Chapter Three #3
‘Oh, Mr Lonsdale, I cannot tell you how sorry I am,’ said Mrs Bainbridge. ‘Please give us another chance. I will not rest until I have brought you happiness.’
‘No, Mrs Bainbridge, I am done,’ he said.
‘I appreciate the efforts you and Miss Sparks have made on my behalf. I know that you can’t succeed with everyone.
I am sorry to have become one of your failures.
I am going to wrap up things in London and go back to Hampshire.
If I am to be alone, I would at least like to be alone where the trout are biting. Goodbye, Mrs Bainbridge.’
‘Goodbye, Mr Lonsdale,’ she said. ‘Thank you for calling to tell us.’
She hung up, then dabbed at her eyes.
We’ve hurt someone, she thought. Damn it.
Berkeley Square was a short walk from The Right Sort, so Sparks arrived much too early for her quarry. She was running on nerves and an empty stomach by this point, so she walked through the London plane trees dotting the park, inhaling the scent of the new-mown grass to soothe her frazzle.
Then she spotted him. Tony, unmistakably Tony, walking down the pavement towards the shop. She looked down into her bag as if she were searching for something, keeping him in view out of the corner of her eye. He went inside Maggs Bros.
She pulled out her compact, checked her make-up, snapped it shut and put it back. Then she took a deep breath and sauntered from the park to the bookshop.
Two shallow steps took her to the door, next to which hung a plaque with the royal coat of arms over it and the proud, white-lettered proclamation: Maggs Bros.
Ltd., 50 Berkeley Square Est. 1853. RARE BOOKS MANUSCRIPTS AUTOGRAPHS.
She opened the door, tinkling a small silver bell overhead.
A clerk nodded to her from behind a maple counter to her left.
On long tables in front of her were stacked giant volumes with worn bindings from centuries past, while more on shelves covered every inch of wall space up to the ceiling.
A rolling stepladder stood at the ready to the right.
There was a staircase at the rear leading to the upper storeys, which no doubt were crammed with even more books.
Tony wasn’t there, which meant he must have gone upstairs. She walked over to the clerk at the counter.
‘May I help you, miss?’ he asked.
‘Miss Iris Sparks,’ she said. ‘I called about a book yesterday.’
‘Of course,’ he said, turning to a shelf directly behind him.
He pulled down a large brown book with embossed lettering and placed it before her. She flipped it open to find plates of Coleoptera in glorious array.
‘Wonderful,’ she said, meaning it. ‘I will take it. But I’d like to do some browsing before I go.’
‘Of course, Miss Sparks,’ he said. ‘I’ll be here when you’re ready.’
She took the book, then made a slight show of examining the volumes on the display tables, some of which were nearly half her size. Then she took the stairs up to the next floor.
Where would he be? she thought.
History, most likely.
The History section was two storeys up. She took a quick recon of the first floor just in case she was wrong but didn’t find him.
On the next level, tall, freestanding bookcases divided the room.
She wandered through the centuries and civilisations from antiquity through the modern era.
Then she spotted him in the middle of one narrow aisle, a pair of reading glasses perched on his nose, with said nose deep in a volume from the nineteenth century.
The fair hair was now touched with grey here and there, topped by what looked like a brand-new homburg, and the glasses were not a part of any memory she had of him, but it was the same face, as beautiful as it was nine years before, the trace of melancholy that had infused it when he had returned from Spain now deepened.
Time to attract his attention in some subtle fashion, she thought.
Then she thought, the hell with subtle.
She walked boldly down the aisle, making sure to throw her left hip solidly into him as she passed.
He turned to glare at her as she kept walking.
‘Excuse me, madam,’ he said irritably. ‘Would you mind taking care where you’re going?’
She stopped, still facing away from him.
‘I bumped you fair and square, you Pembroke git,’ she said. ‘So weigh enough and pull to the banks.’
She turned, smiling, and his jaw dropped.
‘Sparks,’ he said. ‘Oh, my God.’
She wasn’t expecting the embrace. It happened so quickly that her arms were momentarily pinned to her sides, but she was able to free them enough to wrap them around him.
‘Excuse me, but that behaviour is not permitted in this establishment,’ a clerk admonished them sternly from the end of the aisle.
They quickly released each other.
‘Sorry,’ called Tony. ‘I was caught by surprise. Won’t happen again, I promise.’
‘See that it doesn’t,’ said the clerk.
‘Well, here we are,’ said Tony, turning back to her. ‘Once again acting inappropriately in an antiquarian bookshop. My God, Sparks, you are a sight for sore eyes. How long has it been?’
‘Nine years,’ she said. ‘We had dinner right before you left for Singapore.’
‘Well, the polite thing would be to say you haven’t aged a bit,’ he said, stepping back to look at her critically. ‘But the accurate thing to say is that you have aged gloriously.’
‘And you’ve become quite distinguished looking,’ she replied. ‘Tell me, what’s it like being over thirty?’
‘Ah, the thrust straight into my heart!’ he cried, his fist pounding his chest dramatically. ‘You’ll find out all too soon, if my arithmetic is correct.’
‘When did you get back?’ she asked.
‘A few weeks ago.’
‘And you didn’t call me straight away? Naughty boy!’
‘I thought about calling, but you’re not in the London directory and I didn’t know where you had got to,’ he said. ‘And life has been a whirlwind since I came home.’
‘You need to tell me everything,’ she said. ‘Over drinks. Which should start as soon as possible.’
‘Agreed,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a book waiting for me downstairs, and I’m going to add this one. What have you got there?’
She held it up, and he smiled affectionately.
‘Beetles, of course,’ he said. ‘Some things never change. Is every British water beetle in there?’
‘Hardly,’ she said. ‘They say he’s doing three volumes. What have you got?’
He held up a copy of Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War.
‘It’s the Crawley translation,’ he said. ‘I prefer it to Jowett’s, plus I can’t afford the Jowett. Ashendene Press put out a limited edition of the Jowett that’s obscenely beautiful and expensive, but the translation’s still the thing, isn’t it?’
‘I can’t believe you didn’t already have a copy.’
‘I did,’ he said. ‘Took it with me to Singapore, lost it in a typhoon.’
‘A typhoon! Goodness! That had better be one of the stories.’
‘Right, let’s get out of here.’
They descended the stairs to the front counter where the clerk had another book waiting for him.
‘Guide to 14 Asiatic Languages,’ she read. ‘How many do you speak now?’
‘Fluent Malay and Mandarin, passable Cantonese and Japanese, and a smattering of Korean,’ he said as the clerk rang up the sale.
‘I’m impressed,’ she said, handing over the Balfour-Browne beetle book. ‘I’m still stuck in Europe. And you’re planning to learn more?’
‘My new post,’ he said. ‘Let’s go find a pub and I’ll tell you all about it.’
They ended up at the Clarence, a small establishment on Dover Street. Tony secured a table, placing his package on the floor beneath his seat.
‘What are you drinking?’ he asked.
‘In your honour, make it a Singapore sling,’ she said.
‘Done, and I’ll have the same. Feeling peckish?’
‘A bit.’
‘I’ve been craving Scotch eggs. They didn’t have those in China. Shall I order a plate to buffer the alcohol?’
‘Please.’
When the drinks came, he held up his glass.
‘To old friends,’ he said.
She smiled and clinked her glass against his, suppressing her internal disgust with herself.
He took a sip and swirled it around in his mouth quizzically, then swallowed.
‘Not at all like the ones at the Raffles,’ he pronounced. ‘It was the first drink one had when one came to Singapore. This one is missing a few ingredients.’
‘Welcome to rationing,’ said Sparks. ‘What’s missing?’
‘Lime,’ he said. ‘And I don’t taste any pineapple.’
‘Sorry, I’ll pick a more conventional drink for the next one. So – typhoon.’
‘Nasty creatures, all of them,’ he said. ‘You talk about rain in England. You have no idea. I spent a foolish amount shipping my books to Singapore, then lost half to the weather and the rest to the Japs.’
‘Were you in Singapore when it fell?’
‘No, thank God. I was travelling in China, and got stuck there after the Japs attacked Malaya. I managed to get to Chungking, reported to the embassy, and asked what I could do to help. They found out I spoke Mandarin, and I spent the rest of the war working out of there.’
‘That must have been brutal,’ she said quietly.
‘I did what was necessary,’ he said, with a shrug that was meant to be casual. ‘I was lucky in hindsight. Had I remained in Singapore, I probably wouldn’t be here drinking with you now.’
‘What’s it like being home after all this time?’
‘Ah, home,’ he said. ‘The place I left thinking I’d never return. They weren’t exactly forgiving about it.’
‘What, besides leaving, needed forgiving?’
‘Coming back and expecting to be welcomed as the prodigal. My family tends to skip those portions of the Good Book involving acceptance and forbearance.’
‘Fatted calves are also rationed nowadays,’ she said. ‘Are you living there now?’
‘Staying in a hotel at the moment, but I just signed a lease for a flat not too far from work.’
‘Right, you mentioned a new position.’
‘I’m with the Foreign Office now, working the Far East desk.’
‘How wonderful! Obviously, you know the territory, and I imagine … well, you haven’t said anything about what you’ve been doing since the war.’
He leaned back and looked at her appraisingly.