Page 28 of The Secret Christmas Library
Just as before, in the East Library, this had two storeys, and they had entered on the mezzanine. They must have been designed this way. But the windows didn’t face east, to the wild sea, or west, to the beautiful dying rays of the setting winter sun. They looked out on the harsh landscape of the northern hills, where there was no heather left now, so late in the year. Hardy sheep were dotted here and there; everything in shades of grey, cold and inhospitable.
Mirren shivered. The books here, as dishevelled as anywhere else, were covered in a thick layer of dust. Nobody had been here for years, surely. Thousands of volumes lined the mezzanine, then down below there was shelving and cupboards, all full.
‘So . . . it’s in here, whatever it is?’ said Mirren. They stood, staring around at the vastness of the task.
They decided to divide the room up methodically, and Jamie found a collection of Post-its in an old desk. Every shelving stack they’d finished needed a Post-it, and if they fell off, well, that would be a problem for another day.
Anything that looked vaguely old or precious or promising, they decided, they would pull out to examine properly later. Any famous editions of well-known books, they were to ask Theo, who had the expertise; anything local or handwritten, they would put aside in case that meant something, and if James had written in it or on it, Jamie could check the handwriting and confirm it either way.
Mirren wished she’d worn gloves – she was sure there was some disease you could get from handling old books, something to do with spores – but she wasn’t sure how to politely bring it up. She had wanted an adventure, she reminded herself. A change in her life. And here she was, up in the Highlands in a crazy old castle. Okay, she had been anticipating rather less indexing of old titles about – she picked up one at random – great chess games from the International Bradford Chess Competition, but maybe people forgot about the slightly duller parts of adventures.
They got their heads down as dusk fell. Jamie went and scared up some light bulbs from various other rooms – Mirren hoped he hadn’t annoyed the animal gods next door – to give them a bit of light, and plugged in an ancient radio on one of the desks, which pleasingly still worked, although the choices were limited to the local Gaelic radio station or Russian seafaring channels. They went for the former, which played enough jolly jigs and reels to keep them moving.
What, though, thought Mirren, as she sorted through the stacks, did James mean? What could the book be? Really richpeople did buy and sell books for absolutely loads of money, she knew that. Silly money, for things that nobody else could have, rarities or special things. Because, when they’d run out of every commonplace thing, every single normal mass-produced thing a human could ever want to buy, they had to spend their money somewhere, so they spent it on pointless things nobody could possibly want or need: engagement rings the size of hen’s eggs for marriages that wouldn’t last; rocket ships that exploded all over the place; artworks that only existed on the internet, for heaven’s sake. Houses so big, so impossibly huge and useless that you couldn’t even go in every room and you could get lost just looking around them. What on earth was the point of this, truly? she thought, as the windows showed full dark outside now on the long, wild grounds of the north.
Oh, she didn’t know. She didn’t understand the world, not really. Maybe the old laird had given loads of his money away. Maybe he’d fed all the hungry kids in the villages all round, found good jobs for people to do. Or maybe she was naïve and studenty and didn’t understand the world and all of that. But looking round at this dusty, forgotten, overflowing room, belonging to a man who seemingly, from the way Jamie told it, had died completely alone, his estranged daughter in a foreign land, his grandchildren passing the buck on the inheritance . . . well, she wouldn’t say he’d been on top of it either.
‘What was he like?’ she called to Jamie, as she leafed desultorily through a selection of hardback guides to O-level mathematics in 1956. She could not deny, it looked a lot harder than her GCSEs. That was an entire puzzle on its own. Still, though, it was a treasure trove, and she remembered, looking round, how, when she was young, she’d thought, once, that she might read every book in the world, she loved them so. As she’d outgrown the tiny children’s section in her branch library, she’d realisedthis was futile, but there was still something in her that wanted to sit down and not get up again till she’d read every single one; travelled to every single land within their pages; met their kings, learned about their strange ways; fallen in love. Perhaps the old man, too, really had thought he could possess every single book in the world. ‘Your grandfather. What was he like?’
Jamie frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, I mean . . . was he warm? Fun? You spent all your holidays here.’
Jamie looked uncomfortable. ‘Well . . . he was head of the family, you know.’
‘I don’t,’ said Mirren. ‘My parents are divorced, and I don’t really see my dad’s parents at all. I lost an entire set of grandparents.’
‘Oh, me too,’ said Jamie. He looked sad for a moment. ‘Well. He was . . . crusty, I suppose? Had his head in a book a lot of the time. Eccentric? You had to be quite quiet around him . . . ’
‘Was he fun?’
‘The laird?’ The way Jamie spoke his title said everything. ‘No,’ he said, heavily. ‘No. He was not fun. No.’
‘But he liked games and puzzles and things . . . ’ Mirren gestured at the poem.
‘Yes, he’d set us really hard puzzles then get annoyed when we couldn’t solve them,’ said Jamie, wincing a little at the memory. ‘I was never exactly a Mensa candidate. He made it very clear what he thought about that. I like reading but I’m not really into word games. He was a difficult man. I never understood him.’
He looked down and they carried on. Some of the books half-disintegrated when they picked them up. The room must be damp, thought Mirren; the beautiful, ancient mullioned windows were single-glazed, of course, and the moisture must get in. Another terrible note for the survey, if she had been doingher actual job. There must be mice too. This place would be a feast to them. Add them to the spiders and this castle was absolutely full of life. She made a promise to herself not to think about bats.
At the edge of the mezzanine, where the wrought-iron balcony creaked slightly and probably wouldn’t handle too much leaning against, was a pile of old chests. One of them was full of magazines: old issues ofNational Geographicwith their yellow borders, which might have been worth something if they weren’t all warped and spotted. A second, likewise, but with a bunch of comics.
‘TheBeano!’ said Mirren.
Jamie looked up.
‘Hundreds of them!’ she said.
He came up to inspect. ‘Well, there’s some treasure,’ he said, and bounded up the curved staircase, which wobbled ominously at his large hands on it. ‘Ha. God, that old bastard.’
‘What?’ said Mirren.
He shook his head. ‘It’s funny really. He wouldn’t let me have any comics because I should be reading “real books”. And don’t even start me on telly or the internet. And he had all of these the entire time!’
He picked out the top one. ‘What was your favourite?’
‘The Numskulls, obviously,’ said Mirren. ‘I feel sorry for kids today who only haveInside Out.’
He laughed. ‘Quite right too. God, I used to look like Plug.’
