Chapter Sixteen
A Lot More Than They Bid For
They’d been summoned to the bidding by the sound of a gong before she could say anything more, and Harri had taken her arm and walked her down the creaky stairs.
He’d been concerned, of course, but she couldn’t have known where his mind had gone when she told him she had secrets to share. The little key in his heart had turned and sprung the lock, letting out a rush of hope despite all the promises he’d made himself at the beach after talking with Paisley.
There’d been no time for talking, however, as they were ushered to their table of bidders. The blue seats.
Katie closed the doors upon the room once everyone was inside. Her colleague took his place at the rostrum, introducing himself as ‘Colin Blazey of Blazey, Barnes and Blazey’, and proceeding to talk for a very long time about the ancestry of the Courtenay family, which could be traced back to Agincourt, and then there was a lot of talk about provenance and estate inventories and the declining fortunes of the little known Lord Courtenay who’d passed away five months before, leaving no will, no heirs, and no money.
Castle Lore, the Borrowers learned, was as yet unsold, but listening to the whispers of the antique dealers at the table around him, Harri gleaned there’d been some interest in the land from developers keen to have the site for rental chalets and caravans, letting the castle moulder on, uninhabited, as a picturesque ruin at the centre of their holiday park.
Annie didn’t seem to be listening much to any of it, sitting now with her head lowered and her hands in her lap.
Even when the auction began she was subdued, though Harri was fascinated by the auction-goers in the yellow seats hastily claiming lot after lot. The cold businesslike way it was all conducted astonished him.
The furniture went first, then the weaponry and armour. By the time they got to the contents of the library, Harri’s thighs were numb and Annie was slumped in her seat, her coat wrapped tightly around her. Harri had considered offering her a spot in the nook under his arm, but something stopped him, even though they’d done just that the other night, snuggled up together like the oldest, most innocent friends as they watched TV on Annie’s bed.
‘Lot sixty-six, first editions of the Marquis de Sade in their original French.’
This made him sit up.
‘Shall we start at eighteen hundred?’
‘Oh!’ Harri’s shoulders dropped and he watched as the Eagle and Owl fought it out until the Owl was beaten and the Eagle had promised twelve grand for the titles.
‘Don’t think that’s the kind of thing Jowan was after anyways,’ Annie whispered, amused, as though they could have afforded it if it was.
The auctioneer worked his way through the library contents. Bound manuscripts, illuminated scrolls, titles in Latin and Greek selling for prices that had Harri plumping his bottom lip in incomprehension. A huge old bible with the family’s coat of arms embossed into leather went for only a couple of hundred quid, which he couldn’t believe, and as soon as volume one of something called The Yellow Book and a water-damaged, incomplete Shakespeare’s Folio sold for eye-watering amounts, to the Owl, as it happens, both of the bookish birds of prey got up and left the room, their business concluded.
‘Maybe now we’ll stand a chance?’ Harri whispered to Annie.
The lots got smaller and induced fewer gasps from the crowd, until finally there were books the Borrowers could afford. With Annie’s encouragement, Harri claimed two lots of assorted three-volume melodramas and Mudie’s Circulating Library editions of forgotten novels once popular in the nineteenth century. Annie did the maths in her head while Harri raised the card to claim collections of obscure European poetry, histories of the British Isles, naturalists’ yearbooks, almanacs and what the auctioneer called ‘railway novels’ in gaudy jackets. Finally, they snagged some Devonshire history books that nobody else bid on.
‘We’ve only a few pounds left,’ Annie warned him, just as the auctioneer presented a cardboard box, soft and bulging with damp.
‘Assorted library papers, uncatalogued, largely foxed, dating from this century. Do I hear twenty-five pounds?’
Harri glanced at Annie. She shook her head.
‘Ten?’ the auctioneer tolled. ‘Do I hear five, then?’
‘Five!’ said Harri, his card lifted.
‘Sold.’
As the hammer fell, the Borrowers rose to settle the bookshop’s debt at Katie’s station by the doors.
Harri claimed their free drinks and the pair took their seats again for what the catalogue described as ‘the prestige’ lots of the day. There were mayoral chains of office and a rope of Jacobean freshwater pearls allegedly seized after Bannockburn; six fine portraits in miniature of eighteenth-century Courtenay women in feathered hats, and an impressive oil-painting of a pointy-bearded Royalist Courtenay in a high lacy collar. This bidding had been accompanied by bursts of applause and a lot of boozy hilarity from the yellow tables.
Annie and Harri watched on, spent out and sleepy. Their table had emptied ages ago. The auctioneers were preparing to open the bidding on the contents of the stable block, which included an engineless, tyreless Rolls-Royce.
‘I’m surprised Minty didn’t want to come to the auction,’ Annie said to Harri, dabbing at her mouth with her cocktail napkin because that’s what they did in period dramas and it seemed like the proper thing to do now. ‘I guess they wanted us to enjoy the experience. It’s certainly been eye-opening. Kinda sad, though.’
‘I know what you mean,’ said Harri, though he wasn’t sure if she was referring to the sorry state of the Courtenay estate or to the other, secret thing she’d wanted to tell him.
Annie looked across the room and, spotting the waitress clearing glasses onto a bar trolley, an idea seemed to strike her.
‘Excuse me,’ she was whispering to the woman, before Harri could work out what she was up to. Annie rummaged in her bag as the waitress pulled her trolley closer. ‘We used up our complimentary drinks passes. We’re lowly blue guests, but…’
The bored girl had let Annie have the bottle of wine in exchange for a tenner, which went straight into her apron pocket with a surreptitious glance around, and Annie turned around triumphant and grinning, holding her prize.
‘What’s happening?’ Harri said, eyes narrowed and suspicious, but definitely up for a bit of scheming.
‘You want to go look at that library again?’ she said, suddenly driven by a new impulse, not her old mischief, rather something reckless within her; her old carefree self fighting to get out, perhaps?
Harri thought about it for precisely one second. Standing and taking Annie’s bag, putting it over his shoulder, he said, ‘What about the security guard?’
‘Just walk like you own the place,’ instructed Annie.
As they left the room Katie was busy taking auction payments and stifling her yawns. Everyone else was engaged in draining their bottles and preparing for the very last round of bidding.
Annie led him to the foyer at the foot of the stairs and peered up into the dark space above them.
‘No one around,’ she hissed, reaching for Harri’s hand.
He held on as she led the way, tiptoeing as fast as they could up the stairs. The rigged-up spotlights had been switched off and Harri lit their way with his phone. They laughed and shushed one another all the way up to the library doors.
The key was still in the lock and Harri turned it, again letting Annie peek in first.
‘Coast’s clear,’ she said, and as he followed her, he made sure to lock them inside the silence of the library. The mechanism clunked into place and he knew for sure nobody could disturb Annie’s impromptu escapade.
Doubtless, they’d only stay twenty minutes, long enough to take the photos Annie hadn’t been allowed to earlier, and to have a proper snoop around.
Pocketing the key, he followed Annie towards the fireplace where the last embers glowed amongst the cooling ashes. All the candles had been extinguished, no doubt by the efficient Katie, and the room was lit only by the stark wintry moonlight through the window.
Annie lifted some kindling from the basket by the fire, since there were no logs, and stuck them into the grate. The flames slowly sparked back into life and Harri crouched by her side to watch them as Annie piled on more of the soft wood. Then she lit a candelabra of three slender white tapers using the fire, wax dripping onto the stone hearth. Harri didn’t suppose it mattered.
‘They’re going to strip this library apart in the morning. We might be the very last people ever to see it like this,’ he said.
This stopped Annie in her tracks.
She was beautiful in the glow from the fire and candlelight. He determined not to mention that fact as he sat himself down on the fireside rug and cracked the screw top on the wine bottle, handing it to her.
‘Here’s to poor old Sir Courtenay and his library,’ he said.
Annie sat by him on the hearth rug and, setting the candlestick down, took a swig before handing it back. ‘Here’s to him.’
When he’d taken a drink, he watched Annie arrange her long coat and skirts. She hugged her arms around her legs where her long leather boots laced up her calves.
‘So do you want to tell me now?’ he said.
Annie seemed to take a second to work out what he was asking. She lunged for the bottle and drank with a grimace.
‘Cheap Shiraz,’ she said. ‘Dad would not approve.’
Harri laughed and reached for another drink, this time glugging it with deliberate relish to spite judgy, cold Mr Luna.
Annie’s laugh told him his joke had landed.
‘Go on then,’ Harri prompted. ‘I’m listening.’
His friend exhaled hard. Whatever she had to say, it wasn’t easy for her. Harri didn’t try to rush her, tipping his head and waiting for her to find the words, trying to stop his heart jumping to conclusions and hoping for too much.
‘I’m not on vacation leave,’ she began. ‘I was… we were all suspended from the library service.’
‘What! How come?’
In a shaky voice, she told him the whole sorry story of how her colleagues had been sent home from their jobs, and most likely wouldn’t return, having been found to have stocked numerous books that went against parental tastes, and when they all flatly refused to participate in submitting the library’s future acquisitions for the approval of a hastily thrown-together committee of concerned parents, ‘things had got real crazy, real quick.’
‘But you love that job,’ Harri said.
‘I know. We were family. But what do you do when the community turns against you, and suddenly you’re not the cornerstone of your school anymore? You’re just a dangerous snowflake pushing your own agenda?’
‘Jeez! What exactly did you do?’
‘Nothing!’
‘I mean what books were you giving these kids?’
‘I dunno, most of the ones they objected to were written by or are about LGBTQIA plus folks or by Black and Indigenous people and people of colour. They’re well-written books with some great representation, as far as we were concerned.’
Harri nodded along. ‘I’ve seen this on the telly. Parents trying to ban books in schools.’
‘Yep, happening more and more. In some places they have the law on their side, and they can whip up pretty nasty campaigns about a person.’
Harri shifted closer. ‘Is that what they did to you?’
Annie nodded. ‘To us, all the staff. It was constant. There were emails, letters sent to school… one mom even came to our houses with a petition she’d made. They were saying awful things about us. Obviously, none of them were true. We were just curating a library of books relevant for our kids.’
‘So, what are you going to do?’
‘Do?’ She shrugged. ‘I could appeal. Argue that I was wrongfully suspended. Argue that even if you don’t want to read a book it doesn’t mean you have the right to stop other folks reading it. I could take it to the Library Association… but…’ Annie’s shoulders slumped and her words turned into a hard sigh.
‘But?’ Harri coaxed.
‘But without Mom and Dad supporting me, and without Cassidy, it didn’t seem possible somehow. And I was tired and scared. And I’ve seen what happens to some of the librarians who fight back. They get crushed. Their faces all over the news. I guess it’s hard for you to get it, when it’s not really happening in the UK. Not yet anyways.’
Harri’s heart cracked. ‘What about your colleagues in the library?’
‘I haven’t heard from them. We were told to go home and not to try organising anything.’
‘So who’s running the library?’
Annie raised an eyebrow.
‘Ah! Right. Some parents? But they’re not trained librarians. What do they know?’
‘They know plenty, apparently.’
Harri watched her drinking from the bottle, weighing up if he could ask what was on his mind. He risked it. ‘Why didn’t you say anything when it was all kicking off? I could have helped?’
‘Could you?’
‘I mean, not with the school and the parents, but I could have helped you, I could have carried a bit of this worry for you.’
Annie didn’t say anything at first, only taking another drink. Distantly, out on the roadside, Harri registered car doors shutting sharply.
‘I didn’t want to admit I was losing,’ Annie went on. ‘I’m supposed to be Annie Luna, the gutsy one. I’m supposed to be brilliant. And I was scared, and I was embarrassed, actually. Yeah, embarrassed, and I was ashamed. It felt like my own community thought I was some creep, pushing inappropriate books at kids, but they were just books, kids ’ books!’ Tears rushed out as fast as her words.
‘Oh my god.’ Harri shifted to her side and threw his arms around her.
‘You are the gutsy one!’ Harri said, his head against hers. ‘You’re Annie Luna! School Librarian extraordinaire! I’ve always been so proud to know you.’
This made her sniff back her tears and she managed a little laugh followed by a sorry groan. ‘I really miss the kids,’ she said, her eyes sadder than Harri had ever seen them.
He pulled her closer. ‘What did they say about all this?’
‘The kids? Some of them sent me messages, saying they felt bad it was happening. Most didn’t say anything. How could they? They’re just kids. Some of them were shouting at the school gate with their pissed parents and their placards. The school authorities said they were worried for our safety and the safety of the school, so they sent us all home until it blew over. They called it a suspension to keep the parents happy, but they’re removing books at the parents’ requests anyway. I don’t know if I have a job to go back to, and I don’t know if I wanna go back.’
‘You should have told me.’
‘You had your own stuff going on.’
‘Oh.’ Harri drew his neck back. ‘With Paisley, you mean? But I didn’t tell you things were rocky with Paisley.’
‘A girl knows.’
‘Right.’ Harri let this sink in. Everybody had known he and Paisley were doomed, long before he’d been able to admit it to himself. A flash of headlights passed over the library wall, followed by another, but neither registered it now. ‘I could still have helped.’
Annie made a cynical snort and reached for the bottle. ‘There’s nothing anybody could do.’
‘And your parents didn’t stick up for you?’
Annie’s eyes fell. ‘Nope. They were embarrassed, I reckon. They don’t see things the way I do. They don’t think it’s important that kids see themselves and their lives reflected in books. Most of all, they’d prefer I didn’t bring a big, public fight to their door.’
‘You deserve better than that.’ He tamped down the livid feelings. How could anyone treat Annie like that?
They passed the bottle between them, and Harri loosened his hold on Annie. The auction sounds and the distant milling of people had faded, but Harri only vaguely registered this fact. He didn’t care if they were the last to leave. He’d call a taxi soon enough. For now, he had to comfort Annie.
‘Tell you what, though, if you do go back to face them, now that I know, you have me on your side, all right? You’re not on your own.’
Annie nodded, fixing her eyes on the fire.
For a long moment no one said anything and Harri moved to throw some more kindling on to the flames. ‘We’ll be out of sticks in ten minutes at this rate,’ he said, coming right back to her side where he’d been a moment before. It suddenly felt very, very close, now that Annie’s confession and crying fit had passed.
He wriggled an inch or two away from her side and she definitely noticed. A line appeared between her brows. Harri had to look away. He’d gone and made things awkward again, so he shifted his body back, right into the nook by Annie’s side, and her warmth reached his limbs where they almost touched.
‘Did you, um, hear from Cassidy at all?’ he tried, hoping the moment would pass and be forgotten.
‘Oh, yeah, I did actually.’
‘No way! What did she say?’
‘It was just a thumbs up emoji, but that’s still progress.’
‘Did she know all this stuff was happening to you?’
Annie sighed again. ‘Pretty hard not to know. It was in the Amarillo papers and there wasn’t a person who wasn’t talking about it.’
Harri was overtaken by a feeling of injustice. ‘I don’t like that,’ he said, and his jaw set like a clamp as he shook his head.
‘It’s okay. Deadbeat Dave might have stopped her reaching out. Or maybe she thought it was my fault, bringing it on myself? No, actually, no. There’s no way she’d think that, even if that would suit Dave perfectly. She knows me, and I know her. She’d be mad too.’
‘ Are you mad?’ Harri said.
‘Of course I am!’
Harri looked at her for a long time, his eyes searching her face for the spark. Where had her fight gone? Had it really been that bad? That she’d lost it completely?
‘I’m just taking some time,’ she said defensively. ‘To regroup. Like you are.’
‘The Annie Luna I know fights for what she wants.’
‘Does she? Or does she wait around, for years and years in some cases, waiting and hoping that she’ll get what she wants?’
‘Huh?’
‘Nothing, forget it.’ Annie moved to stand up.
‘No wait, what are you saying?’
‘I…’ She looked desperate, like a trapped animal. ‘I…’ Her whisky-coloured eyes turned dark as her gaze flicked to his mouth. It took a fraction of a second to register the change but it was enough to set off a hard primal fire in Harri’s gut. He was already lifted onto his knees and drawing Annie to him with his hands spreading over the small of her back.
She breathed hard, inches from his face, both frozen, all thoughts suspended, only their nerves and instincts speaking. Her eyes lifted from his lips, which had fallen open with the force of his breath.
He was waiting for any signal from her when two came at once. Her pupils shrank to a pin sharp intensity that shot straight down his spinal column landing heavy and low where he hardened, and she gave the clearest nod of permission before their lips met in a sudden crash with the force of a decade’s waiting behind them. He couldn’t help the moan that came from deep within him as they kissed and Annie answered it with her own.
No words, no thoughts, nothing held them back as they kissed harder, and their hands roved. He pulled her against where he was aching for her and the burst of heat coming off her filled him even fuller with wanting. She rocked her head back when he put his mouth to her throat. He was reading her, responding to what she needed.
How they were lying down, he didn’t know, but he was on top of her. She tugged his shirt loose and yanked at his belt, stopping only to run her hands over him, driving him close to blacking out. He’d pulled up her skirts with her nodding the whole time, kissing him between her gasped, ‘yes,’ and suddenly there was nothing between them at all. She was reaching for her bag, rummaging inside, all sorts of crap spilling out of it.
‘Dang it, where are they?’ she said, laughing, but Harri wanted her to feel how much he wanted her, so instead of helping, he took her arms in his hands, feeling his way to her wrists, bringing them over his head, pressing her fingers to the nape of his neck until she understood and held him there. He kissed his way right down her body from her neck to her navel, through her clothes and over her bunched skirts until his mouth was exactly where he wanted to be and he ran his tongue in relentless sweeps letting her, his Annwyl, know how much he’d wanted her all this time, making her trust his touch, making her gasp for it, promising her he could do this to her whenever she wanted.
Just as she was drawing her thighs closer, almost losing it completely, there came the unmistakable sound of a key turning in the library door, and the echo of the mechanism unlocking, reverberating through the library.
The pair jumped apart.
‘Oh my god! Someone’s coming in,’ cried Annie, hauling herself back into the shadows to fix her clothes.
‘Shit! Shit! shit!’ hissed Harri, scrabbling to button and zip himself back together, straightening his glasses, wiping at his face. It had to be Katie doing a last check. The auction must be long since over.
The door was creaking open, the glow of a torch lifting the gloom. If he wasn’t so alarmed Harri would have laughed at the sight of Annie emerging from the shadows, a picture of hastily poised serenity, pretending to inspect the big globe in the middle of the room.
‘Who’s there?’ came a crotchety voice. Definitely not Katie.
A figure presented itself now; hunched, shambling, all in black.
‘Mr Sabine?’ cried Harri and Annie at once.