Page 57 of Sisters Making Mischief
‘By the tin plate sign?’
‘Absolutely. Felix parks round the back of the shop, and he will tell the localgendarmerieit’s your car, anyway they never make a fuss. His nephew, Andre, married one of the sergeants two years ago. I don’t think you’ve met her, Mireille, she looks like a long-distance lorry driver but she’s very sweet really. And her father is the mayor. That counts for a lot over here. You have to keep on his good side.’
I imagined myself driving into the town the following day, knowing where to park and the prospect was rather fun. I had opened my mind to the possibility of doing new things and found another one. It wasn’t something for me to lie awake all night worrying about, it was exciting.
18
The bookshop was calledLe Livre Ouvert,meaning The Open Book, and it was absolutely delightful. The window frames were painted blue, and there were ornamental white shutters on the outside. Two flower boxes underneath had been filled with plants and looked as though they would spring into colour before too long. There was also a small table and two ironwork chairs outside in the morning sunshine, tempting customers to sit and read for a while. Inside, the room was quite narrow but it stretched a long way back, with shelves which nearly reached to the low ceiling, and two racks of second-hand paperbacks, all marked very cheaply.
Inside was the distinctive smell of books and paper, which was just the same as the bookshop at home, ‘bibliosmia’ I thought it was called. Felix was sitting at his desk near the back of the shop, drinking coffee from a cardboard cup and eating a chocolate éclair out of a paper bag.
‘S’il te plait, please don’t tell her,’ he said when he saw me, ‘she makes me eat yogurt and fruit for my breakfast. It is not enough to keep a man going through a hard morning at work.’
I laughed. ‘I won’t. Now tell me what I can do to help?’
‘I have a box of English print paperbacks just arrived; you could put them out on that empty shelf by the front door? And perhaps label them so people know what they are.’
It didn’t take me long because there weren’t that many. The usual best sellers on one shelf, sagas and romances on another, and a couple of books about the English countryside and French travel guides in English on a small low table in the window.
I spotted an old and very worn red tapestry armchair halfway down the shop covered with some old pamphlets and Felix’s coat and scarf. I cleared it all away and moved the chair into the window and dusted it, to make a tempting reading area. The faded fabric somehow worked; it looked – what was the expression – shabby-chic.
‘Yes,’ Felix said when he came out of his office an hour later, ‘that orange chair looks good. I don’t know why Lisa didn’t think of that.’
‘It’s red, actually. You could have done it too,’ I said.
He looked thoughtful. ‘I don’t have those sorts of ideas. I have all the paperwork to do and the ordering. That takes up a lot of my time.’
‘Which reminds me, those notebooks. You really should have some. And some pens and pencils too. I’m sure they would sell to your visitors.’
‘Right then, against my better judgement?—’
He went back into his office and brought out some booklets.
‘This is what the man left me, and looking at them is driving me mad. They all look the same to me. I cannot decide between the colours. You choose what you think we should have. But don’t get carried away, we don’t have much space as you can see.’
Felix might not have liked looking at them, but I did. There were so many attractive colours and patterns, although they all seemed to have squared paper in them not the lines I was used to. I picked out half a dozen and went to ask for his opinion. Ifound him in his office, half hidden behind a computer screen and a pile of documents, eating chocolate. There were books everywhere; on the floor, under the desk, even piled up on a spare chair in one corner.
‘These,’ I said showing him the ones I had chosen, ‘and if you buy enough the company will provide you with a little display stand. It says so in the small print.’
‘I never noticed that, but where would that go?’ he said gloomily.
‘I thought we could move the small shelf with the guides to this area nearer to the front door, to catch people new to this area, and then behind that put the notebooks and the pens.’
‘Je ne suis pas convaincu… I’m not sure.’
‘Then I will buy them,’ I said, ‘then if they don’t sell you will have lost nothing.’
We discussed this for a while, as Felix wasn’t sure he liked the idea, but when I said that I would take any unsold ones back home with me, he agreed.
‘Though what you will do with them, I can’t imagine,’ he said.
‘I’ve already told you, give them as presents to my friends and family.’
He shook his head and did some muttering about the risk and all the terrible upheaval, as though I was planning to bring in a three-ring circus. Then he declared he needed another cup of coffee before he felt strong enough to place the order, and I walked to Mimi’s café around the corner.
She greeted me as an old friend asking about Isabel and Eugénie until I left with a spring in my step, feeling quite the local. I hadn’t felt like that at home for quite a long time, probably years, if I thought about it. Just a simple interaction, with some nodding and smiling.Deux cafés et deux tartlelettes aux fraises, s’il vous plait.
In the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t much, but somehow it felt significant. Since I had arrived here, I had found myself doing new tasks, helping my sister, learning more of a language I thought I had forgotten, meeting new people and interacting with them. It was all very unexpected and rather exciting. Perhaps I had consigned myself to the scrap heap too soon; there might be more out there for me than I had anticipated.
