Chapter 19
T he next morning, the fresh snowfall had rendered the little coastal town beautiful; trapped in time. Shiny aluminium cars were covered in white – including, alas, the tiny Fiat, with nobody from a car-fixing company considering being able to come out in the near future to anyone not in immediate danger, given so many people had come a cropper on A roads.
There was, however, a stop there for the train that would take them across the border, which Theo suggested during a delicious but somewhat muted breakfast where, feeling her head rather twingey from the night before, Mirren was glad she hadn’t jumped into bed with this thoughtful bookish man she barely knew at all. It had seemed a great idea the previous evening; now, she was grateful for his restraint, and pleased he thought they should go on together. Theo, for his part, buried himself in the paper and occasionally passed the marmalade.
‘Okay,’ he said, as they got up to leave. Then smiled at her. ‘You okay?’
She nodded. ‘Sorry about last night.’
‘Not at all,’ said Theo. ‘I was really flattered.’
Mirren nodded, still feeling very stupid.
‘Have you got, uh, someone?’
And Theo said ‘no’ at exactly the same time as Mirren said, ‘No, don’t tell me, I’ll just feel worse’.
The awkwardness, however, was blown away as they opened the front door of the hotel into the town.
The sun was making the snow turn to diamonds, everything gleaming up and down the street. It was still early; not too many footprints or car tracks in the pristine white crystals. The sky had lost its heavy greyness and was a bright stark Scandinavian blue, so different from the damp of the west, birds vanishing overhead.
Mirren took a long breath of clean air deep into her lungs, shaking out her fuzzy head. It was so cold it hurt; it felt like drinking freezing water. She looked around her.
‘Wow,’ she said. ‘This place is fantastic.’
Theo agreed; it was an undeniably cracking day. They had a hard task ahead of them, and an embarrassing evening to forget, but it was difficult not to feel light at heart when there was crunchy snow underfoot and a sun high up in the sky. Children, wrapped in Puffas that made them twice as wide as they were, were already heading for the hill behind the town, dragging trays or bright plastic sleds, shouting excitedly to their friends. School must be off, or postponed, or perhaps they had just all collectively decided to skip it, and Mirren had to think that, under the circumstances, she didn’t entirely blame them.
They walked up the street towards the station, but they had a plan; en route, they were going back into the old shop, and Theo was going to distract the bearded owner again, and Mirren was going to look at the back of the picture to see if it had anything written on it. They were going early on so that hopefully the shop would be empty and, even more hopefully, it wouldn’t be the same guy who had been so grumpy the previous evening.
They were, it turned out, in luck. The shop was being opened up by an older woman, with short steely grey hair and a severe expression.
‘Hmm,’ said Theo.
‘Don’t tell me,’ said Mirren, smiling. ‘Tough middle-aged ladies are the hardest to charm?’
‘Seriously impossible,’ said Theo. ‘She’ll see right through me.’
‘Go obscure,’ suggested Mirren.
‘She’ll think I’m showing off.’
‘Naive?’
‘Oh my God,’ said Theo. ‘Are you, perhaps, born to a natural life of crime?’
They drew closer just as the woman opened the door. She frowned at them, which wasn’t exactly what Mirren thought you should do as your friendly neighbourhood bookseller, but what did she know?
‘Hello,’ said Theo cheerfully, and they followed her inside as she turned on light after light. To Mirren, there was something about the cold morning sun poking through the frosted windows, showing up the dust floating off the old books, and the smell of the shop that felt like coming home. It smelled not unlike Great-aunt Violet; an aura of books, of reading, of curling up and being cosy, of deciding, in a queue or on a train or a bus, just to step out of your normal world for a little while, go visit Narnia, or medieval England, or Persia, or the cockpit of a fighter plane; a hot air balloon; crime-ridden streets of Victorian London. To sit and blow the dust off something, then be transported elsewhere. It was magical. She couldn’t think of another word for it.
Theo had eventually followed the woman to the back of the shop and started discussing editions of On the Origin of Species with, Mirren couldn’t help noticing, a fair amount of authority and knowledge. She was quite impressed. There was nobody else around in the large echoing rooms and she feigned interest in the many pictures that covered every spare inch of wall. She recognised a growling handsome Ted Hughes, the unflattering buns of the Bront?s, and an old silver-framed reproduction of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, his enormous shaggy head large and dignified. Once more, Mirren found herself getting engrossed in this world: the old books she could hold in her hands; the wooden floorboards under her feet; the simple, human state of looking and sharing knowledge and information.
Suddenly, she heard the voices move back towards her and, startled, moved quickly to where the picture was. It was practically rusted to the wall as she tried, carefully, to feel behind it or lift it off; it didn’t come easily at all and wasn’t on a piece of string like some of the others. She pulled it away a little to see if she could see anything more about it, even just squint behind it.
As she did so, something old behind the nail gave way and, with a deafening crash in the silent cathedral of books, the frame dropped on to the ground with a shattering crash.
Immediately, footsteps came running.
‘What the HELL did you do?’ said the woman, her eyes frosty.
‘I ...’ Mirren improvised helplessly. ‘I must have hit it with my bag as I passed. I’m so, so sorry.’
She bent down to fish the frame out of the broken glass.
‘Don’t touch it,’ barked the woman. More staff had started to arrive, pulling off coats and gloves.
‘Georges,’ she yelled. ‘Where’s the dustpan?’
Mirren pretended to be carefully replacing the back of the frame on the ground. But as she did so, she saw something – a tiny rolled-up strip of paper – and while the woman was looking round for the dustpan, she couldn’t help herself. She snatched it up.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said again. ‘Can I pay for the frame?’
‘I’m going to take that 1972 edition,’ said Theo hastily.
The woman seemed slightly mollified.
‘Well ... I suppose ... It’s only an old antique from a junk shop. Probably not worth anything. Don’t worry about it.’
Georges appeared. He was the angry man from the night before, who recognised the troublemakers. His eyes narrowed.
Theo beamed at him.
‘We got it!’ he said, waving the book he had paid for hurriedly – it was hundreds of pounds, Mirren noticed in alarm – and bundling them back outside into the snow.