Chapter 18
18
The bookshop was called Le Livre Ouvert, meaning The Open Book, and it was absolutely delightful. The window frames were painted blue, and there were ornamental white shutters on the outside. Two flower boxes underneath had been filled with plants and looked as though they would spring into colour before too long. There was also a small table and two ironwork chairs outside in the morning sunshine, tempting customers to sit and read for a while. Inside, the room was quite narrow but it stretched a long way back, with shelves which nearly reached to the low ceiling, and two racks of second-hand paperbacks, all marked very cheaply.
Inside was the distinctive smell of books and paper, which was just the same as the bookshop at home, ‘bibliosmia’ I thought it was called. Felix was sitting at his desk near the back of the shop, drinking coffee from a cardboard cup and eating a chocolate éclair out of a paper bag.
‘ S’il te plait , please don’t tell her,’ he said when he saw me, ‘she makes me eat yogurt and fruit for my breakfast. It is not enough to keep a man going through a hard morning at work.’
I laughed. ‘I won’t. Now tell me what I can do to help?’
‘I have a box of English print paperbacks just arrived; you could put them out on that empty shelf by the front door? And perhaps label them so people know what they are.’
It didn’t take me long because there weren’t that many. The usual best sellers on one shelf, sagas and romances on another, and a couple of books about the English countryside and French travel guides in English on a small low table in the window.
I spotted an old and very worn red tapestry armchair halfway down the shop covered with some old pamphlets and Felix’s coat and scarf. I cleared it all away and moved the chair into the window and dusted it, to make a tempting reading area. The faded fabric somehow worked; it looked – what was the expression – shabby-chic.
‘Yes,’ Felix said when he came out of his office an hour later, ‘that orange chair looks good. I don’t know why Lisa didn’t think of that.’
‘It’s red, actually. You could have done it too,’ I said.
He looked thoughtful. ‘I don’t have those sorts of ideas. I have all the paperwork to do and the ordering. That takes up a lot of my time.’
‘Which reminds me, those notebooks. You really should have some. And some pens and pencils too. I’m sure they would sell to your visitors.’
‘Right then, against my better judgement?—’
He went back into his office and brought out some booklets.
‘This is what the man left me, and looking at them is driving me mad. They all look the same to me. I cannot decide between the colours. You choose what you think we should have. But don’t get carried away, we don’t have much space as you can see.’
Felix might not have liked looking at them, but I did. There were so many attractive colours and patterns, although they all seemed to have squared paper in them not the lines I was used to. I picked out half a dozen and went to ask for his opinion. I found him in his office, half hidden behind a computer screen and a pile of documents, eating chocolate. There were books everywhere; on the floor, under the desk, even piled up on a spare chair in one corner.
‘These,’ I said showing him the ones I had chosen, ‘and if you buy enough the company will provide you with a little display stand. It says so in the small print.’
‘I never noticed that, but where would that go?’ he said gloomily.
‘I thought we could move the small shelf with the guides to this area nearer to the front door, to catch people new to this area, and then behind that put the notebooks and the pens.’
‘ Je ne suis pas convaincu … I’m not sure.’
‘Then I will buy them,’ I said, ‘then if they don’t sell you will have lost nothing.’
We discussed this for a while, as Felix wasn’t sure he liked the idea, but when I said that I would take any unsold ones back home with me, he agreed.
‘Though what you will do with them, I can’t imagine,’ he said.
‘I’ve already told you, give them as presents to my friends and family.’
He shook his head and did some muttering about the risk and all the terrible upheaval, as though I was planning to bring in a three-ring circus. Then he declared he needed another cup of coffee before he felt strong enough to place the order, and I walked to Mimi’s café around the corner.
She greeted me as an old friend asking about Isabel and Eugénie until I left with a spring in my step, feeling quite the local. I hadn’t felt like that at home for quite a long time, probably years, if I thought about it. Just a simple interaction, with some nodding and smiling. Deux cafés et deux tartlelettes aux fraises, s’il vous plait.
In the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t much, but somehow it felt significant. Since I had arrived here, I had found myself doing new tasks, helping my sister, learning more of a language I thought I had forgotten, meeting new people and interacting with them. It was all very unexpected and rather exciting. Perhaps I had consigned myself to the scrap heap too soon; there might be more out there for me than I had anticipated.
I returned to the bookshop a few minutes later with coffee for both of us and two beautiful strawberry tartlets in a cardboard box to cheer us up.
‘I have sold three of the English paperbacks already!’ Felix said triumphantly as I walked in. ‘Two women who wanted to know if we had anything about Star Wars and I said no, but we did have a vintage Tintin annual, and they bought that, even though someone had coloured in Snowy the dog to look like a spaniel. Je suis ravi … I am very pleased indeed. And you have brought me une petite friandise – a little treat! This is excellent news. Perhaps you are right about the notebooks after all.’
After we had finished our snack, I brought out a few more of the English paperbacks to fill the spaces, and by the end of the afternoon we had sold six and Felix had placed my order for fifty notebooks in different colours and patterns. He seemed quite jaunty by the end of the day.
‘Lisa was very resistant to anything new, perhaps that was the problem. But you have persuaded me that perhaps I should do something exciting and unexpected,’ he said. ‘It’s like Isabel told me, you can’t change the people around you so change the people around you. I didn’t know what she meant at first, but I think I do.’
‘I wouldn’t get too excited, Felix. It’s only a few notebooks.’
‘We’ll see how they sell. And if they don’t, you’ll still take them, right?’
‘Absolutely,’ I said, wondering what I would do with them but not willing to admit it.
‘ Bien , you go home, and I will close up the shop. I won’t be long,’ he said.
Feeling incredibly positive and happy, I drove home through the dusk, and reached Potato Farm where the lights were still shining out from the barn, and there was a car parked in front of it. I could see Isabel inside, and a couple walking around, picking things up and putting them back again.
Getting out I shivered, there was a cold wind blowing my jacket open, and a few drops of rain fell onto my head.
‘I’m glad you’re back,’ Isabel murmured as I looked in to see how she was doing, ‘I’ve sold nothing all day and I don’t think these people are really interested in anything other than the auricular theatre, and they can’t fit that in their car. Even if I dismantled it, and then it would probably fall to bits, and they wouldn’t be able to reassemble it. I don’t think a pile of vintage French firewood would be very appealing to many people.’
‘Where are they from,’ I asked, ‘perhaps I could take it back when I go and get it to them somehow?’
‘It’s a kind thought but they live in Glasgow,’ Isabel said, ‘it would cost you more in petrol than the thing is worth.’
I went forward. ‘If you wanted something to put some small plants on, perhaps a few pots of herbs for your kitchen windowsill, maybe this would be suitable,’ I said, pointing to the miniature étagère .
The couple looked at it very doubtfully.
‘It’s really lovely, I noticed that when we came in, but I don’t think it would fit in the car, we have quite a bit of stuff already,’ the woman said, although her eyes looked longingly at it. She reached out a hand and touched it regretfully.
‘But if you did this…’ I said. During our sort out of all the new things Isabel had collected over the winter, I had cleaned up the ironwork and oiled the bolts that kept the étagère together. Which meant that in moments I had unscrewed them and the whole thing folded flat.
The woman’s face lit up and she darted a hopeful look at her companion.
‘Lenny, I’d really like that, and she’s right, it would hardly take up any room.’
Lenny rolled his eyes, and the deal was sealed.
‘You said you were going to pace yourself, Jess. We’ve only been in France two days. At this rate you’ll have to travel home on the roof rack.’
They drove away a few minutes later with the étagère in the boot of the car.
‘Marvellous!’ Isabel said happily, ‘who knew you were such a salesman? And how did you get on at the bookshop?’
‘Really well I think – it was fun, actually. I had such a great time. And yes, before you ask, Felix did put in an order for those notebooks.’
‘Fantastic. Anyway, I have some exciting news. I had a phone call about the shepherd’s hut. It’s being delivered tomorrow. Probably in the afternoon because they are bringing it from Nantes. On the back of a low loader, so we’d better get the dogs in, and for now, looking at the cloud coming in, I think we’d better close everything up and get indoors. The weather forecast isn’t looking good.’