Free The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald Page B

Gipping, glimpsed between rows of green leaves, was tending the early celery, which would stand fit until Christmas.
    In the damp warmth of the washday kitchen, Mrs Gipping was reassuring. She had been told about the rapper’s visitation; but in her opinion there were disadvantages in every job. ‘You’d like a drink, I expect, before you open up your business.’ Florence was expecting some Nescafé, to which she had grown accustomed, but wasdirected to a large vegetable marrow hung over the sink. A wooden spigot had been driven into the rotund and glistening sides of the marrow. It was boldly striped in ripe green and yellow. Cups and glasses were ranged beneath it, and at a turn of the spigot a cloudy liquid oozed out drop by drop and fell heavily into the nearest cup. Mrs Gipping explained that it hadn’t been up for long and wasn’t at all heady, but that she’d seen a strong man come in and take a drink from a four-week marrow and fall straight down on to the stone floor, so that there was blood everywhere.
    ‘Perhaps you’ll give me the recipe,’ said Florence politely, but Mrs Gipping replied that she never did, or the Women’s Institute, against which she appeared to have some grudge, would go and put it in their collection of Old Country Lore.
    Opening the shop gave her, every morning, the same feeling of promise and opportunity. The books stood as neatly ranged as Gipping’s vegetables, ready for all comers.
    Milo came in at lunch-time. ‘Well, are you going to order Lolita ?’
    ‘I haven’t decided yet. I’ve ordered an inspection copy. I’m confused by what the American papers said about it. One of the reviewers said that it was bad news for the trade and bad news for the public, because it was dull, pretentious, florid and repulsive, but on the other handthere was an article by Graham Greene which said that it was a masterpiece.’
    ‘You haven’t asked me what I think about it.’
    ‘What would be the use? You have lost the second volume, or left it somewhere. Did you ever finish reading it?’
    ‘I can’t remember. Don’t you trust your own judgment, my dear?’
    Florence considered. ‘I trust my moral judgment, yes. But I’m a retailer, and I haven’t been trained to understand the arts and I don’t know whether a book is a masterpiece or not.’
    ‘What does your moral judgment tell you about me?’
    ‘That’s not difficult,’ said Florence. ‘It tells me that you should marry Kattie, think less about yourself, and work harder.’
    ‘But you’re not sure about Lolita ? Are you afraid that the little Gipping girl might read it?’
    ‘Christine? Not in the least. In any case, she never reads the books. She’s an ideal assistant in that way. She only reads Bunty .’
    ‘Or that the Gamarts mightn’t like it? Violet still hasn’t been here, has she?’
    Milo added that the General had told him, when their cars were both waiting at the Flintmarket level crossing, that his wife didn’t expect Lolita would ever be sold in a dear, sleepy little place like Hardborough.
    ‘I don’t want to take any of these things into account. If Lolita is a good book, I want to sell it in my shop.’
    ‘It would make money, you know, if the worst came to the worst.’
    ‘That isn’t the point,’ Florence replied, and really it was not. She wondered why this matter of the worst coming to the worst seemed to recur. Only a few days ago, down on the marshes, Raven had shown her a patch of green succulent weeds which, he said, were considered a delicacy in London and would fetch a high price if they were sent up there. ‘That might help you, Mrs Green, if things don’t work out.’
    ‘We’re doing quite respectably at the moment,’ she told Milo. ‘I shall take good advice about Lolita when the time comes.’
    Milo seemed vaguely dissatisfied. ‘I should like to read Bunty ,’ he said. Florence told him that there was a large pile of Bunties in the backhouse, but she couldn’t part