she had to employ a great deal of tact and finesse to prevent him from going upstairs and having a real look at how the bookshelves were progressing. It all took a long time. Getting into a house always took a long time, much longer than one thought. And so many irritating people. Electricians, for instance, who came and appeared to be displeased with what they had done the last time they came and took up more large areas in the floor and, with cheerful faces, produced more pitfalls for the unwary housewife to walk along and put a foot wrong and be rescued just in time by the unseen electrician who was groping beneath the floor.
‘Sometimes,’ said Tuppence, ‘I really wish we hadn’t left Bartons Acre.’
‘Remember the dining-room,’ Tommy had said, ‘and remember those attics, and remember what happened to the garage. Nearly wrecked the car, you know it did.’
‘I suppose we could have had it patched up,’ said Tuppence.
‘No,’ said Tommy, ‘we’d have had to practically replace the damaged building, or else we had to move. This is going to be a very nice house some day. I’m quite sure of that. Anyway, there’s going to be room in it for all the things we want to do.’
‘When you say the things we want to do,’ Tuppence had said, ‘you mean the things we want to find places for and to keep.’
‘I know,’ said Tommy. ‘One keeps far too much. I couldn’t agree with you more.’
At that moment Tuppence considered something—whether they ever were going to do anything with this house, that is to say, beyond getting into it. It sounded simple but had turned out complex. Partly, of course, all these books.
‘If I’d been a nice ordinary child of nowadays,’ said Tuppence, ‘I wouldn’t have learned to read so easily when I was young. Children nowadays who are four, or five, or six, don’t seem to be able to read when they get to ten or eleven. I can’t think why it was so easy for all of us. We could all read. Me and Martin next door and Jennifer down the road and Cyril and Winifred. All of us. I don’t mean we could all spell very well but we could read anything we wanted to. I don’t know how we learnt. Asking people, I suppose. Things about posters and Carter’s Little Liver Pills. We used to read all about them in the fields when trains got near London. It was very exciting. I always wondered what they were. Oh dear, I must think of what I’m doing.’
She removed some more books. Three-quarters of an hour passed with her absorbed first in Alice Through the Looking-Glass, then with Charlotte Yonge’s Unknown to History. Her hands lingered over the fat shabbiness of The Daisy Chain.
‘Oh, I must read that again,’ said Tuppence. ‘To think of the years and years and years it is since I did read it. Oh dear, how exciting it was, wondering, you know, whether Norman was going to be allowed to be confirmed or not. And Ethel and—what was the name of the place? Coxwell or something like—and Flora who was worldly. I wonder why everyone was “worldly” in those days, and how poorly it was thought of, being worldly. I wonder what we are now. Do you think we’re all worldly or not?’
‘I beg yer pardon, ma’am?’
‘Oh nothing,’ said Tuppence, looking round at her devoted henchman, Albert, who had just appeared in the doorway.
‘I thought you called for something, madam. And you rang the bell, didn’t you?’
‘Not really,’ said Tuppence. ‘I just leant on it getting up on a chair to take a book out.’
‘Is there anything I can take down for you?’
‘Well, I wish you would,’ said Tuppence. ‘I’m falling off those chairs. Some of their legs are very wobbly, some of them rather slippery.’
‘Any book in particular?’
‘Well, I haven’t got on very far with the third shelf up. Two shelves down from the top, you know. I don’t know what books are there.’
Albert mounted on a chair and banging each book in turn to dislodge such dust as it had managed to gather on it, handed things down. Tuppence received them with a good deal of rapture.
‘Oh, fancy! All these. I really have forgotten a lot of these. Oh, here’s The Amulet and here’s The Psammead. Here’s The New Treasure Seekers. Oh, I love all those. No, don’t put them in shelves yet, Albert. I think I’ll have to read them first. Well, I mean, one or two of them first, perhaps. Now, what’s this one? Let me see. The Red Cockade. Oh yes, that was one of the historical ones. That was very exciting. And there’s Under the Red Robe, too. Lots of Stanley Weyman. Lots and lots. Of course I used to read those when I was about ten or eleven. I shouldn’t be surprised if I don’t come across The Prisoner of Zenda.’ She sighed with enormous pleasure at the remembrance. ‘The Prisoner of Zenda. One’s first introduction, really, to the romantic novel. The romance of Princess Flavia. The King of Ruritania. Rudolph Rassendyll, some name like that, whom one dreamt of at night.’
Albert handed down another selection.
‘Oh yes,’ said Tuppence, ‘That’s better, really. That’s earlier again. I must put the early ones all together. Now, let me see. What have we got here? Treasure Island. Well, that’s nice but of course I have read Treasure Island again, and I’ve seen, I think, two films of it. I don’t like seeing it on films, it never seems right. Oh—and here’s Kidnapped. Yes, I always liked that.’
Albert stretched up, overdid his armful, and Catriona fell more or less on Tuppence’s head.
‘Oh, sorry, madam. Very sorry.’
‘It’s quite all right,’ said Tuppence, ‘it doesn’t matter. Catriona. Yes. Any more Stevensons up there?’
Albert handed the books down now more gingerly. Tuppence uttered a cry of excessive delight.
‘The Black Arrow I declare! The Black Arrow! Now that’s one of the first books really I ever got hold of and read. Yes. I don’t suppose you ever did, Albert. I mean, you wouldn’t have been born, would you? Now let me think. Let me think. The Black Arrow. Yes, of course, it was that picture on the wall with eyes—real eyes—looking through the eyes of the picture. It was splendid. So frightening, just that. Oh yes. The Black Arrow. What was it? It was all about—oh yes, the cat, the dog? No. The cat, the rat, and Lovell, the dog, Rule all England under the hog. That’s it. The hog was Richard the Third, of course. Though nowadays they all write books saying he was really wonderful. Not a villain at all. But I don’t believe that. Shakespeare didn’t either. After all, he started his play by making Richard say: “I am determined so to prove a villain.” Ah yes. The Black Arrow.’
‘Some more, madam?’
‘No, thank you, Albert. I think I’m rather too tired to go on now.’
‘That’s all right. By the way, the master rang and said he’d be half an hour late.’
‘Never mind,’ said Tuppence.
She sat down in the chair, took The Black Arrow, opened the pages and engrossed herself.
‘Oh dear,’ she said, ‘how wonderful this is. I’ve really forgotten it quite enough to enjoy reading it all over again. It was so exciting.’
Silence
