Chapter 8
H ay-on-Wye did, Mirren thought, feel like a good place to start. Having arrived mid-morning into some uncharacteristic December sunshine, she took a beautifully backdropped selfie – hills, cobbles and sloping roofs of the town all in one shot, even if she had to stand on one leg while she took it – and posted it on her Insta, just in case bloody Rob got told by his friends how brilliantly she was doing, travelling places and not being in the least bit fussed by him being the single worst human ever born ... Actually, she realised, being away from London, away from false promises and memories tainted by him being a shitweasel, might actually be quite good for her.
It was a beautiful little town with about a thousand bookshops, lovely old grey houses, and now, at the very beginning of winter in Wales, it was already snowy on the little stone-walled roads. Mirren looked towards the hills – which did look like harps, in fact, just like they were supposed to – and briefly wondered how long ago it was, exactly, that wolves had stopped living here and whether or not they’d reintroduced them yet. Her little car, on the other hand, was very happy – you’re not allowed to drive fast in Wales, so she didn’t stand out or get honked as much as usual in her tiny ancient Fiat.
She couldn’t stop her spirits lifting as she approached the dream of a town, nestled right on the border of England and Wales, a world away from London, and mothers, and Robs. She’d watched a stubby grouse take off from a frosty ploughed field as the car puttered down the hill towards the beautiful slate stone roofs of the gorgeous town.
And the bookshops! It was almost overwhelming. There was one that had taken over an entire old cinema building. There was an ancient building with genuine half-timbers. There were crime bookshops and naughty bookshops and every type of book under the sun, and, everywhere, people who loved to read, wellies and hats, marching through the pretty grey streets with tote bags under their arms, past the mullioned windows.
Mirren, a bookworm all her life, hadn’t even realised there was an entire town like this. She had to fight down the temptation to immediately just move here. Who wouldn’t be happy all the time, padding from shop to shop, picking up something wonderful to read and a Welsh cake in one of the many local cafes, and sitting overlooking the river? Suddenly, it felt like a promise of a different life. Mirren took a look at her tiny Fiat, and her tiny Fiat looked back at her with its round headlamps, as if pleading with her not to fill it up with hardbacks; it was having enough trouble making it up the slushy roads as it was. Festive white lights swung in the wind across streets filled with puddles. Sheep dotted the hillsides. It was perfect.
Just as in London, eyes narrowed when Mirren ventured into the shops, one by one, and mentioned what she was looking for. Aubrey Beardsley? And Robert Louis Stevenson? Nobody had heard of such a thing. When they heard it was an original, eyes suddenly opened back up again, often wider than before. Although Mirren saying it was a sale made seventy-five years ago didn’t raise a lot of eyebrows in shops hundreds of years old.
Mirren searched mile upon mile of shelves. Violet remembering the cover was red was a help in itself, as she could run her finger along fairly quickly. But she tried the children’s department in one shop and found herself almost overwhelmingly tempted by the many beautiful, varied editions of A Child’s Christmas in Wales and bought one of those to take back anyway, bound in red leather, with beautiful illustrations of little boys throwing snowballs at cats.
And there were many versions of A Child’s Garden of Verses – contemporary, with modern children in snowsuits, lovely old-fashioned watercolours, and odd Cubist versions from the 1950s – but none was the one she was looking for. Although she was tempted to buy a beautiful Charles Robinson edition from 1896 as a backup. Even that was hundreds of pounds.
She stayed there so long that, even in an environment where people were expected to stay, the nice lady on the desk kept an eye on her and at one point, in fact, cleared her throat politely. Mirren realised it was well after five, and she had been in there all afternoon.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, realising. She also suddenly realised she was exhausted from driving, and completely starving. She grabbed a cheaper, but still pretty, version of A Child’s Garden of Verses , paid for it and headed out into the dark evening. The rain had come on, pelting down.
Violet had given her a little money – but not very much. Mirren was feeling a bit worried. If the internet couldn’t find something for you ... and phoning the bookshops wasn’t any use ... and now she’d looked in a place, a town, an entire citadel of books that, from the outside, ought to hold every book in the known universe, as well as people who knew more about old books than anyone else on Earth, and still nobody had heard of it. Was this all a ridiculous waste of time?