Chapter 13 Dorothea
DOROTHEA
As she turned the bookshop door sign from Closed to Open, Dorothea Stewart looked out at the damp fog in the air.
Viscous; almost liquid. She regarded the penny box on wheels, filled with old texts and damaged second-hand books that had no real value.
She couldn’t wheel it outside onto the cobblestones today.
‘Damp is the enemy of books, Dorothea.’ Mr Thistlethwaite’s refrain was a small, irritating jingle in her head.
Last week he’d returned from assessing a book collection peppered with invaluable volumes.
The owner, a wealthy hermit, had loved birds and collected books on ornithology.
Usually, there was a joyous energy in Mr Thistlethwaite’s step after returning from such a find.
But the hermit had no family, so when he died two years ago, somebody had locked the house and walked away.
At some unknown time, a storm had felled a tree and there was a huge splintering gash in the roof, water damage across the entire top floor.
The books upstairs were ruined. Beautiful books about winged creatures from all over the world.
Rare large folios on natural history, lithographs and original plates of African and South American birds; unusual, centuries-old scientific works.
But swollen, or with fatal staining or foxing on every page.
Some could be restored, of course, and Mr Thistlethwaite had conducted his assessment the following week with the care of an emergency physician and the kindness of a priest.
Dorothea wheeled the penny box back inside, safe from the fog.
She was tired, an essay having kept her up into the early hours and she had a lingering sense that something was missing now that James had gone to America.
She wondered if this was her heart, crying for the loss of her love.
No. She didn’t think so. Some small part of her had been glad when this opportunity had arisen for him.
She had been afraid he was going to ask her to marry him and, no matter how hard she tried, she could not see him in her future.
The sky was grey so that the pretty panelled windows struggled to let light into the small, book-filled room.
Cold emanated from the flagstone floor. She picked up a pile of books from the counter and ducked beneath the lintel as she entered the shop’s second room.
It was larger, two ladders attached to rails on each side so that books on the top shelves could be reached with ease.
This room held the leather- and cloth-bound treasures of their antiquarian collection.
Dorothea knew to keep an eye on anyone who came in here.
Not so much for theft, although it sometimes happened, but because it was not necessarily easy to locate the books on a topic of interest. They were filed based on Mr Thistlethwaite’s intuition about value and significance, so that books on elephants might be filed adjacent to volumes with photographic plates showing indigenous populations of Africa or Asia; their system relied on knowing how he thought.
If Dorothea’s memory failed her, their card file would soon reveal the correct location.
The rarest books were not kept on the shop floor.
They were safely in a locked glass cabinet in Mr Thistlethwaite’s office, away from browsers.
Collectors were an unusual bunch, and they would move mountains to own a rare first edition or a book that completed their collection.
As soon as he laid eyes on a special treasure, Mr Thistlethwaite knew exactly who to telephone.
Dorothea looked out onto the street. It was almost ten in the morning, and a familiar car was parked outside the bakery.
An Austin in British racing green. She peered through the fog.
The owner of the car, Lady Adeline Fitzhenry, was talking to a woman with a pushchair.
She kept leaning over and placing her hand into the pushchair as if touching the child.
The woman was Jane, one of the girls who had worked at the Fitzhenry estate before marrying last year.
Her baby must be nearly four months old, Dorothea thought. How time flew.
She began tidying the counter. Now there was a true collector, she thought, just as the bell above the shop door tinkled. ‘Well, hello, Lady Fitz.’ Dorothea smiled, warmed by the sight of her friend.
‘Dorothea! Are you well?’ The woman flitted across the room and took Dorothea’s hands across the counter. The scent of her perfume was dreamy, a little like gardenias. ‘I’m desperate to know all your news. How is that chap of yours getting along over in America?’
‘I got my first letter today. He’s settling in well, thank you! He’s enjoying the company of the new colleagues he’s working with.’
‘Wonderful.’ Lady Fitzhenry was pretty and fine-boned, and often—Dorothea noted when she watched her friend talking with others—she had a hesitant, nervous quality.
But with Dorothea she seemed to come alive.
Today she was dressed in a pleated wool skirt and a top with a Peter Pan collar.
Her hair was coiffured in voluminous waves around her face and curled out just below her collar.
She had it styled every week in the local salon.
‘How is Jane getting along with the baby?’ Dorothea asked, looking out onto the street.
‘Oh, yes, quite well it seems.’ A flicker of something passed across Lady Fitz’s face then she brightened. ‘If ever I were lucky enough to have a son, though, I don’t think I would call him Danny-Ray. It sounds like an American matinee idol.’
Dorothea giggled and reached behind her. ‘What would you call him?’
Lady Fitz looked wistful. ‘Edward likes Francis, for a boy.’
‘A lovely name.’ Dorothea handed her the item she’d been saving. ‘Nineteenth-century engravings of regency interiors. A bit of foxing unfortunately, and I don’t know the provenance, but a lovely collection of Ackermann’s work.’
‘How thrilling. I’ll take a look.’ Lady Fitz took the folio into the second room and sat on the old leather sofa, reverently turning the pages.
After just moments, she was lost in her passion for European interior design and architecture.
Dorothea leaned on the counter, wondering at her friend’s life in that enormous house with her handsome husband and staff.
Was it a happy life? Dorothea occasionally had a feeling of unease around Adeline.
A premonition of sadness. She wondered what her intuition was telling her.
She felt drained of energy today as she watched her, although she supposed she had felt this way all week.
The bell above the shop door tinkled again. She squared her shoulders and took a deep breath, remembering to bring a smile to her face.
‘Hello,’ she said to the middle-aged man in a tatty old suit. ‘Welcome to The Bookshop of Buried Pasts. Can I help you find the book you need?’