Chapter Nine
It was eight o’clock by the time Grace arrived in Beckenham.
The water had soaked up from the bottom of her trousers and made them heavy and uncomfortable, the flares slapping against her ankles as she rushed along the High Street.
The lights were on in the bookshop, so she didn’t give herself time to pause before pushing on the door handle and stepping inside.
She almost stumbled straight into the group, who were sitting in a circle just inside the shop, under blue bunting with ‘Welcome Book Lover’ spelled out in gold.
Turquoise lights hung on the back wall like beads on an enormous necklace, making the back portion of the shop glow.
The seating area was smaller than in Books En Parade, and the group sat on matching chairs placed in a circle. Annie was facing the door and her face lit up when she saw Grace. ‘Grace! You made it. I’m so pleased to see you.’ She pointed at the kettle. ‘Can I make you a drink?’
‘No, I’m fine, thank you. Sorry I’m late.’ Grace flushed as all heads turned in her direction.
‘Family tradition?’ said the bald man, laughing. The comment about her tardiness made it clear he now knew she was Frank’s wife. Grace wished she could remember the man’s name.
‘Hope you don’t mind me telling them who you are,’ said Annie. There was a look of reverence on her face that made pride swell in Grace’s chest. Being closely associated with Frank was akin to being royalty in these parts, it seemed.
‘No, that’s erm, that’s fine.’ She turned to the bald man. ‘I’m usually much more time-aware than Frank was, honestly, but I went to Books En Parade first. I didn’t know about the change of venue.’
Annie grimaced. ‘Sorry. I rang around, to see if anyone had your number. I even tried a couple of people who haven’t been to book club in months, but no luck.
I tried calling Frank’s old phone but …’ Her voice trailed off and Grace felt her embarrassment.
She’d eventually forced herself to cancel Frank’s phone contract six months after his death.
It had been a difficult thing to do, as if she was closing down an avenue through which people, including her, could contact him.
If he’d ever put a personalized message on his voicemail, she didn’t think she’d have been able to do it.
She would’ve ended up like those people she’d seen in films, calling a loved one’s voicemail in the dead of a sleepless night, just to hear their voice.
‘Crush had a family bereavement,’ Annie added.
‘So the change of venue was quite late notice.’
‘I appreciate you trying,’ said Grace. The cat stalked over to her and started to sniff at the hem of her trousers.
‘Manners, Earnest,’ said the bald man. The cat gaped up at Grace with serious blue eyes. She noticed again how the dark lines tracking up from its black nose made it look as though it had a permanently furrowed brow.
‘Earnest is the perfect name for you, isn’t it?’ She bent to scratch between his ears.
‘Ha, did you hear that, Harry?’ Annie chuckled and nodded in the bald man’s direction. Grace committed his name to memory.
‘Funny you should say that,’ Harry said to Grace. ‘He’s actually called Eric.’
‘I thought you said Earnest?’ Grace stopped scratching the cat’s head for a moment, but resumed when he bumped her shin with his nose.
‘His full name is Eric Laughlin Cartright-Hamilton, but, thanks to your late husband, everyone calls him Earnest, including me.’ His face was serious, but there was an amused light in his eyes which, despite the lack of any other hair on his head, were rimmed with surprisingly thick dark lashes.
‘The first time Harry brought him to book club,’ said Annie, ‘he was a tiny dot of a kitten.’
‘He’s a house cat,’ interjected Harry. ‘But he hates being left alone, so I started to take him out with me in a cat carrier, and it’s become rather a habit.’
‘He wouldn’t sit on the floor,’ continued Annie, ‘so we all took turns reading with him sleeping in our laps. When Frank held him, he looked into his eyes and said he was the most earnest-looking creature he’d ever seen in his life, and it stuck. From that moment on he was Earnest with an A.’
‘Which is very confusing for both of us when we go to the vets and they call out his given name.’ Harry raised an eyebrow, causing his forehead to wrinkle almost up to the crown of his shiny head.
‘Frank had a nickname for everyone,’ said Grace. ‘I suppose I was lucky to get away with Gracie. It could have been worse.’
‘He called me Billie,’ said a quiet voice to Grace’s left.
Grace turned to see the girl with the thick black ponytail she’d seen briefly at Books En Parade. ‘Why Billie? It’s Jasmine, isn’t it?’
The girl nodded shyly. Ornate henna tattoos swirled in intricate patterns on her hands. ‘People sometimes call me Jazz, and Frank said his favourite jazz singer was Billie Holiday, so Billie it was.’ She shrugged, smiling.
Grace had a sudden image of Frank sitting in their front room, tears running down his cheeks as he listened to Billie Holiday singing ‘Strange Fruit’ on the radio.
He’d felt everything so deeply, and even the thought of what those poor people in the song suffered was enough to pierce his tender heart.
‘Sounds like him,’ she said, her own heart keening afresh for her husband.
‘I wasn’t so keen on my nick name: Hazza,’ said Harry, his cut-glass voice full of derision. ‘I mean, do I look like a Hazza?’ He brushed at the sharp creases in his slacks with square cut, immaculately clean fingernails.
‘No, you’re definitely more of a Harold,’ said Annie, patting him on the shoulder.
‘Lordy. That’s almost worse.’ Harry turned sharply, his mouth pinched. ‘Takes me back to my boarding school days.’
‘Not Sandhurst?’ said Annie, poking him with her elbow. ‘I bet you went there, didn’t you?’
‘Your assumption is correct, but no one called me Harry or Harold. Having a first name there was an admission of effeminacy. I was Cartright-Hamilton for years. If it wasn’t for my wife, I’d have forgotten I had a first name at all.
’ He glanced across at a slim, toned woman in sports Lycra.
‘Not that there’s anything wrong with being effeminate. ’
The woman laughed. ‘You’re looking at the wrong gal, there, mate,’ she said in a strong Scottish accent. ‘The last time I was accused of being feminine was when my girlfriend’s ma asked why she didn’t have a nice women’s haircut like me.’
They all scrutinized the woman’s short pixie cut. ‘I just didn’t want to offend,’ said Harry. ‘I’m an old fool sometimes, quite out of touch with modern thinking. I do try, though.’
‘Harry, you’re good, fella.’ She winked at him, then turned to Grace.
‘I’m Tracy, nice to meet you. Frank called me T.
’ She leaned across from her chair and offered her hand to Grace, who shook it and smiled, wondering how the woman managed to fit in so many earrings without running out of ear. ‘Take a seat.’
Grace perched on one of the two empty chairs in the circle.
‘Nicknames are generally used to express affection or highlight character traits,’ piped up the man with the glasses and side-parting. He nodded, as if agreeing with his own point.
Grace smiled at him. ‘What did Frank call you?’
‘Lee.’
‘And what’s your name?’
‘Lee.’
She stared at the man, lost for words. She hurriedly reached into her bag and brought out The List of Suspicious Things. ‘I brought my book along today,’ she said, hoping to move the conversation on.
‘You’ve got a fair way through,’ said Annie, pointing to the protruding bookmark.
‘Yes, I’m quite proud of myself,’ said Grace.
‘And I’m astonished at how much I’ve enjoyed reading it.
Frank was the reader in our house, not that I have to tell you all that.
’ She smiled at the faces watching her, the nerves from speaking to the group diminishing when she saw the warmth in their eyes.
All but Lee’s. He was flicking through his book, as though he was barely tolerating the interruption.
‘Ordinarily, I only picked up a book on holiday, but I’ve found my reading mojo, you might say.
It was nice to escape the real world for a while, I have to admit. ’
‘That’s great to hear,’ said Annie. ‘We all shared what we’re enjoying about our books before you arrived, and we’ve got a bit of time left before we settle down to read so, if you’re happy to talk about it, I’d love to hear your thoughts.
I haven’t read that one yet, but Crush reckons I’ll like it.
’ She turned to the others. ‘Has anyone else read it?’
All except Jasmine shook their heads. ‘I have,’ she said, her voice soft. ‘It’s such a good book. It made me grateful to be born now, instead of in the seventies.’
Grace nodded, bracing herself to speak to this unusual collection of people, and trying to ignore Lee’s disinterested expression.
‘I think showing the racism through the eyes of a child is incredibly effective. It brings home how utterly ridiculous prejudice is, doesn’t it, when you’re reminded the children are all just innocents to start with, until they learn from the people they’re surrounded by and what their environment teaches them?
And even the thugs have a back story, don’t they?
It makes you think about how and why people end up with such warped views.
’ A memory of Jude crying because he’d been called a racist slur by a boy in the year above him at school smacked into her heart.
She’d certainly struggled to remember that boy was a product of his upbringing and environment at the time.
She’d wanted to throttle the little sod.
Jasmine nodded and Grace was surprised to find she had more to say.
‘And the portrayal of the seventies and early eighties is brilliant. I’d forgotten so much about what it was like back then.
My grandparents lived in Leeds, and I vividly remember visiting them around the time of the Yorkshire Ripper.
The fear came back to me. Incredible how a book can do that, isn’t it? ’
‘Sounds brilliant. I’m definitely going to read it,’ said Annie and some of the others mumbled in agreement.
‘My Jack says one day my to-be-read pile will topple over and bury me, but I told him there are worse ways to go.’ Her smile dropped for a moment.
She recovered it and glimpsed at her watch. ‘Right, time for reading, then?’
The adrenaline from entering the group, then forcing herself to speak seemed to drop through Grace’s feet into the pale wood floor, leaving her suddenly breathless with exhaustion.
The thought of sitting and silently reading now seemed just as preposterous as it had the last time.
More so, since these chairs were less comfortable than the sofa and armchairs at Books En Parade.
Perhaps the venue wasn’t her main issue, after all.
Glancing around, she saw that Annie slouched in her seat, her long legs almost reaching the centre of the circle.
Tracy leaned back, balancing her e-reader on her impossibly flat stomach and Harry crossed his legs, the stitching on the leather soles of his shoes precise around the edges. Even the soles of his shoes were smart.
Grace opened her book. She trained her eyes on the page, but the letters wouldn’t turn into coherent words.
Despite her attempts to regulate her breathing and relax, the silence seemed to thicken around her.
When she glanced up again, all the others seemed completely engrossed in their stories.
She dropped her eyes, but Miv refused to become real the way she had before.
She heard her own breathing again, then became aware of Earnest purring at Harry’s feet.
The sound of Jasmine turning a page made her look up, then the noise of Tracy’s Lycra leggings against the fabric of the chair when she shifted position.
She looked at her watch. Only five minutes had passed.
She couldn’t bear another fifty-five minutes of this gloopy quietness.
But she couldn’t walk out either, not now she’d chatted to everyone, and they all knew she was Frank’s wife.
She pictured him in her mind’s eye, willing him to give her some staying power from beyond the grave.
Beyond the grave. The thought leapt on top of her and crushed out her breath.
She returned her gaze to the book, but the words blurred and danced.
Frank had been burned to ashes and these were his friends, not hers.
She was surrounded by silence again. She realized Books En Parade wasn’t the real problem.
The gaping quiet was. It had been a mistake to come and she would never get used to this.
It was even more painful than being alone.