The Bookshop on the Corner (11 page)

Nina noticed a beautiful picture on the wall. It was dark and gloomy, a heavy canvas, quite out of keeping with the rest of the delicate room. She looked at it.

“I'm sorry to hear that,” she said, wondering about it.

“Oh well,” said Lennox. “Time to get over it, apparently. Bloody Marilyn Frears from the village seems to think so anyway. Bleating about it over the phone, talking about moving on, getting someone in . . .”

He remembered himself.

“Which would be you, of course.”

“Thanks,” said Nina. “I promise I'll look after it.”

Lennox squinted out through the door suddenly and raised his hand to his forehead.

“Is that your van rolling down the hill?”

“What?” shouted Nina. “No, I left the hand brake on. I did! I'm sure I definitely did!”

“It'd better not run over any of my bloody chickens.”

“My VAN!” Nina was shouting and charging down the hill as fast as her wellies would take her.

“Get back from there!” shouted Lennox, pounding down behind her and overtaking her easily with his long legs. “Get away from it!”

The van was just picking up speed, heading toward a ditch at the edge of the field. Quickly, and without fuss, Lennox swung himself up into the cab—thank goodness she hadn't locked it, Nina thought—gracefully dropped in and pulled on the hand brake so hard Nina could smell the burning across the farmyard. There was a pause, as a chicken hopped sharply to the side. Nobody said anything.

Then Nina walked forward.

“I think my van has a death wish,” she said miserably. “It's trying to kill itself. Sometimes with me in it, sometimes on its own. Maybe it's haunted.”

Lennox clambered down, frowning. “You're going to have to look after it properly. Which means putting the hand brake on.”

Nina went bright red. “Sorry,” she said. “I had an accident—or nearly an accident—when I couldn't get the hand brake off, and that's why I don't really like putting it on.”

“I'm not sure your aversion to hand brakes has much to do with it,” said Lennox. “You want to park that thing here, you park it properly.”

“Okay. Yes. Sorry.”

Lennox glanced back into the cab. “What's back there . . . books?”

“Uh-huh.”

“You've got a van full of books?”

“Not quite full yet,” said Nina. “But I'm planning on heading that way, yes. Do you read?”

Lennox shrugged. “Don't see the point.”

Nina's eyebrows lifted. “Really?”

“Well, I get
Farmers Weekly
and I read that. I
can
read,” he said, as if she'd accused him of being illiterate.

“I assumed you could,” said Nina. “But you never read for fun?”

He looked at her. His eyes, creased at the edges, were blue against his suntanned face; his expression was bleak. Nina wondered if showing her the house, built with such loving care in happier times, had caused him pain. He didn't look like a man who did anything for fun.

“I never understand,” he said, shaking his head, “why anyone would go to the trouble of making up new people in this world when there's already billions of the buggers I don't give a shit about.”

Nina spent the rest of the day moving in, having paid Lennox a month's rent. He had taken the envelope gruffly, then gone back to work, disappearing over the horizon even as Nina wondered just how far the farm actually extended.

She unpacked her meager possessions into the stylish built-in wardrobes—far too stylish, now she thought about it, for a humble vacation cottage. They couldn't have hoped to recoup this investment in a hundred years. She wondered if the mysterious ex-Mrs. Lennox was simply looking for excuses to call back the interior designer.

She touched the heavy lined curtains and gazed out across the beautiful fields, wondering what Lennox's wife had been like. Perhaps she had longed for the city, just as Nina, sitting in her tiny bedroom in Edgbaston looking out on the long street of row houses opposite, had begun to dream of wide-open spaces
and fresh air. Perhaps they had had the wrong lives all along. It was a strange thing to think. She looked at the quality of the pale oak flooring, the tongue and groove in the bathroom, the claw-footed bath and the huge bed, almost as wide as it was long, and smiled wryly to herself. Yes, she and Mrs. Lennox were almost certainly quite, quite different. But for once, Nina had had her stroke of luck.

A
fter she'd unpacked her few possessions, Nina wasn't quite sure what to do with herself. Then she looked at the van, and realized it would need a massive scrubbing. The problem, she realized, having been used to zipping around in a tiny Mini Metro, was that if she ever wanted to go anywhere, the van had to come too, like a huge lumbering elephant too wide for half the streets of the town. She gave it a severe look and considered extending her rental on Edwin's bicycle.

She steeled herself, though, and trundled down to the village at ten miles an hour—she wasn't entirely sure she and the van trusted each other at this point. As she drove, she pondered the further problem of how she was going to get the rest of the books up from Birmingham. In reality she should simply drive down and fetch them, but it was such an incredibly long way, and she wasn't a hundred percent sure yet she had the nerve, especially following her near-death experience the last time she had set out for Birmingham.

The village had a small grocer's shop, painted a pretty pale
blue. A woman said a curt hello as she went in, the bell dinging overhead. Although the shop was tiny, it appeared to sell absolutely everything.

Nina looked at the paper-wrapped lamb chops. They were marked “Lennox Farm.” Back in Birmingham, meat generally came from the supermarket, encased in plastic. This was kind of new. There was chicken, too. She thought of the jolly little hen scratching outside her new window. Of course it was having a much better life than any chicken she normally bought, she told herself. Even so, she found herself choosing some cauliflower to make cauliflower with cheese instead. There was also a plethora of local cheeses she'd never seen before. The woman noticed her looking.

“Do you need any help?” she said. “I know it's a bit confusing.”

“I'm new here,” said Nina, smiling.

“Oh, I know that!” said the woman. “I'm Lesley. You bought Wullie's van, for some crazy reason, and you can't drive it, and you've moved into Lennox's mystery palace.” She gave a rather pleased-with-herself smile. She was small and neat, with weather-beaten cheeks and a tight look about her face.

“Mystery palace?” said Nina.

“Oh yes, nobody's seen that place since Kate left. What's it like? I heard she spent a fortune, got people up from Edinburgh; even Inverness wasn't good enough!”

“Right,” said Nina.

“Well?” Lesley folded her arms. Obviously gossip was something you paid for together with whatever you were actually buying.

“It's very nice,” said Nina. “Kind of all glass at the front, with a little balcony for sleeping, and a good view.”

Lesley sighed. “That sounds nice. Is it insulated?”

“I didn't ask.”

Lesley stared at her. “You rented a house without finding out if it was insulated? You can tell you're foreign.”

Nina had never thought of herself as foreign before.

“There's a wood-burning stove,” she said hopefully.

Lesley looked at her. “Okay then,” and she laughed in a way that made Nina feel slightly uncomfortable.

Nina picked out as many scrubbing and cleaning products as she could carry.

“What's all that for?”

She had absolutely vowed to support the local shop and the people who worked in the area, but found she was quickly going off the idea.

“It's for the van.”

“What are you going to do with a van anyway? You don't look as though you could do furniture moving.”

“Actually,” began Nina, feeling timid and trying to force herself to speak a little louder. This was her life now; she was going to have to own it, even though she felt as you often do when you've had to do absolutely everything by yourself: rather like a grumpy child. She took a breath. “Actually, I'm going to run a mobile bookshop. Go around to the towns where they don't have one, like here.”

Lesley's eyebrows lifted. “Really?”

“Uh, yes,” said Nina, glancing around anxiously just in case Lesley was already hiding a full bookshop in the back of the little blue shop and wouldn't appreciate her competition in the slightest.

“Have you got the new E. L. James?”

“I'm afraid not,” said Nina apologetically. “But I can get it! Also, I have something I think you might like even more.”

Lesley looked suspicious. “I doubt it.”

“You should trust me on this.”

“I know what I like,” said the woman.

Nina looked down and fumbled in her wallet. “Well, um, hopefully see you down there anyway.”

Outside, she found a cluster of people around the van, who peered inside as she unlocked the back. The books were still in their boxes on the floor, but people reached out their hands to pick them up and look at them.

“Um, hi, everyone,” said Nina shyly, her own hands full of cleaning bottles.

“Is this the new library?” said an older woman with a shopping cart. “We need a new library.”

Lots of other old ladies nodded approvingly.

“I'm afraid not,” said Nina. “It's going to be a shop.”

“It's a van.”

“I know. A bookshop in a van.”

“I miss that library.”

“So do I.”

Nina winced. “Well, once we're ready, we'll have lots of lovely books for you.”

A young woman with a stroller stopped beside the van.

“Hello! Are you selling books?” she said cheerfully. “Got any for children?”

“Of course!” said Nina, leaning into the stroller. “Hello there.”

“This is Aonghus,” said the woman. She squinted. “I know you're meant to read to them, but he gets really bored and wobbles off or tries to bite something. Mostly the biting thing.”

Aonghus grinned, showing gummy teeth.

“All our books are ripped to shreds,” the mother went on. “Someone asked me if we had a dog and I nearly said yes.”

“Have you tried cloth books?”

“Yes,” she said glumly. “He actually swallowed those. So we're back to hardback. At least they've got some fiber.”

Nina smiled. “Hang on,” she said. “Someone else had exactly that problem.” She hopped up into the van and came out with a near-pristine copy of
Don't Bite Me
. It was an incredibly successful board book about various animals with teeth that encouraged children to point at their own teeth rather than use them.

“What's that?”

“Well, it's got a lot of pointing. Maybe if he's pointing at it, he won't bite it so much.”

“Or he'll bite his own finger,” said the woman hopefully. “Good training. Thanks! I'll take it! I'm Moira, by the way.”

“Nice to meet you, Moira and Aonghus,” said Nina, realizing that she would have to get prices marked up in the front of the books. “And also your invisible dog.”

Moira paid her, looking cheerful as she handed the book to Aonghus, who stuffed it in his mouth hungrily.

“Maybe keep it in your bag till you can practice the pointing,” suggested Nina.

She watched Moira go, smiling, then, as if the floodgates had opened, sold her entire stock of Georgette Heyer and Norah Lofts to a cluster of old ladies, who buzzed around her still complaining about how awful it was that the library had gone. By the time she'd driven back to the barn to make cauliflower with cheese (swiftly followed by a reminder to herself that until either she'd gotten a separate kitchen or it was warm enough to have all the doors and windows open, she shouldn't cook cauli
flower again) and start scrubbing the van, she realized she'd have to figure out some way of getting the rest of the books up here, and quickly. Because this might just work.

Nina turned around and looked out of the window of the barn the following day, over the fields, where moorhens and even the occasional kestrel were swooping down. The place was full of birds. And there was just so much sky. A gray bank of clouds was hanging over the sea, approaching fast, racing one another. A piercing shaft of sunlight pushed in between them. There was rain, far away, the mist coming off it as some other farmer's field was watered, and the faintest pink line on the horizon, later in the evening, illuminating the end of the multicolored fields. Every time she crested the top of Kirrin Hill, she saw the shining fields of rapeseed pop up, almost too bright a yellow against the blue patches of sky. It felt like weather was being made in front of her eyes, the sky a huge screen of flowing and whorling movement.

Which meant you generally needed an extra sweater, she realized. And a jacket. But it was worth it.

It was time to drive over the train crossing again. Surinder had been very clear about this during their final wine-fueled chat: she needed to conquer her fears and get on with everything anew; she'd had a shock, but she couldn't let it beat her. But also, Nina was curious—no more than that, she told herself—as to whether Marek and Jim had picked up her bag from the tree.

It was a daft idea, and she shouldn't dwell on it. Anyone could have taken it. And they shouldn't be leaning out of trains anyway. She'd caused enough damage. Nonetheless, she slowed
down carefully, and parked in the turnoff just before the crossing. The bag was gone. But that didn't mean anything. There was, however, she noticed suddenly, another bag there, hanging quite far out on a branch, bright yellow.

Smiling to herself, she shinnied up the side of the tree, remembering those days of hiding in the apple tree to read in peace. She inched her way up the trunk until she could grab a lower bough, then lightly raised herself and crawled toward the bag. As she got closer, she could see that it very clearly said
NINA
in big square letters. She leaned over with excitement blooming in her chest and untied it.

Inside was a little book of poetry, in Russian and English, by a writer Nina had never heard of called Fyodor Tyutchev. She smiled in delight. It was an old cloth hardback, evidently well-worn. There was no inscription.

Tucked into the front of it was a little note from Jim that said, gruffly,
Hope you're okay after everything. Sorry again I shouted. Got a scare. Marek says maybe we can make it up to you by bringing some stuff up. Let us know.
And underneath, an e-mail address.

Suddenly the sun came out from behind a fast-moving cloud and hit the tree trunk dead on. The warmth felt absolutely glorious on Nina's back. She wriggled backward with the book and got comfortable against the tree trunk—she was an expert at getting comfortable in trees—then began to read.

Be silent, hide away and let

your
thoughts and longings rise and set

in the deep places of
your heart.

Let dreams move silently as stars,

in wonder more
than you can tell.

Let them fulfill you—and be
still.

She looked at the first poem for a long time, idly rubbing a leaf between her fingers. How very strange that someone she had met so briefly, under such extraordinary circumstances, should turn out to be able to pinpoint exactly what she was feeling, and how. Or, rather, take what she was feeling and make her feel so very much better about it.

The verse in the original Russian looked equally beguiling, if completely incomprehensible.

М
олчи, скрывайся и таи

И
чувства и мечты свои—

П
ускай в душевной глубине

В
стают и заходят оне

Б
езмолвно, как звезды в ночи—

Л
юбуйся ими—и молчи.

She read the poem again, feeling herself sinking slightly in the warm, cozy haven of the great oak tree. She warned herself not to fall asleep and topple off, but it was so quiet, merely the hum of the bees in the bluebells below, the occasional call of a tern high above the trees, and she felt the most remarkable sense of inner peace.