‘Well, that’s true…’
‘The fellow not ’ere yet though?’
It takes me a moment to figure out what’s going on. Mr de Marisco is glancing down the street looking for an invisible someone following behind me. For Mack? ‘Uh, no, I thought you knew he wasn’t coming?’
He juts his bottom lip, confused. ‘Ain’t he? Oh.’
My mind’s working away ten to the dozen. What does that mean? Didn’t Mack tell him I was coming alone? Mr de Marisco doesn’t seem that bothered but he obviously sees me wigging out and blurts out an explanation.
‘He was in a rush when we spoke, I think. Fidgety-sounding sort of fellow. Secretive? Didn’t like parting with details about himself. I hope you don’t mind him. Any trouble, let me know. A’right?’
He’s giving me a cautious glance and I’mreallyconfused now. ‘I’m holidaying alone, so I’ll be fine, thanks. He won’t be troubling me, Mr de Marisco.’
‘It’s Jowan, please. Show you to your bookshop, then?’ he says, still squinting in confusion but hiking a thumb up the hill and taking my case from me.
I suppose Mackwouldsound strange to Jowan. They’re total opposites on the Man Scale: Ten being this big, bristly, rugged Devonshire man with a fading blue anchor tattoo stretching across the back of his hand; Zero being Mack, pale and elegant and a bit sickly looking in that aristocratic way, with all his indoorsy interests, refined manners and annoying habits, like the way he’d call his expensive watches his ‘timepieces’.
‘Eugh!’ I can’t help vocalising it and my spine shivers as I shake the memory of sneaky, lying Mack away.
‘Beg’ pardon?’ Jowan turns, alarmed.
‘Oh,uh, swallowed a bug. Ugh,yuk.’ I’m not much of an actor, but he buys it. I fall behind his long strides, still peeking in at the gardens as we climb, when suddenly Jowan takes a sharp left turn down an alley between two cottages and I see the weathered old board on a wall saying Borrow-a-Bookshop is twenty metres this way. Doorsteps and window boxes, sleds and plant pots line the narrow route and I skip a few steps to keep up.
‘’ere we are,’ Jowan says with a crinkle-eyed smile, though we’re still winding along the cobbled path which is widening out now into a little, airy square, lit overhead with two crossing strings of white bulbs, and at its centre a palm tree in a big terracotta pot. I glimpse occasional hints of blue sea and dark sky between the grey tiled rooftops peaked like wonky wizards’ hats. ‘Binbags out on Tuesday nights, mind you cover ’em with the blanket or the gulls’ll have ’em ripped apart and rubbish strewn everywhere, the buggers! Milk and clotted cream delivery every morning, except Monday and Thursday. Spare key’s kept at the Siren if you need ’un. Volunteers’ll pop in most days to help you out, see if you’ve got any problems. I’ll call in now and again too, but you can find me at the B&B Down-along if there’s trouble. S’where I live. My mobile number’s taped to the till if you need me.’
‘Down-along?’ I say.
‘Ah, yes. Street’s called Up-along if you’re down at the harbour, and Down-along if you’re up at the top of the village. Question of perspective.’
I’m nodding as though that’s perfectly sensible but internally screaming ‘what?’ Jowan’s instructions keep coming though so I have to try and concentrate.
‘Gold key’s the front door, silver key’s the cash box. Take the money upstairs at night and stow it under your bed. Not that we get many burglars round ’ere, but still. Oh, and Aldous only eats jam scones, cheese sandwiches and chicken soup, no point trying anything else, many have tried, all failed. Right, ’ere we are.’
I’m about to ask who the hell this Aldous is and will I be expected to make chicken soup for just one customer – I doubt there’s a recipe for chicken soup in Grandad’s baking book – when we stop at the white steps of a squat, wide cottage, and there, behind a bay window that once upon a time must have had straight frames but now they’re slanting – like everything else in Clove Lore – are rows of books on display. I peer in at them. The glass looks about two hundred years old and is warped and bubbled with a greenish tinge like seawater so it’s not easy to make out the titles.
I’m a little dizzy all of a sudden, but Jowan seems used to this kind of reaction and he smiles indulgently as he gives me the last of his welcome spiel. ‘It’s your bookshop to do as you like with. Remember, every guest changes the display by the till on their last day to reflect their own reading tastes, and you must leave it for the next bookseller to keep in place during their fortnight – nice little tradition we have ’ere, a legacy of your stay. You’ll see Charles and Enid who were with us before you loved spy thrillers and espionage, so that’s what they’ve left for you. Otherwise, do as you please, same goes for the café.’
I’m nodding and hoping I remember all this.
Up three wide and wonky stone steps is the shop door, painted a glossy sky-blue. A bell tings as Jowan unlocks it and lets it swing open.
‘She’s all yours,’ he says, and I think I must have floated up those steps.
Of course I’d Googled my destination and discovered it was recently declared the ‘Most Instagrammable Village’ in England by a national newspaper, and I read the TripAdvisor comments from previous guests – only three reviews, all five stars and all raving about the sea views, the helpful locals, and the fun of playing at bookselling for a fortnight. I even found some photographs of the bookshop interior online, so I knew this place would be stunning, but now that I’m standing on the ‘welcome’ mat, frozen to the spot, open-mouthed, trying to take it all in, I realise none of those accounts of Borrow-A-Bookshop had done it justice.
‘Why don’t you lock the door and give yourself time to ’climatise?’ Jowan says, and I nod and mumble my thanks. I’m dimly aware of him chuckling as he walks away, the keys still in the lock, and I have a tiny spike of panic that he really has left me to my own devices.
I want to call him back and ask him a thousand questions about how someone actually goes about running a bookshop, but I suppose that’s the point of this mad experiment; I’ll have to figure it out for myself. Isn’t that why I wanted to come here? To prove I can do something more than prettify the place, to show Mack and everyone else I’ve got the gumption to go it alone, even if just for a fortnight. That, and the fact I can inhale old-book smell for two weeks and be part of something new, a community of a kind. Not that the place is full of people tripping over each other to make friends with me, at least not with a storm coming in. Clove Lore feels as though everyone’s battening down hatches and hiding. It’s so quiet, quieter even than Marygreen with all its boarded-up shops and scaffolding, and that’s saying something.
I pull the keys free, step inside and let the door close behind me.
Chapter Nine
At first I drift around trying not to touch anything and just having a really good marvel at the place.
There are shelves from floor to ceiling lining the walls and table ‘islands’ with towers of books piled up on them. Here and there are little nooks and dead ends with chairs for customers to secrete themselves away with a book, and there are lovely little windows, some of them just glazed portholes, with only enough room for a plant pot on their sills. Threadbare rugs cover the floor and everything is just a little dusty and faded in the nicest way and every surface seems to be made of ancient-looking wood.
I stagger a bit making my way through the shop since every floorboard, overhead beam and shelf seems to have absorbed a hundred winters’ cold and damp and a thousand spring storms and it’s all dried out again over a hundred parched summer months until no surface is level. I’m convinced if I were to drop a bag of marbles in the middle of the shop floor they’d run off in every direction and disappear into umpteen mouse holes, cracks and gaps.
