The Last Bookshop in London

by Madeline Martin

  She called his name again as she strode to the rear of the shop and pushed into the small backroom.

  It was the smell of alcohol that hit her first.

  Scotch.

  Her uncle had drunk the stuff. It stank like paraffin oil and tasted far worse. Not that she was one for sampling paraffin oil.

  Mr. Evans was slumped in his chair, half sagging over the tabletop. A bottle of amber liquid sat before his folded elbow, and his hand limply curled around a nearly empty crystal glass.

  Were it not for that bottle at his side, she might have been truly worried. Though the image of him in such a state was still rather disconcerting.

  “Mr. Evans?” Grace stepped into the quiet room and set aside her handbag.

  He lifted his head, though his glasses rested askew across his face, and gave her a bleary look from the crooked lenses. His normally immaculately combed hair was mussed and his brown pullover atop his collared shirt, the same he’d worn the day before, was rumpled. “Go home, Miss Bennett.” His words were thick with sleep and drink, and he lay his head on the table once more.

  “I can’t go home. It’s morning and we’ve a store to run.” She gently reached for the glass and pulled it from his hand.

  He didn’t stop her. Instead, he squinted up at her from under his bushy brows. “Did I ever tell you I had a daughter?”

  “I wasn’t aware, no.” Grace cradled the glass in her palm, its smooth surface still warm from his grip. He had clearly been there for quite some time. “Is she in London?”

  He sat up slowly, swaying. “She’s dead.”

  Grace winced at her egregious misstep. “Forgive me. I didn’t—”

  “It happened several years ago, same car accident as my wife.” He adjusted his glasses with clumsy hands, setting them almost correctly at the bridge of his nose. “She would have been about your age now, my Alice.”

  A ghost of a smile flickered at the corners of his mouth. “You look like her. I suspect it’s why Mrs. Weatherford sent you my way, the meddlesome woman. Her boy Colin had been friends with my daughter for the whole of their lives. No doubt she thought it might help ease the pain of Alice’s loss or some such rot. Nonsense, all of it.” His furrowed expression softened. “Though I suppose now Mrs. Weatherford understands the futility more so than before.”

  There was a sadness in his eyes that Grace felt in her core, the hollow emptiness of grief. One that had resonated since her mother’s death and never went silent.

  She carefully set the glass on a stack of boxes, away from his reach. “Does it bother you that I look like Alice?”

  His gaze slid to Grace and paused as though considering her appearance in earnest. Tears filled his eyes, and his chin began to tremble. Quickly, he looked away and a hearty sniff filled the room.

  “In the beginning.” There was a quaver to his voice, but he cleared his throat. “Every time I’d see you, I’d see my Alice. She had blond hair, like me. Before this.” His fingers danced over his white, rumpled hair.

  Grace said nothing, letting him speak.

  “I thought I’d buried her here.” He slapped his open hand on his chest and gave an exhale that seemed to cause him great pain. “Now I know, such things are too great to be contained. It also makes me realize I wasn’t only trying to push aside my grief, but also my guilt.”

  There was a thickness to his words, not from alcohol, but from emotion, and it made Grace ache for him.

  Mr. Evans tilted the bottle to study the inch or so of liquid sloshing at the bottom. “I hope she knew how much I loved her. How much she meant to me.” He set the bottle firmly into place and looked up at Grace.

  “I’m sorry I was cross with you for staying on with the ARP.” His jaw worked beneath a sprinkling of fine, white whiskers. “You’re not Alice. I know that. I know that.” He looked away. “But I can’t lose you too.”

  A stubborn lump worked its way into Grace’s throat. One she couldn’t swallow away. She’d never had anything close to a father in her life. Not when her own had been killed before she met him. And certainly not with her uncle, who saw her more as a workhorse than a niece.

  “I’ll be careful,” she said. “But I have to continue with the ARP. Mr. Evans, this is me never stopping—just as you said.”

  The corner of his lip lifted in a half smile. “I give terrible advice sometimes.”

  “You give excellent advice.”

  He pushed up from the table and paused a moment, teetering a bit where he stood. “I haven’t ever told you this before, Grace, but I’m proud of you.”

  A warmth blossomed in her chest at his praise. No one had ever said those words to her before, not like that.

  Mr. Evans framed his fingertips on the table. “I think I should retire to bed now.”

  “I can handle the store,” she offered quickly.

  “I know you can.” He reached out and took hold of her shoulder, giving it an affectionate squeeze. “Mind you look after yourself as well, eh?”

  “I will,” she promised.

  With that, he nodded and wandered toward the door leading to his flat above the shop, his glasses still askew.

  Grace managed the shop that day, using her ARP skills that afternoon to usher the customers to local shelters when an inevitable air raid called out the arrival of more German planes. Those same sirens wailed again that night and the following night, as well as in the afternoons.

  People did not ignore the sirens now. Not like before. Not when the damage was so considerable, the worst of which being when South Hallsville School in Canning Town was struck, killing many of the survivors of the East End who were sheltering within.

  It was a hard blow for all of London.

  Aside from the destruction of the Hewses’ home, Grace’s sector remained untouched during the air raids. Regardless, she and Mr. Stokes were asked to increase their night watches from three times a week to five. Mr. Evans, who never again brought up their discussion about his daughter, allowed her to start a bit later each day to account for the extra ARP shifts.

  It was past noon several days later when she entered the bookshop and discovered a small tabby cat sleeping in a sliver of sunshine just inside the door. This discovery was followed almost immediately by the excited trill of Mr. Pritchard’s voice as he offered his ever-present opinion on the state of Britain.

  “Did you hear the king and queen were bombed in Buckingham?” he said as she set her things in the back room. “The bloody king and queen, Evans. They’re just like us, they are. We’re all in this together.”

  Grace could practically see Mr. Evans wince at the other man’s language when customers were present in the store. She hung her handbag and threaded through the shop, ensuring their patrons were tended to.

  “You said a bomb was lodged in the ground before St. Paul’s?” Mr. Evans pressed, clearly trying to rush the other man along.

  “Yes,” Mr. Pritchard exclaimed. “Right before the clock tower. The whole cathedral would have been blown to pieces had the thing gone off. The bomb disposal unit had to come see to it. Fascinating stuff, that.”

  No sooner had he spoken than the air raid siren started its afternoon wail. Tabby immediately leapt to his feet and trotted over to Mr. Pritchard, who scowled at the interruption by “Moaning Minnie,” his beady eyes bright with irritation. “Blast these nuisance raids. I think Germany wants to win by driving us all mad.”

  Regardless of his grousing, he followed Grace out of the shop, along with the other customers and Mr. Evans. The tube stations had opened up for shelter despite the government’s initial decision to keep them closed. The repeated bombings made their use necessary, especially with so many now seeking safety.

  It was to Farringdon Station that Grace led them all, utilizing her experience as an ARP warden, despite not being on duty. For those who preferred not to pay the
one and a half pence to enter the station, she guided them first to the brick shelter at the corner. Before the siren had quieted, she was settled against the tiled wall beside Mr. Evans and lifting the front jacket of her book.

  She’d only just started Middlemarch the night before and was several chapters in, her mind locked on Dorothea and the young woman’s plight with her new, much older husband. The siren overhead cut off and the shuffle and muttered conversation of dozens of people inside the tube echoed against the rounded walls. Wind billowed in from the gaping tunnels on either side of the platform, issuing a low, haunting note and tickling Grace’s hair across her cheek.

  She blocked all sound out, propped her open book on her knees and began to read. Outside came the now familiar sounds of war, the booming ack-ack guns firing at enemy aircraft as the RAF dove and shot at the Germans in an effort to fend them off. Amid it all, and far less often than at night, came the distant thud of falling bombs.

  “What are you reading, miss?” a woman asked from beside her.

  Grace looked up to find the young mother she’d comforted weeks before. “Middlemarch by George Eliot.”

  Guns pounded overhead. The woman glanced up anxiously. “What’s it about?”

  “A woman named Dorothea,” Grace replied. “She has a handsome suitor intent on marrying her, but he’s not the man who draws her eye.”

  “Why is that?”

  “She quite prefers an older man, a reverend.”

  The young mother gave a nervous chuckle. “Does she?”

  “She does.” Grace pinched her finger between the pages of the book to ensure she wouldn’t lose her spot and sat up a little straighter. “She even marries him.”

  “What was so appealing about him?” a middle-aged woman in a blue housedress asked.

  A low whistle sounded outside, followed by an explosion that made the ground vibrate and the lights flicker. Mr. Evans nodded encouragingly at Grace, a small smile playing on his lips.

  “She’s pious,” Grace answered. “And he is a scholar in addition to being a reverend, with intellectual pursuits she finds fascinating.”

  “What about the handsome man?” a voice asked.

  Grace grinned. “He pursues her sister.”

  Someone laughed. “Brilliant!”

  “Does it work out then?” a burly man in a yellow pullover asked. He hardly looked the type to care with his tousled dark hair and rumpled clothes more likely suited for a pub.

  “With the sister and the handsome suitor?” Grace asked. “Or Dorothea and the reverend?”

  The man shrugged. “Both, I suppose.”

  The crack of the anti-aircraft guns rang out overhead as a plane swooped low enough for the hum of its engine to echo through the cavernous tube station.

  “I don’t know.” Grace glanced at the book, still pinched at her location. “I haven’t read that far yet.”

  “Well,” the housewife said. “Go on.”

  Grace hesitated. “You want me...to read it?” Everyone on the platform of Farringdon Station watched her expectantly. “Out loud?”

  The lot of them all nodded, and quite a few smiled.

  Suddenly, she was the painfully shy girl of her youth again in scuffed shoes that pinched at her toes, standing before the class with a bit of chalk in her hand and every set of eyes on her. Her stomach coiled itself into a knot.

  “Please,” the young mother said. Another barrage of gunfire came, and she cowered down into herself.

  Mr. Evans’s expressive brows crept upward in silent question.

  Despite every brutally shy bit of Grace’s makeup screaming at her to refuse, she opened the book, licked her suddenly dry lips and began to read. Her tongue tripped over the first couple of sentences, and she was awkwardly aware of how many people were witnessing her missteps. And when a bomb exploded somewhere far off, its thunder distracted her so thoroughly, she forgot what line she’d been on.

  But as she continued to read, the crowd around her faded away and her mind focused only on the story. Her world curled around Dorothea’s, experiencing that miserable honeymoon in Rome with a man who hoarded his scholarly aspirations to himself. As the pages turned, they met Fred, the wastrel who had his sights set on marrying a woman in his uncle’s care while Dorothea’s previous beau set his intent toward her younger sister.

  When the anti-aircraft guns fired, Grace raised her voice to be heard. When the lights winked in and out, she continued on as best she could, recalling from her peripheral vision what words were to come next. And when a new character spoke, she invented a voice for each and every one of them.

  A howling screech came overhead, followed by a boom that plunged the tube station into darkness.

  “Here.” There was a rustling as someone dug in a handbag, followed a moment later by the weight of a torch being nudged into Grace’s hand. She flicked on the beam and continued to read, bringing the entire group with her through the story. The all clear sounded and broke through her reading, making her blink at the abrupt transition between the fictional world and reality.

  She returned the borrowed torch with thanks and discovered she was already several chapters into the book.

  “Will you be here tomorrow afternoon?” the housewife asked.

  “If we have an air raid.” Grace tucked a scrap of paper between the pages to mark her place and cradled its weigh in her palm.

  “Then she will,” the burly man said.

  The young mother, who Grace learned was called Mrs. Kittering, nodded at the book in Grace’s hand with a hopeful smile. “Perhaps you can bring Middlemarch with you?”

  After promising to resume where they’d left off, Grace and Mr. Evans returned to the bookshop.

  “You mentioned once feeling helpless amid this war.” He flipped the sign to Open in the window. “But down there, reading to all those frightened people, you had power.”

  “I confess, I felt rather foolish reading aloud like that.” Grace stacked the discarded books left on the counter during the air raid and set them aside in case the customers returned for them.

  He shook his head. “Not foolish at all, Miss Bennett. You’ll change this war yet.” He tapped his blunt fingers on the cover of Middlemarch. “One book at a time.”

  FOURTEEN

  The damage from the attack that afternoon was considerable, leaving a massive crater carved into the street in the middle of the Strand. Over six hundred German planes had crossed into Britain, their bellies heavy with bombs. But while they had come with the intention to destroy more of London, the RAF was prepared to defend.

  The Luftwaffe came back that night, of course. They always did.

  Grace was on duty, grateful that her sector, once more, remained blessedly untouched. It would not remain thus forever. Not when the rest of London had been chipped away to reveal ribs of support beams and blown-out windows reminiscent of the empty sockets of a skull.

  The following day, when the air raids blared their warning, Grace put Middlemarch in her large handbag and escorted Primrose Hill Books patrons to Farringdon Station. The people she’d read to the day before were waiting for her in a small cluster. Their faces lit up when they saw her, especially after taking note of the book she pulled from her handbag.

  They showed up the following day and the one after that as well, each time the number growing slightly larger.

  However, mid September, the weather was quite dismal. Bad enough even to discourage German bombers from attempting their daily afternoon raids. It was a rare, uninterrupted day, absent of a single air raid siren.

  Grace did not squander it and instead combed through a list of recently released books to see how many she might order from Simpkin Marshalls. The door chimed to announce a customer as she was nearly done, a disruption she did not mind.

  When she lifted her gaze, she found the burly man who att
ended every one of her readings at Farringdon Station. He had his cap in his large hands, wringing the gray wool.

  “Afternoon, Miss Bennett.” He ducked his head respectfully. She’d never seen him without the cap settled over his head. His hair beneath was a mix of gray and brown, slightly fuzzed with a bit of his scalp showing at the top.

  “M’name’s Jack,” he said. “I wanted to thank you, not only for reading to us from your book, but also for saving my life.”

  “Saving your life?” Grace repeated in surprise.

  He nodded. “I was in the area the day you started reading, rather by accident. Usually, I’m near Hyde Park in the afternoons, repairing some of the buildings there.” He tilted his head in a humble gesture. “Much as I can. But lately I’ve been finding jobs around here to make sure I’m in the tube to hear you read during air raids. Had I not, I’d have been in Marble Arch Station where I sheltered before.”

  Grace put her hand to her mouth to cover her shock.

  Two days before during a particularly brutal attack that destroyed nearly all of Oxford Street, a bomb had come through the ceiling of the Marble Arch Station where people were waiting out the attack. The carnage had been considerable, as detailed by Mr. Stokes until Grace had begged him to stop. Those who had not been killed by the bomb had been shredded by the exploding tiles. The injuries had been horrific.

  “I’m so...” Grace stammered, unsure what to say. “I’m so pleased you weren’t there. That you’ve remained safe.”

  Jack sniffed and wiped at his nose with the back of his hand, cap still clutched between his thick fingers. “That’s not the only reason I’m here.”

  “Oh?” She smiled. “Can I help you find a book?”

  He twisted at his cap again. “You hadn’t finished Middlemarch. A couple of us queued at Farringdon Station anticipating an air raid. When it didn’t happen, well... We were wondering what’s next in the story.”