Chapter 33 FRANCIS
FRANCIS
NOW, CAMbrIDGESHIRE, ENGLAND
The bell tinkles as Francis opens the door to the bookshop. Ellery Thistlethwaite looks up from behind the counter, her hands resting on a pile of calfskin-covered books.
‘Frankie. You look terrible.’
‘Thank you, Elly-belly. I admire your honesty.’
‘How was your birthday party?’
‘Predictably awful.’
Ellery crosses the room and begins shelving books. ‘Surely not.’ She turns, eyeing him sceptically, a wry smile threatening.
‘All right. It was fine. I drank a lot of champagne and talked to some very nice people. It was actually much better than I expected.’
She arches an amused eyebrow. ‘What did I tell you?’
‘Minty found some new caterers,’ he says. ‘They did these exquisite little pigs in blankets. A modern version.’ Francis peers into the distance, conjuring the flavours. ‘The bacon was sort of smoked in maple syrup. Scrumptious.’
‘I thought you were vegetarian.’
‘One makes an exception when necessary.’
It had been nice not to have to make his own meal.
Francis knows how to cook, of course. Mrs Wilson had taught him as a boy, after his father died.
Cricket had left Bleddesley House a few weeks after the grisly discovery of his father’s body and the disappearance of his nanny and brother.
Francis didn’t blame her. He would have left too, if he could.
And with no one in charge in that cavernous place while his paternal grandmother came and went—and the issue of who would look after the newly orphaned and nanny-less nine-year-old was sorted out between adults who all had better things to do—Mrs Wilson had set about giving him life skills.
How to bake scones. How to roast a leg of lamb.
What to do with the abundance of apples that Len or Stan would bring in from the orchard in the wheelbarrow.
He and Mrs Wilson would sit in the kitchen with the gardeners, discussing bottling techniques and the best recipe for apple cakes over cups of tea, straining over awkward silences when somebody accidentally touched on an issue that involved his father, or Dorothea or Louis.
Ellery hands Francis a book from behind the counter. She texted him a few days ago about this volume of The English House, which will help complete his mother’s collection on European architecture.
‘I have volumes two and three of this. Clever woman for finding this one!’ Francis sits on the corner chair and begins leafing through it.
‘It’s a little foxed but in pretty good condition.’ Ellery continues to bustle around the shop, moving and sorting.
‘What terrible price are you going to extract from me?’ muses Francis. ‘There’s some rubbing on the cloth boards, I see.’
‘Eighty pounds, I thought.’
‘All right,’ he murmurs.
They look up as the back door sounds. Ellery’s father enters the shop from behind the counter. Technically, he is retired now, though he still adores going out to view collections, or rummaging through deceased estate libraries.
‘Hello, m’lord. How are you?’ asks Mr Thistlethwaite.
‘Well thanks, Mr T.’ Francis remembers the man’s father who worked here when he used to come in as a boy with Dorothea.
Both men were equally charming, both devoted to the book trade.
There was never any question that Ellery, an only child, would carry on running the Thistlethwaite family bookshop when her time came.
Mr Thistlethwaite glances at the book in Francis’s hand. ‘Your mother would have admired that book. It was new in her time, though, I suppose. That edition at least.’
Francis smiles. He likes to hear stories of his mother. Mr Thistlethwaite Senior had known her better, of course, but anyone who had even met Adeline in passing is special to Francis.
‘Had a friend of yours in here the other day,’ says Ellery, nudging her father out of the way as she ducks behind the counter. ‘Monty, or Jonty or someone. Said he went to university with you.’
‘Good lord. Monty Johnson?’
‘Yes!’ says Ellery. ‘Said you were in the Footlights with him at Cambridge. I didn’t know you could act!’ Ellery pretends to be scandalised. ‘I would have dragged you into our little drama group here in the village if I’d known.’
Francis feels a shiver go through him. He remembers the rehearsals he’d done for months with the Footlights; how good it felt when the comic timing had paid off—like liquid lightning through his veins.
They’d all told him he was good. The past president of the Footlights, a young Stephen Fry, had come to one of the dress rehearsals and sat in the audience.
Afterwards he had slapped Francis on the shoulder, told him he had the chops for it.
‘It was short-lived,’ Francis says. ‘I gave it up.’
‘What a shame,’ says Mr Thistlethwaite. He has a cup of tea in his hands now and sits on the couch opposite.
He folds one elegant leg across the other, and Francis is thrown back to the night of the opening and the front row—all those legs beneath chairs, anonymous shadows watching as he pivots on stage.
He was brimming with nerves that night; had the audience in the palm of his hands, until a heckler had called out.
‘Did your mother write that line?’
The voice was so like his father’s—the intonation, the scorn—that he had jerked his gaze around to the spotlight and frozen.
‘Watching grass grow would be more amusing!’
It was a ghostly voice from his childhood.
‘For god’s sake, stop that ridiculous display, boy! Have you no dignity?’
He had dried up. Gone completely blank. Someone had come on for him in the end.
He’d never gone back. Never lived it down either.
He wondered why Monty had even brought it up, forty years later.
Francis had dropped out of the English Literature degree too.
Gone off to study fashion and work backstage.
He made it to the West End, but not as a front man.
Francis closes the book. He has spent so many hours in this shop, with these people.
They are like family to him. There is a smell in here he likes: vanilla and musty paper, wood wax and the lingering hint of old tobacco smoke in the yellowing pages of all these books.
It feels safe, so that the hurtful memories of his student days barely touch him. Here, he is himself.
‘I’m thinking of trying another firm of private detectives,’ he says. ‘To look for Dorothea.’
Mr Thistlethwaite blinks slowly. Gives a hint of a disappointed smile. ‘You won’t find her, Francis. She’s long gone. Probably passed away by now.’
Ellery looks at her computer. Looks back at him.
She shrugs. ‘Can’t hurt,’ she says, as if her father hasn’t spoken.
She picks up a volume from the display unit, its cover a midnight blue that blends with the shop walls.
In the corner of the cover are the stars of the Southern Cross.
She hands it to him. ‘David Malouf,’ she says.
‘Written in 1985, I think. Not valuable, but excellent. Stories of outsiders living at the bottom of the world.’ She smiles, raises her eyebrow with a mischief he has come to appreciate. ‘You never know,’ she says.
He turns the book over in his hands.
Antipodes.
His heart skips. A sign, he thinks. One must always be alert for signs.