The Winds of Change (13 page)

‘It’s true. It’s because I got really sick once, so I had my birthday early, in case I died.’

‘You’ll stop at nothing to get this book, will you? I expect if I continue to refuse, you’ll drop down in a heap on the floor?’

Clearly, she was entertaining this suggestion.

‘No, don’t bother. Here, you can have it.’ He thrust it at her, for he had spied another copy of Dirty Debbie and slid it from the shelf. ‘And I’ll have this one.’ He turned and marched off to the library’s little coffee room with Debbie at his heels. At the entrance, he looked round. ‘Where are you going?’

‘I’d like a bun.’

‘And you think I’m going to buy you one?’

She nodded. ‘Like I said, it’s my birthday and I didn’t even have my tea today.’

‘And is that my fault? Go complain to your mum.’

Now, Melrose was aware of a rule barristers followed when questioning witnesses: never ask a question to which you do not know the answer. Brushing off this sage advice, Melrose asked, ‘Why can’t you?’

‘Mum’s–dying.’

Melrose shut his eyes and wondered why he had to be here (speaking of death) when he could be spending a pleasant hour rowing across the River Styx. He had noticed Debbie’s hesitation in reporting this sad fact. She sniffed, but he knew it wasn’t a prelude to tears. He doubted this child would stoop to such cheap emotionalism as that. She’d much rather lie.

‘Oh, all right, come along.’ He heaved a great sigh as they made their way to the counter and the pleasant elderly lady who served up coffee and pastries. Mrs. Kimble, he thought her name was. He greeted her and ordered a latte. Then he said to the girl, ‘You’ll have a double espresso?’

‘No. I’d like a lemonade, please.’

‘All right, Polly.’

Aha! He’d caught her this time! ‘Polly is it? Funny, Mrs. Kimble, but she told me her name was Debbie.’ He looked down at her with a bit of a leer.

‘Debbie’s my middle name. I’d like a jam doughnut please.

And a cream bun.’ Her eyes just about reached over the counter.

Did the child have an answer for everything? Well, Mrs. Kimble here would surely know her mother. ‘It’s such a shame, isn’t it, Mrs. Kimble, about Polly’s mother?’

‘Oh? And why’s that, Lord Ardry?’ She was foaming up the milk and stood wreathed in a steamy smile.

‘That she’s at death’s door.’

This did not disturb Mrs. Kimble at all, seeing it wasn’t true. ‘I hardly think so, Lord Ardry. I just saw her pass by on the other side of the street with her cousin.’

Melrose looked down at Polly. ‘Dying, is she?’

‘It’s been taking a long time. Anyway, you can walk around, can’t you, as long as you’re not completely dead?’ She left him and took her lemonade, doughnut and bun over to one of the tables.

They ate for a few moments in silence. Silence except for the kicking of the rungs of the chair. Jam doughnuts were better than talking any day. He said, ‘I have a good friend by the name of Polly.’ He was thinking of Polly Praed, whom he hadn’t seen in some time. ‘She lives in a place called Littlebourne.’

This stirred no interest. Finally, she was finished with eating and drinking and would now perhaps reenter the world.

When Melrose rose to leave, Polly slid from her chair and put on her coat. It was, Melrose thought, not very substantial for a winter garment. And she was wearing sandals, which struck him as hardly sturdy enough for this time of year.

‘Oh, are you leaving, too?’

‘Yes.’

Polly padded along behind him. He could hear the small plop of her sandals’ hitting the cobbled pavement.

He turned and walked backward for a bit. ‘Why aren’t you wearing proper shoes? It’s wintertime, you know. Ice, snow, all that.’

‘It’s not snowing.’

‘Well, it’s not snowing now, but it has been.’ He waved his hand toward the green, where gray ruffles of snow were melting round the little pond. ‘You can smell snow coming, you can smell it in the air.’

‘It doesn’t smell, snow doesn’t. It’s only white rain.’

He noticed how she had declaimed this without so much as a sniff to test her theory.

Melrose, now walking forward, asked over his shoulder, ‘Is your purpose here on earth just to contradict others?’

‘I don’t have any purpose.’

As he looked back at her, in her sandals and thin coat and without mittens, he could have believed it, had it not been for her diabolical cleverness in talking her way out of black holes.

 
‘Come along, come along, I can’t talk to you if I have to walk backward.’

She came a few steps nearer, but still stayed close behind him. ‘Have you been to the bookshop before?’

‘No.’ She shook her head.

‘I’m surprised. I thought everyone in Long Piddleton has had the pleasure of sussing out its charismatic owner.’

‘I’m not from here.’

That rather stunned him and he stopped. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, I’m not from here.’

If he picked her up by her heels and shook her, he wondered if the postmistress - he and Polly were standing in front of the post office-would report him to the authorities. Had he ever known a child both as fanciful and literal as this one?

‘Yes, I know. You already said it. Then where are you from?’

‘Sidbury.’ Here she pointed to what she apparently thought was the Sidbury Way.

This brought to mind, only God knew why, The Guermantes Way. It would be interesting if Polly were to come along in Time Regained. What would Proust make of her? He could well imagine Polly herself being spit up by involuntary memory. ‘So if you’re from there, why are you here?’

They were near to Ada Crisp’s used-furniture emporium. Her Jack Russell terrier, sitting on its regular stool outside of the shop, started barking, as it always did, no matter who or what strolled by. Dog paradise could descend and he’d still bark.

‘Mum’s got a friend here she came to visit.’

‘So why aren’t you with your mum instead of following me around?’

‘I wanted to see things.’

‘Well, you’ve - oh, shut up!’ said Melrose to the barking dog.

‘You’ve been gone well over an hour, probably a lot longer. Don’t you think your mother wonders where you are?’

‘No. I’m to be back by four and it’s not near that yet. We’ve got a lot of time.’

Melrose gave a fake guffaw. ‘Oh, we do, do we? And must I be back by four, too?’

They’d by now come to the door of the Wrenn’s Nest Bookshop and Melrose had to admit he was curious to see what Polly would make of Theo Wrenn Browne. And what he would make of her. ‘Here’s the bookshop. Come on.’

‘Well, Mr. Plant. It’s been some time since you’ve graced our shop. Have you been visiting the new Waterstone’s in Sidbury, then?’ He waggled a bony finger at Melrose, then looked down at Polly. The smarmy tone changed to an instructive one. ‘I don’t believe I know you, dear -’

No response from Polly. Just a look.

‘- but we will observe all of the rules in the children’s corner, won’t we? We wouldn’t want to damage our beautiful books, would we?’

Polly kept on staring at him until he grew uncomfortable and shifted his gaze to Melrose. ‘You were looking for books on American racehorses back in January. I’ve got in one or two; I think you’ll find -’

To shut him up, Melrose interrupted. ‘Soil, Mr. Browne. Sod and soil. Formal gardens. And my friend here will no doubt find something worthwhile in the children’s corner.’

This was a section of the store Theo had decided to allot to the kiddies. This was not because he liked them (he didn’t), but because he now had to compete with the very library he had tried so hard to close awhile back. The library, pumped up with new money, as a result of the cafe, had moved from almost closing to a roaring success. Miss Twinney had supervised the expansion, the adding of a children’s room.

It was largely owing to Marshall Trueblood’s saving the day with his idea of Latte and the Library that had made the place so hugely popular. Here was another reason for Theo Wrenn Browne to hate Trueblood. Indeed, Theo was so enraged, he blistered. Trueblood was always trumping him, most brilliantly in the chamber pot affair. That was a legend in Long Piddleton, people were still talking about it.

‘Just as long as you’re careful,’ he said to Polly, who was in no way attending, but whose big brown eyes were scouring all of the shelves.

Polly liked books, thought Melrose.

To Melrose he said, ‘Gardening, well of course, we’ve plenty of books on that.’ He lifted the hinged top of the counter and stepped through.

Polly, in the meantime, had taken off for the children’s section. ‘Not gardening as such, but turf, sod, soil. And enameled mead.’

‘That might be harder. It’s so specialized. Enameled mead, my goodness.’

Melrose followed him to the shelves at the rear of the shop, where Theo pulled out one after another of gardening books, two of them great tomes that Melrose thought would serve far better as places to rest one’s knees while digging and planting than they would as reference books. Melrose looked at and rejected them. His eye went to one titled The Serene Gardener. He pulled that out and leafed through it.

Theo smirked. ‘I’d hardly think that’s the one for you. You certainly don’t strike me as being into one of those Eastern faiths.’

As long as Theo was against it, Melrose was for it. ‘I’ll have it, I think.’

‘Well, it’s certainly not about soil alone.’ He pushed his metal-rimmed glasses up on his nose. ‘May I ask what your interest is in sod?’

‘You may.’

There was a silence during which Theo waited for an explanation. None was forthcoming. Theo cleared his throat. Melrose just kept turning pages of The Serene Gardener. He very much liked the approach; it was inactive.

Theo expressed his doubt once again that Melrose would find a whole book on turf. ‘What you need is to find an expert on that.’

‘What I need is to be an expert on that.’

A voice piped up from a distance. ‘I found one!’ Then here came Polly, running up to them and holding a book. Two books, for another one was under her arm.

Melrose took it, saying, ‘Tillie Lays Turf. Interesting.’ It sounded to Melrose rather pornographic.

‘It’s a child’s book,’ said Theo, master of the obvious. ‘Whatever good would it do you?’

‘An old child’s book. An elderly child. Tillie is actually putting down sod. What’s this other?’ He nodded from Tillie to the bright blue book under Polly’s arm.

She showed him.

‘My goodness, one of my favorite books, a Long Pidd bestseller,
Patrick the Painted Pig
.’

‘I want to buy it except someone’s gone and messed it up.’

Theo sucked in breath. ‘What? How? It’s a brand-new book.’
 

Polly opened it to the offending pages. ‘You should sell it for half.’

Irritably, he opened the book to the pages she’d marked. It looked as if dirt, perhaps potting soil, had been spilled and even rubbed in. ‘This is disgraceful!’ He looked at Melrose as if Melrose himself were the agent of destruction here. ‘It’s that Sally, or her brother did this -!’

‘Sally and Bub were warned off, remember? Did you take out a restraining order against them?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. It was you, Mr. Plant, that let ‘em get off so easy. You purchased this book, I mean one just like it, and gave it to them. That’s putting them on the high road to a life of crime, that is.’

‘Well, Mr. Browne, I’ll have this Tillie book.’ They started walking toward the front of the shop.

‘And I want this one,’ said Polly. ‘Only you can’t charge the whole seven pounds fifty p for it.’

‘I most certainly can!’

‘Nobody’ll buy it for that.’

‘She’s got a point, you know.’

Theo lifted the counter’s hinged lid and moved to his cash register. Glumly, he said, ‘I’ll take a pound off the price.’

Polly shook her head vigorously.

‘Better take what you can get, Mr. Browne. Half off is a good offer.’

‘Oh, very well.’ He brought his fingers down on the cash register keys as swiftly as if he were conducting the London Symphony Orchestra. ‘That’ll be three pounds seventy-five.’

Melrose went to reach for his wallet when Polly took a five-pound note from her pocket and handed it over. ‘Well, my goodness,’ said Melrose. ‘Your mum certainly set you up for the day!’

‘No. I earned it.’

‘Doing what, if I may ask?’

She looked down at
Patrick the Painted Pig
. ‘Painting.’

‘Really. Are you having a show at the Royal Academy?’

Across the street, Trueblood went into his antiques shop.

‘Ah, there’s a friend of mine; I must speak to him. It’s time you joined your mother, isn’t it?’

Polly didn’t look as if she agreed it was time to do anything that she didn’t want to. ‘No,’ she said.

‘Well, I’ve got to be going.’

‘Good-bye.’