I'll See You in Paris (29 page)

Shelves ran floor to ceiling, from one corner to the next, all of them tightly packed with books of all sizes and colors. Any other room in the Grange was partially finished at best: a few appliances and minimal dishware in the kitchen, the sparse dining hall, Win's bed on the floor upstairs. But this room, it was curated. And it was full.

“Win!” Pru said and flew to a row of J. M. Barrie. “This is magnificent!”

Peter Pan. The Little White Bird.

“I knew you'd love it.” He grinned. “Worth getting off your duff for, isn't it?”

“Yes. A million times over.”

Pru spun around to face a collection of Arnold Bennett. She closed her eyes and inhaled, the smell of paper strong in the air.

“I feel a little drunk,” she said.

Win chuckled.

“You seem a little drunk besides.”

Pru opened her eyes again and spotted an old friend.

“Look!” she said, sliding a book from its spot. “Virginia Woolf!
A Room of One's Own
. Every girl at Berkeley would be swooning at the sight.”

She opened the front cover.

“First edition. And it's signed!”

“Ms. Woolf and Gladys Deacon were acquainted,” Win told her. “Virginia said of her, ‘one does fall in love with the Duchess of Marlborough. I did at once.'”

Win then moved down a row of books, looking for something specific.

“Ah!” he said. “Here it is. A collection from R. C. Trevelyan, the poet.
Polyphemus and Other Poems, The Foolishness of Solomon, The Death of Man
. He wrote almost nothing in the late teens and early twenties. A horrid case of writer's block. Virginia Woolf said it was Lady Marlborough who released Bob from his misery. She called it ‘the legacy of Gladys Deacon.'”

“The legacy being she could get writers out of their slumps?” Pru asked. Then added with a wink, “Looks like she'd better get working on you.”

“Hilarious! A real comedy routine from our cherished Miss Valentine. And yes, she was referring to his writer's block but also that Trevelyan lived in Gladys's home for a spell. After leaving the duchess's tutelage, the formerly homosexual poet had a renewed interest in the female sex. Or sex with females.”

“Was it necessary to specify that last bit?” Pru asked. She looked back at the shelf. “Hello,
Mrs. Dalloway.
”

She smiled but although Pru loved
Mrs. Dalloway,
she bypassed her for the book beside it.
Grand Babylon Hotel.

“Mrs. Spencer put Woolf next to Arnold Bennett?” she clucked. “Woolf couldn't stand the man. She thought him hideously old guard.”

“I'm sure you can take it up with Mrs. Spencer. Perhaps she'll permit you to rearrange the books according to each writer's complaints and position of envy.”

“I'll pass, in the interest of my sustained existence. Obviously she doesn't want us in here, if it's hidden away like this.”

Pru stroked the spine of a Cocteau, then a sequence of Conrad.

“Wow,” she said. “Wow.”

“Look what I've got,” Win said and raised a book, tall and thin. “The famous collection of sexual renderings by D. H. Lawrence.”

“You would find that one,” Pru said and rolled her eyes.

She lugged a stool from the corner and climbed on top to examine the upper shelves. Forster, Wells, Shaw, Wharton. The gang's all there.

“Oh!” she said, stretching to the right. “Is that? I can't believe she has this one!”

Pru tugged a book out from between two others, and then held it to her chest.

“One of my favorites.” She breathed in its scent. “
Sailing Alone Around the World
. It was my parents' favorite, too.”

“I'm not familiar,” Win said and took a few steps closer.

Book in hand, she hopped down from the stool.

“It's a memoir by Joshua Slocum,” Pru explained. “He was the first person to sail the world alone. His book was an enormous hit when it came out.”

She pried open the cover and ticked through several pages.

“His publisher built him an onboard library for the journey,” she said. “How neat is that?”

I had already found that it was not good to be alone, and so made companionship with what there was around me, sometimes with the universe and sometimes with my own insignificant self; but my books were always my friends, let fail all else.

“Books were always my friends,” she repeated with a goofy yet winsome smile.

“Ah.” Win set the literary pornography on a shelf. “You like seafaring tomes. I s'pose it makes sense for a Boston girl.”

“I'm not a Boston girl,” Pru said, staring into the book. “I grew up in Sausalito. It's a former fishing village just outside San Francisco.”

As for myself, the wonderful sea charmed me from the first.

Even a decade later Pru could still picture her home. She could catch glimpses of the wind kicking up water, the morning fog gripping the roads. She closed her eyes to conjure the sun as it rose and cleared out the gloom, washing the world clean. Inhaling through the books, Pru could almost smell the sea.

“It's odd,” Win said. “In all of our conversations, I don't think you've once mentioned your childhood. Or your parents. On bad terms, are you?”

Pru shook her head.

“No terms,” she said. “As a child I adored my parents. They were beautiful and careless, but oh such fun.”

“Gatsby-esque?”

“Something like that. They were sufficiently well off to appear rich, but in absolutely no position to spend with the abandon that they did. I suppose my mother was like Mrs. Spencer's, minus the slain lovers. But, gosh, they made it seem so simple and happy with their clothes, and their boat, and all that champagne spilling into the bay.”

“That's why your family was so fond of the sailor,” Win said, pointing to the book still in her hands. “You were bred for the sea.”

“Or irony. When I was nine, my parents took our boat
Day in the Sun
out onto the water and never returned.”

“No!” Win said, mouth gaping. “Surely that's not true.”

“Unfortunately, it is.”

“That's horrific!”

“They eventually found the boat upturned, bobbing along in the bay, their bodies likely sunk to the bottom, if not eaten by sharks.” Pru pitched the book onto the stool. “Joshua Slocum, the author, disappeared on his boat, too.”

“Miss Valentine.” He clutched his chest. “I'm gutted. Truly. I wish I possessed the slightest of couth. I haven't the faintest clue what to say.”

Pru shrugged.

“There's nothing to say, really. I was at school when it happened, which was noteworthy as my parents thought experiencing life was far superior to sitting in a classroom. Luckily, I was a bit of a nerd. Of course I didn't always feel so lucky, having been in school and not with them that day.”

“Oh Miss Valentine,” Win said and looped an arm around her shoulders.

He felt strong. Steady. Secure.

“I wish there was something I could do.”

He squeezed tighter and Pru was surprised to find herself snuffle-nosed and weepy-eyed. It'd been so long since she'd cried about them. Of course, as of late, all her tears had been for Charlie.

“What happened after?” Win asked. “Who raised you?”

“I went to live with my aunt and two much older male cousins,” she said. “They might be as old as you are, even.”

“And they're still alive? Someone call Ripley's!”

Pru gave him a shaky smile.

“Another aunt soon followed,” she said. “Then a relative whose genealogy I can't recall. My parents were viewed as vastly irresponsible but in my first nine years, I lived in one home. In the next nine years, I lived in eight.”

“Blimey, this old man's heart can't take it. It's ripping apart at the mere thought of a wee Valentine amid all that loss and upheaval. Those big eyes, the sweet face. Gutted, I tell you. Simply gutted.”

“It's fine,” Pru insisted. “Everyone was fine. Nothing was awful. At worst, the guardian-of-the-moment ignored me. Sometimes I got a hug, or a Christmas present. It was no love fest, but if you're going to be a foster kid, it was a halfway decent fate.”

Pru shimmied out of his grip.

“So,” she said. “There you have it. My own story. I'll bet you wish you stuck with the explicit drawings.”

“I'm having a hard time digesting this,” Win said, his eyes almost glassy. “God, you were an orphan, weren't you? Straight out of a Dickens novel, impish and ragtag to boot.”

“A Dickens character?” Pru turned to face him, a smile breaking across her face. “Funny, I thought the same about you. I guess it's no surprise we ended up in the same book.”

 

Forty-eight

THE GRANGE

CHACOMBE-AT-BANBURY, OXFORDSHIRE, ENGLAND

JANUARY 1973

They spent over two hours in the library that night, thumbing through books, quoting the masters, sniggering over Lawrence's drawings. He had a knack for making the men appear perfect, the women contorted and deformed.

Finally, even Pru had had her fill.

“Might be time to call it a day,” she said. “I'm dizzy from all the books. Or the dust.”

Pru looked down at her hands. Her fingertips were shiny, bearing a slight silver sheen from the pages and the type. She wiped them on her trousers.

“What's this?” Win said. “Even the highly literary Miss Valentine can tire of books?”

“I think my brain's not used to all the words. Quick. Get me a spaniel to deworm.”

She nudged a first edition of
The Jungle Book
back into its shelf.

“What do you plan to do now?” Win asked.

“Uh. Go to bed? Like a normal person?”

“I was not aware normal and boring were synonymous,” Win said. “Come on. You can sleep when you're dead. Let's head out for a pop.”

“A pop? Of your dreadful family wine? No, thanks, I don't want to suffer another three-day headache.”

“I don't think you can blame the wine quality, it was more a matter of quantity,” he said. “But, no, I was thinking we grab a pint at a proper pub. In town.”

“In town?”

“Sure. The Royal Oak. The George and Dragon. Take your pick.”

Pru weighed the possibility. Other than getting flayed by Mrs. Spencer or ending up in Win's bed a second time, what did she have to lose? Finishing the Wodehouse suddenly didn't seem so important.

“You know what?” Pru said. “Let's do it. Why not?”

“Why not. A jolly good question. Okay. Let's go. No time to waste.”

Before Pru could regain her judgment, Win hastily ushered her from the library and out onto the road. Win hoped they'd keep a tab for him at the G&D because he didn't want to bother scrounging up a few quid.

“Are we competing in a race or something?” Pru asked as they clipped along. “If so, I think we're in the lead.”

“Ha! Funny as always! No, I only want to get there before last call.”

It was nine o'clock.

By the time they bumbled into the George & Dragon, Pru's nose was running from the cold and also their brisk pace. She looked down and realized she had on slippers, lounging clothes, and no coat.

“Uh, Win,” she said. “We should probably turn around. Look at me! I'm not even properly dressed. This is a bad idea…”

“Of course it's a bad idea, which is exactly why we're doing it. Regardless.” He gave her a once-over. “You look rather charming. Quite cute.”

Pru blushed, right on time, and he led her to the back of the pub, ordering up two pints on the way.

“This place is very English,” Pru noted as they sat down.

“How curious. It's not like we're actually in England or anything.”

“And you were heckling me for my ‘comedy routine'?”

Without her asking for it, Win yanked off his sweater and tossed it her way.

“The old G and D is a seventeenth-century pub,” he said. “It has most of its original beams and fireplaces.”

“Well, I love it,” Pru said, wiggling into his sweater. “Much better than sitting in your room while you mope about in your underclothes.”

“And yet, last time I did that you stayed the night.”

Pru chuckled as the barkeep dropped off two pints. They each took a sip. Between the sweater and the beer, Pru thawed at once.

“So,” Win said and wiped a line of foam from his top lip. “You've told me about your parents, offered a touch of Berkeley to boot, now it's time to fess up about the rest of it.”

“The rest of what?”

“Your life,” he said. “But mainly I was referring to the fianc
é
.”

“Charlie?” Pru said, her heart beating fast.

She didn't want to tell Win about Charlie. It felt like two different worlds, compounds that should never mix.

“Charlie.” Win took another gulp of beer. “Sure. Okay. Lay it on me. Tell me about ol' Chuck.”

“There's nothing to tell. He's gone. We weren't even engaged for that long. That's all I have to say on the matter.”

“If you planned to marry the bloke, surely you have more to say.”

“Nope,” she said. “That's pretty much it.”

“Do you want to know what I think?”

“Not particularly.”

“I think he's the reason behind your unceremonious university departure. You've made some vague references to a lack of funds and not knowing what you wanted to be when you grew up. But I think the leaving was about him. This fianc
é
is the lynchpin.”

“Former fianc
é
,” she said. “And ‘unceremonious departure'? My departure was supposed to be literally ceremonious. As in a wedding ceremony.”