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- Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
1950, London. Bloomsbury Books on Lamb's Conduit Street has resisted change for a hundred years, run by men and guided by the manager's unbreakable rules. But after the turmoil of war in Europe, the world is changing and the women in the shop have plans. As the paths of stylish Vivien, loyal Grace and brilliant Evie cross with literary figures such as Daphne Du Maurier, Samuel Beckett and Peggy Guggenheim, these Bloomsbury girls are working together to plot out a richer and more rewarding future.
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Seitenzahl: 499
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
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5
BLOOMSBURY GIRLS
NATALIE JENNER
For my daughter, the original Evie & Malkit Leighl, the very best of men
INSIDE THE SHOP
Evelyn Stone … Former servant girl & Cambridge graduate
Grace Perkins … Secretary to the general manager
Herbert Dutton … General manager
Vivien Lowry … Disaffected staff member
Alec McDonough … Head of fiction
Ashwin Ramaswamy … Head of science & naturalism
Frank Allen … Head of rare books
Master Mariner Simon Scott … Head of history
OUTSIDE THE SHOP
Fredrik Christenson … Vice-master of Jesus College, Cambridge
Lord Baskin … Owner of Bloomsbury Books
Ellen Doubleday … Widow of American publisher Nelson Doubleday, Sr.
Lady Browning … English aristocrat & author
Sonia Brownell Blair … Widow of George Orwell
Mimi Harrison … Movie star
Samuel Beckett … Irish playwright
Peggy Guggenheim … American heiress & collector
Stuart Wesley … Research assistant to Vice-Master Christenson
Yardley Sinclair … Director of museum services at Sotheby’s
Elsie Maud Wakefield … Deputy keeper of the Kew Herbarium
Dr Septimus Feasby … Principal keeper of printed books, British Museum
Robert Kinross … Junior fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
19 December 1949, Cambridge
Evie Stone sat alone in her tiny bedsitter at the north end of Castle Street, as far from the colleges as a student could live and still be keeping term at Cambridge. But Evie was no longer a student – she remained at the university on borrowed time. The next forty minutes would decide how much she had left.
The room’s solitary window was cracked open to the cool December air, which was about to vibrate with the sound of Great St Mary’s striking two o’clock from precisely three miles away. The interview with Senior Fellow Christenson was for twenty minutes past that – exactly as long as it would take her to arrive at Jesus College. Evie always had her walks perfectly timed.
Christenson scheduled his appointments for twenty minutes past the hour, one of many famous eccentricities for which he was known. The students jokingly referred to this arrangement as CMT or Christenson Mean Time. Resounding bells of St Mary’s or not, Evie could have guessed the exact minute almost down to the second. She had honed this skill as a servant girl at the Chawton Great House, where for two years she had secretly catalogued the family library. Without the benefit of a clock, she had passed hours every night going through all 2,375 books, page by page. At a clear two-foot distance, Evie could now eyeball anything from a Gutenberg-era tome to a carbon-copy document and not only predict how long it would take her to summarise the contents but to quickly skim each page as well. These were skills that she kept to herself. She had long known the value in being underestimated.
The male faculty around her only knew Evelyn Stone as a quiet, unassuming, but startlingly forthright member of the first entry class of women to be permitted to earn a degree from Cambridge. After three years of punishing studies at the all-female Girton College, Evie had been awarded first-class honours for her efforts, which included a lengthy paper on the Austen contemporary Madame de Staël, and become one of the first female graduates in the eight-hundred-year history of the university.
Christenson was the next hurdle.
He needed a research assistant for the upcoming Lent term, and Evie had applied before anyone else. She also needed the job more than anyone else. Since graduating with a First in English, she had been assisting Junior Fellow Kinross with his years-long annotation of William Makepeace Thackeray’s 1848 novel, Vanity Fair. With this project finally at an end, Evie’s current stipend was scheduled to dry up on the very last day of 1949. As Christenson’s newest research assistant, Evie could continue to spend countless days on her own, without supervision, methodically working her way through the over one hundred libraries at the university – a prospect that remained more exciting to her than anything else at this stage of her academic career.
The minute the bells started to ring out, Evie – already clad in her thick woollen coat for winter – stood up, grabbed her leather bag, and headed for the door. Twenty quick steps down to the street, five and a half minutes until she passed the Castle Inn, and then a clear ten before she saw the bend of the River Cam. There the Bridge of Sighs loomed above the river, Gothic and imperious, the stonework tracery in its open windows designed to keep students from clambering in. This was the type of campus foolery that Evie would never seek to join – or be invited to.
Jesus College, Evie’s immediate destination, was rich in history, having been founded in 1496 on the site of a former nunnery. The grass beneath Evie’s feet had been kept long for centuries, reflecting its historical use as fodder. During the Second World War concrete shelters had been situated under the gardens to offer protection from German air raids. In this way, the medieval university had begun to bear the scars of modern existence, as well as its fruits: only a few years later, the women of Cambridge were finally permitted to graduate.
Evie didn’t think about any of this as she crossed the grounds. Instead, her brain kept time to the rhythmic crunch of frost-covered lawn beneath her lightly booted feet. With every crisp, measured step, her weathered leather bag swung steadily against her hip, weighed down by the writing sample inside: nearly one hundred pages dissecting individuality and resistance in the works of de Staël for which Evie could not have done better, having received the highest mark possible. The bag also contained a letter of reference from Junior Fellow Kinross. This time Evie could have done better, but didn’t know she needed to.
Mimi Harrison had written to Evie earlier that fall in anticipation of her upcoming need for employment. Mimi had urged the young girl to accept a letter of referral from her husband, who had recently finished a three-year professorship at Jesus College and returned to Harvard along with his new wife.
‘But I only ever met him once,’ Evie had answered Mimi over the phone in the downstairs common room.
‘Nonsense,’ Mimi had replied with an indulgent lilt to her voice. ‘When I arrived in Hollywood twenty years ago, it was with a letter from my father’s former law partner, and I’d only met him one time more than that. Besides, Geoffrey desperately wants to help you.’
‘But why? He don’t – I mean, he does … not … know me.’ Evie often slipped back into Chawton vernacular when conversing with Mimi, whose friendship remained so rooted in their time together in the small farming village.
Mimi had laughed, always trying to keep things light with the serious young woman. ‘But he knows me, and he knows that I know a good egg when I see one.’
Still, Evie had refused. And still, Mimi had had the letter sent through, just as she often did with theatre tickets, and rail fare, and the many other things that she had tried to give the girl over the years. The generosity of Mimi Harrison, a famous film and stage actress, knew no bounds.
But neither did Evie’s pride. So today she carried the letter of referral from Professor Kinross instead. Kinross gave out many such letters each term, but poor Evie did not know that. She had been perfectly content when he had offered her one. She had done solid research work for him on his annotation of Vanity Fair, and he had called her capable and efficient. Surely that would be enough for Senior Fellow Christenson.
It was now 2.22 p.m. and Evie sat feeling smaller than ever in the large swivel chair that faced her entire future. Christenson put Kinross’s letter down, tapped the top of the one hundred pages on de Staël, and sighed.
‘The research here … all these obscure women authors. Even de Staël is no George Eliot.’
Evie found this comment interesting, given Christenson’s noted expertise on the latter.
‘After all, the cream always rises to the top, hmm?’ He leaned back in his chair. ‘And the joint paper … on Mr Thackeray …’
Evie sat up. She was particularly proud of the research work for Professor Kinross, which she had completed alongside Stuart Wesley, another recent graduate. Kinross had commended her on the note-taking and impressive indices she had assembled to support his annotation. He had encouraged her to spend as much time with the original sources as possible, often stressing how critical accurate research was to the entire project.
‘Your colleague Mr Wesley contributed a large part, I understand.’
Evie sat up even straighter. ‘We both did.’
Christenson paused, his eyes narrowing against both her lack of demurral and the all-too-familiar letter of reference before him. Kinross did none of his students any favours with these rote little missives.
‘Yes, well, I understand that you carried out the research and such, but the writing …’ Christenson smiled, so genially and unlike him, that Evie finally grew concerned. ‘As you know, what I need is a certain facility with text, with, ah, language.’ He gave the last word an extra syllable in the middle, and Evie became even more conscious of her rural accent, which was apt to shorten everything instead.
‘What you may not know is that I am assuming Vice Master Bolt’s role in the New Year. Less time for my own writing, more’s the pity.’ Christenson picked up the papers before him, tapped their bottom edges decisively against the blotter on his overflowing desk, then passed the entirety of a term’s work back to her.
‘Thank you, Miss Stone, for your time.’ He gave a cursory nod at his closed office door, which everyone knew to be his cue for dismissal, and Evie gave a quick nod back before hastily leaving. On the walk home, it started to snow. The windows of the shops and pubs glowed from within, their golden electric lustre in soft contrast to the early-winter darkness making its descent. For Evie, however, the day was fully, and terrifyingly, at an end.
She did not feel the tiny flakes of snow falling about her hatless head and shoulders – did not notice the figures scurrying home, the baskets full of rationed goods, the brown-paper packages hinting at the Christmas week just ahead. Instead, she pulled her coat tighter about her, wondering what had just happened, mulling it over again and again. She now knew she had missed something, not just in her time with Christenson, but with Wesley, and Kinross, all along. She felt a sense of distrust starting to form from her confusion, which bothered her by its sudden – and delayed – appearance.
Evie knew that she had worked harder than any other student these past three years. Her marks reflected that. Christenson would never find a better research assistant. And yet.
She stopped in front of the window of the Castle Inn. Inside she could see students laughing and drinking, piled about different tables, celebrating the last day of term and the Christmas festivities already in full swing. She stood there for a while and watched through the frosted glass, confident that no one would notice her small, indistinct form against the snow-speckled night. When Evie returned to her bedsitter at the very north end of Castle Street, her mother’s weekly letter lay on the worn carpet a few feet from the threshold of the door. Evie put the leather satchel on its anointed hook on the coat stand, which contained nothing else but her sturdy black umbrella, then stood aimlessly in the middle of the sitting room, looking about. She would need to start packing up soon. She had no idea for where.
Her brothers were all scattered far from home except for the youngest, Jimmy, who was only ten. Their father was dead these past two years from an infection in his gimp right leg, which he had shown the local doctor one week too late. After that, the family farm had finally been sold, and her mother and Jimmy had moved to a small two-up, two-down terrace house on the main village road. But Evie had not worked this hard to go backwards.
She walked over to the upright dresser, the top drawers of which she had fashioned into a makeshift filing cabinet, having few clothes to keep inside. She pulled open the first drawer and started at A. She proceeded apace, going through each carbon copy, each sheet of notepaper, each trade card and pamphlet that she had retained over the years. She never threw anything out.
When she got to AL, she found the small trade card for a Mr Frank Allen, Rare Books Acquirer, Bloomsbury Books & Maps, 40 Lamb’s Conduit, Bloomsbury, London. Mr Allen had been introduced to Evie by their mutual contact, Yardley Sinclair, during the landmark dispersal of the Chawton Great House library by Sotheby’s in the autumn of 1946. Along with Mimi Harrison, Yardley Sinclair and Evie had been founding members of the Jane Austen Society, which had acquired the library as part of its efforts to save the Chawton cottage where Austen once lived. During the auction, Allen had bid on and acquired a handful of nineteenth-century books for the London store that employed him. As assistant director of estate sales at Sotheby’s at the time, Yardley had proudly been showing Evie off to all the various dealers and agents in attendance at the sale. She recalled how Allen had briefly complimented her meticulously handwritten catalogue, which Yardley also often showed around.
Evie stared at the embossed silver lettering on the cool white card, running her stubby, ink-stained fingers over the raised name. She could hear the bells of Great St Mary’s strike half past three. Standing there in her woollen coat, she felt the cold draught entering the room from the window she had left open. The satchel dangled from its lonely perch; the letter from her mother remained unopened on the floor. She heard the word lan-gu-age still reverberating in her head, then took a deep breath with all the assurance and certainty she could muster.
She would not be going backwards; she would not be looking back.
CHAPTER ONE
Rule No. 17
Tea shall be served promptly four times a day
‘The Tyrant beckons.’
Grace looked up from her small desk at the rear of the shop. Here she marshalled all manner of what the bookshop staff called couches: the piles of letters, requests, adverts, journals, newspapers, trade cards, catalogues, magazines, announcements, invitations, and all the rest of the paper ephemera that kept Bloomsbury Books in commerce with the outside world.
Her colleague Vivien stood in the doorway, swinging the kettle in her right hand. It was Monday morning, and Vivien was always on elevenses duty on the first day of the week.
‘And now the fuse to the cooker’s gone again.’ She made a face. ‘You know they can’t function without their tea. The Tyrant’s in a particular mood today.’
The Tyrant had a name, but Vivien refused to use it in private, and Grace often found herself failing to do so as well – just one example of how Vivien’s attitude at work sometimes seeped into her own. Grace stood up and stacked a pile of papers neatly before her. ‘If he were ever to catch you calling him that …’
‘He can’t. He can’t hear anything but the sound of his own voice.’
Grace shook her head at the younger woman and stifled a grin. They had been working at the bookshop together since the end of the war, and Vivien’s friendship was a big reason why Grace stayed. Well, that and the wages, of course. And the fact that her unemployed husband could not begrudge her the opportunity to earn those. And the time away from her demanding boys. And the fear of drastic change. In the end, Grace supposed there were quite a lot of reasons why she stayed. She wasn’t quite sure why Vivien did.
‘Is Dutton not in yet?’ Vivien asked, glancing past Grace to the empty office behind her.
Herbert Dutton, the long-time general manager of the shop, had never been given a nickname by Vivien, let alone a term of endearment. He wasn’t the kind of man one would ever bother to put in a box, being so fully contained on his own.
‘He’s at the GP.’
‘Again?’
Vivien arched both eyebrows, but Grace only shrugged in response. As the two female employees of Bloomsbury Books, Grace and Vivien had mastered the art of silent expression, often communicating solely through a raised eyebrow, earlobe tug, or barely hidden hand gesture.
Vivien placed the kettle on top of a nearby filing cabinet, and the two women headed wordlessly for the basement. Whenever they strolled the shop corridors together, their matching height and tailored clothes gave them an indomitable appearance from which the male staff instinctively shrank. Both women were unusually tall, although very different in physique. Grace had broad shoulders which did not need the extra padding so fashionable at the time, an open, un-made-up face, and a peaches-and-cream complexion – her one inheritance from a family that had farmed the upland hills of Yorkshire for generations. She dressed in a simple manner that flattered her height: the strong lines of military-style jackets and pencil skirts, with low-heeled pumps for walking. Her most delicate features were her calm, grey eyes and fine brown hair with just the slightest hint of auburn, which she always kept neatly pinned back at the crown.
In contrast, Vivien was as angular and slender as a gazelle, and just as quick to bolt when impatient or displeased. She preferred to dress in formfitting monochrome black – most often in tight wool skirts and sweaters embellished by a striking Victorian amethyst brooch, her one inheritance from a beloved grandmother. Vivien’s face was always dramatically made-up, intimidatingly so, which was part of the point: by looking so in control of herself, she succeeded in keeping everyone else at bay.
On their way to the basement, the two women passed by the rear, glass-windowed office belonging to Mr Dutton, who was both the store’s general manager and its longest-serving employee. To reach the back staircase, which Vivien had nicknamed Via Inferno, they had to brush up against the towering boxes of books that were delivered daily from different publishers, auctions, bankrupt stocks, and estate sales across central England and beyond. The shop turned over five hundred books a week on average, so a healthy and frequent replenishing of stock was required from all these sources.
The misbehaving fuse box was in the mechanical room, which was adjacent to the infrequently visited Science & Naturalism Department. The entire basement floor was unseasonably warm and humid due to the inept workings of the pre-war boiler. Through the open doorway of the mechanical room, Grace and Vivien could spot the small wire-rimmed spectacles and placid brow of Mr Ashwin Ramaswamy, the head of the science department and its lone staff, peeking above the table where he always sat behind piles of books of his own.
‘Has he said a peep yet today?’ Vivien almost whispered, and Grace shook her head. Mr Ramaswamy was notorious for keeping to himself within the shop, which was easy enough to do given how rarely his department was visited. The basement collection of biology, chemistry, and other science books had been there since at least the time of Darwin, but remained the most forgotten and least profitable floor of the shop.
A trained naturalist and entomologist, Ash Ramaswamy did not seem to mind being left alone. Instead, he spent most of his day organising the books in a manner that put the other department heads to shame, and peering through a microscope at the slides of insects stored in a flat wooden box on his desk. These were the creatures of his homeland, the state of Madras in southeast India. Ash’s late father, a Tamil Brahmin, had been a highly placed civil servant in the British colonial government who had always encouraged his son to consider the opportunities offered by a life in Great Britain. Ash had emigrated after the war in the hopes of securing a post at the Natural History Museum in London. As a member of the most privileged caste in his home state, he had not been prepared for the overt prejudice of the British people towards him. Unable to obtain even an interview at any of the city’s museums, he had ended up employed at the shop instead.
‘You said a mood,’ Grace started to say, as she fiddled around with her head inside the fuse box.
‘Hmm?’
‘A mood. The Tyrant. What is it now?’
‘It is Margaret Runnymede.’
Grace poked her head out from the fuse box. ‘The new book is out?’
‘The way she bustles in here every release day, just so he can give her that ridiculous posy of purple violets to go with her latest purple prose and tell her everything she already thinks about herself. It’s nauseating. He wants everything in the shop just so for her today.’
Grace raised an eyebrow at the younger woman. ‘Is that all he wants?’
Vivien made a disgusted noise from the back of her throat. ‘He’s so full of himself. As if she’d ever.’
‘Enough women do. Have an interest in him, I mean.’ Grace shut the door to the fuse box and wiped her hands together. ‘All done.’
‘As he’s plenty aware.’
‘Well, one can’t necessarily fault him for that.’ As much as Grace herself did not care for the head of fiction, Vivien expressed a degree of dislike that Grace thought best to temper, for all their sakes.
They headed back up the stairs together, pausing in Grace’s office for Vivien to retrieve the kettle before going her separate way. Through the glass divider to the farthest rear room, they could see the moonfaced Mr Dutton sitting idly behind his desk as if waiting for someone to tell him what to do. Above his head hung, slightly askew, the framed fifty-one rules for the shop that Mr Dutton had immediately devised upon his ascension to general manager nearly twenty years ago.
‘One biscuit or two?’ Vivien asked loudly and officiously, suddenly all work as Grace settled down into her chair, delicately pulling the folds of her A-line skirt out from under her.
Grace hesitated. She was nearly forty years old, and lately she had noticed just the slightest increased weight about her hips. Her husband, Gordon, had noticed it, too. He was never one to let something like that slip by.
She held up one finger with a sigh. Vivien scoffed as she ambled back to the kitchen, swinging the kettle widely to and fro by her side, as if hoping to hit something along the way.
Grace looked about her, at all the familiar papers, the boxes of books, and the bills of lading she had yet to type up. It would be pointless to start anything this close to the hour. So, she waited.
After a few minutes, she heard Mr Dutton call her from the back room at exactly 11.00 a.m. Right on schedule.
‘Miss Perkins,’ he announced in his usual formal manner. He always combined the spinster prefix with her married name to reflect Grace’s unusual status as a working mother. It would make Grace feel like a film star – Miss Crawford, Miss Hepburn – if she didn’t know better.
Grabbing her notepad and pencil, she stood back up and walked into his office through the open doorway that connected with hers. ‘Good morning, Mr Dutton. Everything went well, I hope.’ She said it kindly but declaratively, knowing he would not directly answer her.
‘Lovely morning,’ he said with a smile so small that one could hardly detect it within the wide expanse of his face. ‘I trust you had a pleasant New Year’s.’
‘And you?’
He nodded. ‘Might I now have a second of your time?’
Grace nodded in return and held up the notepad and pencil in mid-air. They had done this routine a thousand times. He went through the schedule for the day – his schedule alone, as everyone else in the shop worked in service to the customers – and when they came to the 2.30 p.m. slot, he halted.
‘A Miss Evelyn Stone?’ he enquired.
‘Yes, remember? That strange call right before the holiday. Mr Allen vouched for meeting her through Yardley Sinclair, and you agreed to interview.’
Mr Dutton just stared at Grace. She knew that his memory was lately not what it had been, and she prompted him again.
‘A formality, you called it – out of respect for Mr Sinclair. As a most valued customer of the shop.’
Mr Dutton tapped the name in his appointment book, then nodded. This was her cue to seat herself and take dictation while he drafted his correspondence.
They were on their seventh letter when he concluded with ‘And while we appreciate the job the Broadstreet Signs Company has done in promoting this latest sales success, we are sorry to say we must decline your kind offer of competitively priced signage at this time. Most sincerely yours …’
He paused and brushed his fingers over the right side of his balding head. Grace must have had one of her looks on her face, as Gordon liked to call them.
‘Yes, Miss Perkins?’
‘It’s just that – well, I do think the front window has been looking somewhat shabby of late, and Viv and I strolled over to Foyles last week to check out theirs, and I must say, they have done rather a clever job.’
Mr Dutton sat there watching her with one of his own looks, a strange tightrope walk between terror and indulgence that ran across his round features whenever she proposed something new. Even more than losing out to Foyles, the shop’s most envied competitor, Grace suspected that Mr Dutton’s greatest fear was of any tumble being somehow cushioned by her. Grace’s ideas for improving the shop seemed to do nothing so much as put him on edge.
‘And … well … I thought, with some proper signage such as that provided by the Broadstreet Company, suspended from the ceiling so as not to block the view from the street, and with different shelving – more open-backed, to let in the light – we could promote the upcoming New Year sale quite effectively.’
Mr Dutton just stared. Grace had worked at Bloomsbury Books for nearly five years and, to her knowledge, a sales sign had never once been placed in the front window or, for that matter, anywhere else in the shop. Instead, the staff were trained to mention sales only most discreetly, in demure, elegant asides to the customers, as if even the mere idea of money had no place around books.
‘There’s also the matter of our upcoming centenary this summer,’ continued Grace in the face of his silence. ‘It’s never too early to start celebrating. Vivien and I were thinking of another display: One Hundred Years of Books. A selection of top titles from every decade.’
Mr Dutton was a creature of habit and rules who, due to the daunting uncertainty of the future, resisted spending time or money too far in advance. This was one of many differences between him and his trusted secretary when it came to matters of business.
‘Thank you, Miss Perkins,’ he finally replied, looking almost pained by her suggestions. ‘That will be all for now.’
It was indeed all for now. It would be all for tomorrow, too, and for the day after that. She would go back to typing up his unnecessarily long letters, organising his voluminous paperwork into alphabetical files, and fetching his tea. Then she would go home and do a version of the same for her family.
Grace looked down the corridor at Vivien, who was leaning on the edge of the front cash counter, her hips swaying as she alternated between jotting something down in a green coil-bound notebook and chewing on the end of her pencil. Vivien was essentially caged behind that counter, only occasionally allowed out front to assist with the customers. She, like Grace, had joined the shop just as the world was emerging from the ashes of war. Life back then had seemed full of possibility and freedom, especially for the women who had taken charge while the men were off fighting.
This was the social contract that had been forged to sustain each of them during a time of great pain and sacrifice: of whom much had been asked, much would later be given.
But the past had a way of slipping back through even the thinnest of cracks in a fractured world. Women such as Vivien and Grace had hoped for a fresh beginning for everyone; but five years on, new opportunities for women were still being rationed along with the food. Those in power would always hold on to any excess supply, even to the bitter end.
CHAPTER TWO
Rule No. 12
First-aid procedures shall be strictly adhered to in the event of an emergency.
The Tyrant was Alec McDonough, a bachelor in his early thirties who ran the new books, fiction and art department on the ground floor of Bloomsbury Books. He had read literature and fine art at the University of Bristol and had been planning on a career in something big – Vivien accused him of wanting to run a small colony – when the war had intervened. Following his honourable discharge in 1945, Alec had joined the shop on the exact same day as Vivien. ‘By an hour ahead. Like a dominant twin,’ she would quip whenever Alec was rewarded with anything first. From the start Alec and Vivien were rivals, and not just for increasing control of the fiction floor. Every editor that wandered in, every literary guest speaker, was a chance for them to have access to the powers that be in the publishing industry. As two secretly aspiring writers, they had each come to London and taken the position at Bloomsbury Books for this reason. But they were also both savvy enough to know that the men in charge – from the rigid Mr Dutton and then-head-of-fiction Graham Kingsley, to the restless Frank Allen and crusty Master Mariner Scott – were whom they first needed to please. Alec had a clear and distinct advantage when it came to that. Between the tales of wartime service, shared grammar schools, and past cricket match victories, Vivien grew quickly dismayed at her own possibility for promotion. Sure enough, within weeks Alec had entrenched himself with both the long-standing general manager, Herbert Dutton, and his right-hand man, Frank Allen. By 1948, upon the retirement of Graham Kingsley, Alec had ascended to the post of head of fiction, and within the year had added new books and art to his oversight – an achievement that Vivien still referred to as the Annexation.
She had been first to call him the Tyrant; he called her nothing at all. Vivien’s issues with Alec ranged from the titles they stocked on the shelves, to his preference for booking events exclusively with male authors who had served in the war. With her own degree in literature from Durham (Cambridge, her dream university, still refusing in 1941 to graduate women), Vivien had rigorously informed views on the types of books the fiction department should carry. Not surprisingly, Alec disputed these views.
‘But he doesn’t even read women,’ Vivien would bemoan to Grace, who would nod back in sympathy while trying to remember her grocery list before the bus journey home. ‘I mean, what – one Jane Austen on the shelves? No Katherine Mansfield. No Porter. I read that Salinger story in The New Yorker he keeps going on about: shell-shocked soldiers and children all over the place, and I don’t see what’s so masculine about that.’
Unlike Vivien, Grace did not have much time for personal reading, an irony her husband often pointed out. But Grace did not work at the shop for the books. She worked there because the bus journey into Bloomsbury took only twenty minutes, she could drop the children off at school on the way, and she could take the shop newspapers home at the end of the day. Grace had been the one to suggest that they also carry import magazines, in particular the New Yorker. Being so close to the British Museum and the theatre district, Bloomsbury Books received its share of wealthy American tourists. Grace was convinced that such touches from home would increase their time spent browsing, along with jazz music on the wireless by the front cash, one of many ideas that Mr Dutton was still managing to resist.
Vivien and Alec had manned the ground floor of the shop together for over four years, circling each other within the front cash counter like wary lions inside a small coliseum. The square, enclosed counter had been placed in the centre of the fiction department in an effort to contain an old electrical outlet box protruding from the floor. Mr Dutton could not look at this eyesore without seeing a customer lawsuit for damages caused by accidental tripping. Upon his promotion to general manager in the 1930s, Dutton had immediately ordained that the front cash area be relocated and built around the box.
This configuration had turned out to be of great benefit to the staff. One could always spot a customer coming from any direction, prepare the appropriate response to expressions ranging from confused to hostile, and even catch the surreptitious slip of an unpurchased book into a handbag. Other bookshops had taken note of Bloomsbury Books’ ground-floor design and started refurbishing their own. The entire neighbourhood was, in this way, full of spies. Grace and Vivien were not the only two bookstore employees out and about, checking on other stores’ window displays. London was starting to boom again, after five long years of post-war rationing and recovery, and new bookshops were popping up all over. Bloomsbury was home to the British Museum, the University of London, and many famous authors past and present, including the pre-war circle of Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster, and Lytton Strachey. This made the district a particularly ideal location for readers, authors, and customers alike.
And so it was here, on a lightly snowing day on the second of January, 1950, that a young Evie Stone arrived, Mr Allen’s trading card in one pocket, and a one-way train ticket to London in the other.
Vivien saw her first.
The bell at the front door gave its customary curt ting sound as the worn pair of girl’s boots tripped the line across the inner vestibule door. Just as curtly, Alec McDonough looked up, then down, from his perch on a ladder nearby.
The hatless small figure failed to notice him. Instead, she took her time as she walked slowly past the fiction tables in the front half of the store. She did three things with every book she touched: first she would run the palm of her hand across its face almost in rapture, next tap on the title thoughtfully, and then with both hands gingerly lift the volume to minutely examine its contents and back cover.
Vivien had stopped writing in her notepad and was now absentmindedly chewing on the end of her pencil, observing the young woman with interest. She had a poorly cropped simple bob haircut and penetrating dark eyes that fixated intently within a narrow field of vision. She didn’t look like someone from the city, but she didn’t look completely out of place, either.
She moved methodically in the direction of the front counter, while Vivien slouched against it in the way that most irritated Mr Dutton. When the girl finally reached the counter, Vivien put her pencil down.
‘Hello.’
Vivien raised her right eyebrow. ‘Hello,’ she replied slowly, and waited.
The girl put her gloved right hand on the edge of the counter and, as if in silent conspiracy, slipped forward a small white card.
Vivien cocked her head to the right before picking up the card. Surprisingly, it belonged to Frank Allen, from the rare books department.
‘I am Evie Stone,’ the girl offered by way of explanation.
Vivien watched her, entranced by the contrast between the girl’s plain demeanour and that deep, intense gaze.
‘I’m afraid Mr Allen’s away today and tomorrow at an estate sale. I hope you’ve not come far.’
The girl shook her head insistently. ‘I am Evelyn Stone. To see Mr Dutton.’
‘Ahh,’ Vivien exclaimed pleasantly, causing Alec to look down from his ladder at the sound of her voice brightening for once. ‘I see. You have an appointment then?’
Now Evie cocked her own head to the right, as if concerned that no one had been told to expect her.
‘If you would wait right here, I shall see about getting him.’
Vivien’s slender figure departed through a small swinging door at the back of the counter and down a long corridor, before eventually disappearing into a rear glassed-in office. Next Grace popped her head out of the same office to peer down the corridor, and then she, too, disappeared from view. A few seconds later Vivien reappeared, walking back towards Evie as if she had all the time in the world.
‘We’re so sorry, he was indeed expecting you. I’ll lead the way.’ Vivien motioned for the girl to follow her. ‘Here, let me take your coat, shall I?’
The girl declined the offer, pulling her woollen coat tighter about her in a slightly nervous manner that Vivien found endearing.
After passing the young girl off to Grace, Vivien returned to her post at the cash counter to find Alec now standing there. He was leaning against the counter in the same casual manner for which she was so often reprimanded. Mr Dutton did not seem to mind it so much in a man. The girls in the shop were expected to have an elegant comportment, the men to be easy and approachable.
‘Yes?’ she asked sharply.
‘Who was that queer little thing?’
Vivien sighed and picked up her pencil. She always had to look up at Alec, which she resented. No one should be that tall.
‘A Miss Evie Stone to see Mr Dutton, if you must know.’
‘Whatever for?’
Vivien put the pencil back down and made an exasperated noise. ‘A job, apparently. Grace said there was a referral by Yardley Sinclair. The director of museum services, over at Sotheby’s? Is that enough name-dropping for you?’
Alec gave a smirk back to match her own. ‘Surely not for anything front of store, I should think. She doesn’t look much older than sixteen, if that.’
‘Don’t worry, Alec. I’m sure she has no interest whatsoever in your dominion.’
Alec was about to say something in retort when the strangest shout rang out. Every single head in the bookshop shot up from a book as Alec reached forward for Vivien’s arm in alarm.
‘My God!’ Alec exclaimed. ‘Was that Grace?’
He rushed around the counter to pull open the swinging door for Vivien before they raced down the corridor together. There they found Grace standing outside the general manager’s office, frozen in place, her hand over her mouth.
Inside the doorway lay Mr Dutton on the floor, his face and body stiff as a board. Evie Stone knelt there beside him.
‘What on earth …’ Alec made a move towards the manager, but Evie put out her left hand to stop him.
Just then, Mr Dutton began to convulse, his arms and legs violently twitching.
‘Call an ambulance,’ Evie said calmly to Grace while loosening his tie. ‘And stay back.’
Grace just stood there in the doorway along with Alec and Vivien, all three of them stunned by the figure now writhing on the frayed carpet at their feet.
‘Now!’ Evie cried.
Grace finally jumped with a panicked start and rushed over to the phone on the desk, while Alec, looming behind Vivien in the doorway, called out, ‘Put something – put something in his mouth – a book, or—’
The young girl was shaking her head. ‘No,’ she replied firmly. ‘Just keep back.’ She looked up and nodded towards the large antique table on which Mr Dutton reviewed his constant correspondence. ‘And move the desk away. Now! Before ’e hits himself!’
Alec came forward and shoved the desk corner hard, just as Grace hung up the phone.
‘The poor man … they’re on their way. How – how did you—’ The young girl put up her left hand again to silence Grace. The three shop employees could only stand there, watching helplessly, as Evie placed her right hand on his chest. ‘His heartbeat’s quite slow.’
‘Grace,’ Alec asked, ‘did he say anything earlier? Anything at all? Did you know about this?’
Grace shook her head, her hand again suspended, quivering, over her mouth. ‘He’d just been to the GP, that’s all I know. Wait—’ She pulled open the top drawer of his desk and rummaged around, then ran to the coat stand and fished her hands into his trench coat pockets. ‘Oh, wait, yes, here’s something ‘
She held out a small prescription box for them all to see. ‘“Phenytoin”,’ she read aloud.
‘Get Ash,’ Vivien cried out. ‘His medical dictionary!’
Alec gave her a look, then quickly ran to the back staircase.
‘He’s stopped convulsing,’ Evie suddenly announced.
All three women watched as first Mr Dutton’s round eyes began to flicker, and then the rest of his facial features started to relax in turn.
Alec now returned with Ash Ramaswamy, who held a thick medical dictionary in his hands.
‘It’s phenytoin – for epilepsy – yes, miss?’ he asked Evie. ‘Low heartbeat?’
Evie was staring so openly at Ash that everyone else in the room grew suddenly uncomfortable. Vivien wondered if Evie had never seen anyone from India before, then felt a strange sort of shame for even having such a thought.
‘Yes, quite low,’ Evie eventually replied, but Ash did not seem to notice her hesitance or her reddened cheeks. Instead, he seemed to be equally astonished by her being there, too.
‘Put something under his head then, miss, to align his spine and jaw.’
They all watched as Evie hurriedly took off her blue knit cardigan and gingerly placed it under Mr Dutton’s head as he slowly returned to consciousness.
‘You’re all right, sir, it was just a little fit.’ Evie reached out and patted his hand as if trying to console a small animal or child, which seemed to only increase Dutton’s mortification at his present state.
Everyone watched with relief as Evie now helped ease Mr Dutton up onto his right elbow.
‘Your heart rate’s low, sir. Please, stay still,’ Evie urged him.
At the unfamiliar voice, a dazed Mr Dutton turned about to see his interviewee kneeling behind him. ‘I’m terribly sorry. How awful for you. How awful for you all.’
Evie gave the first smile any of them had seen on her face yet. ‘Don’t worry ’bout me, sir.’
‘Yes,’ Vivien spoke from the doorway, keeping an eye on the front of the store as the bell rang out to announce the arrival of the ambulance attendants. ‘Miss Stone certainly coped better than any of us lot.’
Vivien moved to the side as the two attendants rushed down the corridor with a stretcher and began ministering to Mr Dutton, who was still resting on the floor. Alec returned to the front of the shop to attend to the few customers, Ash left for the basement, and Vivien, Grace, and Evie remained clustered together in the hall.
Remembering how difficult the entire situation must be for their visitor, Grace was about to ask if she could get Evie a cup of tea when a booming voice thundered down the upstairs staircase, the one that Vivien mockingly called Via Dolorosa.
‘What the devil is all the racket?’
CHAPTER THREE
Rule No. 44
The General Manager shall have sole authority and discretion regarding the hiring, elevation and firing of staff.
At the bottom of the staircase stood a man well into his sixties, wearing a jacket decorated with a series of naval pins along both lapels.
‘Mr Dutton’s had some kind of attack,’ Grace explained with a nod towards his office. Through the open doorway, the two ambulance attendants could be seen kneeling on the floor next to the general manager and helping him to sit upright against one of the legs of the desk.
‘An attack?’ the old man almost spit out. ‘What kind of attack?’
‘Epilepsy, most likely,’ Evie answered.
Peering over the rim of his reading spectacles, the man finally took note of her small form sandwiched between Grace and Vivien, who were both rather tall for women.
‘And who are you?’ he thundered again.
Grace took a small step forward. ‘This is Miss Evelyn Stone. Referred to Mr Dutton by Mr Sinclair for a position. Mr Yardley Sinclair, of Sotheby’s? The director of museum services?’
The man made a dismissive noise. ‘Not for my department, she’s not. Second floor’s no place for a girl.’
Vivien gave an audible sigh. She was used to such stonewalling by the men in the shop. Alec wouldn’t have the young girl on the store’s main floor, Master Mariner Scott wouldn’t allow her on the second.
‘Perhaps she’s not interested in a bunch of dusty old maps, hmm?’ Vivien asked him with a taunting tone. ‘Has anyone even thought to ask her?’
Vivien was the only employee of the shop who remained unafraid of Master Mariner Scott, despite his frequent outbursts. She was fairly certain that beneath his crusty exterior was a man who loved women, particularly pretty women, and had built up a wall of defence against them to protect his ego. Vivien was writing a character just like him in her novel – the novel that no one else knew she was writing in that green coil-bound notebook of hers.
Master Mariner Scott looked ready to respond in kind to Vivien’s words, but something about her aggressive manner seemed to change his mind.
‘Still, she looks too slight to be up to much of anything.’ He turned to Grace. ‘Attack or not, it’s time for tea,’ he added gruffly.
‘One biscuit or two?’ Grace asked in her overly deferential manner, the genuineness of which the men in the shop had begun to seriously question of late.
‘Two,’ he barked back, then headed up the stairs.
‘You’re probably wondering who that was,’ Grace said to Evie in an apologetic tone.
Vivien laughed at her side. ‘Oh, I think that get-up was explanation enough.’
Grace peered into the office where the two attendants were now packing up their gear. She was relieved to see Mr Dutton already back at his desk, pen in one hand, trying to act as if none of the last few minutes had happened.
‘That was Master Mariner Simon Scott,’ Grace continued. ‘Fought in the Battle of Dover Strait in the Great War and, to his great chagrin, sat out the Second. He rules the second floor: history, travel, topography, genealogy. But mainly naval and military history.’
‘I don’t care much for cartography,’ Evie replied.
Vivien patted her on the back. ‘Lucky for you. What are you interested in? Book-wise, I mean.’
Evie looked up the staircase. ‘Rare ones.’
Emerging from the back room, the attendants brushed past the three women standing in a line as they carried the empty stretcher through the corridor. The sound of a slight cough came from inside the office, and Grace knew this was Mr Dutton’s cue for her and Evie to come back in.
‘His heart rate has stabilised,’ the first attendant, a tall, jovial-looking young man, stopped to inform Grace. ‘Probably in reaction to the new medicine.’
‘It wasn’t epilepsy, then?’ Vivien asked.
The man turned to look her up and down approvingly. ‘No, miss, it was – the one beget the other. Did you not know he’s an epileptic?’
Both older women shook their heads at him, while Evie remained entirely missed standing there between them.
‘Well, whoever took care of him did everything right and proper.’ Grace stepped back with a motion to Evie, and the man leaned down to get a good look at her. ‘I understand you were interviewing for a position when it happened.’
Evie nodded.
‘Well’ – he straightened up and gave Vivien and Grace both a wink – ‘after all that fuss, they should at least hand you the job.’
Evie was back in the visitor’s chair across from Mr Dutton’s desk. He was writing something down for Grace, who remained standing in the doorway.
Evie looked about the room as Mr Dutton laboriously composed his message. She noted the glass-covered case of old books that stood next to an extensive set of filing cabinets, the type of organising system that she could only dream of. On the walls were several certificates for bookselling success of some commercial nature, a cricket trophy from grammar school days decades past, a photo of the shop staff picnicking on a beach, and one of an austere-looking older woman with the same roundish features as Mr Dutton. Most prominent of all was a large framed set of shop rules that hung high on the wall behind his desk.
Evie felt as if Mr Dutton had his whole life contained within the walls of Bloomsbury Books. Before collapsing onto the floor, he had been telling her that he had first been employed by the shop as a delivery boy. He had worked there on weekends throughout university and then, upon failing his civil service exams, had ended up permanently joining the shop. This was right after the Great War, in which Mr Dutton had been too young to fight. He had worked his way up to general manager of Bloomsbury Books & Maps by the 1930s, which is when he had first hired Frank Allen, now the head of rare books, as an assistant buyer. They remained the two longest-standing members of the staff.
Mr Dutton had then given her the rest of the history of the shop. Evie had not been quite sure why. What she most wanted to hear about was the antiquarian collection on the third floor, which she now knew to be one floor safely removed from the purview of Master Mariner Scott.
Folding up the paper he had been writing on, Mr Dutton held it out for Grace to take.
‘You must post this to Mr Allen. He is at Toppings today and tomorrow morning, but he needs to be made aware, should I …’ His voice trailed off as Grace carefully took the note from him.
‘Mr Dutton, please, don’t exert yourself. I’ll see to everything. And I am sure Miss Stone here might also like the chance to catch her breath.’
Evie shook her head pleasantly. ‘No, ma’am.’
‘I’m terribly sorry,’ Mr Dutton broke in. ‘I’ve not even thanked you. They told me what you did. How did you know?’
Evie shrugged, thinking back on the many seizures that her father had suffered following his first stroke. Mr Stone’s health had never recovered from the trauma of the tractor accident on their family farm. One by one, different parts of his body had simply started to fail him and fall apart. It had been a difficult lesson for his family, that bad luck could be followed by even more.
‘You learn what you have to.’
‘And you had to learn rare books?’ Mr Dutton asked simply.
‘In a way, yeah – yes.’
‘And you want to sell them, now, after all your studies?’
‘No, not at all.’
She watched as Mr Dutton and Grace looked at each other in confusion.
‘I want to catalogue them.’
Mr Dutton leaned back in his chair, and in the fading afternoon light both women could make out the small beads of sweat still left on his brow from the stress of the recent attack.
‘Grace, the letter.’ He stared at her until, recollecting herself, Grace nodded and quickly left.
‘How do you know they need cataloguing?’ he turned to Evie to ask.
‘Well, they always do, in a way. As things change. Provenance, rarity, value. Something always comes along and changes the future for an old book.’
Now Mr Dutton was staring at her, too. Evie knew that she talked about books as if they were alive. As alive, as changeable, as people themselves.
‘Your academics are impeccable. I wonder that you would settle for a role in a shop.’ Mr Dutton gave a weak smile. ‘But I suppose I am just as guilty of that myself.’
The former servant girl and the portly general manager shared a strange congruence, in addition to their compulsive natures and strong sense of duty. Mr Dutton’s entire life was on display within the four small walls of his office; Evie was known for saving her affections in life for dead authors and relationships that were socially constrained. She had adored her schoolteacher Adeline Gray and former employer Frances Knight. Even Kinross she had trusted, it turned out, to a fault.
As Evie sat there, she could feel herself already warming up to the sickly older man sitting pale and worn at his desk, trying so valiantly to continue with his work in exactly the way that she would have done.
‘Sir, perhaps I should return another time—’
‘I’m afraid there won’t be another time.’ He put up his hand in a most supplicating manner at the alarmed look on her face. ‘Terribly sorry, Miss Stone. I only meant I’m told I need to rest for a bit. A few weeks at least, it seems. I will be informing the staff in the morning. It will entail some shifting about, and I’m afraid not all the changes will be to everyone’s liking.’
Somehow Evie already knew that he was talking about Vivien and Grace.
‘Our head of rare books, Mr Allen, has been my right-hand man for nearly two decades, and we always act in partnership. But as you know, he is away, quite far north, and I shan’t be expecting to get a hold of him before tomorrow. The, ah, changes will be significant for Mr Allen perhaps most of all. He will need’ – here Mr Dutton paused for so long that Evie started to fear another attack was coming on – ‘he will need reinforcement in his department. All the staff will.’
Evie sat there quietly, recalling her recent meeting with Senior Fellow Christenson, and how she had not caught on in time. Not asserted herself over his preference for Stuart Wesley. Not done what was necessary to secure the job.
‘I can help in any way,’ she offered. ‘Not just rare books, as I said. Just … whatever you need.’
These were the words that Mr Dutton always most wanted to hear. He sought complete dedication and compliance from his staff. He had written the fifty-one rules so prominently displayed on his office wall to ensure that his voice – parental, authoritative, godlike if need be – was constantly in the ears of his employees. Nothing could go wrong, he believed, if everyone simply followed the rules.
CHAPTER FOUR
Rule No. 14
Departure time for staff is subject to the needs and progress of the day.
Grace Perkins and Vivien Lowry departed together that chaotic day at precisely 5.30 p.m., just as they had done every workday for the past four years. No matter the goings-on at the shop, managerial collapse or otherwise, the staff always kept to their exact routines.
The gentlemen in the shop could set their watches by the moment when Grace arrived at the front cash counter, plain black handbag over her left arm and hands elegantly clasped, and Vivien immediately stopped whatever she was doing to grab her own black bag. They then marched out together and headed straight for the Russell Square bus stop. They would spend the first leg of their journey home commiserating over the events of the day and fortifying themselves against the one ahead, grateful to be out of earshot of the men who managed them. At Camden Town, Vivien always disembarked and transferred to the Hackney rail line. She could have headed straight home by bus from Bloomsbury, but the time saved was less appealing to her than the time spent airing her grievances to Grace.
Tonight, however, the two women were oddly silent as they sat together in their row of two seats. Grace stared out the window at the evening sky, its darkness punctuated by a blur of streetlamps and lit windows. Nights in the city hid so much of the grime and shadow cast by the pollution that constantly hovered above London, a permanent cloud that seemed to reflect the national mood.
The Camden Town bus inched slowly northwards, passing first Russell and then Tavistock Square. The borders of these perfectly geometric parks were towered over by buildings housing all matter of public services: hospitals, universities, the British Museum, even the former site of George Orwell’s infamous Ministry of Information, where Grace’s husband had worked during the war.
She felt Vivien tap her left arm and looked back at her.
‘They say Orwell’s dying, right down there, at University Hospital. I overheard one of the Secker and Warburg editors in the shop.’
Grace sighed in remembrance of their own invalid. ‘Poor Mr Dutton. He must be so mortified by everyone seeing him like that. I wonder what the doctor will say.’
‘Whatever it is, Dutton’s sure to ignore it.’
‘Maybe he’ll surprise us.’
Vivien let out a dismissive laugh.
‘Well, he should rest up, all the same. January is never a busy month.’
‘He could hire that girl, Evie. I do like being proven wrong about a person.’
Now Grace laughed just as dismissively. ‘You do not.’
‘No, I don’t suppose I do.’
‘Still, it’d be nice to have another girl in the shop.’
‘You are quite surrounded by men.’ Vivien hesitated. ‘Everything all right over the holidays?’
Grace gave a quick smile. ‘The boys were spoiled by my mother.’
‘And Gordon? Although I suppose he’s spoiled enough already by you.’
