Bookmarks

Even at the worst of times, there are always a million places to find joy in the world.

Perhaps it’s the bliss of that first stroll in early springtime, when the world seems alive after sleeping for so long.

It could be the beauty of a sunset, or the brilliance of a smile.

For one, perhaps it is a hobby, be it woodworking, painting, or gardening. For another, perhaps it is in the work they do; in the satisfaction of a job well-done.

For Elaine, joy was found on the stretch of Leicester Square that was occupied by at least a dozen bookshops, one after the next. But not new bookshops—new books only had one story to tell. For Elaine, the thrill of a book existed in the people who had lived with it and loved it; in the hands that touched it before hers.

She wasn’t a writer, or an editor, or a publisher, but she loved stories.

She was a bartender in Shoreditch, at an eccentric little pub that catered to an endless stream of new customers. Regulars were few and far between, and that was just how she liked it.

She loved the influx of new bar-goers, all meeting friends or finding new ones, going on first dates or alone and searching for someone they hadn’t met yet. Sometimes they talked to her, and sometimes they didn’t. But she always listened.

She loved her job, but there was something more to that stretch of secondhand bookstores that she frequented. When she worked, she experienced stories as they were happening, but often only a single chapter, and almost always she was left without an ending. But with books…she was always guaranteed at least one ending, along with the bits and pieces of the lives of those who had owned the books before her.

Perhaps it is more accurate to say that Elaine’s joy was found in stories, in collecting moments lived by others, in finding a piece of someone pressed between the pages of a book.

As she stepped into the first store on the strip, this one with chipping blue paint and quaint curving window fronts, a familiar bell tinkled over her head. The owner of the shop, murmured a greeting to her with a faint smile from his seat behind the till. She smiled back, nodding her head as she slipped into the first line of stacks. Her fingers trailed over old cloth covers and leather bindings, scanning titles, appraising ages, and pulling hopefuls from their resting spots.

In the first shop, she scanned through several dozen books, flipping gently through weathered pages and studying faded inscriptions.

To Eddie, Love Vera 1921, read a copy of Percy Shelley’s poems.

Addie, we are so proud of you. Miss you dearly, Grandma and Grandpa, June 1964, read a particularly lovely copy of Alice: Through the Looking Glass.

And so it went. After nearly an hour of browsing, she had been through the entire stock, seeing several old friends from past visits that had yet to be liberated from their shelves. She departed the first shop with a smile at the owner, empty-handed.

She continued this way through two more stores on the same street, and then turned down a quieter alley heading for her favorite shop. When she entered, she was surprised to see the front desk empty. Usually the owner, Arthur, sat vigil over that desk, guarding his books from the rough hands of uncaring customers.

Knowing that he would never leave the shop entirely unattended, she strode through the twisting shelves, heading for the rickety staircase nearly hidden at the back of the store, which led to a basement full of thousands more books.

“Arthur?” She called as she stepped her way carefully down the little spiral staircase.

“Down here!” A voice called from the depths of the shelves that spread from the base of the stairs.

Elaine picked her way past piles of books left alongside the shelves, following the general direction of that voice.

She found Arthur sitting on the floor in the back corner of the basement, surrounded by at least half a dozen boxes filled with books. He was studying one of the books intently, and Elaine gave a small cough to make her presence known.

“Mm? Elaine! Good to see you. It’s been a while.”

Elaine smiled. It had been perhaps a week since her last visit. Of the shop owners, Arthur was her favorite. He was far more protective of his books than the other owners, and far more interested in finding loving owners than seeking a profit, though perhaps that came from his uncanny ability to find first editions that sold to very loving owners for very high prices.

“New books?” Elaine asked.

“Yes! All from one estate. Son of the late owner dropped them off this morning.”

“Was it a good deal?” Elaine asked, stepping over to examine the contents of one of the boxes. Hundreds of books stared back.

“Free!” Arthur said, incredulous.

“What?” Elaine sank down on the floor beside him, running a hand over a stack of volumes.

“The boy was a busy sort. I told him the books could be worth something, but he didn’t seem to care. He just wanted rid of them. I don’t think there was much love between them.”

“No, I would suppose not,” Elaine murmured, still staring at the immense collection.

“Problem is, I don’t have the time to get through all these. I have two more estates that I bought out being dropped off tomorrow, and I’m meant to go to another sale on Friday.”

“I could help,” Elaine said.

Arthur paused. Elaine immediately regretted her offer. Her knowledge of books was amateur at best.

She opened her mouth to take it back, but Arthur grinned and said, “Ready to admit you want to work with books at last?”

“I mean, I know I’m not an expert—”

“My girl, you’ve been coming in here for years. You know almost as much about books as I do. If you’re truly willing, I can show you how I appraise them.”

“Really?”

“Really. The pay is piss poor until we actually sell the books though, I’ll warn you.”

“How about you pay me in books? If I see anything I particularly love that won’t put you out too much, that’s my commission.”

Arthur grinned wider. “Deal.”

***

The next morning, Arthur showed Elaine the signs that a book was something particularly special, and assigned one corner of the space to books that she was unsure of, and wanted him to look at. He taught her how to judge the integrity of the binding and the level of damage to the pages.

As she set to work on the collection, she came to know quite a bit about their previous owner.

Her name had been Margaret, and she had lived in Kensington, in a very nice townhouse (Elaine looked up the address scribbled in the corner of several of the books, spanning from the 1960s to the 2000s), for what seemed to be all her life.

Margaret had a particular love for Agatha Christie books, which Elaine lost count of after 23. She even had multiple copies of the same book, just with different covers, or from different places. She had a copy of Death on the Nile purchased in Cairo in the ‘70s, as per the annotation by Margaret.

Margaret also had a habit of using letters and old notes as bookmarks, as well as simply storing things among the pages of her books. Elaine found a receipt for a coffee in Covenant Garden from 1962 tucked between the pages of Huckleberry Finn, a letter from Margaret’s friend Anna from 1971 in a particularly valuable early edition of Jane Eyre, and even a £100 note in a copy of Shakespeare’s sonnets.

The true treasure though, was a small, scuffed black book that Elaine came across several hours in to her second morning of appraising. The binding was a soft leather, made softer by the constant touch of hands. It had no title on the binding or the cover, only simple gold accents and thick pages that looked to be crammed with more paper pieces of Margaret’s life.

When Elaine flipped open the first page, expecting to see a book title, the breath was nearly knocked from her. There, in place of a title, was Margaret’s now familiar scrawl, reading “The Journal of Margaret Wilson-Davies 1982-2012.” Elaine ran her hands over the words, the first part written in faded black, and the final date written in a shaky hand with dark blue ink.

Entranced, Elaine began to read.

Margaret wrote frequently of her children, a daughter who left for the States in the ‘90s to marry a musician, and the son that had left these books like an unloved child on Arthur’s doorstep. Harry was his name, and he was hugely successful. Cambridge, a job in the financial district at a high-ranking firm, and perpetually unhappy.

In the early years of the journal, Margaret worried over him, but as Elaine moved to more recent entries, Margaret’s tone turned bitter, hurt by her son’s continued estrangement.

Elaine lost track of time flipping through the journal, and before she knew it, had reached the end of the journal. The final entry, written three years after the penultimate entry, was written in the same blue ink and shaky hand as the final date in the front of the journal.

It read:

If you are reading this journal, I am likely gone from this world, and my beloved books are now in the hands of someone other than my family. Harry, if you have kept these books as I asked, you will find me surprised, even in death.

If, as I find more likely, this book is being read by someone working in an old bookshop somewhere, I thank you for taking the time to read this journal. I ask that you love my books dearly, and that, if you sell them, you do so only to the most loving customers. I know this is likely an expensive ask, and one that may mean that many of my books continue to take up space on the prime real estate of your shelves, which is why I’ve decided to offer compensation for this request.

Though I have not had this collection appraised, I estimate, conservatively, that its value is somewhere around £10,000.

In order to entice your conscience (which I assume you have as you have chosen to spend your life giving books a second life) I have left £20,000 in my collection, tucked into the pages of my favorite volumes. Please use this money to care for my books, however you see fit.

From one book-lover to another, thank you.

-Margaret

Elaine sat back, staring at the piles of untouched books that remained. She recalled the £100 note she discovered the day before, now realizing it was the first of many. She took a deep, settling breath, and reached for a book.

Arthur found her hours later, piles of unboxed books in orderly pillars around her and a stack of money at her feet.

“Counting tips?” Arthur asked, startling Elaine as she flipped through the pages of another Christie novel.

Elaine grinned. “A lot more than the tips I usually make. Arthur, this woman left £20,000 tucked into the pages of her books, and look,” she bent forward, grabbed the little black journal, and handed it to him, “she’s asked that you care for her books with the money, and only sell them to people who will love them.”

Arthur’s eyes scanned the journal, growing wider with each line. When he finished, he looked up, smiling. “I think, Elaine,” he said, “Margaret has asked that you care for her books.”