Postern of Fate

‘Tell me, Tuppence, were you clever enough to read at eight years old?’

‘Yes,’ said Tuppence, ‘I read at five years old. Everybody could, when I was young. I didn’t know one even had to sort of learn. I mean, somebody would read stories aloud, and you liked them very much and you remembered where the book went back on the shelf and you were always allowed to take it out and have a look at it yourself, and so you found you were reading it too, without bothering to learn to spell or anything like that. It wasn’t so good later,’ she said, ‘because I’ve never been able to spell very well. And if somebody had taught me to spell when I was about four years old I can see it would have been very good indeed. My father did teach me to do addition and subtraction and multiplication, of course, because he said the multiplication table was the most useful thing you could learn in life, and I learnt long division too.’

‘What a clever man he must have been!’

‘I don’t think he was specially clever,’ said Tuppence, ‘but he was just very, very nice.’

‘Aren’t we getting away from the point?’

‘Yes, we are,’ said Tuppence. ‘Well, as I said, when I thought of reading Androcles and the Lion again—it came in a book of stories about animals, I think, by Andrew Lang—oh, I loved that. And there was a story about “a day in my life at Eton” by an Eton schoolboy. I can’t think why I wanted to read that, but I did. It was one of my favourite books. And there were some stories from the classics, and there was Mrs Molesworth, The Cuckoo Clock, Four Winds Farm—

‘Well, that’s all right,’ said Tommy. ‘No need to give me a whole account of your literary triumphs in early youth.’

‘What I mean is,’ said Tuppence, ‘that you can’t get them nowadays. I mean, sometimes you get reprints of them, but they’ve usually been altered and have different pictures in them. Really, the other day I couldn’t recognize Alice in Wonderland when I saw it. Everything looks so peculiar in it. There are the books I really could get still. Mrs Molesworth, one or two of the old fairy books—Pink, Blue and Yellow—and then, of course, lots of later ones which I’d enjoyed. Lots of Stanley Weymans and things like that. There are quite a lot here, left behind.’

‘All right,’ said Tommy. ‘You were tempted. You felt it was a good buy.’

‘Yes. At least—what d’you mean a “goodbye”?’

‘I mean b-u-y,’ said Tommy.

‘Oh. I thought you were going to leave the room and were saying goodbye to me.’

‘Not at all,’ said Tommy, ‘I was deeply interested. Anyway, it was a good b-u-y.’

‘And I got them very cheap, as I tell you. And—and here they all are among our own books and others. Only, we’ve got such a terrible lot now of books, and the shelves we had made I don’t think are going to be nearly enough. What about your special sanctum? Is there room there for more books?’

‘No, there isn’t,’ said Tommy. ‘There’s not going to be enough for my own.’

‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ said Tuppence, ‘that’s so like us. Do you think we might have to build on an extra room?’

‘No,’ said Tommy, ‘we’re going to economize. We said so the day before yesterday. Do you remember?’

‘That was the day before yesterday,’ said Tuppence. ‘Time alters. What I am going to do now is put in these shelves all the books I really can’t bear to part with. And then—and then we can look at the others and—well, there might be a children’s hospital somewhere and there might, anyway, be places which would like books.’

‘Or we could sell them,’ said Tommy.

‘I don’t suppose they’re the sort of books people would want to buy very much. I don’t think there are any books of rare value or anything like that.’

‘You never know your luck,’ said Tommy. ‘Let’s hope something out of print will fulfil some bookseller’s long-felt want.’

‘In the meantime,’ said Tuppence, ‘we have to put them into the shelves, and look inside them, of course, each time to see whether it’s a book I do really want and I can really remember. I’m trying to get them roughly—well, you know what I mean, sort of sorted. I mean, adventure stories, fairy stories, children’s stories and those stories about schools, where the children were always very rich—L. T. Meade, I think. And some of the books we used to read to Deborah when she was small, too. How we all used to love Winnie the Pooh. And there was The Little Grey Hen too, but I didn’t care very much for that.’

‘I think you’re tiring yourself,’ said Tommy. ‘I think I should leave off what you’re doing now.’

‘Well, perhaps I will,’ said Tuppence, ‘but I think if I could just finish this side of the room, just get the books in here…’

‘Well, I’ll help you,’ said Tommy.

He came over, tilted the case so that the books fell out, gathered up armfuls of them and went to the shelves and shoved them in.

‘I’m putting the same sized ones together, it looks neater,’ he said.

‘Oh, I don’t call that sorting,’ said Tuppence.

‘Sorting enough to get on with. We can do more of that later. You know, make everything really nice. We’ll sort it on some wet day when we can’t think of anything else to do.’

‘The trouble is we always can think of something else to do.’

‘Well now, there’s another seven in there. Now then, there’s only this top corner. Just bring me that wooden chair over there, will you? Are its legs strong enough for me to stand on it? Then I can put some on the top shelf.’

With some care he climbed on the chair. Tuppence lifted up to him an armful of books. He insinuated them with some care on to the top shelf. Disaster only happened with the last three which cascaded to the floor, narrowly missing Tuppence.

‘Oh,’ said Tuppence, ‘that was painful.’

‘Well, I can’t help it. You handed me up too many at once.’

‘Oh well, that does look wonderful,’ said Tuppence, standing back a little. ‘Now then, if you’ll just put these in the second shelf from the bottom, there’s a gap there, that will finish up this particular caseful anyway. It’s a good thing too. These ones I’m doing this morning aren’t really ours, they’re the ones we bought. We may find treasures.’

‘We may,’ said Tommy.

‘I think we shall find treasures. I think I really shall find something. Something that’s worth a lot of money, perhaps.’

‘What do we do then? Sell it?’

‘I expect we’ll have to sell it, yes,’ said Tuppence. ‘Of course we might just keep it and show it to people. You know, not exactly boasting, but just say, you know: “Oh yes, we’ve got really one or two interesting finds.” I think we shall make an interesting find, too.’

‘What—one old favourite you’ve forgotten about?’

‘Not exactly that. I meant something startling, surprising. Something that’ll make all the difference to our lives.’

‘Oh Tuppence,’ said Tommy, ‘what a wonderful mind you’ve got. Much more likely to find something that’s an absolute disaster.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Tuppence. ‘One must have hope. It’s the great thing you have to have in life. Hope. Remember? I’m always full of hope.’

‘I know you are,’ said Tommy. He sighed. ‘I’ve often regretted it.’

CHAPTER 2 (#ufc185c8d-05b8-58f8-983f-58a26f7ab1bb)

The Black Arrow (#ufc185c8d-05b8-58f8-983f-58a26f7ab1bb)

Mrs Thomas Beresford replaced The Cuckoo Clock, by Mrs Molesworth, choosing a vacant place on the third shelf from the bottom. The Mrs Molesworths were congregated here together. Tuppence drew out The Tapestry Room and held it thoughtfully in her fingers. Or she might read Four Winds Farm. She couldn’t remember Four Winds Farm as well as she could remember The Cuckoo Clock and The Tapestry Room. Her fingers wandered… Tommy would be back soon.

She was getting on. Yes, surely she was getting on. If only she didn’t stop and pull out old favourites and read them. Very agreeable but it took a lot of time. And when Tommy asked her in the evening when he came home how things were going and she said, ‘Oh very well now,’ 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.’