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Authors: Penelope Fitzgerald
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ask you how the business is run. My worry is that they’re posted in the sales book as having been sold at fivepence each. How do you account for that?’
‘It was a mistake on Christine’s part. She thought they were made of paper and misread the price. You can’t expect a child of ten to appreciate an Oriental art that has been handed down through the centuries.’
‘Perhaps not, but you’ve failed to show the loss of 4s. 7d. on each article. How am I supposed to prepare a Trial Balance?’
‘Couldn’t we put it down to petty cash?’ pleaded Florence.
‘The petty cash should be kept for very small sums. I was just going to ask you about that. What is this disbursement of 12s. 11d.?’
‘I daresay it’s for milk.’
‘You’re absolutely certain? Do you keep a cat?’
By September the holiday-makers, with the migrant sea birds, showed the restlessness of coming departure. The Primary School had reopened, and Florence was on her own in the shop for most of the day.
Milo came in and said he would like to buy a birthday present for Kattie. He chose a colouring book of Bible Lands, which Florence considered a mere affectation.
‘So Violet isn’t going to get her own way,’ he said. ‘Has she been in here yet?’
‘We haven’t been open very long.’
‘Six months. But she will come. She has far too much self-respect not to.’
Florence felt relieved, and yet obscurely insulted.
‘I’m hoping to reopen my lending library quite soon,’ she said. ‘Perhaps Mrs Gamart –’
‘Are you making any money?’ Milo asked. There were only two or three other people in the shop, and one of those was a sea scout who came every day after school to read another chapter of I Flew with the Führer . He marked the place with a piece of string weighted down with a boiled sweet.
‘You really need something like this,’ Milo said, not at all urgently. Under his arm he had a thinnish book, covered with the leaf-green paper of the Olympia Press. ‘This is volume one.’
‘Is there a volume two?’
‘Yes, but I’ve lent it to someone, or left it somewhere.’
‘You should keep them together as a set,’ said Florence firmly. She looked at the title, Lolita . ‘I only stock good novels, you know. They don’t move very fast. Is this good?’
‘It’ll make your fortune, Florence.’
‘But is it good?’
‘Yes.’
‘Thank you for suggesting it. I feel the need of advice sometimes. You’re very kind.’
‘You’re always making that mistake,’ Milo replied.
The truth was that Florence Green had not been brought up to understand natures such as Milo’s. Just as she still thought of gravity as a force that pulled things towards it, not simply as a matter of least resistance, so she felt sure that character was a struggle between good and bad intentions. It was too difficult for her to believe that he simply lapsed into whatever he did next only if it seemed to him less trouble than anything else.
She took a note of the title Lolita , and the author’s name, Nabokov. It sounded foreign – Russian, perhaps, she thought.
6
C HRISTINE liked to do the locking up. At the age of ten and a half she knew, for perhaps the last time in her life, exactly how everything should be done. This would be her last year at the Primary. The shadow of her eleven plus, at the end of the next summer, was already felt. Perhaps, indeed, she ought to give up her job and concentrate on her studies, but Florence, for fear of being misunderstood, could not suggest to her assistant that it might be time for her to leave. The two of them, during the past months, had not been without their effect on one another. If Florence was more resilient, Christine had grown more sensitive.
On the first evening of September that could truthfully be called cold they sat, after the shutters were up, in the front room, in the two comfortable chairs, like ladies. Then the child went to put on the kettle in the backhouse, and Florence
‘It was a mistake on Christine’s part. She thought they were made of paper and misread the price. You can’t expect a child of ten to appreciate an Oriental art that has been handed down through the centuries.’
‘Perhaps not, but you’ve failed to show the loss of 4s. 7d. on each article. How am I supposed to prepare a Trial Balance?’
‘Couldn’t we put it down to petty cash?’ pleaded Florence.
‘The petty cash should be kept for very small sums. I was just going to ask you about that. What is this disbursement of 12s. 11d.?’
‘I daresay it’s for milk.’
‘You’re absolutely certain? Do you keep a cat?’
By September the holiday-makers, with the migrant sea birds, showed the restlessness of coming departure. The Primary School had reopened, and Florence was on her own in the shop for most of the day.
Milo came in and said he would like to buy a birthday present for Kattie. He chose a colouring book of Bible Lands, which Florence considered a mere affectation.
‘So Violet isn’t going to get her own way,’ he said. ‘Has she been in here yet?’
‘We haven’t been open very long.’
‘Six months. But she will come. She has far too much self-respect not to.’
Florence felt relieved, and yet obscurely insulted.
‘I’m hoping to reopen my lending library quite soon,’ she said. ‘Perhaps Mrs Gamart –’
‘Are you making any money?’ Milo asked. There were only two or three other people in the shop, and one of those was a sea scout who came every day after school to read another chapter of I Flew with the Führer . He marked the place with a piece of string weighted down with a boiled sweet.
‘You really need something like this,’ Milo said, not at all urgently. Under his arm he had a thinnish book, covered with the leaf-green paper of the Olympia Press. ‘This is volume one.’
‘Is there a volume two?’
‘Yes, but I’ve lent it to someone, or left it somewhere.’
‘You should keep them together as a set,’ said Florence firmly. She looked at the title, Lolita . ‘I only stock good novels, you know. They don’t move very fast. Is this good?’
‘It’ll make your fortune, Florence.’
‘But is it good?’
‘Yes.’
‘Thank you for suggesting it. I feel the need of advice sometimes. You’re very kind.’
‘You’re always making that mistake,’ Milo replied.
The truth was that Florence Green had not been brought up to understand natures such as Milo’s. Just as she still thought of gravity as a force that pulled things towards it, not simply as a matter of least resistance, so she felt sure that character was a struggle between good and bad intentions. It was too difficult for her to believe that he simply lapsed into whatever he did next only if it seemed to him less trouble than anything else.
She took a note of the title Lolita , and the author’s name, Nabokov. It sounded foreign – Russian, perhaps, she thought.
6
C HRISTINE liked to do the locking up. At the age of ten and a half she knew, for perhaps the last time in her life, exactly how everything should be done. This would be her last year at the Primary. The shadow of her eleven plus, at the end of the next summer, was already felt. Perhaps, indeed, she ought to give up her job and concentrate on her studies, but Florence, for fear of being misunderstood, could not suggest to her assistant that it might be time for her to leave. The two of them, during the past months, had not been without their effect on one another. If Florence was more resilient, Christine had grown more sensitive.
On the first evening of September that could truthfully be called cold they sat, after the shutters were up, in the front room, in the two comfortable chairs, like ladies. Then the child went to put on the kettle in the backhouse, and Florence
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