Deadlight-Hall(24)

Kindest regards, as always,

J.W.





SEVEN


Nell thought the trouble with becoming extremely close to another person was that you started to sense that person’s thoughts and emotions. She was finding she was doing so with Michael, more and more. On the whole, this pleased her. She had had something similar with her husband – almost a subliminal sensing of emotions. On the day he died in the motorway pile-up, Nell, alone in their house, had felt a sudden overwhelming sensation of panic and immense confusion before the phone rang. In the crashing pain and anger that followed Brad’s death, she had thought she would never experience that shared understanding with anyone again. She had not, in fact, wanted to experience it, because it had been something between her and Brad exclusively. And then Michael had walked into her antiques shop. Nell smiled, remembering. ‘Whoever loved, that loved not at first sight,’ he had once said, hiding behind a quotation, as he often did when he was feeling deeply emotional. But the meeting had been a happy one, and it had led to delighted intimacy. She thought Brad would not have minded her closeness with Michael, not after four years, and she liked to think he would have approved of Michael.

But that mental closeness meant you sensed the other person’s thoughts and sometimes that could make for a difficult situation. Particularly if there was something you wanted to keep to yourself.

‘I’ll be devastated to leave Quire Court,’ Godfrey Purbles, from the antiquarian bookshop adjoining Nell’s shop, had said, two days earlier. ‘But I’ve always wanted to have a shop in Stratford – well, who hasn’t? It’s going to cost me an utter fortune and I dare say I’ll end up in a debtors’ gaol – do they still have debtors’ gaols nowadays? – but the premises are quite near the Rose Tavern, which couldn’t be much better, on account of the tourists flocking and cavorting everywhere. And as a hunting ground for rare books and theatrical memorabilia it’ll be tremendous.’

‘You’ll probably end up discovering the famous unknown play,’ Nell said, smiling.

‘Yes, and I’d probably pay several fortunes for it, only to find afterwards that it’s a Victorian fake.’

‘I’m glad for you, but I’ll miss you.’ Nell liked Godfrey and found him companionable.

‘Oh, you’ll visit me, of course. And I’ll come back to Oxford. But here’s the thing, Nell. The shop.’ He looked at her hopefully, clearly wanting her to voice an unspoken thought.

Nell said, ‘The shop? Your shop, d’you mean?’

‘Yes. It’ll have to be sold, because I can’t afford both places. At least, the lease will have to be sold. Assigned, they call it, I think. How would you feel about taking it over? I mean in addition to yours, not instead of.’

Nell was very aware that life often presented you with odd twists, and quite often you had long since seen or suspected what those twists might be. But this was not a twist that had ever occurred to her.

‘The lease is probably the same as your place as far as ground rent and repairing obligations and whatnot,’ said Godfrey. ‘But there’s about thirty years left to run on mine. And the two shops adjoin – I’ll bet you could knock them into one.’

‘The freeholders would have to approve that,’ said Nell, looking round Godfrey’s shop with the rows of bookshelves, and the lovely old tables for customers to consider the wares and discuss them in leisurely fashion.

‘It would double your present floor area,’ said Godfrey. ‘It might even more than double it – I think this shop is a bit bigger than yours.’

‘Godfrey, I don’t know if I could afford …’ But Nell was already remembering the insurance payout from Brad’s death, some of which the bank had invested in various funds and bonds, most of them incomprehensible, but all of them paying reasonable dividends, even in the current depressed and depressing market. If she called them in, would there be enough to take over Godfrey’s shop? And even if there was, would she want to use all of that money, which she had meant to keep for Beth? But then she looked round Godfrey’s shop again – yes, it was larger than hers – and she found herself thinking that she could turn the annexe behind her own shop, where she and Beth currently lived, into a big workshop which would allow her to return to renovating furniture, which she loved doing.

‘Come and see the rest of the place anyway.’ Godfrey was already leading the way. There were two more book-lined rooms, and a large alcove for prints. The living part at the rear had a beautiful large sitting-room looking on to a paved courtyard, with a small dining area leading off. There was a big square kitchen. Everywhere was immaculate – Godfrey was inclined to be fussy in a slightly old-maidish way – and the place would not need so much as a lick of paint.