‘Why not try another publisher?’
‘They all work in together.’
Although it was obvious that he was still seeing Lotus (on one occasion he appeared with a strange scar on the side of his neck), or she him, he became really industrious in paying court to Griselda. He would not come to the shop, for fear of Mr Tamburlane; but they would meet at the northern end of the Burlington Arcade, and Griselda would take him to Greenwood Tree House for a good meal and in order to listen to his difficulties and advise him.
‘If I’m not a poet, Griselda, what am I? Am I any more than a current of hot air?’
Unlike Mrs Hatch, Griselda herself did not care for Kynaston’s poems. ‘You dance very well. Why don’t you try to develop that?’
‘I find it empty. As you dance so little yourself, it’s hard to explain to you.’
‘I suppose so. Have some more stew?’
‘Please.’
‘And more potato?’
‘Please.’
‘And more seakale?’
‘Please.’
Griselda sat back. Fortunately Kynaston’s attacks of self-doubt seldom upset his appetite.
‘A piece of currant bread?’
‘If you can spare it.’
Later, when they were seated one on each side of the electric heater, and Kynaston had been describing the difficulties of his early manhood, and munching cream crackers, he said ‘This is what marriage would be like. I think it would be enchanting.’
Griselda could not possibly go as far as that; but, after her recent loneliness and unhappiness, she admitted, though only to herself, that worse things might easily befall her. Kynaston was not very much of a man, but life, she felt, was not very much of a life.
So before he went she let him kiss her on the eyes, and even neck, as well as on the mouth. It was one thing about him that he had never attempted to seduce her. She was quite uncertain whether he cared for her too much or too little.
There were several fogs in November, a rare thing in London. On the foggiest morning Mr Tamburlane arrived late at the shop, wheezing slightly but jubilant. He wore a thick scarf in the colours (a little too vivid, Griselda thought) of the Booksellers Association, and a black Astrakhan hat.
‘My waywardness has put you to the labour of taking down the shutters, Miss de Reptonville. I can but blame a higher power.’ He indicated the fog. ‘But your magnificent zeal is to be repaid a thousandfold. Yes, indeed.’ He sneezed.
‘There’s a new edition of the Apocrypha come in,’ replied Griselda demurely. ‘Shall I arrange some copies in the window?’
‘Work,’ cried Mr Tamburlane, sneezing again, ‘can wait. There are tidings of joy.’
‘What can they be? Shall I make you a warm drink?’
‘A splendid and original device. Let us split a posset. There’s nutmeg in a mustard tin behind the Collected Letters of Horatio Bottomley.’
Griselda set to work in the back room, while Mr Tamburlane sat complimenting her, his legs stretched out to the large gas fire in the shop. Soon the brew was prepared, and Griselda pouring it into large hand-thrown bowls, the colour of nearly cooked rhubarb.
‘Miss Otter has news.’
Griselda nearly scalded her uvula.
OфофофоЯ TофоЯ,’ exclaimed Mr Tamburlane sympathetically. ‘Let us go further.’ He swept across Griselda’s feet, and, unlocking a drawer, brought out a bottle. ‘We are warned against mixing our drinks, as the idiom is, but I think that on this occasion our common joy will absolve us. Here is finest coconut rum brought direct from the fever belt by one of my clients. It was all he had with which to meet his account, poor fellow. He described it as an antidote against cold feet.’
‘Thank you,’ said Griselda, taking the glass Mr Tamburlane extended to her. ‘What is Miss Otter’s news?’
‘That,’ said Mr Tamburlane swallowing his rum at a gulp, ‘I do not know. Miss Otter wrote to me that she will look in this morning to impart it in person. It must be something quite unconventional, because, as you know, this is not Miss Otter’s day.’
‘And that’s all you know?’
‘Enough is as good as a feast, Miss de Reptonville. I counsel you to watch and pray. Although unswervingly antagonistic to an anthropomorphic theogony, I often find purgatation in the precepts of the primitives.’
‘Some more posset, Mr Tamburlane?’
‘Thank you, no. Warmth is already reanimating the various segments of my trunk. Nor, I conceive, should we continue imbibing stimulants until incapacity overtakes us. We should recollect that the hour for toil has but just now chimed; and summon forth our full self-mastery. Or do you differ?’ He sat anxiously interrogative, with the bottle clasped motionless in the air between them.
‘Far from it, Mr Tamburlane. I agree entirely.’
‘What a reassurance that is to me. My inner demon has in it that which could so easily sweep all resistance away like chaff – which indeed on more than one occasion has swept it away like chaff – that I fear constantly the thickness of my own right arm.’ The bottle still hung in the air.
‘I think we have a customer.’
‘Then let all be apple pie and shipshape.’
Griselda drained her glass. She did not care for the coconut rum, because it tasted of coconut.
A young man had been standing outside the shop, looking in the window and hesitating. At first Griselda feared it might be Dennis Hooper, come with persuasive protestations of repentance; but it proved to be a young man looking for a chart of the Blackwater Estuary. From his demeanour outside and inside, it was clear that, like many of the customers, he seldom entered a bookshop.
‘Charts, Mr Tamburlane?’
Mr Tamburlane ran both hands through his upstanding white hair. ‘Try in there, Miss de Reptonville.’ Griselda suspected that he had decided entirely by intuition.
‘Nothing but almanacs,’ said Griselda rumaging.
‘I always like to keep a stock of almanacs for past years,’ said Mr Tamburlane to the customer in a spirit of affable salesmanship. ‘I am, I believe, the only London bookshop to do so.’
The young man simply nodded. He was in a subdued frenzy for a chart of the Blackwater Estuary.
‘It’s ideas such as that, I always like to think, which set one apart from one’s competitors.’
‘I want some idea where she dries out,’ said the young man anxiously. His eyes followed Griselda round the shop. It was clearly a matter of immense moment.
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Griselda. ‘I’m afraid we’ve sold out that particular one just at the moment. Shall I order it for you?’
‘My dear boy,’ said Mr Tamburlane, laying his hands on the customer’s arm. ‘For a sailor who has youth, there are always the stars.’
Miss Otter failed to arrive.
Griselda, although she had never, except at the very beginning, dared to take that particular ridiculous business in the least seriously, found by midday that she was taking it seriously enough to feel sick.
She had nothing for lunch but bananas and cream, and a cup of black coffee. When she returned through the fog to the shop, she was even more alarmed to perceive that Mr Tamburlane seemed really upset.
‘Miss Otter is invariably the very figurehead of punctilio. You could, if I may employ a daring concept at such an anxious moment, use her as a regulator for a clock.’