The Bookshop on the Corner (12 page)

HONK!

The sound of a car horn startled Nina and very nearly did make her topple off the branch.

HONK!

Below her was a big, arrogant-looking Land Rover taking up more than half the road. She'd left enough space for it to get through, hadn't she? So what was the problem?

“It's fine!” she yelled down, to no avail. The Land Rover honked again. Furious now, Nina was tempted to throw some
thing down on top of it—an acorn, perhaps, although it wasn't the right season. The birds stuttered and flew away at the ugly noise of the horn, the utter peace and calm of the setting disrupted because some stupid driver thought she might clip their expensive side mirror.

She shinnied down crossly.

“It's fine,” she repeated loudly to the open window. “Just drive past it! It's not that big!”

The face greeting her was stern.

“Well, first, it
is
that big. It's huge.”

Nina realized belatedly that it was Lennox the farmer—her new landlord—in the Land Rover, which paradoxically made her angrier. This was his countryside, after all; why was he determined to ruin it?

“And second, that branch you were so languidly relaxing on is actually rotten right through, couldn't you see?”

Nina glanced upward to where there were flaking bits of bark and green spores blooming in the bare wood beneath the branch.

“It's dying,” said Lennox, his face still set.

“Oh,” she said. “I didn't realize.”

“Obviously,” sniffed Lennox. “If you fall off that and land on the railway line again, you get special marks for carelessness. What the hell were you doing up there anyway?”

Nina shrugged and held the book close. “No reason,” she said.

“I mean, there's no shortage of trees.”

“Well, maybe this was just the one I liked.”

There was a short silence and Lennox looked awkward. He rubbed the back of his neck with his hand.

“So, you settling in all right?”

Nina looked down at the book in her hand. “Oh,” she said awkwardly. “I should be working harder. I mean, I can afford my rent!”

“That's not what I meant,” said Lennox, going pink at the tops of his ears. “I heard the women in the village are all a-flutter about you coming. It's just me that thinks it's a stupid idea.”

“Do you think reading is only for girls, then?” said Nina, still cross. “You know, women find men who read really frightfully attractive.”

She instantly worried that she'd gone too far, as he got out of the Land Rover and stood beside her, not looking at her. Then he heaved a sigh, and clicked his fingers. Instantly, a black and white dog leaped out of the back of the Land Rover and whizzed to his side, and he put his hand down and automatically caressed its ears. Nina found herself thinking how useful that would be, to have an automatic comforting device. The dog looked nice.

“Do they?” said Lennox gruffly.

“I like your dog,” said Nina. “He's very cute.”

The dog wandered up to her and sniffed her hand.

“And clever,” she said. “Oh, you're a lovely boy, aren't you! You're a lovely boy.”

“He's a working dog,” said Lennox shortly. “He isn't a lovely boy. And he and I have to get back to work.”

Nina watched the Land Rover take off, mud splattering from under its tires as it made its way into the distance. She sighed. Pissing off her landlord hadn't exactly been at the top of her to-do list. She glanced back down at the book and the scrap of paper she was still holding. On the other hand, the day had hardly been a write-off.

As she drove back to the farm, she sank into a reverie: the handsome, sad-eyed foreign gentleman with the deeply romantic heart racing through the night on a dashing charger—well, a big train. She knew she shouldn't think this way, but she couldn't help it. It was just how she was built. And now she had an e-mail address she could actually read.

I
t was exciting staying up until midnight to go and meet the night train.

Jim had pointed out in an e-mail several times that what they were doing was completely against regulations and also illegal to boot, so she couldn't tell anyone about it, and she had promised faithfully, feeling rather thrillingly that she was inside a spy novel as she did so.

She was to be at the train crossing at 12:10 precisely. Jim was going to drive too fast—which he never did, he had said solemnly—to begin with, then tell signal control that they needed to stop to delay the timetable. But she would have to be quick.

Feeling the part, Nina dressed entirely in black, including a wide scarf, and tweeted a picture of herself to Surinder, feeling slightly regretful that her friend wasn't there to share the adventure. Surinder didn't even get back to her, which she found rather hurtful. Plus, Griffin's Facebook page had been absolutely chock-full of what a jolly time he was having at his amazing new
media center; Nina wasn't sure whether this was actually true or in fact meant that his new bosses monitored all his social media accounts, so it was pretty difficult to figure out what he was trying to say. And her other friends said hi, of course, but that was about their limit. Everyone was busy, she told herself. Everyone's life went on. And this was definitely something new.

She marched to the door and turned out the lights. In the farmhouse, which she could see down the slope, a lamp was still burning. Nina didn't think farmers stayed up late in general. Perhaps Lennox was the exception. Maybe that was why he was so grumpy all the time. Maybe he was looking through his wedding album, getting maudlin with a glass of whiskey. A shot of pity went through her. She didn't want to think of him like that, think of anyone like that. It was hard. She crept past the farmhouse quietly, even though of course as soon as she started the van, it made enough noise to wake the dead.

As she pulled up at the now familiar train crossing and turned off the van's headlights, she felt like the only human being for miles around. Then, realizing that she
was
the only human being for miles around, she pulled up her scarf and stepped out of the vehicle.

It was cold outside. Owls hooted in the trees, the flapping of wings merging with the noise of the leaves rustling in the wind. Oddly, even though it was right in the middle of the night, it didn't feel quite black. The moon and stars were bright against the patchwork landscape in a way they never could be in the city sky, with its fiercely delineated halogen lights. The chill air caught sharply in her throat, and the world felt very strange.

Suddenly, from far off, she heard it: a tremble, then the slight rattling of wheels on the rails, slowing down; then, coming
around the bend, a shockingly bright light. It gave her a quick, unnerving flashback to being trapped, and she found herself glancing instinctively back at the van to make sure it was still there, safely on the other side of the barrier.

The train was huge in the night, utterly vast and dark, a great metal dragon. No wonder people used to be so scared of them. It slowed and slowed but still made a dark and sinister outline against the gray fields, until a light went on in the cabin and she saw Jim's cheery face, someone else by his side.

Down beside the track she heard footsteps, and she wondered who the second person in the cabin was, for there, suddenly, was Marek, beaming, his white teeth visible above his stubble in the headlight of the train. She flushed at the sight of him, as she always did when, as so often, she had excitedly built up a book-fueled idea of someone in her head, someone who would match up to her romantic fantasies. She felt foolish immediately. But his smile was genuine; he was truly pleased to see her. And his curly black hair still fell over his heavy-lidded eyes.

“Come!” he said. “Come unpack!”

Nina grinned so widely it almost split her face. “I will!”

“AND!” he shouted, excited, moving more quickly. “Come see!”

Jim jumped down from the front of the train.

“Hurry up, hurry up!” he said. “We can't dawdle. The sleeper will have our guts for garters.”

“The sleeper stop too early anyway,” grumbled Marek. “They should be pleased of a few more minutes in their beds. And also, look!”

Behind Jim, the figure Nina had glimpsed in the cab jumped down. To her amazement, it was none other than Surinder.

“SOORS!” she screamed, running to her friend and flinging her arms around her. “You're here! Why are you here?! I've missed you so much.”

Surinder grinned. “It was Marek's idea. When they came to pick up the books. By the way, can you let me know how you managed to persuade these two gigantic hunks to do all your dirty work for you?”

“It's Scotland's newfound proud confidence as a nation,” said Nina, amazed by how delighted she was, even after just a week, to see a friendly face—or rather, it seemed, three friendly faces. She realized suddenly that despite all the new exciting feelings—of autonomy, of freedom—that she'd felt since she arrived, she'd been missing the simple familiarity that came with . . . well, someone you understood, she supposed.

“Come on!” said Marek. “Move!”

They all scurried to the first car, and Jim loosened the pegs, first glancing around furtively. Fortunately there wasn't a soul in sight. Underneath the tarpaulin were what Nina knew were over seventy boxes of books. She eyed them guiltily.

“I had no idea there were that many,” she lied.

“Really?” said Surinder, hoisting two at once. “No, how could you, with only all the many, many warnings from me to move the damn things?”

Nina felt awful. “I must have been the worst roommate in the world.”

Surinder rolled her eyes. “Actually, I moved someone else in too fast. She cries in the bathroom a lot. Then when I ask her if she's all right, she says, ‘I'm fine, but why are all these books in here?'”

Nina frowned. “That sounds awful,” she said. “She's prob
ably depressed. I have a couple of excellent books I could recommend.”

Surinder dumped the boxes in the back of the van.

“Okay,” she said. “I'll pay you on the way out.”

“No you won't,” said Nina, as the two men lifted large boxes off the flatbed. “Oh, I am so thrilled to see you! How did you meet up with them?”

“Flew to Inverness and hitched a ride. It was quite exciting, actually. And I have a bunch of annual leave left over. The office can fall apart. Which it will. I need a break from that place.”

Surinder watched Marek bend over and load a large pile of boxes effortlessly and tidily into the van.

“Good view here, though,” she said.

“Surinder!” said Nina, shocked. She'd had more romantic thoughts.

Surinder looked at her. “Come on, don't say you hadn't noticed,” she said slyly.

Nina thought of the poem suddenly, and caught herself blushing.

“Don't be daft,” she said. “He's a very nice man doing us both a favor.”

“It's a hell of a favor, risking their jobs.” Surinder glanced back. “Do you think he looks a bit like Mark Ruffalo?”

“Stop it.”

“I'm just asking.”

“Do I think a Latvian train driver looks like Mark Ruffalo?”

“A little bit.”

“Hey, you two, hurry up, huh? I do not want to get fired for deeply illegal move on Britain's railways.”

The girls straightened up and giggled.

“Also, I have tea,” added Jim helpfully, holding up his thermos. “So unload the boxes before it gets cold.”

They scurried back to the train to fetch more books.

“Is there not loads of this going on?” Nina asked suddenly as the thought occurred to her. “Lots of illegal naughty things traveling up and down the railway? Smuggling and stuff?”

Jim and Marek smiled.

“Not with us,” said Jim. “I've seen what drugs have done to the place I grew up in. Won't have nothing to do with anything like that. No way. This. This is different.”

Marek frowned. “You know,” he said, “when my parents were little, books were banned in my language. That is why, alas, I read in Russian first and then in the beautiful music of my homeland. So. Anything that spreads books and brings about more books, I would say it is good. Good medicine, not bad.”

They sat on the stoop, talking about books in the moonlight, passing around the hot, very sweet tea, and Nina could easily have stayed there until dawn; but there was a telephone sound in the cab, and simultaneously a loud honk from behind them somewhere—the impatient sleeper, Nina deduced—and it was time for the boys to go.

Jim hopped into the cabin and fired up the engine, which made a deep throbbing sound that shook the ground. Surinder declared herself absolutely bloody freezing and went and sat in the van to warm herself up. Then Marek jumped lightly onto the plate, and Nina smiled up at him.

“I can't thank you enough,” she said.

“You can,” he said gently. “Leave me book every now and again. Whenever you think of us.”

“I shall think of you every day,” said Nina, coloring a little.

“Well, every day it shall also be good,” said Marek, blushing slightly, too.

“I liked your book of poems,” said Nina. “I liked it very much.”

“Poetry is good for people who are in strange lands,” said Marek.

“Yes,” said Nina. “Yes, it is.”

The train gave out a long honk and then slowly, gracefully began to move away beneath the starry sky.

Nina turned around and saw that Surinder, obviously exhausted from her long day, had curled up in the front of the van and fallen fast asleep. Nina herself stayed by the track as the noise from the train faded away, followed in short order by the long and beautiful burgundy and navy blue sleeper, with its busy bar full of strangers meeting and passing by; its hard recliner seats where the cash strapped and the shift workers tried to get some shut-eye; and the mysterious, dimly lit windows of the first-class compartments. As the train slowed, then slid smoothly through the train crossing, nobody aboard was the least bit aware of a girl standing alone in the dark, staring straight ahead.

And then at last the track stopped humming and all was silent once again, and the wide dark Highland valley belonged once more to the owls and the scurrying squirrels and the gentle deer and the wind rustling in the branches and the bright moon overhead and the sense of a world completely and utterly at peace, and Nina, even though she felt chilled, also felt profoundly touched and grateful for her good fortune; and she could not have said how long it had been since she felt that way.