probably roughly equals the loan we took out to upgrade our Internet café. Given two years there should be a turn around, but for this year we’ll probably make enough money to pay the staff, keep the library stocked up and service the loan, but there won’t be vast profits.”
Norman grunted.
“So basically you’re running off turnover and a little hand to mouth.”
Mary said quietly, but with conviction.
“Just two years Norman. Five years ago the library was deep in debt and falling off the edge, we’ve come a long way, but I told John at the start that if he wasn’t prepared to use venture capital in would take at least eight years, I might beat that by one.”
Norman changed tack.
“What about the lease, how long has it got to run and can the lease-holder’s name be changed or was it to John personally?”
Mary racked her brains.
“As far as I remember it was to John personally, but it can be passed on, or bought off him. There’s twenty-five years to run and an option to extend it for another ten years or, now that John’s had it for more than fifteen years, you can hand it back with no penalty on six months notice.”
Norman made another grunting noise.
“Can you hang on?”
Mary waited and tried to compose herself and thought about what she would do in their position. She concluded that if she were on the other side of the world from a major asset she would either want a really good trustworthy manager or dispose of it. She hoped that they would see that there was no value in disposing of it while the Internet funding loan had hardly begun to be paid off. Joanna can back on the line.
“Mary, dad talked to us about the library after you rang to tell him about the rent going up. I think he’d already decided to stay out here, he was so at home.”
There was a pause and then she continued.
“He said that you’d turned the library/book-shop around, got him out of debt and were working towards making it a profitable concern, but that he’d really lost interest in the financial side of things.”
She took a deep wavering breath.
“When he got back he was going to offer you the chance of buying it off him. He said that he’d sell it to you for £1.”
Mary’s heart did a somersault.
“But that’s ridiculous, he put thousands in to buy the original stock and this library was the sum total of his life’s savings.”
Mary made a non-committal noise.
“Not quite Mary, he put a very large deposit down on our house out here and provided the start-up funding for our locksmith business. The library gave him endless enjoyment, especially after you took the management burden off of him. And we know that at present your assets roughly equal your debts. It was his last wish Mary and I’d like to honour it.”
Mary suffered temporal distortion and the entire background of the library faded away from her consciousness. She swallowed to try and regain her composure.
“Of course I’d love to buy the library, but I insist that I pay the legal charges of the transfer.”
Joanna managed an ‘I’m glad,’ before breaking down into sobs and Norman came back on the line.
“Joanna’s nodded to me, so I guess your buying the library, I’m glad about that, it’s what John would have wanted. Now talking of sorting things out for us over there, can you send us her father’s personal effects? Don’t bother about clothes or furniture, just his effects; hang on.”
There was mumbling.
“Joanna wants his glass chess board and crystal pieces, the rest of the furniture she’d like you to sell and give the money to the local Hospice… Oh and she’d like you to keep the piano if you want to.”
Mary made some notes.
“I’ll start right away, well as soon as I feel able.”
Norman mumbled something to Joanna.
“Can you ring in two days time, we’ll know more about the funeral then.”
“Will do, bye, and take care.”
She put the phone down, walked calmly into her little private room, closed the door and burst into tears. She’d remembered John as he had walked out of the library, happy to be off to see his daughter. She remembered him passing the time of day with the customers and she remembered him when she first arrived, taking great care that she had the right equipment. She remembered his gentleness and business naivety and she remembered how he had once gently captured a butterfly that had wandered in through the window. She sat and remembered and cried because for fifteen years he had been more of a father to her than her own father ever had.
Chapter 19
Reality shift
Mary finally managed to compose herself about an hour later. She dried her eyes and went to the staff toilet to sluice her face with water. She’d been there about five minutes making sure than she looked presentable when Serena came in; Serena was not fooled in the least by her supposed calm appearance. She gave Mary an odd look.
“You OK?”
Mary shook her head and grabbed Serena’s hand.
“John’s dead. He die
d in his sleep on Sunday.”
Serena’s other hand flew to her mouth.
“Oh poor Joanna.”
Mary watched Serena closely, to her it was sad news, but only sad news. Mary gave her a small smile.
“Can you do me a favour Serena? Can you tell the others?”
Serena looked mystified.
“Me?”
Mary nodded.
“I’m not sure I can trust myself at the moment.”
Serena nodded in understanding.
“What do I tell them about the library.”
“For the minute just tell then that it is not closing and that their jobs are safe. And that is the truth. There will be other things to say later, but not now.”
Mary let go of Serena’s hand and she moved forward and hugged Mary. They didn’t speak because they didn’t have to. Eventually they parted and Serena said gently.
“Do you want me to take over for the afternoon?”
Mary gave a weak smile.
“I’ve only just got back. I’ll go next door and have stiff coffee, then I’ll be alright.”
“Do you want me to ring anybody?”
Mary gently shook her head.
“Thanks, but no. It was just a bit of a shock.”
Serena eye’s said that she understood.
“I’ll give you time to disappear and then I’ll spread the word.”
Mary gave Serena another hug and left for the restaurant knowing that she was ducking her first major issue as potential owner/manager, but also knowing it was the right decision for her.
Mary returned after lunch and noticed a sign on the counter that informed the public of John’s death and that the library would be continuing as usual, from somewhere a hospice donation tin had also appeared. Mary sat down at her desk and started to think things through; she would dearly have loved to talk with Robert, but she knew he was taking Josie to an exhibition of photographs of Earth from space. A few people came and spoke to her, but as most customers related to the counter-staff and not her so she was not inundated with condolences. Sometime mid-afternoon she looked up to see Charlotte disappearing into the power-room. Mary walked over and followed her in, Charlotte was standing facing the only bare wall with her head resting against the wall. She turned as Mary closed the door and gave a sheepish grin. Mary perched against the table and Charlotte shrugged her shoulders.