Postern of Fate (Tommy and Tuppence Series) - Agatha Christie [1]
‘And we made some offers,’ said Tommy.
‘Yes. Not as many as they hoped we would make, I expect. Some of the furniture and ornaments were too horrible. Well, fortunately we didn’t have to take those, but when I came and saw the various books–there were some nursery ones, you know, some down in the sitting-room–and there are one or two old favourites. I mean, there still are. There are one or two of my own special favourites. And so I thought it’d be such fun to have them. You know, the story of Androcles and the Lion,’ she said. ‘I remember reading that when I was eight years old. Andrew Lang.’
‘Tell me, Tuppence, were you clever enough to read at eight years old?’
‘Yes,’ said Tuppence, ‘I read at five years old. Everybody could, when I was young. I didn’t know one even had to sort of learn. I mean, somebody would read stories aloud, and you liked them very much and you remembered where the book went back on the shelf and you were always allowed to take it out and have a look at it yourself, and so you found you were reading it too, without bothering to learn to spell or anything like that. It wasn’t so good later,’ she said, ‘because I’ve never been able to spell very well. And if somebody had taught me to spell when I was about four years old I can see it would have been very good indeed. My father did teach me to do addition and subtraction and multiplication, of course, because he said the multiplication table was the most useful thing you could learn in life, and I learnt long division too.’
‘What a clever man he must have been!’
‘I don’t think he was specially clever,’ said Tuppence, ‘but he was just very, very nice.’
‘Aren’t we getting away from the point?’
‘Yes, we are,’ said Tuppence. ‘Well, as I said, when I thought of reading Androcles and the Lion again–it came in a book of stories about animals, I think, by Andrew Lang–oh, I loved that. And there was a story about “a day in my life at Eton” by an Eton schoolboy. I can’t think why I wanted to read that, but I did. It was one of my favourite books. And there were some stories from the classics, and there was Mrs Molesworth, The Cuckoo Clock, Four Winds Farm–’
‘Well, that’s all right,’ said Tommy. ‘No need to give me a whole account of your literary triumphs in early youth.’
‘What I mean is,’ said Tuppence, ‘that you can’t get them nowadays. I mean, sometimes you get reprints of them, but they’ve usually been altered and have different pictures in them. Really, the other day I couldn’t recognize Alice in Wonderland when I saw it. Everything looks so peculiar in it. There are the books I really could get still. Mrs Molesworth, one or two of the old fairy books–Pink, Blue and Yellow–and then, of course, lots of later ones which I’d enjoyed. Lots of Stanley Weymans and things like that. There are quite a lot here, left behind.’
‘All right,’ said Tommy. ‘You were tempted. You felt it was a good buy.’
‘Yes. At least–what d’you mean a “goodbye”?’
‘I mean b-u-y,’ said Tommy.
‘Oh. I thought you were going to leave the room and were saying goodbye to me.’
‘Not at all,’ said Tommy, ‘I was deeply interested. Anyway, it was a good b-u-y.’
‘And I got them very cheap, as I tell you. And–and here they all are among our own books and others. Only, we’ve got such a terrible lot now of books, and the shelves we had made I don’t think are going to be nearly enough. What about your special sanctum? Is there room there for more books?’
‘No, there isn’t,’ said Tommy. ‘There’s not going to be enough for my own.’
‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ said Tuppence, ‘that’s so like us. Do you think we might have to build on an extra room?’
‘No,’ said Tommy, ‘we’re going to economize. We said so the day before yesterday. Do you remember?’
‘That was the day before yesterday,’ said Tuppence. ‘Time alters. What I am going to do now is put in these shelves all the books I really can’t bear to part with. And then–and then we can look at the others and–well, there might be a children’s hospital somewhere and there might, anyway, be places which would like books.