Page 75 of The Battle of the Bookshops
But Jules was silent. It wasn’t like she hadn’t felt the allure of the States before in all those years she was slogging away in London. Who wouldn’t be dreaming of the publishing scene in the United States, with its bigger advances, bigger budgets, bigger audiences? Without its Net Book Agreement, the UK publishing scene had felt hopelessly impoverished and small by comparison. But now that it was being offered to her on a plate, Jules wasn’t sure. Despite being delighted to escape Portneath eleven years before, and despite all these months of struggle and drama, her time in the town had been joyful too. Portneath had started to feel like home.
Itwashome.
“Good as new,” said Flo, shaking out the green silk dress and holding it up for Jules’s approval. It was freshly returned from the dry cleaners, and Flo had just finished sewing a tiny black replacement hook and eye at the top of the zip. “You’ll be the belle of the ball,” she declared.
“Stillnot really my scene,” muttered Jules awkwardly, thanking her aunt for her efforts with a grateful smile. “Bit out of my depth with all that stuff.”
“Nonsense,” Flo retorted. “Us Capelthornes are just as deservingof a seat at the top table as any fancy Middlemass Montbeau lot, and don’t you forget it. You’ll go,” she said firmly. “And you’ll enjoy yourself.”
“So, tell me more about this mad plan of Diana’s,” said Jules, keen to change the subject. She picked up the estate agent’s brochure and studied the picture of the little cottage on the front. It did look enchanting.
“Come and see for yourself?” suggested Flo, looking at her watch. “You and I can gang up against Diana. I need all the defenses I can lay my hands on. She’ll be here in a minute.”
And then, right on cue, Diana breezed in, clanging the shop bell as she flung open the door.
She was an implacable force, all right, thought Jules, resigned to her and Flo’s fate.
Hollyhock Cottage was adorable.
Jules realized when they got there that she remembered it fondly from childhood, the little white-painted picket gate opening onto the bosky, partly hidden lane that ran down the side of the churchyard. For years, Jules remembered it being inhabited by a comfortable old lady, almost invariably wearing her hair in a bun and sporting a white French linen apron tied around her ample middle. Her tiny front garden was a riot of hollyhocks and roses, and Jules remembered a large ginger cat who would bask in the sunshine on the wide stone step.
Now, the old lady and her cat were long gone. The hollyhocks were wayward, with no one to tie them upright; they straggled drunken across the little path, rain-sodden and rusty. Despite that, the years of care and love poured into the little garden were evident. At the memory of this smiling woman whose name she never knew, Jules’s eyes filled unexpectedly with tears. It felt like the past was slipping inexorably away from her, and in the passing oftime, she saw that her darling aunt Flo too would be a memory. The thought of being in a world without her aunt in it left her feeling bereft, grieving a loss that hadn’t even happened yet. Clearing her throat, and deflecting a piercing look from Diana, who missed nothing, she pretended to examine a headily scented carmine rose, shedding petals at the slightest touch of her hand, until she had regained her composure.
The thatch eaves were low and thick, cossetting the little cottage in a comfortable, insulating blanket. The roof rose in a curve to accommodate the windows on the upper floor and dipped low to form a porch over the studded oak front door. Jules distracted herself from her preoccupations by concentrating on the details of what she was seeing, ducking a little as she went through the low doorway, straight into the main downstairs room.
Flo’s eyes were bright as she assessed the cozy sitting room, with its woodburning stove and deep bookshelves on the walls either side of the inglenook. To Jules, it looked like how she imagined Mr. Tumnus’s place inThe Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, a book she had adored as a child. She remembered Aunt Flo reading it to her over and over again in the flat above the shop when she went there for sleepovers.
There was a ledge and brace door leading to the little kitchen, with its stove tucked into a wide fireplace, a stone sink under the window, and a brick paver floor, burnished to a shine by hundreds of layers of wax. The ceiling was too low for wall cupboards, but Flo nodded approvingly at the floor-level cupboards and shelves and the pretty gingham curtains concealing a washing machine and dishwasher. What the kitchen lacked in cupboard space was more than compensated for by the tiny, cool pantry, with its broad slate counter and room underneath for a fridge.
Upstairs revealed a small bathroom and two pretty, rose-wallpapered bedrooms with sloping ceilings and varnished woodenfloors. There was a huge, high wrought-iron bed in one room and twin beds in the other, all of them with lovingly created patchwork quilts. Had they been made, over years of toil, by the lady with the bun and the pinny?
Opening the stable door from the kitchen into the back garden, Flo was unable to stifle a cry of pleasure and excitement.
“Nowthisis what I call a garden,” she declared delightedly, examining the gnarly gray-brown stems of the wisteria that had wound their way across the entire length of the cottage and over the kitchen door. “That’s taken some work,” she said approvingly. “Wisteria can be quite a challenge. And this”—she toed a bare piece of dark, crumbly earth—“is jolly good soil.”
“You know what you’re talking about,” said Diana, sounding thrilled that her campaign was being so well received.
“Theoretically perhaps,” admitted Flo. “The courtyard at Capelthorne’s doesn’t offer much of an opportunity.”
“You have always wanted a proper garden,” said Jules, earning herself a conspiratorial look of approval from Diana.
“It’s a hundred feet long,” contributed the sweet, little estate agency girl, who had said practically nothing up to that point. “That’s generous for a house of this size.”
Examination of the garden took longer than the house, but eventually the anxious fidgeting of the estate agent grew unignorable, and Flo reluctantly wrapped up her exploration.
“It’s very charming, I’ll give you that,” conceded Flo, when Diana had persuaded the two other women to repair to the Middlemass Arms for an illicit mid-afternoon glass of wine.
“It’s perfect for you,” said Diana, plonking her hands, palms down, on the table for emphasis. “Tell me it isn’t, I dare you.”
“What a shame it’s completely beyond my reach,” continued Flo. “It staggers me that such a small place should cost such anextraordinary amount of money. How can all our young familiespossiblyafford to put a perfectly ordinary roof over their heads at those prices is beyond me. What are they to do? Tell me that?”
“It’s you we’re talking about now,” said Jules.
“You’ve got savings?” queried Diana, eyebrow raised.
“Yes, of course,” admitted Flo, “but not in that order of magnitude.”
“Put your savings down as a deposit and get a mortgage?” suggested Jules, realizing, even as she said it, what a ludicrous suggestion that was.
