The Air Raid Book Club
Annie Lyons
Prologue
London, 1911
Gertie Bingham was standing in the queue at Piddock the Butcher’s contemplating offal when she experienced a thrill of longing a little like falling in love. She recognized this sensation immediately, as it was only the second time she’d experienced it in her life. Some people thought falling in love happened over time, unraveling like a spool of thread, but for Gertie, it was instantaneous. A thunderbolt through the heart. Unexpected. Immediate. Everlasting.
Her eyes traveled from the trays of burgundy sheep hearts and slabs of plum-colored pig’s liver to the shop opposite and more specifically the “For Lease” sign within it. Gertie let out an involuntary yelp of excitement. The woman before her in the queue, a Miss Crow, whose name befitted her beady-eyed appearance, issued a loud tut.
“Sorry,” cried Gertie, abandoning her place and heading for the door. “It’s just that I’ve found it. I’ve found it!”
The “it” in question was a milliner’s. “Buckingham Milliners, Elegant Millinery for Ladies of Discernment,” to be precise. Beechwood High Street boasted not one but two milliners, along with a butcher, a baker, and, indeed, a candlestick maker, although this establishment went under the broader umbrella term of “ironmongers.” Gertie despaired at the paucity of interesting shops on offer. Having grown up in the center of London, she found married life in this south-east corner of the capital rather humdrum at times. She longed for a theater or a concert hall or, best of all, a bookshop to add a little cultural distraction. The shops were very pleasant, of course, but largely functional. There was a tailor, a chemist, and a confectioner run by Mrs. Perkins, who Gertie had to admit made the best homemade toffee she’d ever tasted. She also enjoyed visiting Travers’s Greengrocers, run by Gerald and his wife, Beryl, and Mr. Piddock was an excellent butcher, but Gertie longed for more, and on this bright June morning, it seemed that it might be in her sights.
She hurried up the hill to the public library where her husband, Harry, worked, impatient to give him the good news. Gertie burst through the heavy mahogany doors, receiving a sharp reproach from the senior librarian, Miss Snipp, who glared at the intruder over the top of her pince-nez.
“May I remind you that this is a library, Mrs. Bingham,” she hissed. “Not one of your raucous suffragette gatherings.”
“Sorry,” whispered Gertie. “I wanted to speak to Harry if he’s available.”
Miss Snipp opened her mouth, ready to scold such presumption, when the door to the head librarian’s office swung open and Harry appeared, carrying a cup and saucer and a copy of a P. G. Wodehouse novel. He didn’t notice Gertie at first, and she was reminded of that deliciously heady sensation she’d experienced when they first met. To the casual observer, Harry Bingham’s appearance could most generously be described as awkward. He looked like a man whose arms and legs had grown too long for his body, giving him the haphazard air of a foal who was learning to walk. His tie was invariably askew and his hands covered in ink stains, but this simply made Gertie love him more. In fact, it had been one of the key factors that drew her to this rumpled, charming man when he walked into her father’s bookshop all those years ago.
Gertie Bingham was fortunate enough to be born into a family of forward thinkers. Her father, Arthur Arnold, had established Arnold’s Booksellers in Cecil Court, London, with his brother, Thomas, at the end of the last century. For Arthur and his wife, Lilian, there was never any distinction made between the education of Gertie and her younger brother, Jack. One of the first books her mother had taught her to read was Original Stories from Real Life, by Mary Wollstonecraft. Lilian Arnold was a staunch suffragette, and so Gertie was raised with a keen mind and a bloodhound’s instinct for sniffing out injustice. This was all well and good in the confines of her home life, where debate and discussion were commonplace. However, when her mother decided to send her to an all-girls school, she was often out of step with her peers, who were shocked to learn that she didn’t long for a life of domesticity and submissiveness.
“Why on earth have I been given a brain if not to use it?” she would complain to her mother.
“Patience, my love. Not everyone sees the world as you do.”
But Gertie had little patience. She was always in a hurry, eager to read the next book, absorb a new idea and release it into the world like a butterfly from a net. Her mother suggested that she attend university, but Gertie didn’t have time. She wanted to be living, to be out in the world. So she asked her father for a job at the bookshop, and it was there that the stars aligned and she met Harry.
“Gertie, I’ve got a new recruit for you,” said her uncle Thomas one day. “Would you show him the ropes, please?”
Gertie glanced up from the index cards she was filing and knew that she was staring into the startlingly blue eyes of the man she would marry.
“Harry Bingham, Gertrude Arnold.”
“Call me Gertie,” she said, standing up and holding out her hand.
A flush of scarlet spread up from Harry’s collar as he accepted. “Pleased to make your acquaintance,” he said, pulling his hand away as soon as it was polite to do so and pushing at his large round spectacles, which had slipped down his nose. They gave him an owlish appearance, and this paired with his tall, ungainly frame only made Gertie like him more. He was a shy apprentice, but Gertie discovered that as soon as they began to discuss books, all traces of bashfulness were banished. They bonded over a mutual love of Charles Dickens and Emily Brontë. It wasn’t long before days working together became evenings at the theater and weekend promenades in the park. Gertie sometimes mused that falling in love with Harry had been as easy as the songs told you it was.
They were married a few years later and moved south of the river when Harry qualified as a librarian. The newly married Binghams had assumed that their snug little house would soon echo with the sound of infants, but years of heartbreaking disappointment resigned them to the fact that this wasn’t to be. Ever the practical stoic, Gertie continued with life as she knew best, and when she spied the “For Lease” sign in Buckingham Milliners on the high street, her impatient mind saw a solution and an exciting new future for them both.
“A bookshop?” said Harry as she linked an arm through his and led him on a lunchtime walk around the rose garden next to the library.
“Why not? We could run it with our eyes closed, and besides, wouldn’t you like to work in a place where you don’t have to whisper all the time or get snapped at by Snipp?”
“Now, Gertie, Miss Snipp isn’t that bad.”
“Yes, but she’s not a patch on your wife,” said Gertie, leading him behind an oak tree out of sight and planting a kiss on his lips.
Harry smiled and kissed her again. “Where would I be without you, Gertie Bingham?”
“Tragically alone and terribly brokenhearted,” she said.
They applied in person to Miss Maud and Miss Violet Buckingham, the sisters who had run Buckingham Milliners ever since their father died thirty years previously. The pair seemed very taken with the young couple who stood before them, complimenting Gertie on her “elegantly demure” choice of hat.