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come back. Pleasant people.’
    The peaceful silence of the shop had surprised me. It wasnot out of the way, far from it, but it had a provincial air, as if it had been in a side street in Ludlow, or Barnstaple. And then Muriel, behind her desk, did not look like a shopkeeper. She had a distant aristocratic appearance which she had no doubt cultivated as being suitable for the daughter of a man of letters. What had surprised me was her superiority, which was genuine. Yet here was a woman who had devoted her life to this dusty enterprise, as though it were a genuine calling. I did not then know about her days in the Land Army, which would have seemed to me as remote as the Peasants’ Revolt. Rather I imagined suitors battling their way in vain through the obstinate door, and being held at arm’s length by Muriel Collier’s distant but well-mannered smile. She seemed to accept me without question, or maybe she was simply anxious to get back to her reading.
    ‘Have you had many applications for the post?’ I inquired cannily. I had already removed my coat.
    ‘One or two,’ she replied. ‘They seemed disappointed when I explained the work to them. I think they saw themselves putting together something more contemporary. And they were unsuitable in ways I could not quite understand. So modern, you know. Young men with their shirts hanging out. And one older man smelling of drink who evidently thought I should have heard of him. He had a beard, and a collection of mannerisms. I could see that he despised me. Called me “Dear lady,” detected spinsterishness. Well, I am a spinster; I make no apology for that. How soon do you think you could start?’
    I was startled, had not expected to come so far so quickly. I said that I could start at once, if that was what she wanted. She gave me a smile that lit up her pale austere features.
    ‘You had better familiarize yourself with the material,’ she said. ‘And there is a café round the corner if you require lunch.’She spoke as if lunch were a reckless indulgence. ‘And my sister comes round at about four o’clock with something for our tea. I’m sure you will be happy here. But,’ she held up an admonitory hand, ‘I must be sure that you will take the work seriously. My sister and I revered our father. These days, I dare say, he would appear unsophisticated. But he wrote in happier times, before all this satire.’ I did not point out that satire was mainly the product of the long-dead Sixties. I was anxious to get down to work. When she mentioned the minuscule salary, also characteristic of the Sixties, I understood why all those young men with their shirts hanging out had turned the job down. This was a time warp. St John Collier, whose œuvre I was about to disinter, was no more a figure of the past than was his daughter. When Hester arrived that same afternoon, her presence announced by an eager shout from outside the door, which her sister was then obliged to open, I felt immensely at ease.
    I might also say at home. St John Collier’s writings struck me as entirely worthy, although the added attraction was the piles of obsolete women’s magazines in which most of them were entombed. The nature articles I could deal with more or less summarily. But in the basement, on my own, except for a very occasional customer, I could indulge my curiosity, not in the great man himself, but in all those horoscopes, those letters of advice—so prudent, so circumspect—written, I suspected, and replied to by the august woman whose photograph was featured at the top of the page, those constipating recipes, and above all the illustrations to the stories, with their winsome lady role models (except that nobody had them then) and their air of gentility which even I, a spoiled product of a later age, felt bound to admire.
    Nostalgia for the shop struck me painfully, but I still had this peculiar interval to observe. Truth to tell it rather frightenedme, while the poor array of