The Lost Bookshop(33)

‘Beggars can’t be choosers.’ She shrugged and all but concealed a malevolent grin.

Banter. A safe harbour. I got stuck into a custard doughnut, grateful that we were back on a firm footing. I didn’t know why she had confided in me and I wasn’t sure why I had told her about the darkest times in my life, but perhaps the trick was not to question it. Not to put a label on it, as clichéd as it sounded.

‘Any luck with the manuscript?’

I made a mental note that whenever I showed up at Martha’s window, I should bring sugar. Her mood was positively upbeat.

‘Um, no, not really. A colleague found something about her brother, Lyndon. He was a soldier – a general or something – in the war. It’s strange,’ I said, tearing a chocolate doughnut into two halves and offering her one. ‘You’d think a woman like her who’d been rubbing shoulders with Hemingway and contacting one of the top book dealers in America would leave some sort of trace, wouldn’t you?’

She took her time to think about it and once she had satisfactorily munched the last of the doughnut and wiped her hands on her jeans, she looked me square in the eye.

‘You think it’s strange that a woman has been silenced? Forgotten about? Written out of history? Henry, what have they been teaching you?’

‘Okay, all right, that sounded completely stupid, but you know what I mean.’

‘Well, maybe your problem is that you keep looking at Opaline from a man’s point of view. Hemingway, her brother, the other guy—’

‘Rosenbach.’

‘Yeah, Rosenbach. Why don’t you find out more about Sylvia and the bookshop in Paris?’

Why hadn’t I thought of that?

‘You know, you really are quite good at this.’

‘What?’

‘Research. What was it you were thinking of studying?’

Her whole demeanour deflated, like those inflatable men outside car dealerships when the air runs out.

‘Ugh, let’s not talk about it.’ She checked the time on her phone and said she had to get back to work. With one leg halfway in the open window, she stalled for a moment. ‘Madame Bowden told me something … a bit strange. About the bookshop.’

I felt the hairs on my arms standing straight up.

‘Actually, forget I said anything, you’ll think it’s ridiculous.’

‘Now, see, all you’ve done there is create a more captive audience. Spit it out—’ I wanted to use her surname, but then realised I still didn’t know what it was.

‘The thing is, Madame Bowden tends to embellish a lot of her stories, so I guess you have to take it with a pinch of salt or whatever …’

‘Just tell me.’

She pulled her leg back out of the window and stood beside me once again.

‘One of her friends, who was probably very drunk at the time, claims that she saw the bookshop. Not only saw it, but walked inside.’

I said nothing. I couldn’t risk opening my mouth to speak.

‘It was back in the sixties, so, you know … hallucinogenic drugs and stuff. But I figured you’d want to know. Anyway, I really have to go.’

With that, she slipped back inside and shut the window behind her. I stayed on the patch of ground where the bookshop should have been and walked slowly around in circles until my legs stopped feeling like jelly. I wanted to tell her, but just as she had said, it sounded ridiculous. My first night in Ireland, following a few too many G&Ts on the Ryanair flight, I took a taxi straight to Ha'penny Lane. I was fully expecting to find a bookshop, and that is exactly what I found. Even the taxi driver must have seen it. I think. I remember getting out of the car, handing him the money and walking up to the door. The lights were on inside and there was a golden glow from within, dispersed through the stained-glass windows. It was warm and comfortable inside, with that distinct bookshop smell of old musty covers and something spicy, like cinnamon. The walls were lined with shelves full of colourful book covers and I felt the tips of my fingers itching to touch them. But I wanted to speak to the owner first – show them the letter I had found and see if they could shed any light on its contents. I heard the bell ringing over the door and as I turned to see who had walked in behind me, I found myself outside on the pavement again. Just like that. I hadn’t moved my feet and yet there I was.

I turned back to where the shop had been and found nothing but the darkness of night, as though it had swallowed the shop whole. For some reason I patted myself down, maybe to see if I was still there when the shop I was just standing in so clearly wasn’t. I did that ridiculous thing where you turn around and around on the spot, like a dog chasing its tail, in case the thing you lost is right behind you. But how could anyone lose a bookshop? The only logical explanation was that I had been very, very drunk. That is what I kept telling myself. A drunken haze, and the shop was a mirage. But I had been drunk many times before that and never conjured up a building, let alone walked into one. Now I had a corroborator. Someone else had seen the shop.

The question now was: what had caused it to disappear and how could I get it back?





Chapter Nineteen





OPALINE





Dublin, 1922


My first few weeks at Mr Fitzpatrick’s Nostalgia Shop were punctuated by a string of strange occurrences. It seemed the building itself did not exactly welcome me with open arms, but I was determined to prove myself a worthy custodian. I ventured up the spiral staircase that led to the attic, where he had kept the overflow from the shop. At the top was a tiny door that required me to bend a little and when I pushed against it, I found that the wood seemed to push back. I stood back in order to take something of a run at it and on the third go I burst through and fell flat on my face.