Page 3 of The Undercover Bookshop

When I return to her, she raises one brow. “Well done. Soon you’ll know everyone’s name and everything about them.”

“Mr. Hastings was very particular about that. The names, I mean, not the gossip.” I press my lips shut. I hadn’t meant to say that last part.

Peggy laughs again. She seems to do that easily. I like that. “Quite right, but the gossip you’ll get for free around here and plenty of it. In such a small village it’s almost considered one’s Christian duty to share.”

“I thought that’d be nice. Along with the bedsit. Knowing everyone’s name and being known, I mean. Even a block in London, at least where I lived, felt too big for that.”

Peggy dips her chin in a nod. “It is.”

As customers come and go Peggy tells me about each one, about the village, and how she landed here herself from the tiny coastal village of St. Eths four years ago. Then the bell rings again, and she stops talking altogether.

A middle-aged woman with dark, almost black, frizzy hair enters, holding the hand of a small boy of about six or seven years old, presumably her son. She is in deep conversation with him. The woman’s face is lit up as if her boy is the most fascinating person in the world. She gives him the kind of smile every child wants to receive from his mum—the kind some of us only ever wish for.

I jump up and race around the counter. “May I help you find something?”

We stand eye to eye for a moment. But that is our only similarity. She carries her height on a broader and fuller frame, and her eyes, so dark I can’t find the pupils within them, seem to somehow overpower my weaker hazel.

She assesses me, then glances to the odds and ends strewn about the aisle and returns to me with a quizzical look. “Ten stick candies.” She taps her son’s head, who, having picked up a duster lying on the floor, is brandishing it like a sword. “Cherry, Peter?”

I pull ten sticks of cherry from the jar and drop them into a paper bag. The woman immediately reaches in and pulls out two. Once payment is received and change is delivered, both mother and son tuck the cherry sticks into their cheeks and leave as happily as they arrived.

Peggy whistles. “You don’t see that every day.”

“What?” I perch again on the stool, watching the pair walk past the full plate glass window, completely absorbed in their conversation once more. “Drat. I forgot to ask their names. Mr. Hastings will want to know who came in.”

“That’s Mrs. Len Beurton and her younger son, Peter. Great Rollright’s great mystery.”

“What do you mean?” I glance towards the window again, but Mrs. Beurton and her son are gone.

“Just that. They’ve lived here five years, and no one knows much about them. For instance, in the time I’ve lived here, I can count with four fingers the times she’s stepped into this shop. And, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, there’s no competition nearby.”

I laugh—at least I try to. “But you couldn’t know, could you? Not really. I mean, you aren’t here all the time.”

“But someone is, and as I said, everyone talks. I assure you, I’m serious. She greets you when you pass her on the street. She bakes scrumptious scones. But she does not socialize or even participate in the weekly ritual of shopping with all the other ladies. Instead, Mrs. Beurton rides her bicycle like the Wicked Witch of the West every Tuesday all the way to Kidlington for her weekly shop. Maybe she’s trying to avoid us all—or maybe, as most people say, she’s having an affair with a man there.”

I blink in surprise.

Peggy opens her mouth to say more, but her eyes catch upon my watch. She grabs my wrist and pulls it towards her. “Is that the time? Goodness, I’ve got to be going. I only meant to step out for a few minutes.” She races to the door. “Come to services on Sunday. We’ll go to the Unicorn after for a Sunday roast. I can introduce you around.”

“Very well,” I call out. “Thank you!” I suspect she doesn’t catch the last part over the bell’s chime and the clatter of her own heels as she rushes onto the sidewalk and the door closes behind her.

I smile and almost wish I had a list before me so I could check off the accomplishment of one of my dreams. Today, I believe I made my first friend.

Then I glance down the store’s main aisle. I can’t afford to get sacked. It’s time to get to work.

Chapter 2

Sunday, 13 November 1949

Great Rollright’s only pub, the Unicorn, is packed on a Sunday. Is it because of the fine weather, or is it simply the place to be? After all, in a village of only 247 people, as Peggy told me, there can’t be many places to congregate—and it does seem almost as if all 247 of us are jostling around the front bar or sitting in the back eating rooms today.

Peggy and I weave through the throng to a little two-top she spies near the back. All along our path, as we bump into patrons packed tight, she introduces me. So many names are thrown my way, so many hands thrust into mine, that my mind reels by the time I drop into my chair. After a few years of what I would call relative anonymity in London, the attention and questions have me aching for my bedsit’s armchair, a cuppa, a good book, and some quiet.

“You look shell-shocked,” Peggy comments as we pull our chairs close to hear each other over the din.

“A little overwhelmed, to be sure. When I was young it was only Mum and me. I then spent the war in Yorkshire with an older couple who barely talked to me. And these last few years? It’s surprising how you can be surrounded by people yet know no one. Not really.”

“Sounds lonely.”