“You bastard,” I hissed at the door, then turned around just in time to see a young girl scrambling onto the table to grab the stuffed armadillo.
“Don’t climb on that!” I yelled, rushing over and scooping the child off the table before she fell and cracked her head open.
“But I wanna!”
“Come on, Trudy,” An older girl, about fourteen, rushed in and grabbed the child’s hand. “Let’s look in the children’s section. I bet we’ll be able to find some lovely illustrated biblical stories for you.”
They raced off, brushing past a round woman who stood in the doorway. She ducked as a paper plane flew over her head. Her face crumpled apologetically and her rosy cheeks reddened as she held out her hand to me. “Hello, my dear. I’m so sorry for all the noise. The children are very excited to visit a bookshop. Many of them don’t have books in their homes, you know. I believe reading is just so important, so I thought I’d bring them over.”
“It’s fine,” I said, straightening the armadillo and taking her hand. “If you could just remind them it’s a bookshop and not a jungle gym, everything will be fine.”
“I’ll do my best, although I’m afraid sometimes they get the better of me,” she patted her thigh. “These old bones aren’t as fast as they used to be. They’re a rambunctious bunch, but they’re good souls. It’s nice to see them learning and experiencing something new. If I can turn just one of them into a reader, well, I’ll have made a difference.”
“I was a reader growing up,” I smiled at her. “I’ve never forgotten the feeling of diving into a book and escaping to another world. Is this a school group?” The kids were a range of different ages, and there were far too many to be her children.
“Oh, heavens no. These are my youth group. I’m Brenda Winstone, and I run the youth group activities at the Argleton Presbyterian Church,” the woman frowned. Her rosy face instantly aged, and a look of sadness came over her kind green eyes. “I haven’t any children of my own, you see. My husband is Harold Winstone – you might know him, he’s a very famous historian. He travels all over the world writing books about interesting buildings and their history. Right now, he’s writing a history of the old Argleton hospital, the one they’re tearing down? A lovely man is my Harold, but he dedicated his life to his research and didn’t want children distracting him. So I donate my time to young ones in need.”
“It’s lovely to meet you, Brenda. Mrs. Scarlett mentioned you the other day. You’re in the Banned Book Club.”
Mrs. Winstone’s eyes bugged out. “Please, don’t say that so loud.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize it was a secret.”
Mrs. Winstone opened her mouth to say more, but the older girl poked her head in the room and said that a boy named Thomas had thrown up on a George Eliot. Mrs. Winstone dashed off to deal with that particular disaster while I rescued a terrified Grimalkin from where the boys had her cornered on top of a bookshelf.
As Grimalkin’s claws dug into my shoulder, I watched Mrs. Winstone scurry around after the children, who ran circles around her.What an odd woman.
Half an hour, a broken chair, one slammed door, and three squashed fingers later, Brenda Winstone paid for a huge stack of children’s books and bustled the youth group next door to terrorize Greta at the bakery. I went across the hall to straighten the Fiction room and discovered the teenagers had moved every one of our copies of Darwin’sOn The Origin of Speciesinto the General Fiction section.
Who says religious people don’t have a sense of humor?
I’d nearly finished re-ordering the books when Heathcliff emerged from hiding. “So what did they break?”
“Nothing.”
“And?”
“Theremaybe a tiny scratch on a chair in the Children’s room.”
“And?”
I sighed. “The chair’s broken. One boy slammed his friend’s fingers in the door, but I think they’re just bruised.”
“Just you wait, I’ll have an HSE officer and the parents’ lawyer in here by the end of the day.” Heathcliff noticed the stack of Darwin books by my feet. “Church group, were they? Stick all the Darwin in the fiction shelves, did they? If any one of the little bastards sat in my chair, I’ll be breaking fingers for real.”
I threw a Darwin book at him. He ducked and slipped away, humming under his breath.
He’s in a remarkably good mood, considering a horde of marauding children just destroyed his shop and we’re hosting a book club tomorrow. It’s not… it’s not the prospect of our date that’s making him almost cheery, is it?
No.
It can’t be.
But maybe…
A broad smile crossed my face. After a shaky start back in Argleton, things really were looking up. I had a date with Heathcliff, Morrie was making me feel all kinds of good, no one had been murdered in the shop in over a month, and we were about to host the first of what I hoped would be many events.
I thought back to all the gossip about the King’s Copse development, and Mrs. Winstone’s reluctance to talk about the book club. Mrs. Scarlett seemed like a harmless old woman, but the more I heard about her and her book club, the more I wondered if I might be running with the badass old biddies of Argleton.It’s just a group of women chatting about books over high tea… it isn’t as if the Banned Book Club is dangerous, is it?
