The Patron Saint of Lost Souls by Menna Van Praag

Author:Menna Van Praag [Praag, Menna Van]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780749023607
Publisher: Allison & Busby
Published: 2018-05-15T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Jude no longer asks her niece over breakfast what she wants to do that day, since she already knows the answer. They don’t say much to each other while Jude dusts the antiques and Gertie paces a furrow in the Persian rugs waiting for the next customer to walk through the door. Now and then Jude glances at her niece, smiling at her desire and hoping that it’s soon fulfilled.

‘I want to live here,’ Gertie says.

Jude puts down her duster. ‘Here? Really? But, we don’t have a kitchen, a bathroom or even a proper bedroom – this isn’t really a house.’

Gertie stops pacing. ‘Yeah, but I bet it was once, hundreds of years ago. It feels like a house. It feels like …’

Jude waits for Gertie to finish. She knows now to not prompt her niece, not to pursue her silences with words, like a fox trying to ferret a rabbit out of a hole, but instead wait for Gertie to emerge from her silence in her own time.

‘Home.’

There it is. And, in that moment, Jude knows that, no matter the chaos or the expense, she will turn Gatsby’s into their home.

‘I wanted to go back to Mum’s house, before,’ Gertie continues. ‘And I don’t like your flat. But I … I love it here, I don’t want to leave.’

‘Then we won’t.’

For the following four hours, while Jude dusts, Gertie chatters about her plans for moving, how she’s going to set everything up, how they’ll sleep upstairs in the office, how they can fit a tiny kitchen and bathroom on the second floor, how they can eat their dinner downstairs on the counter among the antiques, how, how, how …

When the first customer walks in, Gertie instantly stops talking and looks up. She waits for the woman to venture further inside, waits for her to start settling into the shop, to begin absorbing the feeling of the furniture, the smell of things steeped in history, the essence of beauty revealed and wishes fulfilled.

Then Gertie walks towards the woman, who is now examining the engraved glass book cabinet, her fingers tracing circles of awe along the elaborate curls. She crouches next to it for some time before realising that Gertie is standing next to her. The woman glances up, startled out of her reverie.

‘Oh, sorry,’ she says. ‘I was just looking. Isn’t it lovely?’

Gertie nods.

‘It will look so beautiful in my bedroom. I know just what I’ll put inside – not just books but my very favourite—’

‘Sorry,’ Gertie says. ‘But it’s not for you.’

‘What?’ The woman asks, taken aback. ‘You think I can’t afford it? I don’t care how much it costs. I know it’s mine, I can feel it.’

Gertie shakes her head. ‘You want it to be, like you want him to be. But he’s not yours either and you can’t change that.’

Now the woman looks at Gertie as if she’s seen a ghost. ‘What – how do you know that?’

At last, the effortless shrug. ‘You can buy it, if you want,’ Gertie says.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.