Free The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald Page A

into the room. Fear would have seemed more natural if the place had been dark, but the bright shop lighting shone into every corner. The muffled din upstairs grew into a turmoil.
    ‘That’s coming on loud, Mrs Green.’
    Christine had given up her Florence Nightingale voice. Mrs Green took her left hand, which was the nearest. A light current seemed to be passing through it, transmitting a cold pulse, as though electricity could become ice.
    ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’
    The hand lay in hers, weightless and motionless. Perhaps it was dangerous to press the child, and yet Florence overwhelmingly felt that she must make her speak and that something must be admitted between them.
    ‘That’s going down my arm like a finger walking,’ said Christine slowly. ‘That stops at the top of my head. I can feel the hairs standing up properly there.’
    It was an admission of sorts. Half rigid, half drowsy, she rocked herself to and fro on the chair in a curious position. The noise upstairs stopped for a moment and then broke out again, this time downstairs and apparently just outside the window, which shook violently. It seemed to be on the point of bursting inwards. Their teacups shook and spun in the saucers. There was a wild rattling as though handful after handful of gravel or shingle was being thrown by an idiot against the glass.
    ‘That’s the rapper. My mam knows there’s a rapper in this old place. She reckoned that wouldn’t start with me, because mine haven’t come on yet.’
    The battering at the window died to a hiss; then gathered itself together and rose to a long animal scream, again and again.
    ‘Don’t mind it, Christine,’ Florence called out with sudden energy. ‘We know what it can’t do.’
    ‘That doesn’t want us to go,’ Christine muttered. ‘That wants us to stay and be tormented.’
    They were besieged. The siege lasted for just over ten minutes, during which time the cold was so intense that Florence could not feel the girl’s hand lying in hers, or even her own fingertips. After ten minutes, Christine fell asleep.
    Florence did not expect her assistant to return; but she came back the very next afternoon, with the suggestion that if they had any more trouble they could both of them kneel down and say the Lord’s prayer. Her mother had advised that it would be a waste of time consulting the Vicar. The Gippings were chapel and did not attend St Edmund’s, but the minister would be of no use either, as though ghosts could be read down or prayed out, rappers could not. Meanwhile, it must surely be time to wash the dusters.
    Florence regretted what seemed a slight on the gracious church whose tower protected the marshes, and whose famous south porch, between its angle buttresses, had been laid in flint checkerwork, silver grey and dark grey, by some ancestor of Mr Brundish. She wished that, when she spoke to the Vicar, the subject did not have to be money. She had been glad to give some of herstock to the harvest festival, although wondering a little how Every Man His Own Mechanic , and a pile of novels, could be considered as fruits of the earth and sea. It must be a burden – she realized that only too well – for the Canon to have to devote so much time to fund-raising. She wished she could see him for a moment simply to ask him: Was William Blake right when he said that everything possible to be believed in was an image of Truth. Supposing it was something not possible to be believed in? Did he believe in rappers? Meanwhile she went to the early service at St Edmund’s, noticing, on the way out, that it was her turn to do the flowers next week. The list stared at her from the porch: Mrs Drury, Mrs Green, Mrs Thornton, Mrs Gamart for two weeks, as having a larger garden.
    Mrs Gipping, whose house was between the old railway station and the church, was pegging up. Seeing Christine’s employer walking down from early service, she signalled to her to come into the backhouse.