Chapter 100
The Good Old Days
Wilbur put down his wine glass. He needed to put something straight.
‘Ignore what I said earlier,’ he told her.
‘What about?’
‘The meeting with the bank manager.’
‘The loan?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘I’m not going to bother. We don’t need that kind of pressure.
We don’t need to expand. We have a perfectly good bookshop.
And it doesn’t need to change its name. Agnes – Mrs Bagdale – the original owner was a legend of sorts and she did things differently.
She planted the seed and I think it’s right she is remembered.
She ran it for over thirty years and never once set up another shop.
Maybe she knew what she was doing. I just want to run a really good bookshop and keep it that way and have a nice time. Do it the Mrs Bagdale way.’
Maggie was so surprised she put down her cutlery. ‘But you were adamant. You said it was the opportunity of a lifetime.’
‘I know, I know …’
‘Is this because I sounded worried? Because I asked if it would take us away from each other?’
‘No. It was nothing you said. Not at all. But the thing is, it will. It will take us away from each other, Maggie.’
‘But you said it—’
‘I know what I said. But I was lying to myself. Look, I don’t want more than this.’
‘More than what?’
‘More than us. More than our life.’
‘Wilbur—’
‘Look, we are having our honeymoon in Venice. We are literally abroad. The shop is doing well and could stay that way. We need to find some balance. It’s not my dream to have shops on every corner.
And I know it isn’t yours. If I take this offer, years from now you’ll be sat on a sofa in a very expensive and magnificent house on Sumner Place in South Kensington and you’ll be deeply, deeply unhappy and want to leave me.
And you’ll be right to want that. Because I’ll already have left myself. ’
‘Your imagination, Wilbur, honestly! South Kensington, for heaven’s sake? We have no idea it would be like that.’
‘I do, actually. And I don’t want it.’
Her eyes shone with a smile and a memory.
‘What?’ he asked her.
‘You haven’t changed.’
‘Since when?’
‘Since I first met you on Glossop Road. Remember? Telling me to mind the glass. You’re still that boy. And that’s good. I don’t want to lose him.’
His eyes glazed. ‘No. I’m right here.’
He looked at her. He thought of the person she had been and the woman she was yet to become.
He loved her completely, through all time.
Through the trials they had known and the unknown mess and grief and joys yet to come.
And he realised what he should have always known. It was her. She was the whole point.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I can see him.’
After the meal they walked the long way back to the hotel, through labyrinthine streets and alleyways, taking wrong turns and finding themselves in tiny squares.
‘I miss Dougie,’ he said. ‘I miss him every day.’ He was saying it out loud, not to upset her, but to show her and himself that he was acknowledging something. That he couldn’t wash that away.
‘I know, love. You don’t have to pretend any more.’
He thought of her words. The ones she had written him in the letter. Sometimes you have to let your heart break in order to stay alive.
They walked on a little further.
‘It’s marvellous, isn’t it, Wilbur?’
He felt happy. But it was a different kind of happiness to what he had known before. This time it felt less fragile, as though it could survive other things alongside it. Like a tenacious flower that would bloom every year.
‘Yes! Yes, it is. Life is marvellous. You are marvellous. Venice is marvellous … Sheffield is marvellous.’
Maggie looked at him with fond eyes. ‘You pudding. You sound like Charlie used to when he was on a trip!’
But Wilbur kept going. ‘Charlie Applewood is marvellous. And Claudette Campbell is marvellous. And I can’t wait for their wedding. I’m going to be there this time.’
‘Eh? Are they getting married?’
‘Oh yes. Not that they know it yet.’ He paused.
Then carried on, making Maggie laugh in the process.
‘Doreen Taylor is marvellous … Dear old Victor Willows – you know, the man I talk to in Endcliffe Park – he is marvellous … Italian food is marvellous … My wife’s art is marvellous …
Reading books is marvellous …’ He thought about that.
‘I’m not going to stop reading,’ he said adamantly.
‘I never said you would.’
‘I know. But I’m just saying. I’m always going to have time for it.
And for you.’ He remembered the telephone conversation that he saw himself having on the eve of his death.
‘This is it. These are the good old days. We are living them. They aren’t always going to be easy, but one day we will look back and know them as that.
So I’m going to try and live them as that … to be nostalgic about the present.’
Maggie smiled and felt a subtle shift, as if some barely recognised worry had lifted and the air was clear.