Page 3 of The Society of Unknowable Objects
Magda Sparks’s favourite place was to be found at 114 Bell Street in London’s Marylebone, in an unspectacular four-storey Georgian townhouse that was identical to many other buildings on the street.
The ground floor of the building and the two floors above were occupied by a secondhand antiquarian bookshop called Bell Street Books. In these rooms the walls were lined with shelves from floor to ceiling, and bookcases sat on the old wooden floorboards wherever there was space. Books were squeezed into every available corner: hardbacks and picture albums, paperbacks with yellowed pages and cracked spines, and even vintage comics, their colours faded with age. The shop was more book than brick, and all the better for it in Magda’s view. She had spent many hours in happy solitude in Bell Street Books, discovering long-forgotten novels, sometimes with handwritten notes in the margins or on the title page, faded ink and pencil marks from people long gone. But as much as she loved the shop, Bell Street Books was not the reason that 114 Bell Street was Magda’s favourite place in the world.
The top floor ofthe townhouse had been converted into an apartment where the owner of the shop, Frank Simpson, had lived alone for as long as Magda had known him. Frank was the closest thing Magda had ever had to a father. Magda was, as her mother, Imelda, had once told her, the beautiful product of a decidedly average and anonymous drunken dalliance, and she had been raised solely (and entirely successfully, in Magda’s view) by her mother. But Imelda had always loved books and she had frequented the shop often during Magda’s childhood, seeding Magda’s own love for books at a very young age. There had been many weekends when Imelda had taken Magda for cakes and milkshakes at a nearby café, or for ice cream in one of the busy parlours in Covent Garden, where they watched the tourists, and then afterwards they would head to Bell Street so they could both pick up some new books. Frank would be there, shelving books or reading in his chair behind the old writing desk he used as a counter. His face would light up whenever Magda and her mother appeared, and he would bounce Magda on his knee and call her Sparks because of her bright red hair, or delight as she clattered around the shop in search of picture books and comics.
“Bookshops shouldn’t be quiet and sombre!” he would pronounce, if ever any of his customers tutted or frowned at Magda’s ebullience. “This is not a library! We are a place of stories and adventure, and children should make noise if they want!”
Sometimes Magda and her mother would visit Frank in his apartment and Frank would give her cake or chocolates from a cupboard he always referred to—with a secret wink just for Magda, or with a twinkle in his eye—as Magda’s magic pantry. In later years when Magda was studying law at university and living in student accommodations, she would visit weekly and she and Frank would catch up, the radio playing in the background while they ate and chatted or played board games. Frank lived alone, but his apartment never seemed to be a lonely place—it was comfortable and welcoming, with table lamps that threw honey-coloured light into the corners and soft seats that felt like a hug from a friend when you sank into them. The apartment had dormer windows that afforded a view of the rooftops of Marylebone and Magda remembered sitting in those windows as a young girl, watching the world below, thestrawberry-coloured tops of double-decker buses cruising past on nearby streets. She had formed many happy memories in Frank’s apartment, as a child and as an adult, but eventhiswas not why 114BellStreet was her favourite place in the world.
Hidden away out of sight with no outward signs of its existence, there was a basement beneath Bell Street Books. At one time, in the Georgian and Victorian eras, this had been the space where servants had lived, working long hard hours for the wealthy Londoners who occupied the upper floors. In the first part of the twentieth century, the ground floor of the building had become a tailor shop, and the basement had been converted into a storeroom for fabrics and wool and offcuts. And then, when the tailor shop had become a bookshop in the middle of the century, the basement had become something else entirely, and it was the basement of 114 Bell Street that was Magda Sparks’s favourite place in the world.
Because this was a place where an incredible secret was kept within its walls, a place of mysteries and magic.
This was the meeting place of the Society of Unknowable Objects.
An Extraordinary Meeting
For as long as Magda had been a member, the Society of Unknowable Objects had only ever held two meetings a year, one at the end of April and one at the end of October. As the longest-serving member of the group and the chair of the Society, Frank Simpson was able to call an extraordinary meeting whenever he wanted, but he never had, at least not until a sunny morning in early autumn ten years after Magda had first joined the Society.
“I need to convene a meeting,” Frank had said, interrupting Magda’s breakfast with a phone call. “This evening.”
“Today?” she asked, a cup of tea in one hand, her phone in the other, and a burst of adrenaline racing like a sports car through her body. “A meeting?”
“Yes,” Frank confirmed. “Can you make it? Are you busy?”
Magda was a novelist, and having recently completed the edits on her seventh book, her plan for the day had been to stay in her pyjamas for as long as possible, reading and drinking tea in the comfort of her living room. She was not busy. “Of course I can make it,” she said. “But why are we meeting?”
“I’ll tell you when you get here. It will keep for a few hours yet.”
An unhelpful answer, but not unexpected.
Magda lived on Norfolk Road in the St. John’s Wood area of London, in a detached Georgian house, with red brick walls and bay windows, built sometime around 1830. The house was far more expensive than she could ever have afforded on her author income, but it—and a large fortune—had been passed down to her from her mother after her death. There were many things that Magda loved about the house—the space, the big windows that let in the light, the garden with the mature trees, and the simple fact that every room reminded her of happy moments from her childhood—but one of the best things about the house was that it was only ever a short tube ride away from Bell Street Books. She would visit Frank often for dinner or to catch up, or just to browse in the shop. That day, Magda decided to walk, feeling the need to burn off some of the nervous energy that had been thrumming through her ever since Frank’s breakfast call.
She left home with plenty of time to spare and took a pleasant stroll through a city washed with the golden light of an early autumn evening. Long shadows stretched out along the pavements like spilled ink, and the green trees with their topmost leaves turning golden looked like caramel-dipped apples. As she approached the bookshop Frank was visible through the window, sitting owlishly behind the old writing desk, his nose in a battered hardback book. He was a thin man, folded awkwardly into the chair, his legs bent into ungainly angles and points. Behind him, on the shelf where he kept first editions and other valuable books, there was also a collection of Magda’s six published novels, one of each turned out to face the shop. This display always warmed Magda’s heart, a tangible demonstration of Frank’s pride in her writing success. Frank looked up as she approached and beckoned her in with a wave of his hand. The shop was stuffy inside, having been warmed by the sun all day, but full of the comforting smell of old books.
“Sparks!” Frank exclaimed, pushing himself to his feet. He was dressed, as always, like a schoolteacher: a burgundy V-neck sweater over a shirt and tie, brown corduroy trousers, and equally brown, sensible shoes. His short, grey hair was neatly combed on his head, and his eyes glinted behind his spectacles as he squeezed between the desk and the books that were piled precariously against the wall. Frank was tall, and Magda short, so when they embraced Magda’s cheek pressed into hissweater. Her senses filled up with the smell of his laundry detergent, and the many memories of previous hours in his company. But more than this she felt how thin Frank was through his clothes.
He’s all hard edges. No fat upon him. It’s like hugging an ironing board. Has he always been like this?
“You made it!” Frank said as he pulled away from the hug.
“Like I wouldn’t,” she muttered. “What else am I going do when you call an extraordinary meeting? What is it all about anyway?”
Frank flapped a hand at her, dismissing the question as he squeezed back behind the desk. “You’ll have to wait,” he said, avoiding her probing gaze. “Downstairs with you, and I’ll be right with you.” He sat down, picked up his book, and crossed his legs again, affecting the demeanour of a man who wasn’t going to be right with anyone anytime soon. “I need to close up the shop.”
“You don’t look like you’re closing up,” Magda observed, trying not to show the irritation she felt. “You’re sitting down again.”
He shrugged in his seat. “I want to finish this chapter.”
Frustrated at the lack of answers and impatient to get on with it, Magda pushed through the door in the corner of the room and into the narrow space beyond. A set of ancient, worn stairs led down to a wooden door. The door appeared old, but Magda knew it was reinforced with steel. An incongruously modern security keypad was on the wall at the bottom, requiring a six-digit code to unlock the door. As she reached the foot of the stairs, Magda tapped the code and waited a moment until the magnetic locks released, the familiar thrill vibrating through her chest like strummed guitar strings, just as it had the first time she had been granted entry a decade earlier.
Stepping into the basement, Magda saw that Will Pinn was already there, sitting at the large round table in the middle of the room and staring at his clasped hands. He looked up at her arrival. “Magda,” he said, a smile flickering briefly on his face.
“Hello, Will,” she replied. He stood up as she approached so they could embrace briefly. Will wasn’t a man who hugged easily, but he seemed to make allowances for Magda.
“How are you doing?” Magda asked, expecting that he probably knew as little about why Frank had called the meeting as she did.
Will nodded. “Very well, thank you, and you?”
