Chapter Twenty-One
Unpacking
‘Book stewardship, you see,’ William was explaining, having at last put his book down and settled to a little work, hunched over one of the open boxes from Castle Lore, ‘…is both a vocation and a calling.’
Jowan made a gruff sound to show his agreement while William pulled out paperback after paperback looking at them like they were old friends.
‘You chose well, young Harri.’
‘I didn’t do much.’ It was awkward riffling through the titles that, until last week, had been in William’s care. Harri wanted to do nothing but apologise and offer them all to William to keep, but the antiquarian had a different take on things.
He saw the bookshop’s purchases as a rescue of sorts. ‘They’ll do well here on your shelves. One day just the right person will come for each one and Nicholas’s books will gradually become dispersed into libraries everywhere. That’s no bad thing.’ But it didn’t stop him looking fondly at the book in his hand. ‘General Fiction, H,’ he said, passing Harri a Radclyffe Hall to shelve.
‘Ah, The Well of Loneliness ,’ said Harri. ‘We studied this at uni.’
‘It was banned, you know?’ said Jowan.
‘Obscene Publications Act, eighteen fifty-seven,’ said William in an offhand way. He really was a walking encyclopedia. ‘Ah, I’m glad you saved these!’ William pulled out Harper Lee and two Iris Murdochs. ‘Oh, and here’s a Huxley. A particular favourite of Nicholas’s. That man could see the future , Nicholas used to say.’
It was small, but Jowan spotted it, the pinch of stress and sadness between William’s brows.
‘You are welcome to keep any of these books, you know?’ said Jowan. ‘T’would be our pleasure to return them to their owner.’
‘No, no,’ said William, swiftly wiping his eyes with his handkerchief. ‘Let us carry on.’
He had a tireless energy for unpacking and correctly cataloguing the works on the shop’s stock system, telling Harri their publication dates and rough value without having to consult any databases or compare prices across book merchants.
William lifted the very last title from the second to last box. ‘John Donne. A favourite of yours, I believe?’ he addressed Jowan. He remembered him reading a collected works at the silent reading night.
‘’Twas the favourite of my Isolde,’ said Jowan. ‘My late wife. My late first wife,’ he clarified like a man not quite used to saying the words yet. ‘We set up the bookshop at her insistence. Oh, she was some woman! A poetry lover.’
‘I was never one for Metaphysicals,’ said William, unromantically, but handing the Donne to Jowan nonetheless. ‘Perhaps you should keep this one?’
‘Thank you, but I only care for the collected edition, up there on the top shelf. It’s overpriced so no one buys it, but I like to keep it in the poetry section so anyone that needs it can find it.’
William nodded his understanding and Jowan flicked through the book. He thought hard for a little while before passing the book to Harri.
‘Poetry shelves, please.’
Harri entered the book’s details into the shop laptop.
‘You know,’ said Jowan in a pointed way. ‘My Isolde and my Minty were great friends.’
This stopped Harri on his way across the shopfloor with the book. ‘They were?’
‘Aye, and for a long, long time after Isolde’s passing, I found I couldn’t even entertain the notion of my liking Minty.’
William motioned for Jowan to cut the tapes on the last box, marked ‘miscellaneous’. Romantic stories evidently weren’t for him. Jowan worked the scissors as he talked.
‘Mint and I were great friends for a long time. She helped me so much with my grief, maybe because she shared it? After losing Isolde, I couldn’t bear the thought of losing Minty, my friend and my comfort, as well. But my avoiding loving Minty almost broke us apart anyway.’
‘It did?’ Harri couldn’t help asking.
Deep laughter lines radiated out from Jowan’s eyes like sunrays as he gave a throaty chuckle. ‘Got to the point where I’d gone way past liking Mint as a friend, and we were both dancin’ around each other, trying to avoid our feelings. I loved her, deep down, and I knew if I couldn’t have her, my wanting her would break us anyway. So, I chose to tell her. It was a risk, of course, but I was going to lose her completely, the way things were heading.’
Harri’s shoulders dropped. He knew exactly what Jowan was up to. He shelved the book without another word.
Jowan wasn’t done yet. ‘Came a point where I had to ask myself what would happen if she met someone else and I missed my only chance,’ he said.
William looked up from the box as though wondering why they were still on this topic when there were deeply fascinating library papers to sort.
‘Luckily for me,’ Jowan continued, ‘she was of the same mind, and we married soon after I confessed my heart.’
‘ Pfft! ’ William evidently didn’t agree with this strategy.
Harri was grateful for William’s curmudgeonly insistence on starting the unpacking of the last box right away. It would at least prevent Jowan talking about friends becoming lovers as if it were an easy thing to navigate, as though it weren’t in fact near impossible.
Harri plunged his hands inside the last box, his fingers falling upon a yellowing packet. He handed it to William right away.
‘Ah!’ William’s voice shook as he pulled a photograph from the envelope.
Harri caught sight of the image, faded with age, as William examined it closely. Two men, both in rolled white shirt sleeves, open collars and shabby trousers. One, unmistakably a young shaggy-haired Sabine, stood with his arms folded and legs apart like a school sports team photo, and seated nearby, on what Harri recognised as the steps of Clove Lore Castle on a summer’s day, was a thin, pale fellow in a Panama hat, a pipe in his mouth, slouched, a book open across his lap. Around him on the steps were piled numerous books, most of them open as though the men were reading all of them at once.
The mood in the Borrow-A-Bookshop fell as dark as the wintry afternoon outside now that the sun was setting.
With some difficulty, William rose to stand, the photograph still in his hand. ‘I’ll retire to the Siren now, if you don’t mind. It’s been a long day after all.’
Jowan signalled for Harri to find the man’s coat and the new woolly hat, scarf and gloves that one of the villagers, Caroline Capstan, the launderess, had knitted for him.
‘Come along, Aldous,’ called Jowan. ‘We’ll walk Mr Sabine down the slope.’
William didn’t thank him. He’d turned distant and sorrowful again, like he had been on the day he first arrived, only now that the medication was keeping his mind sharp, the pain was written on his face.
When Jowan held the door open for him, with Aldous zipped up inside his jacket for warmth, William asked that Harri leave the rest of the box for unpacking another day.
‘Mr Sabine?’ Harri said, before he was gone. ‘I’m not sure if anyone’s actually said it to you yet, but we’re all very sorry for your loss.’
William’s chest heaved but he was determined to maintain his dignity. ‘Thank you. It isn’t so sad. We had each other for a very long time. How many people can say that? Friendship is the most important of all relations.’
He passed down the shop steps and into the darkness, Jowan nodding a farewell, before closing the door, leaving Harri in the empty shop.
When he propped himself up behind the till and opened his book he found once more that he couldn’t get far in his reading as the older men’s advice – he’d been smart enough to figure their storytelling was giving advice about him and Annie – circulated in his brain.
Tell her before the wanting breaks your friendship apart . What if she meets the one while I’m debating what to do?
Don’t risk spoiling things. Friendship is the most important thing.
He pictured himself as an old man like William. He didn’t know where he’d end up at his age, the future was a blank for him, but he knew he too would live a life measured in books and coffee cups.
Imagine, he told himself now, how incredible things could be if he cherished Annie’s friendship, cherished her , for all his life. Imagine if he worked hard on staying in touch. He could be her greatest supporter, and she for him. It could be wonderful. Wouldn’t that be just as special, and safer, than risking it all on a love affair that might burn itself out, especially with an ocean between them?
He didn’t absorb one word of his book or taste a note of his coffee that afternoon as these thoughts turned in his mind.
When Annie returned from her day at Austen’s, he had dinner ready for both of them. As they ate, she told him all about the email she’d sent the principal, letting him know for sure she was coming home to the school library after her leave of absence.
She’d let her boss know she was committed fully to participating in the community meetings to find a solution to their problems, and she’d made sure he understood she had no intention of shying away from a fight if the book banning was to escalate.
She was ravenously hungry and dreadfully tired. He’d listened to her, all fire and enthusiasm even though she was yawning her head off, and he topped up her tea and made sure she knew he’d be there supporting her through it all.
They’d read by the fireside after dinner until Annie was nodding off. She’d started on a new novel – an English translation of a story set in a dreamy Korean bookshop – devouring it as hungrily as she’d eaten her food. He’d noticed her yawning as she closed its covers with a satisfied smile and told her to head up to bed.
‘I’m gonna save the last chapters for tomorrow. Don’t want it to end too soon,’ she drawled, her eyes heavy-lidded, her head propped in her hand.
William and Nicholas would be so proud of them, he felt sure of it. Jowan and Minty, on the other hand, might have other opinions, but for tonight at least, it was very easy to ignore them.
Erring on the side of caution and friendship felt like the steady, comforting, kind thing to do for both of them.
That night he went to bed with something in his heart that felt close enough to contentment to allow him to sleep in peace.