The Bookshop

by Penelope Fitzgerald

  7

  EVENTUALLY Mrs Gamart did come to the Old House Bookshop. It was a fortnight after the library reopened, this time at a much calmer tempo, as though the subscribers had restrained themselves and the atmosphere had mellowed with the advancing year.

  Christine had grasped the system rapidly and had made short work of learning the names of subscribers she did not know, that is, those who lived outside Hardborough. She classified them by attributes – Mrs Birthmark, Major Wheezer, and so forth – just as Raven did to tell the cattle apart; otherwise he’d never know the strays. Their correct names followed, and in remembering what books they had asked for, and what in fact they were going to get, the child was unerring. Impartiality made her severe. The library did not open now until school was out, and under her régime no one was allowed so much as to look at anyone else’s selection.

  The late autumn weather made the little expedition to the library just about the right length for the retired, both for those who drove and walked and for those who pottered. They seemed to be prepared to accept the B books, and even the Cs, without much complaint.

  Mrs Gamart opened the street door on an afternoon at the end of October. The sun had gone round, and her shadow preceded her down the steps. She wore a three-quarter length Jaeger camel coat. Florence recognized the moment as a crisis in her fortunes. She had been too busy lately to think about the pressure that had been put upon her, six months earlier, to leave the Old House – or rather, to be honest, she kept herself busy so that the thought would not be uppermost in her mind. It was uppermost now. The shop had been transformed into a silent battleground in a nominal state of truce. She was in authority, on her own ground, and with some kind of support, since Christine had arrived and was depositing her Wellingtons and cardigan in the backhouse. On the other hand, Mrs Gamart, as a customer, must be deferred to; and as a patroness she was in the unassailable position of having forgiven all. She had made a request in the name of the Arts, and it had been refused; the Old House was still a shop, and yet she continued to behave with smiling dignity.

  The library section was full of mildly loitering subscribers. There were customers in the front of the shop as well.

  ‘I can see you’re very busy. Please don’t put yourself out. I really came to have a look at your library, just to see how it works. I’ve been meaning to do it for so long.’

  Christine, by arrangement, looked after the issues and library tickets, particularly if several people were waiting. Glad to be indispensable, she was combing out her pale hair, tugging at the knots, and energetically ready to take over. Then, more or less tidy, she sprang out of the backhouse with the enthusiasm of a terrier empowered, for the afternoon, to act as a sheepdog. With rapid fingers she began to flick through the pink tickets. ‘Just a tick, Mrs Keble. I’ll fare to look after all of you in turn.’ This would not quite do for Mrs Gamart’s first visit, and Florence left the cash desk to escort her and to explain the system personally. At that moment she felt herself grasped forcibly by the elbow. Something with a sharp edge caught her in the small of the back.

  It was the corner of a picture frame. She was held back by an urgent hand, and addressed by a man, not young, in a corduroy jacket, smiling as a toad does, because it has no other expression. The smile was, perhaps, ‘not quite right’. He had been manhandling a large canvas down the steps. Other smaller canvases were under his arm.

  ‘You remember my letter. Theodore Gill, painter in watercolours, very much at your service. The possibility of an exhibition … a small selection of my work – poor things, madam, but mine own.’

  ‘I didn’t answer your letter.’

  There were frames and sketches everywhere. How could they have invaded the shop so quickly?

  ‘But silence means consent. Not as much room as I anticipated, but I can arrange for the loan of some screens from a very good friend, himself a watercolourist of note.’

  ‘He doesn’t want to exhibit too, I hope?’

  ‘Later – you are very quick to understand me – but later.’

  ‘Mr Gill, this isn’t the best time to discuss your pictures. My shop is open to everyone, but I’m busy at the moment, and now that you’ve seen the Old House you’ll realize that I’ve no room at all for your exhibition or anyone else’s.’

  ‘Sunset Viewed from Hardborough Common Across the Laze,’ Mr Gill interrupted, raising his voice. ‘Of local interest! Westward, look, the land is bright!’

  All this time, beyond the scope of her immediate attention, a murmur of unease, even something like a shout, was rising from the back of the room. As she attempted, in an undignified scuffle, to prevent Mr Gill from tacking up his sunset, she became aware, for the first time, of a breaking up and surging forward of ranks. Mrs Gamart, very red in the face, one hand oddly clasped in the other, and possessed by some strong emotion, passed rapidly through the shop and left without a word.

  ‘What is it? What happened?’

  Christine followed, redder still. Indeed her cheeks were red as fire and beginning to be streaked with tears.

  ‘Mrs Gamart from The Stead, she wouldn’t wait her turn, she picked up other people’s books and looked at them. Do they were hers she wasn’t allowed to do that, and she’s muddled my pink tickets!’

  ‘What did you do, Christine?’

  ‘You wanted me to do it orderly! I gave her a good rap over the knuckles.’

  She was still holding her school ruler, ornamented with a series of Donald Ducks. In the flow and counterflow of indignation, Mr Gill succeeded in hanging several more of his little sketches. The subscribers clamoured against the poor judgment shown. They had always known it was folly to entrust so much to a child of ten. Look, she was in tears. Mrs Gamart had suffered actual physical violence, and one of the customers tried to make off with a card and envelope. He said he had despaired of getting proper attention. Florence charged him 6¾d. and rang it up on the till; and that was her sole profit for the afternoon.

  If she had gone out immediately into the High Street and apologized, the situation might have been retrieved. But she judged that the most important thing was to console Christine. Of course the subscribers had been right, the girl had been given too much authority, a poison, like any other excess. The only remedy, however, in this case was to give her more.

  ‘I don’t want you to think any more about it.’ But, Christine blubbered, they had gone off with their pink tickets, and without their books. She mourned the destruction of a system.

  ‘But there’s still this one for Mr Brundish. He’ll be waiting. I’m relying on you to take it round to him as usual.’

  Christine put on her cardigan and anorak.

  ‘I’ll leave it for him where I always do, by the milk bottles. What are you going to do with all those old pictures?’

  Mr Gill had gone to seek, as he put it, a cup of tea, which he wouldn’t find any nearer than the Ferry Café. That, too, might well be shut in October. He might be grievously disappointed, possibly after a lifetime of disappointments. Florence would have to find time to mind about that, and indeed about a number of things; but all she wanted at the moment was to think of something which would give more dignity to Christine’s errand.

  ‘Wait a moment. There’s a letter I want you to take as well, a letter to Mr Brundish. It won’t take me long to write it.’

  That morning the post had brought the inspection copy of Lolita. She took off the jacket and looked at the black cover, stamped in silver.

  Dear Mr Brundish,

  Your letter to me when I first opened this shop was a great encouragement, and I am venturing now to ask for your advice. Your family, after all, has been living in Hardborough a great deal longer than anyone else’s. I don’t know if you have heard of the novel which Christine Gipping is bringing with this note – Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov. Some critics say that it is pretentious, dull, florid and repulsive; others call it a masterpiece. Would you be good enough to read it and to let me know whether yo
u think I should be doing right in ordering it and recommending it to my customers?

  Yours sincerely,

  Florence Green.

  ‘Will there be an answer, then?’ asked Christine doubtfully.

  ‘Not today. But in a few days, a week or so perhaps, I’m sure there will.’

  The lending library did not close the next week, but continued business in a hushed and decorous fashion. Theodore Gill, with his seemingly endless reserves of watercolours, had been evacuated. This was a bold stroke. Rhoda Dressmaker’s, next door, was certainly not an old house, and it was perhaps a pity that it had been refaced with pebbledash and the window-frames painted mauve, but it had an excellent, well-lighted showroom.

  ‘You’ve got such nice clear walls, Jessie,’ Florence began diplomatically. ‘I don’t know whether you’ve ever felt the need of a few pictures?’

  ‘A semi-permanent exhibition,’ put in Mr Gill, who was wandering about as usual. He would ruin everything.

  ‘No, just a few watercolours for the time being. Perhaps one or two each side of your Silent Memories Calendar,’ said Florence, who had supplied the calendar at cost price.

  Jessie Welford did not answer directly, but turned to the artist himself. ‘I never really think a wall needs anything, but I’m prepared to oblige if you’re in a difficulty.’

  He was hammering and banging all afternoon; the noise was almost as irritating as the poltergeist. Jessie’s deprecatory laugh could also be heard. A card advertising the exhibition was placed in Rhoda’s window. Jessie continued to laugh, and said that she had never had anything to do with an artist before, but that there had to be a first time for everything.

  Florence had not considered how the answer to her note might come. She had certainly not expected it to be conveyed by Mrs Gipping. But Christine’s mother, standing in front of her next day at the grocer’s, told her suddenly and quite frankly that she was buying a pound of mixed fruit because Mr Brundish had told her to leave a cake for him on Sunday. He’d made up his mind, and she might as well pass this on now and save trouble, to ask Florence to tea on that day. In this way what was presumably a device to gain a measure of privacy became known to the whole of Hardborough. It was so improbable as to be almost frightening. Nobody, except an occasional mysterious old friend from Cambridge or London, ever received such an invitation. This, no doubt, was why Mrs Gipping had not wanted to waste her news on a smaller public.

  To go there would be to increase the misunderstanding with Mrs Gamart, still unacknowledged at Holt House. Perhaps this was vanity. What could it matter where she went? An instinct, perhaps a shopkeeper’s instinct, told her that it would matter. She hesitated. But an oddly-expressed reply from Mr Brundish, conveyed by Wally, and mentioning honour, convenience, and a-quarter-to-five exactly on Sunday afternoon, decided her. He told her that he had given careful consideration to what she had asked him, and hoped she would be satisfied with his answer.

  The beginning of November was one of the very few times of the year when there was no wind. On the evening of the 5th a large bonfire was lit on the hard, near the moorings on the estuary. The pile of fuel had stood there for days, like a giant heron’s nest. It was a joint undertaking about which every parent in Hardborough was prepared to give advice. Diesel fuel, although it was said to have burnt someone’s eyebrows off last year, and they had never grown again, was used to start it. Then the sticks caught. Gathered up and down the shore, coated with sea-salt, they exploded into a bright blue flame. The otters and water-rats fled away up the dykes; the children came nearer, gathering from every quarter of the common. Potatoes were baked for them in the fire, coming out thick with ashes. The potatoes also tasted of diesel fuel. The organizers of the bonfire, once it had got going, stood back from the cavernous glow and discussed the affairs of the day. Even the headmaster of the Technical, who kept an eye on the blaze in a semi-official capacity, even Mrs Traill from the Primary, even the dejected-looking Mrs Deben, knew where Florence was going to tea on the Sunday.

  She was not even sure how to get into Holt House. There was an iron bell-pull on the right of the front door, she told herself, as she set out. She had noticed it often. It was ornamental and massive and looked as though it might pull away leaving a length of chain in the visitor’s hand. What a fool one would look then.

  But the front door, when she got there, was not locked. It opened on to a hall lit dimly from a cupola, two floors above. The light struck the sluggish glass of a large Venetian mirror on the dark red wallpaper, patterned with darker red. Just inside the door stood a bronze statue of a fox-terrier, rather larger than life size, sitting up and begging, with a lead in its mouth. The lead was of real leather. On the hall chest there were porcelain jars, balls of string, and a bowl of yellowing visiting cards. The strong scent of camphor came perhaps from this chest, which stood against the left-hand wall. ‘It formerly contained a croquet set,’ said a voice in the gloom, ‘but there is not much opportunity to play nowadays.’

  Mr Brundish came forwards, looking critically round the hall, as though it were an outlying province of his territory which he rarely visited. His head turned gradually and suspiciously from side to side on his short neck. A clean white shirt was all that could properly be made out in the gloom. The collar seemed like the entrance to a burrow into which his dark face retreated, while his dark eyes watched anxiously.

  ‘Come into the dining-room.’

  The dining-room was straight through, with French windows closed on the garden. The view outside was blocked by a beech hedge, still hanging with brown leaves, heavy in the November damp. A mahogany table stretched from end to end of the room. Florence felt sad to think of anyone eating alone at such a table. It was laid, evidently for the occasion, with an assortment of huge blue-and-white earthenware dishes, looking like prizes at a fairground. Lost among them was a fruit-cake, a bottle of milk and an unpleasantly pink ham, still in its tin.

  ‘We should have a cloth,’ said Mr Brundish, taking the starched white linen out of a drawer, and trying to sweep the giant crockery aside. This Florence prevented by sitting down herself. Her host immediately took his place, huddling into a wing chair, spreading his large neat hairy hands on each side of his plate. Shabby, hardly presentable, he was not the sort of figure who could ever lose dignity. He was waiting, with a certain humility, for her to pour out. The silver teapot was the size of a small font, awkward to lift, and almost stone cold. Round the crest ran a motto: Not to succeed in one thing is to fail in all.

  Fortunately, since there was only one knife on the table and the forks had been forgotten, Mr Brundish made no attempt to press the cake or the ham on his guest. Nor did he drink his cooling tea. Florence wondered whether, as a general rule, he had any regular meals at all. He wanted to welcome her but was more used to threatening, and the change of attitude was difficult for him. She felt the appeal of this. After a period of absolute silence which was not embarrassing because he was evidently so used to it, Mr Brundish said:

  ‘You asked me a question.’

  ‘Yes, I did. It was about a new novel.’

  ‘You paid me the compliment of asking me a serious question,’ Mr Brundish repeated heavily. ‘You believed that I would be impartial. Doubtless you thought that I was quite alone in the world. That, as it happens, is not so. Otherwise I should be an interesting test case to establish whether there is such a thing as an action which harms no one but oneself. Such problems interested me in younger days. But, as I say, I am not alone. I am a widower, but I had brothers, and one sister. I still have relations and direct descendants, although they are scattered over the face of the globe. Of course, one can have enough of that sort of thing. Perhaps it strikes you that this tea is not quite hot.’

  Florence sipped gallantly. ‘You must miss your grandchildren.’

  Mr Brundish considered this carefully. ‘Am I fond of children?’ he asked.

  She realized that the question was simply the result of lack of pra
ctice. He talked so seldom to people that he had forgotten the accepted forms of doing so.

  ‘I shouldn’t have thought so,’ she said, ‘but I am.’

  ‘One of the Gipping girls, the third one, helps you in your shop, I believe. And that is all the assistance you get.’

  ‘I have a book-keeper who comes in from time to time, and then there is my solicitor.’

  ‘Tom Thornton. You won’t get much out of him. In twenty-five years of practice I’ve never heard of his taking a case to counsel, or even to court. He always settles. Never settle!’

  ‘There’s no question of any legal proceedings. That wasn’t at all what I wanted to ask you about.’

  ‘I daresay Thornton would refuse to come to your place in any case. It’s haunted, and he wouldn’t care for that. Perhaps, by the way, you would have liked a wash. There is a lavatory on the right side of the hall with several basins. In my father’s day it was particularly useful for shooting parties.’

  Florence leant forward. ‘You know, Mr Brundish, there is a certain responsibility about trying to run a bookshop.’

  ‘I believe so, yes. Not everybody approves of it, you know. There are certain people, I think, who don’t. I am referring to Violet Gamart. She had other plans for the Old House, and now it seems that she has been affronted in some way.’

  ‘I’m sure she knows that was an accident.’ It was difficult to speak anything other than the truth in Holt House, but Florence added, ‘I’m sure that she means well.’

  ‘Means well! Think again!’ He tapped on the table with a weighty teaspoon. ‘She wants an Arts Centre. How can the arts have a centre? But she thinks they have, and she wishes to dislodge you.’