She shook her head. “You can’t fix me, Jack. And I can’t fix us.”
His face was as pale as milk. He wasn’t used to losing, to not getting his own way. Olivia wasn’t sure what she felt as she looked at him. Pity? Perhaps a slight tinge of regret that it had come to this. But love? No.
“I’ll contact the wedding planner. I’ll let people know . . .” She looked at him. She even reached for his hand, but he drew his back. “I’m sorry, Jack, but it’s the right thing. For both of us.”
Surrounded by people returning from journeys and setting out on new ones, Olivia turned away from a future she had never truly believed in and walked out into a balmy evening, one step at a time, toward a new future.
Fourteen
Ireland. Present day.
The Evening of Fairy Stories came around quickly. Olivia held Nana’s hand as she sat beside her in the taxi on the way from the nursing home and hoped she’d done the right thing in bringing her. It was hard to know how she would react, but Olivia wanted Nana to see the bookshop full of happy readers and book enthusiasts, just as it had been in its heyday. Nana sat quietly, gazing out of the taxi window like a child caught up in the thrill of a day out. The late afternoon sun made ripe peaches of her cheeks and set life dancing in her eyes.
At the bottom of Little Lane, Olivia helped Nana out of the taxi and looped her arm through hers for support as they picked their way slowly over the cobbles toward Something Old.
Nana paused in front of the old black door, running her hand gently across the grain, as if feeling the contours of a familiar face. “Could do with a lick of paint,” she said. “Tell him, will you? When you see him. To give the door a lick of paint.”
Olivia said she would and pushed the door open.
She remembered how the smell of the shop had struck her that May morning when she’d first learned it belonged to her: pipe tobacco and leather. She wondered if Nana recognized the smell in the same way. She hoped it stirred the same poignant memories for her if she did.
Nana set her handbag down on the desk and walked slowly around the shop, running her hand along the spines of the books, the textured mustard-yellow walls, the handle of Pappy’s pipe. She opened and closed the front door, listening to the jingle-jangle of the bell as Hemingway wound around her legs. He remembered Nana, even if she didn’t remember him. Olivia followed at a distance, giving Nana the space she needed as she walked to Pappy’s chair, resting her palms against the worn faux-velvet fabric. She chuckled and nodded to herself. Olivia hoped she remembered. She hoped, with all her heart, that Nana could feel him here, as she did.
Walking back to the desk, Nana picked up the silver photo frame, running her fingers across the glass.
“There was another photograph,” she said. “Frances took it when she and Elsie had those cameras.”
“There were five photographs in total, Nana.” She took Conan Doyle’s Strand Magazine articles from the old briefcase. “The first article printed the first two photographs and two more photographs were printed in the second article a few months later.” Olivia took the fifth photograph from the desk drawer. “And I found this in a children’s book called Princess Mary’s Gift Book. It is signed to Ellen from Frances. ‘The fifth photograph.’”
Nana peered at the photographs and the yellowing pages. Olivia recognized the look, as half-formed memories flickered across Nana’s face, like butterflies she couldn’t catch. “No. Not these,” she said. “Another one. Fairies at a stream. A waterfall.”
Not wanting to cause any upset, Olivia said she would look for it and settled Nana into Pappy’s chair with a pot of tea and a plate of biscuits while she put the finishing touches to the window display.
When Henry arrived, he offered to sit with Nana to keep her company while Olivia finished setting up. Nana looked so at home in the bookshop, as if she had stopped fighting with herself and her memories and was happy just to be there. Olivia smiled as she noticed how Nana brightened around Henry, charmed by his attentiveness as he made sure she was warm enough and comfortable enough and whether she needed a hot drop of tea. He listened with such patience to Nana’s muddled stories and when she grew tired they sat quietly together, observing what was going on around them.
By seven, the shop was full. By half past, people were still arriving. Chairs were borrowed from the other shops on the lane, and impromptu seats were found on windowsills and steps and other people’s knees. Children sat cross-legged on the floor as Olivia, Ross, and Henry each read a short extract from different fairy stories and poems. Ross surprised them all by reading something he had written called The Fairy’s Tale, which had everyone spellbound and earned him the longest and loudest applause of the evening.
At the end of the readings, Olivia encouraged everyone to stay and browse and buy as many books as they could carry home. Lots of people were interested in the Cottingley articles and the photographs Olivia had displayed around the shop. She was surprised to hear herself talking so knowledgeably about it, drawing on everything she’d read in Frances’s memoir and the newspaper articles and Conan Doyle’s book The Coming of the Fairies, which one customer took a particular interest in.
“His involvement in the Cottingley affair is fascinating,” he said, turning the book over in his hands.
“Do you know much about it?” Olivia asked.
“A little. It’s generally believed that his interest in spirituality and fairy life came about in the same way as many other people’s did at that time, as a result of the war. People wanted—needed—to believe their loved ones lived on. Conan Doyle lost his son in the war and never got over it. He was involved in writing war propaganda, and held himself partly responsible for his son’s death, and for the deaths of so many young men who volunteered. They didn’t realize the extent of the horrors awaiting them at the Front because the papers withheld the worst details.” He studied the book again. “What are you asking for it?”
Olivia was glad she’d looked up the value. “With the two inscriptions and in such excellent condition, it would be worth around five hundred euros to the right buyer.”
“And are you selling?”
She hesitated. “I’m not sure. It’s part of a private collection. It isn’t currently listed in the catalog.”
“I’d be very interested if it was.”
Olivia took his details and said she would let him know.