Book People

Chapter Two

You were such an angry little thing. A real termagant. Did I ever tell you how much I liked that?

H

SEBASTIAN

I do not like Kate Jones.

I do not like Kate Jones.

I do not like Kate Jones.

I have to say it to myself three times as a calming mechanism, because otherwise I’m going to charge out of the shop door after her to continue our argument, and that would be a very stupid thing to do.

I don’t want her to know how angry she makes me. I don’t want her to know how she gets under my skin. Like a splinter of glass you can’t see to pull out, slowly working its way deeper and deeper, hurting like a bastard.

Instead, I watch her through my front window as she strolls casually across the road, the hem of her frothy pink skirt lifting in the light breeze, revealing a flash of pale thigh.

She’s ridiculous. She dresses like a Barbie doll, not a bookseller. Every gesture she makes is over-exaggerated and it’s the same with her expressions, every emotion on her face writ large enough for everyone to see.

I can’t stand how open she is.

I do not like her.

So I have no idea why I can’t take my eyes off her.

I do not like that either.

She walks with a confident swing of her hips, approaching that ridiculous space that I refuse to call a bookshop. Her hair is long and gathered into a low ponytail at the nape of her neck, spilling down her back in a fluffy golden cloud. She’s wearing little pink sandals that match her pink dress and she looks like the Sugar Plum Fairy. Sparkling and sweet, a delicious confection. Light and airy, without substance.

I don’t want anything to do with women who lack substance.

I don’t want anything to do with women full stop. Or at least not women who live in the village. I go elsewhere if I want female company.

Yet still I watch her as the breeze lifts strands of gold from her shoulders and she pauses to smooth them back. Does she know I’m watching her? Is she trying to prove a point? And, if so, what particular point is she trying to prove?

She was right, I was an arse to her just now. I know that. She had every right to call me a snob. I was being deliberately provocative. But I wanted to make it clear that I didn’t want her or her books anywhere near my festival.

And it is my festival. I’ve spent months organising it for the benefit of Blackwood Books and Blackwood Books alone. Though, it’s more accurate to say I revived it, since it was my great-grandfather who conceived the initial festival, then ran it successfully for years until my grandfather took over. He, unfortunately, didn’t have the same interest in the shop that my great-grandfather did, and his lack of passion hurt the festival, and so it became less and less successful over time. Then my father took over and he ran it into the ground.

Which is the story of Blackwood Books in many ways, since it’s also my father’s fault that the bookshop is struggling now. Too many debts. Lack of financial oversight. Too few books being sold. Too much online competition. Too few people reading. The problems are myriad, but I’m determined to overcome them.

Blackwood Books has been a village icon for over half a century and I certainly won’t be the Blackwood responsible for the business going under. Dad might have given up on it after Mum died, but I haven’t.

Pretty Miss Jones pauses before the doors of her ridiculously named shop, and glances over her shoulder.

No doubt she can see me standing here, looking at her.

I should pretend that I’m not looking and turn away, abashed. But I don’t. I’m a deliberate man. I want her to see me staring after her. I want her to know that I was serious when I said I didn’t want her at my festival, that I will brook no argument.

We’ve already had a silent battle of wills once today. Why not another?

I don’t want her at my festival.

I don’t want her in my town.

I don’t want her pretty, flirty skirts, her pale thighs, her tangled blonde hair, her sunny, friendly smiles, and her wide grey eyes anywhere near me.

She’s too far away for me to tell whether she blushes, but she doesn’t turn away. She sees me, I know she does, and she’s looking right back.

I turn calmly and without haste, glancing down at the laptop I have open on the counter, and resume pretending to check through my stock ordering.

If a customer were to come in now, all they’d see would be a bookseller calmly working at his laptop, nothing but professional and pleasant.

Inside, though, I’m feral.

She’s a persistent woman, and this I know because she’s been persistently courting me ever since she arrived in Wychtree. Not courting in a romantic fashion but in a business sense. She wants me to be okay with her bookshop, with her taking some of my business away. She wants us to be ‘friends’.

But I don’t do ‘friends’, and certainly not with her. And while it’s true our shops are aimed at different readers, there’s a proportion of my customers who have abandoned me entirely. They used to put orders through me and now they don’t. It’s a problem, I can’t deny it.

She called me a snob and no doubt thinks that I’m some kind of intellectual puritan. While it’s true that I’ve played up to her expectations because I’m angry with her, I’m neither of those things. I believe all books should exist and every genre has its place. But she’s directly threatening my livelihood, and that’s why I’m angry. That’s why I organised the festival. I need more customers, and if large numbers of people in the village now get their reading material from her, then I need to reach beyond the village.

I want the All the World’s a Page festival to become the new go-to of literary festivals, the way it used to be back when my great-grandfather started it. I want Wychtree to become the new Hay-on-Wye. I’ve already had massive issues with the printers about the posters that were supposed to go up last month, and now Miss Jones is meddling. I can’t have her insinuating herself and taking all my potential new customers and orders. Blackwood Books will be the sole supplier and that’s final.

Books are a serious business. They deal with deep issues. They are subversive. Political. Religious. They deal with humanity at its worst and its best, and while I believe in fun escapism too, that’s not what my bookshop is about.

I glance out of the shop window again, irresistibly drawn to Portable Magic across the road. Her window dressing is absurd. Piles of romance novels, and mugs of tea and chocolate boxes and cushions, and a huge sign that reads: ‘Indulge in some “me time”!’

The exclamation mark is an affront. The bright colours are an attack. And I’m a fool for indulging in this ridiculous window-dressing battle we have going on, yet I can’t help myself. I filled my window with James Wyatt’s latest Booker Prize winner, The Bay at Midnight , in response to all the fluff in hers. She’s got me stooping to her level and I resent it with every fibre of my being.

I shouldn’t let her get to me, but the debts are already piling up due to the festival and I’m hoping to God that it will be a success, because the bank won’t give me another loan.

No. It will be a success. I’ll make it a bloody success.

James Wyatt himself is the headliner, a coup I managed to pull off through a colleague who manages Wyatt’s wife’s favourite bookshop. My colleague put in a word with the wife, who then convinced Wyatt not only to come to Wychtree, but also to give a reading and a talk right here in Blackwood Books. I’ve got a few other authors, some journalists and some poets too. Ticket sales have been brisk.

Kate Jones and her ‘me time!’ window be damned.

The rest of the village love her, think the sun shines out of her pert rear end, but I refuse to buy into that. She’s the competition, the new kid on the block, and all I have on my side is the history of Blackwood Books, but it’s enough. The village loves its history and Blackwood is part of that.

My great-grandfather, who started the bookshop back in the thirties, was a Sebastian Blackwood and so am I, and I will not let his legacy vanish.

I try to concentrate on the stock ordering, but I can’t get the look on Kate Jones’s face as she left my shop out of my head. She was angry with me, but I also spotted determination in her grey eyes.

I don’t trust that determination. I don’t trust it an inch.

The bell above the door chimes and old Mr Parsons comes in. He’s a retired English professor with a fondness for nineteenth-century classics – he’s a particular fan of Proust – but I’m trying to introduce him to some modern authors. And when I say modern, I mean written after 1950. I got him to take a chance on Faulkner and Rushdie, so now I’m hoping he’ll like the Wyatt too.

The Bay at Midnight is set in an old pub in Ireland over the course of one night and it’s a modern classic. A rich tapestry of life in a village, redolent with history, fraught relationships, and a searing commentary on the loneliness of the human condition – at least, that’s what the Times review said.

I haven’t read it. I don’t need to read about villages and the loneliness of the human condition. I know all about that already. My reading tastes run to . . . other things, that I will never reveal to anyone.

Most especially not to Miss Kate Jones.

‘Blackwood,’ Mr Parsons says in greeting.

‘Mr Parsons,’ I say cordially back. ‘I have the Shakespeare edition you were after. It came in yesterday. The Coriolanus .’

He’s a tall man in his mid-seventies, straight-backed and severe. A bit like my great-grandfather, which is why I bear his little moments of pettiness. At seventy-six, you’re allowed a few pettinesses.

‘Excellent,’ he says, rubbing his hands as he approaches the counter. ‘I’ve been looking forward to it.’

I pick up the Wyatt from the stack beside me and put it next to the Shakespeare. ‘You might like this,’ I say. ‘If you like Rushdie, you should give it a try.’

He looks suspiciously at the book and I tap the ‘Booker Prize Winner’ sticker displayed prominently on the front. ‘It won the Booker,’ I say, just in case he missed the sticker. ‘And the author will be coming to Blackwood Books for the festival next month.’

‘Oh, I see.’ Mr Parsons picks the book up and gives it a cursory study. ‘Will he be doing a reading?’

Mr Parsons does love a reading.

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘And a Q&A.’

Mr Parsons does love a Q&A.

‘Hmm.’ He puts the book down on top of the Shakespeare. ‘I’ll take it. But if the first two pages don’t grab me, I’m bringing it back.’

Mr Parsons also loves his two-page rule. I do not love it, especially when he brings the books back to return them. But I don’t argue with him when he does, because he’s a loyal customer and the books he likes to buy are expensive.

‘Of course,’ I murmur, and ring the books up for him.

As he’s paying, Beverly from the Wychtree Arms comes in and, after Mr Parsons has gone, we go over the details for the poetry-reading event for the festival. That event in particular hasn’t sold as many tickets as I’d like, despite me managing to snag Augusta Heroine (a pseudonym, obviously) reading from her epic verse novel When We Were Heroes , a retelling of The Iliad from the point of view of a gender-swapped Odysseus.

Her readings are usually sell-outs in London, so I’m hoping there will be more takers. There’s still a few weeks to go, after all.

After Beverly leaves, we enter the long hours of the afternoon lull. I find myself yet again looking out of my front window and across the road to Portable Magic.

Miss Jones is adding a few more books to her window. The covers are brightly coloured, with cartoon people on them, and she arranges them picturesquely on the low table, next to a cup and saucer and a teapot.

A group of teenage girls assemble in front of the window, looking at the books, and Miss Jones straightens and gives them a smile. Then she picks up the books one by one and shows them to the girls, who grin and point and nod.

I stare balefully out at them, thinking what a ridiculous pantomime it is. And when the girls all pile excitedly into her shop, I’m incensed.

She treats her front window like it’s a department store display, like a toyshop. She thinks she’s the Pied Piper of Wychtree, luring all the children into her shop, and once they’re inside, they never come out again.

As the girls make their way in, Miss Jones straightens in the front window and throws a jaunty salute my way.

My jaw clenches tight, my teeth grind.

I turn back to my own shop and stare at it, trying to find my usual clear-eyed calm.

This place has always been an escape for me, ever since childhood. My father took it over when my grandfather died and I grew up among the shelves, my toys scattered about on the rugs. I learned to read in this shop, learned all about the world in the pages of these books, and, when my mother died, it was my escape. She loved this place too, just like my great-grandfather did, and it’s for her as well that I want to keep it going.

I need to keep it going.

For the rest of the afternoon, I try to concentrate on yet another festival publicity budget, but I keep being distracted by people in costume all disappearing into Miss Jones’s shop.

At first I think it’s only children, but it’s not. There are adults among them too.

I’m going to have to talk to her, I realise. I’m going to have to make it absolutely clear that she’s not to be involved in my festival in any way. Or sabotage it or subvert it. As she might.

The village grapevine worked overtime when she first arrived here, and not only because she’s the great-granddaughter of the first Kate Jones, who used to own a teashop where the bookshop now is. There was something about a relationship breakup and a redundancy back in London. She’d been doing some kind of corporate job.

She’s probably ambitious – you can’t be in the corporate world for too long before you have to start walking over the backs of people – so I really wouldn’t put it past her to do something to insinuate herself into my festival. I wouldn’t put it past her to organise some kind of sabotage.

So, just before closing, I walk out of Blackwood Books, cross the road and approach Portable Magic.

I’ve never set foot in this shop and I’ve never wanted to. It’s galling that I’m now having to take this step, but it has to be done. She has to know that I will not have her hijacking my festival, not in any way, shape or form.

I step inside and am immediately assailed by a roomful of people all dressed up like cartoon characters. Or superheroes. Or video game characters or something. I can’t tell which it is.

I don’t like it, not any of it. They’re all talking loudly, leaving no space for quiet reading of any kind, and they’re passing around comics and graphic novels indiscriminately. Some kid pulls a toy gun from a holster and pretends to shoot me with it.

I scowl at him and he moves on to shoot his friend instead.

‘Mr Blackwood,’ a feminine voice says. ‘Fancy seeing you here.’

I turn to see Miss Jones standing behind the counter. She’s not wearing her pink skirt any more but a sleek, silver jumpsuit, with knives in holsters strapped to her shapely thighs. She has a black utility belt around her waist.

I tell myself she looks preposterous and do not let my gaze stray from her face.

She raises a golden brow. ‘What brings you to finally darken my door?’

‘I need to talk to you,’ I say.

‘Oh? What about?’

‘The festival.’

Her smile becomes sweet, almost saccharine. ‘What festival? Which one? Oh, the one you didn’t invite me to be a part of?’

I ignore the circus going on around me the way I also ignore her sarcasm, folding my arms and staring at her coldly. Her attention drops briefly to my chest, which is interesting, though not at all welcome. Definitely not.

‘You know which festival I’m talking about, Miss Jones. All the World’s a Page. There’s a reason you weren’t invited and it’s because I want Blackwood Books to be the sole supplier of books for the festival. So I’m here to reiterate that I don’t want you or your bookshop to be involved.’

‘That’s fine,’ she says. ‘I’ve just started planning my own festival. It’ll run concurrently with yours, though of course there’ll be different events and different authors coming.’

A shock of anger pulses through me, so intense that at first I can’t speak.

‘You can’t,’ I finally splutter. ‘A month isn’t long enough to organise an entire festival. Even six months was pushing it.’

She lifts a shoulder. ‘It’s enough time when you have a lot of thirsty readers.’

‘No,’ I say.

‘No?’ She raises both brows this time. ‘I’m sorry, did Wychtree install a dictator while I wasn’t looking? Or maybe appoint you to be the book police? Who died and made you God, Mr Blackwood?’

My jaw is so tight it’s aching. ‘You can’t have a festival at the same time as mine,’ I force out through gritted teeth. ‘The village isn’t big enough.’

She leans forward, both elbows on the counter, looking up at me from beneath her golden lashes. ‘Of course it is. Like I told you before, we cater to different readers. The world is plenty big enough for the both of us and so is this village.’

I don’t want to reveal the extent of my shop’s losses. Dad was the main culprit, it’s true, but I don’t like what it says about me as a business owner. I want her to stop poaching on my territory, but she thinks this is a game, a battle of front windows, intellectualism versus the mainstream, and it’s not.

It’s my livelihood.

Someone approaches the counter and she allows her saccharine-sweet smile to linger on me for a moment longer before she directs her attention to her customer, a gangly adolescent boy with blue-dyed hair, wearing some complicated and elaborate harness around his shoulders.

The smile she directs at him is so warm and genuine that he blushes.

Suddenly I’m even more furious.

Furious that she should be so pretty. Furious that everyone likes her. Furious that I know exactly how long it’s been since a woman smiled at me like that. Furious that I don’t think I’ve ever had a woman smile at me like that.

I stand there fuming as she talks with the kid, exchanging a bit of banter and gently teasing him as he buys his little stack of manga. And I should probably leave. I’m in no fit state to speak to anyone – not even a woman I don’t like – when I’m in this kind of mood. But I don’t move.

When the boy finally walks away, she gives me an exasperated look. ‘What is it, exactly, Mr Blackwood, that is making you quite so angry about my shop?’

‘My falling sales,’ I blurt, unable to stop myself.

She blinks as though this is a shock to her. ‘Falling sales?’

‘Yes, falling sales,’ I bark. ‘What? Did you think there were no romance readers here until your little shop opened? Did you think people only started reading thrillers and mysteries when you miraculously came down from the heavens and waved your portable magic wand?’ I give her my coldest stare. ‘They were always here, those readers. And they used to order from Blackwood Books.’

She blinks again. Yes, this is clearly news to her.

Slowly she straightens and the shock fades from her eyes. The look she gives me now is as cool as the one I’m giving her. ‘Then perhaps you should have done more to keep them.’

It’s a little knife she’s got, but it slides in and wounds all the same. I stiffen. ‘I don’t run a bad business.’

‘No, you don’t,’ she agrees. ‘But you don’t run a warm, welcoming business either. You took for granted the customers you had, so don’t blame them if they wanted to go somewhere else where they’re not looked down upon.’

Another knife wound.

‘I don’t look down on anyone,’ I say. ‘Everyone should be able to read what they want. But Blackwood Books has a history and that history should be treated with honour and respect.’

Her grey eyes flash with temper and, like the cliché I’m rapidly becoming, I find her even prettier when she’s angry. ‘Are you saying that genre fiction is disrespectful?’

‘No.’ I uncross my arms and put both hands on the counter, leaning on them. ‘I’m saying that Blackwood Books is in a historic building. It’s a small local business, and you and your corporate nonsense are in danger of running it into the ground.’

She puts her hands on the counter too, and leans in, invading my personal space the way I invaded hers. She’s looking angrily up at me, not at all afraid that I’m so much taller and broader than she is. ‘Corporate nonsense? Next you’ll be comparing me to Amazon and proclaiming that the death of the independent bookseller is nigh.’

‘It is, Miss Jones,’ I bite out, staring down into her pretty eyes. ‘It is nigher than you think.’

We stare furiously at each other and only then do I realise that her eyes are almost crystalline, lighter in the centre, with a darker ring of charcoal around the outside. Her skin is smooth and velvety, and slightly flushed, and she smells as sweet as she looks. Her mouth is slightly open and her lips are full and soft-looking.

I want to take a bite right out of them.

I want to take a bite right out of her.

‘Um,’ an adolescent voice says from behind me. ‘Maybe you two should get a room?’

I curse under my breath and shove myself away.

Then I turn and leave that hellhole without another word.