The Bookshop on the Corner (A Gingerbread Cafe story) (2 page)

Would I go to yet another wedding unaccompanied? At nearly thirty I couldn’t keep up the pretense that
love was just around the corner
. Maybe some people were destined to be alone. But, I reminded myself, you’re never alone if you read. I had my books; they took me to extraordinary places without having to leave the comfort of Ashford. Nope, I wasn’t lonely, I was just minus a plus one. I was never good at maths, anyway.

We watched them for a beat, before Damon finally stepped off the curb, and headed to his own shop.

“Can you imagine,” I said, “how beautiful their wedding will be?”

Missy rubbed her hands together. “And even better, Lil said I’m allowed to cover her face in gloop, and put a host of overheated hair-torture devices near her scalp — her words, not mine.”

I raised my eyebrows. “She’s going to let you do her hair and make-up? That really will be a Christmas miracle!” Lil’s wedding was taking place in December, the perfect time for a winter wonderland setting. But Lil wasn’t a fan of make-up or torturing her hair, as she saw it. Classically beautiful, she didn’t need to primp and preen, but I was glad Missy was going to help on her big day.

“She’s going to look as pretty as a picture. All that blonde hair, and those bright blue eyes of hers…” Her words trailed off as they often did when Missy was caught up picturing how a person would look after she got through with them.

Missy was the only hairdresser in town, aside from a barber who was purely for men. She had a steady business, but, like most of us, could always be busier.

“Are you flat out today?” I asked, thinking about my bangs, which seemed to grow overnight, prickling the tops of my eyebrows each morning.

“Not really, but I’ve got Rosaleen and her daughter in first up.” Missy rolled her eyes. Rosaleen was the town gossip. Every town had one, ours just happened to be particularly good. “Wonder what tidbits I’ll find out today,” Missy said. “I thought hairdressers were meant to be the ones who gossiped like crazy.”

I laughed, and shook my head. Missy would never get into a game of Chinese whispers, but I guess she was inadvertently privy to it when people like Rosaleen patronized her salon. “Tell her gossip makes your hands shake, and you’d hate to lop off an extra inch or two of those purple curls of hers.”

“You know, that just might work!” She laughed and picked up a lock of my hair and scrutinized it. “Come by later. I’ve been thinking of a new style for you, and I can sort those bangs of yours out.”

“You read my mind,” I said with a smile. “But you only just gave me this style.” I indicated my bobbed hair.

She held her hand up. “Trust me, you’re going to love it,” she said, silencing my concern.

“OK, OK, a new style, why not?” I wasn’t a person who took change well, preferring the rhythm of what worked, but Missy had a way of making me step out of my comfort zone with her dynamic personality.

“Until then…” she air kissed me “…I better go see about a little sugar to start my day. You want anything from the café?”

Missy claimed she needed sweet treats to keep her curves voluptuous. She was more fifties screen siren, with a saunter that accentuated her figure. “I might pop over later. I can’t keep away from the chocolate truffles. Sometimes I wish I’d never suggested the chocolate festival.”

Over Easter I’d orchestrated a chocolate festival in Ashford. Lil and CeeCee from the Gingerbread Café had been the focus but all of the shops along the main street had been involved, including my bookshop. It had been a huge step for me to jump out of the shadows and try and woo some new faces into town, but our businesses had needed a boost, so with that in mind I’d pushed the fear of failure out of my mind and set to work. It had been a lot of fun, and made me appreciate our small town once again, and how well we worked when we banded together.

Missy glided to the front door, and turned to me. “That was the best weekend of my life! I’m still paying for it though.” She grimaced as she surveyed her hips.

“Hardly,” I scoffed, watching the way Missy exaggerated her saunter, indicating the weight she’d supposedly put on.

“Stop past at lunch, sugar,” she said with a backwards wave.

Chapter Two

“The Bookshop on the Corner.” I cradled the phone with my shoulder, and glanced at my watch. Almost time to head over to Missy for my appointment.

“Who am I speaking with please?” asked an elderly voice.

“This is Sarah. Can I help you with anything?”

“Sarah…” He spoke my name slowly as if he was trying to place who I was. “I’m Gerald. I herald from Chicago way.” Gerald’s voice was squirrelly with age, and tinged with something…sadness perhaps? “I have a business proposition for you, Sarah, if you have a moment to discuss it?”

Intrigued, I replied, “Sure, Gerald. Fire away.”

“I have a wonderful library full of books that I think you might be interested in. They’re special books, very special indeed…” It wasn’t unusual for me to receive calls from people wanting to sell their book collections because I advertised far and wide in an attempt to find stock, though lately I’d reined in my budget a little out of necessity.

“Any first editions?” I asked, thinking of my out-of-town clients who collected them.

“No, nothing like that. You see, these books are extraordinary, but maybe only to folk like you and me. Most of them are brown with age, and their covers are spider-webbed from use. But they tell a story, you see. They tell
our
story.” He paused as if weighing up where to begin.

“My wife, Gloria — Glorious Gloria, I called her — spent a lifetime acquiring this collection. Books written in various languages, books so old the pages are loose, but she loved them. The scruffier the book, the better.” His voice dropped to almost a whisper. “A lifetime, she sought out books to add to her shelves. Like some kind of mysterious algorithm, she chose books based on what? I never knew. There was no rhyme or reason. There are books about boat building, and gothic horror — they’re so varied, I sometimes wonder if even she knew why a certain book appealed to her. Sixty-five years spent on this hobby of hers. Finding bookshops that were tucked down narrow alleyways, or great big houses converted into a book lover’s paradise — I’ve seen them all.”

It sounded like bliss to me.

Gerald continued: “Do you believe in magic, Sarah?”

I replied instantly, “In the magic of books? Yes.”

“So did Gloria. If only I could explain how she looked when she found the book she would take home. Her eyes would light up, she’d speak in this beguiling hushed tone, her face full of wonder like a child on Christmas morning. It was like she was finding something priceless each and every time, yet to anyone else they would be nothing but a book destined for the penny bin out front of these small shops.”

It was as though I knew Gloria, understanding the happiness of stumbling across a book as though it were burnished gold. How lucky she’d been to find a man who was obviously besotted by her. But he spoke about Gloria in the past tense and tears pricked my eyes when I realized I’d never get to meet her, another person who lived to find lost and forgotten books and give them a new lease of life.

“I know exactly how she felt,” I said. “There’s a certain pull books have on a person if they listen hard enough.”

Gerald chuckled. “I have found the right place, then,” he said. “You know, Sarah, we visited The Bookshop on the Corner a long time ago. I wonder if you remember…”

Closing my eyes, I thought back for a moment. Surely a couple like that I would remember? I would have recognized a kindred spirit in Gloria. “When?” As soon as the word left my mouth, it came to me. It was winter, and snowing hard outside. The bookshop looked as romantic as ever that day; snow filled the squares of wood on the window pane outside. I had the fire in the reading room stoked up casting an orange hue in the small space. An elderly couple spilled through the door, laughing as they dusted snowflakes from their clothing. It was Gloria I pictured, wearing a cerulean-colored coat, vibrant, and chic. But there was something in her eyes that made her seem timeless, almost ageless.

“Do you recall us?” Gerald asked.

“Yes,” I said, smiling at the memory. “Gloria bought a sci-fi novel — something wacky. You stayed in the reading room sipping tea while we watched the snow fall through the windows and talked about books for hours.” How could I have forgotten them? They came in a few years back. Gloria had a quiet grace about her, but also a zany sense of humor that had me in fits of laughter. When they left, I remembered thinking I hoped I’d have a relationship like theirs one day. They just seemed to fit, perfectly, like two pieces of the same jigsaw.

“What happened to her?” I asked before it dawned on me I could have worded it better.

Gerald sighed, and took a moment before replying: “She passed on, Sarah. Not too long after we came into your bookshop. It was sudden. I woke up one morning, and she was gone. But you know what? She’d just that last night finished the book she was reading. And I think that was a sign especially for me — that she knew what was coming somehow and it was OK. God chose the right moment, at least, in that respect. She would have given Him hell if he’d taken her halfway through a book.” He laughed softly, but it sounded hollow.

“Which book was she reading?” I wanted to read that book, and wonder what she might have thought about that last night when she went to sleep.

“It was
The Notebook
, by Nicholas Sparks…” Gerald sniffed, and I gripped the phone tighter, hoping he wouldn’t end the call just yet. I wanted to hear more of their story. “You know, I read the book afterwards,” he said, “and it seemed fitting. Right, somehow. I’ve never told anyone this, but sometimes I read passages from
The Notebook
aloud, pretending she’s there, and is listening, with that glorious Gloria smile on her face. It makes me feel close to her. As though she’s just stepped into the other room for a minute…” His voice trailed off, and it took all my might not to cry down the phone. They’d exuded this radiance, and that kind of shine only came from real, once-in-a-lifetime love.

“I’m so sorry, Gerald. I can only imagine…” Anything I could say would only seem trite in such circumstances, but I tried desperately to think of something to say that would comfort him.

“It’s OK, Sarah. I’m doing better. I know we’ll meet again, so I live for that. I live for her, because it’s what she would want. But it’s time for me to move now. There’s too many memories in this big old house, and I’m too old to be tending gardens, and wandering around waiting for her to come back. Which brings me to the books. I want you to have them. I know they aren’t worth anything money-wise, and even if they were, it’s not about that. I want them to go to someone who understands their value, albeit sentimental.”

I exhaled quietly, trying to keep my emotions at bay. “Are you sure? There’s no way you can take them where you’re going?”

“I’m sure. I’ll keep a few that hold an extra-special memory, but the rest, I would like to ship to you, if you’ll have them.”

Light spilled into the small hallway from the reading room off to the side of the shop. It was a small room with a few high-back chairs that had seen better days, a fireplace and bookshelves around three of the walls. It was a space for customers to read when it was cold, and a room the local book club used for their monthly meetings.

“Gerald, I’d be honored to have them. But I won’t sell them. I’d like to put them in the reading room, the room you used when you visited, and then they can be enjoyed the way they’re meant to be.”

Gerald didn’t speak immediately. I sensed he was crying, and trying to quell the tears before responding. I pictured Gloria’s books arranged along the shelves in the reading room, including the one she bought here all those years ago. They’d have another life, those books, and Gerald could move along with his.

“Thank you, my dear. From the bottom of my heart. Gloria rhapsodized about you and your bookshop all the time. You’ve made an old man very happy.”

“I hope you find comfort in your new place, Gerald. And if you’re ever in town, come by and say hello.”

We finished the call; when I hung up I let the tears flow. And I knew right then, that was what I was missing in my life…a love affair like theirs. I wanted someone who knew books were more than just words on paper. Someone who understood my introspective nature and didn’t try to change me. I dabbed at my eyes with a tissue, ruminating about the fact that there was no one like that in Ashford. I could see the type of man I wanted: quiet, bookish, and introverted, someone who wouldn’t make me feel that reading all day was weird. And someone who’d snuggle right up next to me and read too.

My last thought before heading to Missy’s was that I hoped Gerald would find his way without his glorious Gloria.

***

“Hey!” Missy said, snipping away at a manic pace on a client’s hair as I wandered into her salon. “Busy morning?” she asked, her voice as loud as her clothing.

“I wish,” I said and sat heavily on the pink sofa. The bookshop figures had been dwindling each week. I had my out-of-town clients who sought hard-to-find books, and without them the bookshop wouldn’t survive, but worryingly they weren’t ordering as much these days either. My walk-in traffic had increased over the chocolate festival but not enough to stop the worry that seemed to plague me.

I rested my head against the back of the sofa, recalling the conversation with Gerald. “I had a lovely gentleman call and offer me his wife’s book collection for my reading room. She’s passed on…” My voice broke as I thought of Gloria.

Missy eyed me for a moment and said softly, “Must be a mighty fine collection all right — only the best go into that room.”

The reading room was my own personal library. It was filled with books that meant something to me, or that had changed the way I viewed the world. Anyone could sit in there and read, but the books weren’t for sale. Now, though, I’d take those volumes home and Gloria’s books would take pride of place.

“Yes,” I said. “It’s time for a shake-up. I thought I might rearrange the shop, maybe organize a weekend away or something. I just feel like…change.”