The Lost Bookshop(10)
‘Excuse me! I wonder if I might take a moment of your time, Miss?’
She halted mid-stride and turned to look at me, as though she would make me regret my entire life if I didn’t make the next words from my mouth worthwhile.
‘What is it?’
‘I – well …’ Brilliant. Ten out of ten. She carried on her brisk pace.
‘Can I buy you a coffee? I could tell you all about it—’
‘I can buy my own coffee, thanks.’
‘Look, I’m not some kind of weirdo—’
‘That exactly what a weirdo would say.’
I struggled to find the words that might make her turn around. As a last resort, I went with honesty.
‘I need your help!’
She stopped, her head dropped and she paused for a moment, as though deciding something.
‘There’s a café through here,’ she said, pointing to a narrow cobbled street through an old archway.
As I followed her lead, I reintroduced myself as Henry. Henry Field. Exactly like that, as though I were a key member of MI5.
She kept her name to herself, making an altogether better spy.
‘So, you found an old letter that mentions a book no one’s ever heard of, hidden in a bookshop that doesn’t exist.’
‘That’s about the size of it,’ I agreed, before taking a mouthful of coffee and inadvertently giving myself a frothy milk moustache. It was kind of liberating, this honesty business. For so long I had hidden my findings for fear someone else would uncover the lost manuscript, but I knew this girl, Martha (as she eventually told me, no surname), wouldn’t have the background knowledge or the interest to steal my discovery.
‘Have you thought about seeing a therapist?’
‘Hah!’ I hadn’t expected her to be funny, her whole countenance was so serious up to that point. She was wearing makeup, which went some way towards covering her bruises, but she still winced from the cut on her lip when drinking her tea. I did the honourable thing and pretended not to have noticed.
‘I know it existed, I have the address on the letter-headed paper, even if the council has no record of it.’
‘And how do you think I can help? I’ve only been here a few days. I don’t know this city at all.’
‘Oh, I just assumed. You don’t own number 12?’
At this she laughed heartily, then just as quickly her features fell back into their strained expression.
‘Madame Bowden owns number 12. I work for her.’
‘Oh, I see, as some kind of assistant?’
She did not answer straight away and I immediately regretted prying. What did it matter? It was just something you say.
‘I’m her housekeeper.’
‘Oh.’ Oh? Can’t you think of anything else to say, idiot?
‘Well, thanks for the tea, I’d best be off.’
She was up and heading for the door before I reacted.
‘Maybe we can do this again?’ I called out.
But she never turned back, just waved a hand and headed back out on to the busy street.
Chapter Seven
OPALINE
Paris, 1921
I started early the next day, enquiring about jobs wherever I saw a sign that read offres d’emploi. It rapidly became clear that no one wanted to hire a young English woman with no skills to speak of, broken French and no experience of commerce. The naivety of my plan, or rather the lack of it, filled me with panic. I wandered the streets aimlessly, blindly hoping for a sign. I let myself be swept along by people who knew where they were going and crossed the Seine on the glorious Pont Neuf. I raised my eyes to the spires of the Notre Dame cathedral, thinking of Esmerelda and Victor Hugo. I reached inside my satchel and rested my hand on the Baudelaire. Even feeling the book under my fingertips calmed me. I couldn’t explain it, not even to myself, but books gave me an unflinching sense of stability and groundedness. That because words survived, somehow I would too.
As I walked the drizzled streets, feeling as though I were about to give up, I came across a bookshop called ‘Shakespeare and Company’. There was something reassuring about seeing that name. The doorway was blocked with boxes, and I saw two women just behind them, arguing over where to put things. They spoke English, and while one had an American accent, the other was unmistakably French.
The window gleamed with a luminous display of books – a rainbow of colourful calf bindings, woodcuts and intriguing title pages. The familiar feeling of excitement and curiosity I always had looking in the window of a bookshop pricked my skin. Don’t buy anything, I warned myself, as I craned my neck to look inside.
‘Give me a hand, will you?’ said the shorter of the two. She was dressed in a tweed jacket and skirt and reminded me of a scout leader, someone you obeyed unquestioningly.
I rather awkwardly took the other side of a large box she was holding, which had the weight of a small elephant.
‘An occupational hazard,’ she said, amused by all my huffing and puffing.
‘I’m afraid I don’t have much in the way of muscles,’ I replied.
‘Is that an English accent I detect?’
I nodded and introduced myself.
‘My name is Sylvia. Sylvia Beach.’ She gave a firm handshake. ‘Well, you’re in the right place. We stock English language novels.’