The Lost Bookshop(2)

‘If you tilt your head,’ he told me once, ‘you can hear the older books whispering their secrets.’

I found an antique book on the shelf with a calfskin cover and time-coloured pages. I held it up to my ear and closed my eyes tight; imagining that I could hear whatever important secrets the author was trying to tell me. But I couldn’t hear it, not the words at least.

‘What do you hear?’ he asked.

I waited, let the sound fill my ears.

‘I hear the sea!’

It was like having a shell to my ear, with the air swirling through the pages. He smiled and held my cheek in his hand.

‘Are they breathing, Papa?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘the stories are breathing.’

When he finally succumbed to the Spanish Flu in 1918, I stayed up all night by his side, holding his cold hand, reading his favourite story. The Personal History of David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens. In some silly way, I thought that the words would bring him back.

‘I refuse to marry a man I’ve never even met purely to aid the family finances. The whole idea is preposterous!’

Mrs Barrett dropped the brush as I spoke and the sound of metal on marble churned my brother’s features. He loathed any loud noises.

‘Get out of here now!’

The poor woman had very unreliable knees and it took three failed attempts before she got up and left the room. How she managed to refrain from slamming the door behind her, I will never know.

I continued with my defence.

‘If I am such a burden to you both, I will simply move out.’

‘And where on earth do you think you would go? You have no money,’ my mother pointed out. Now in her sixties, she had always referred to my arrival in the family as their ‘little surprise’, which would have sounded quaint had I not been aware of her loathing for surprises. Growing up in a household of an older generation only compounded my urge to break free and experience the modern world.

‘I have friends,’ I insisted. ‘I could get a job.’

My mother shrieked.

‘Damn and blast, you ungrateful brat!’ Lyndon growled, grabbing my wrist as I attempted to get up from my chair.

‘You’re hurting me.’

‘I will hurt you far worse than this if you do not obey.’

I tried to free my arm, but he held fast. I looked to my mother, who was making an intense study of the rug on the floor.

‘I see,’ I said, finally understanding that Lyndon was the man of the house now and he would make the decisions.

‘Very well.’ He still held on to my wrist, his sour breath in my face. ‘I said, very well.’

Meeting his eyes, I again tried to pull away. ‘I will meet this suitor.’

‘You will marry him,’ he assured me and slowly he released his grasp.

I smoothed down my skirts and tucked my book under my arm.

‘Right. That’s settled then,’ Lyndon said, his cold eyes looking somewhere just beyond me. ‘I shall invite Austin to supper this evening and all will be arranged.’

‘Yes, Brother,’ I said, before retreating to my bedroom upstairs.





I searched the top drawer of the dressing table and found a cigarette that I’d stolen from Mrs Barrett’s stash in the kitchen. I opened the window and lit the tip, taking a long slow inhale like a femme fatale from the films. I sat at my dressing table and let the cigarette rest on an old oyster shell I had picked up at the beach last summer, a carefree holiday with my best friend Jane before she herself got married. Despite the fact that women now had the vote, a good marriage was still seen as the only option.

Looking at my reflection in the mirror, I touched the nape of my neck where my hair ended. Mother had almost fainted when she saw what I’d done with my long tresses. ‘I’m not a little girl any more,’ I had told her. But did I really believe that? I needed to be a modern woman. I needed to take a risk. But without any money, how could I do anything other than obey my elders? That was when my father’s words returned to me … Books are like portals. I looked again at my bookshelf and took another long drag of my cigarette.

‘What would Nellie Bly do?’ I asked myself, as I often did. To me, she was the epitome of fearlessness – a pioneering American journalist who, inspired by Jules Verne’s book, travelled around the world in a mere seventy-two days, six hours and eleven minutes. She always said that energy rightly applied and directed could accomplish anything. If I were a boy, I could announce my intentions to do the Grand Tour of Europe before getting married. I longed to experience different cultures. Twenty-one years old and I had done nothing. Seen nothing. I looked again at my books and made my decision before I finished smoking my cigarette.





‘How much can you give me for them?’ I watched as Mr Turton examined my hardbacks of Wuthering Heights and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

He was the proprietor of an airless shop that was in reality just a very long corridor without any windows. His pipe smoke gave the air a viscous quality and my eyes began to water.

‘Two pounds and that’s being generous.’

‘Oh no, I need much more than that.’

He saw my father’s copy of David Copperfield and before I could stop him, he began to leaf through the pages.