FREETS chapter 1
FREETS
by TV Brown
One For Sorrow...
1.
From the last letter of Edgar Redfers, 1909:
“…I cannot impart to you by words alone how unshakeably (and rather unnervingly) Loweheaf village believes in old superstitions (which they call by the Scotch word, ‘freets’), legendary creatures included....”
#
Lennie found it as she sifted through the final book from the Dwyton estate.
A stray envelope from a century ago. Fountain pen writing and a green halfpenny stamp. Empty, by the looks of it. She picked it up to set aside because someone might buy it for the stamp alone, right? And how fantastic. A letter lay folded underneath it.
Now please let it be from someone - or about something - incredible.
Lennie picked her way through two pages of the spikes and curls of Edwardian handwriting and one filled with a drawing.
Hmmm…
She let her gaze trail down the length of the room.
A gaze feasting on old spines of calfskin, sheepskin, goatskin, aged hardback, paperback, musty velvet. Rows of wooden shelves bathed in low-watt fluorescence. Ollie, her boyfriend, stood with his cigarette hand held out of the open door. Traffic hissed through pools of rain along the high street from the last deluge of June’s utter drenchfest. The smell of wet London pavements intruded on the earthy, chocolatey fragrance of her mother’s antiquarian bookshop. Her shop, now, of course. But her mother the silent partner in her head.
She held up the letter. ‘Ink’s still dark.’
Ollie said, ‘It’s half seven. The table’s booked for half eight. Getting home to change and shower the office off me would be nice.’
‘I’m nearly…’ Though, no, she hadn’t anywhere near finished inventory. ‘This letter.’
‘What? Savill’s making you a reasonable offer, again? Foxton’s? Or is it John D. Wood you’re turning down this time?’
Hilarious. Any estate agent wanting to get its claws on her mother’s shop was out of luck. There had to be a turning point soon, the shop would start making money, the only family business on the High Street. Maybe going on for generations from this seed planted by her mother.
Lennie swung long legs from her seat on the desk, where piles of books made a horseshoe around her. Her trainers scuffed dark floorboards. A tennis racket cover lay on the chair in front of her, a gift from Ollie to replace the one she’d lost. Pushing her hair back over her shoulder, she caught a view of the wall behind her, where a keyaki tree’s monstrous limbs loomed over her in a blow-up of a photo she’d taken in Japan.
The door “tinged” shut behind Ollie as he drew the tie of his business suit free of its knot. Holding up his hand to show her he said, ‘Cig extinguished.’ A beat. ‘Though, burning the place down for the insurance…?’ Up went those impressive dark brows.
Well, someone was on form tonight, wasn’t he? Lennie gave Ollie a look. ‘It’s a letter to a professor.’
‘Yippee. Who from? Charles Dickens? Charles the Second? Charles Manson?’
‘Schoolteacher called Edgar Redfers. 1909. Ink’s still dark after ninety-seven years, which means no oxidisation, which means it could have been in the book all this time.’
Now Ollie focused in on the letter. ‘Anything interesting in it?’
‘Umm...’ What was that mark? A rusty blot smearing the bottom of Edward V11’s chiselled stampface and some envelope. ‘Just mostly about his holidays, collecting superstitions. There’s a map to the village he was visiting. Go on, unleash the snark.’
‘In this case, hardly necessary. How much longer will you be?’ He surveyed the piles of books.
‘I’ll finish tomorrow.’
She flipped the envelope over to the return address.
‘“Church Hall, Loweheaf, Pennines.” Why…? Oh, yeah. Eddie Reddie says…’ She flicked a look back to what Redfers had written about the woods. ‘He says he’s “obliged to make camp in the woods” because nobody’d give him a bed at one of the “scant cottages”. Guessing he used the church hall as an address.’
‘What, no tugged forelocks of welcome for Sir?’ Ollie said. ‘What a wakeup call that must have been for that particular empire builder.’ Relaxed about time now she’d safely ditched her inventory, he tilted a vintage Grimm’s Fairy Tales from the kids’ section.
’There is one interesting bit. “In the event you should be well enough to join me here, I have drawn you a map! Loweheaf appears on no other, as though it were hiding.” Oo!’
Rain began a slashing assault on the bowed glass of the mullioned window, summer once again disappearing from the sky.
‘Not too unusual in those days to have places missing from maps,’ Ollie said.
’Oh, hey, Eddie’s even drawn the path through the woods on the other side of the map. “A tree stump in a clearing marks the path into the woods.”
Ollie had the eyebrows aloft at something in Grimm’s. ‘Lord, the nightmares they allowed in kids’ books back then. Grim’s the word.’
Lennie set the letter on a 1958 collection of “Tchekoff” plays, launched herself off the desk and collected her raincoat off the back of the chair and the racket cover from the seat. She headed to the door, her trailing coat sweeping a cascade of leaflets from a trolley to flee all around the floor. Ollie unleashed a sigh and helped pick them up, reaching under the desk to chase the farthest fugitive.
‘Thanks, boyf,’ she said.
‘Welcome, madwoman.’
She patted down the last leaflet. ‘Think I’ll call the family anyway. There could be something interesting about Eddie Reddie.’
‘An obscure Edwardian teacher camping in some woods?’
‘Just… due diligence.’
Ollie snorted.
‘What?’ she said. ‘I thought you liked due diligence. I thought due diligence and you were a team. I thought you’d be... best man at due diligence’s wedding.’
‘Whereas you...’ He reshelved Grimm’s.
‘I’m so diligent about the things I find between the leaves of my books, thank you.’ Lennie swept her Chubb key off the shelf. ‘Booksellers have found rare letters, amazing marginalia... and the publicity for their shops…Well.’ Turn-things-around kind of publicity. She tossed the key in the air, snap-caught it, punched in the alarm code.
Ollie clicked open the door. The crimson light of a slowing car travelled across his face. Then it was gone.
He said, ‘Darling, agreed, there’ve been lucky finds. But the chances are…’
‘Worth a bloody phone call, Ollie. You never know.’ In which case… She darted back to tuck the letter into a desk drawer. ‘Fingers crossed.’
Lennie snapped the light switch. A fluorescent stutter.
The light went out.
#
Sunday, and, bugger it to hell, still no word from her Dwyton contact.
Lennie hooted encouragement for Ollie’s charge down the rugby field as blindside flanker. Nearly missed that; bad girlfriend, bad! Then again, he was hardly a cheerleader for her plan to use the Redfer letter to somehow drum up trade for the shop. Or the shop at all.
No Dwyton callback, no trace of Redfers on the net. He didn’t appear in any of the WW1 records or death certificates or even birth certificates. According to Gus, not all records were online yet but give it a few years…
Gus. That was another thing.
Two of the players crashed to the ground. At least it was dry; sunshine had fought off the rain at last.
No word from her bloody father yet on whether he’d allow Gus to stay with her and Ollie this summer.
Right, she’d call the old git this evening. Tell him there was no good reason her brother couldn’t come and stay. That at fifteen, Gus should have more freedom. At that age, living with her mother, she'd been allowed to go wherever she wanted. Though dropping that nugget on the Sergeant-Major would be a mistake the size of, roughly, China. He’d already refused to let Gus help at the shop some weekends.
‘Gus will concentrate on school until his GCSEs, Lenore, after which I fully expect to be able to secure him more valuable work experience than stocking shelves.’
Stocking shelves. God, that— Lennie bit at her thumbnail.
Yeah, well, what the Sergeant-Major didn’t know about Gus hanging out at the shop anyway wouldn’t hurt him. She smirked. But “stocking shelves”. Said with such contempt.
Her phone buzzed against her thigh. Text incoming. She pulled it out of her jeans pocket and her shoulders slumped. Not a number in her contacts, let alone the Dwyton one. Her battery was dying; she’d catch up with this text later. No, better check. It could be a business message. She opened the text. Read the first three sentences.
My cousin’s wife sent me your number. Re Edgar Redfers: was friend of Prof Dwyton’s. Bit of a family legend. It’s said Prof lost the only letter Redfers ever sent saying where he’d gone & couldn’t remember name of village. Wasn’t his fault, of course, being 80+, but it haunted the old poor chap the rest of his life, because in 1909 while researching superstitions, Redfers disappeared.
On the field, a player limped, grimacing, from the scrum, blood sluicing down one thigh.
#
Nadine’s Louboutin heels clicked across the sparkling tiles of the department store, towards the cosmetic counter that bestowed its scented favour in welcome. She had never been to Lennie’s shop, but those rare bookshops were all the same, weren’t they? Lennie would be filling the dim, cramped space now, tramping around in trainers as she um-um-ummed through her flatlined-on-arrival proposal on the phone.
Nadine listened on, would take care to let Lennie finish before she jumped in with her own idea. Which she’d conceived ten seconds into Lennie’s opening sally, but, hey, people should feel heard, and she didn’t have a meeting this lunchtime.
She held out her phone-free hand for the salesgirl to spray the latest debuting perfume. Inhaled the scent that bloomed deep and sweet on her wrist. Nodded, unzipped her shoulder bag to find her bank card.
In her ear, Lennie said, ‘So, what d’you think? As publicity fodder for the bookshop? I mean, it’s a good story, human interest, um, and the mystery, and… and… Thing is, Ollie says nobody’ll be interested because Redfers isn’t Lord Lucan or something. And he says just because I haven’t managed to find anything on Redfers to suggest he did turn up, doesn’t mean he didn’t. Records being so patchy then, um, then World War One, and if nobody but Dwyton really seemed to care about some shy teacher at a third-rate school, with no family, back in 1909, why should anyone give a crap in 2006?’
Nadine handed her card to the salesgirl, all bright red lipsticked smile for the regular customer.
‘Are you trying to talk yourself out of your own idea?’
A beat pulsed at the other side of the conversation. ‘Well, I said I’d mention Ollie’s take on it if I called you.’
Ah. So Lennie’d asked Ollie to call her for her marketing expertise, and the script had gone something like:
Ollie: Ask her yourself.
Lennie: She’s your friend.
Ollie (depending on mood and priorities): It’s your project/If you made a bit more effort to get to know her…
Nadine said, ‘It’s an intriguing story. True-life mysteries are hella popular. On your idea of newspaper interest, though? Ollie’s right.’
‘Oh. Really?’ Lennie sounded crushed. ‘Well, I’m still—’
‘Not so fast. For the trad media, no. So, bypass the trad media.’
‘What?’
‘I’m thinking, present the story on a more accessible, exciting, contemporary platform.’ Nadine tucked the perfume into her shoulder bag, smiling thanks at the salesgirl, and strolled around the other counters. ’Blair Witch. Online film that presented as a real documentary, hugely successful concept. That’s your model. Intrepid young bookseller tries to solve the mystery of a man whose last letter turns up in her antiquarian bookshop.
’You won’t solve it, but you’ll pretend you’re about to. You’ve got material for a dynamic webdoc journey. Best of all is the village. North Pennines, a literal Area of Natural Beauty right there for you. Visuals. Take a camcorder to this Loweheaf place, chat up the locals, get them all excited about this mystery on their doorstep. Work up the angles you want. You said Redfers drew a map. Use it. Follow in his footsteps. For impact, don’t use any other map. I would say to fake that, but you’re not a pro, so it’s better to get your authentic reacts.
’Careful, though - don’t tell anybody yet. Keep it all secret until you’ve found out as much as you can at the village. If you do find something, it’s Ta-da! and you can work backwards presenting the story. If you don’t, you’ll know not to stretch out the interview with the Dwytons. Just get their genuine react to the fact you tried to solve the mystery that blighted their ancestor’s old age.’
She paused her not-a-word-in-edgeways proposal for Lennie’s reaction, glancing at her watch. She’d have time to grab sushi.
‘Really?’ Lennie’s voice perked up.
‘Yes. Plus, the superstitions thing is a lovely hook, you can do a lot with that.’
Right. Favour to Ollie done. Wait, though.
‘Oh, and, Lennie. Careful with that envelope. Depending on circumstances, we could get the smudge on it tested.’ She strode out of the department store into the sunshine. Her choppy relaxed bob bounced around her head in time to her stride, heel taps soundtracking. ‘A remote possibility, but the bankability if it turned out to be blood...’
