‘Indeed, indeed. And so she did. In fact, Miss Potter once owned this very shop. Have you finished?’ He eyed the one mouthful I had left on my fork. ‘I’ll take the dirty plates upstairs out of the way. I do so hate looking at them, don’t you?’
As soon as my fork was back on my plate, he swept it up, along with the bottle of wine. He took his own finished glass too, and seeing mine was no more than half drunk, left it on the table and disappeared through the back door.
I took another sip of my wine, which I didn’t really want, and remembered that I must ask him his name when he returned. Prising information out of this man was a delicate operation.
When he reappeared this time, he was carrying a tea tray with two china cups and a cafetière on it.
‘Do you take sugar?’ he asked as he placed it perilously on top of an old dictionary. I briefly wondered how much the book was worth. ‘Love the stuff myself.’
‘I love it too. Three please.’
‘Ah, I always have four.’
‘Thank you,’ I said as he passed me my cup, and I felt as if I had been swept up in the Mad Hatter’s tea party. ‘So how did Flora MacNichol know Beatrix Potter?’ I asked again.
‘She was once a neighbour of Miss Potter’s.’
‘Up in the Lake District?’
‘Indeed,’ he said approvingly. ‘Do you know about books and their authors, Miss D’Aplièse?’
‘Please, call me Star. And you are . . . ?’
‘Your name is “Star”?’
‘Yes.’ I couldn’t tell from the expression on his face whether he approved or not. ‘It’s short for “Asterope”.’
‘Ah! Aha!’ A smile tickled his lips and he began to chuckle. ‘Again, how deliciously ironic! Asterope, the wife – or mother, depending on the myth – of King Oenomaus of Pisa. You are one of the Seven Sisters of the Pleiades, the third of Atlas and Pleione’s daughters, after Maia and Alcyone, and before Celaeno, Taygete, Electra and Merope . . . “Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising thro’ the mellow shade, Glitter like a swarm of fireflies tangled in a silver braid . . .”’
‘Tennyson,’ I said automatically, recognising the quote from one of Pa’s books.
‘Correct. My dear departed father, who owned this shop before me, studied Classics at Oxford, so my childhood was full of myths and legends . . . although I was not the son to be named after a mythical Greek king, but that’s another story . . .’ His voice trailed off and I worried that his attention had wandered again. ‘No, I was named by my sainted mother, God rest her soul, who studied literature at Oxford. Which was where my parents met and fell in love. Books are in my blood, you might say. Perhaps that is the case for you too. So, do you know anything of the family from which you were originally adopted?’
My hand reached for the plastic wallet. ‘Actually, that’s why I’m here. My father left me these . . . clues to find out where I came from.’
‘Ha! The game is afoot!’ The man clapped his hands together. ‘I do so love a good mystery. Are the clues in there?’
‘Yes, but all the information I have, apart from the bookshop card telling me to ask here about Flora MacNichol, is the place I was born. And this.’ I laid the jewellery box on the table in front of him, opened it and took out the panther. My heart was beating in fear at the trust I was placing in this stranger, sharing information with him that I had not yet even confided in CeCe.
His long fingers pushed his glasses higher up his nose, scrutinising the apparent address of my birth, and then the panther with great care. He returned them to me, and leant back in his chair. He opened his mouth to speak, and I shifted forward to hear his thoughts.
‘It’s time for cake,’ he said eventually. ‘Although, isn’t it always?’
He vanished upstairs, then reappeared with two slices of gooey chocolate gateau. ‘Want some? It’s awfully good. I buy it from the patisserie along the road in the morning. I find my sugar levels drop between three and five, so it’s this, or a nap.’
‘Yes, please,’ I said. ‘I love cake too. By the way, what is your name?’
‘Good grief! Have I not told you? I’m sure I must have done at some point.’
‘No, you haven’t.’
‘Well now, well now . . . that is a thing, and I do apologise. My mother named me for her favourite books. Therefore, I am either a grossly fat marmalade cat, or a fictional embodiment of a famous female author who ran off to France with her female lover and presented herself as a man. So,’ he challenged me, ‘what is my name?’
‘Orlando.’ And it’s perfect, I thought.
‘Miss D’Aplièse’ – he gave me a bow – ‘I am deeply impressed by your literary knowledge. So, am I more fat marmalade cat or, in fact, a woman masquerading as a man?’
I suppressed a laugh. ‘I think you are neither. You are simply you.’
‘And I think, Miss D’Aplièse’ – he leant forward and cupped a hand against his left cheek – ‘that you know far more about literature than you are letting on.’
‘I took a degree in it, but really, I’m no expert.’
‘You underestimate yourself. There are few human beings on the planet who would know of the marmalade cat and the famous biographical novel by . . .’
I watched him search for the author’s name. And knew full well he was still testing me. ‘Virginia Woolf,’ I answered. ‘The story was inspired by the life of Vita Sackville-West and her affair with Violet Trefusis. And Orlando the Marmalade Cat was written by Kathleen Hale. One of her closest friends was Vanessa Bell, Virginia Woolf’s sister, who also had an affair with Vita Sackville-West. But you probably know all this . . .’
As my voice trailed off, I was suddenly embarrassed that I’d imparted all this information. I’d simply been carried away with the excitement of finding another obsessive book lover like me.
Orlando was silent for a while as he digested my words.
‘I knew some of it, yes, but not all. And I had never made the connection between the authors of those two entirely different books. How did you?’
‘I did my dissertation on the Bloomsbury Set.’
‘Aha! But then, as you may well have noticed, Miss D’Aplièse, my mind flits around like a flitty thing. It’s a bee searching for nectar and once it has found it, it moves on. Yours, to the contrary, does not. I believe that you are hiding your light under a bushel. A word I still mourn the death of in the English language, don’t you?’
‘I—’
‘Tell me,’ he continued, ‘how do you know so much, yet present so little? You’re like the sliver of a new moon, and just as mysterious. Miss D’Aplièse . . . Star, Asterope, whichever nom de plume you wish to use, would you like a job?’
‘I would. I need one, because I’m broke.’ I tried not to look too desperate.
‘Ha! So am I, and the business too, after today’s little purchase. Of course, the wages would be dreadful, but I would feed you well.’
‘Exactly how bad are the wages?’ I asked him, in an effort to pin Orlando down before he zoomed off in another direction.