The Librarian

by Salley Vickers

  He laughed and said, ‘A famous general in the Crimean War. It means, trust me, it will all work out OK.’

  Sylvia couldn’t help reflecting that the Crimean War was not the most reassuring parallel for a love affair, but she kept the thought to herself.

  Back in East Mole, Mrs ‘Packard’ was saying to Mrs Brent, ‘I saw her go off with him in his car. Bold as brass.’

  Mrs Brent looked grave. ‘She seemed a respectable enough girl when she came to speak to us at the WI.’

  Mrs ‘Packard’ had noted Sylvia avoiding her at the Bells’ party. ‘It’s the quiet ones you have to watch, in my experience.’

  20

  Although it snowed before Christmas the fall was the faint-hearted kind, which turns to slush before it even settles, and a blow to the East Mole children’s hopes of snowmen and snowball fights. Sylvia’s hopes for a possible impediment to her journey to Ruislip were also dashed. But her conscience smote her at her father’s joy at having her home again. Even her mother seemed glad to see her.

  Climbing between the cold sheets of her childhood bed, Sylvia remembered how she had yearned for any sign of her mother’s pleasure in her presence, saving up to buy her little gifts, helping with the household chores in order to win her approval. And now it had come too late.

  Was it love or laziness that had made her father give up his life for her mother’s version of it? Or pity for his wife’s straitened vision, the pity that she now felt, in turn, for her father? Impossible not to think of Hugh and Jeanette Bell. Would Marigold, in the years to come, be reflecting on Hugh like this? It was horrible, this pity she felt for her father. He should have had a son, she thought, sliding out of bed to find a cardigan. I should have had a brother too.

  On Christmas Eve, by tradition, the Blackwells attended Midnight Mass. Standing in the crowded church, Sylvia’s mind was flooded with thoughts of Hugh. ‘The first Hugh Bell, the angels did say,’ her mind carolled, so clearly it seemed that the whole congregation must hear it. The days during which there was no chance of seeing him stretched unendurably before her.

  Christmas Day was not as bad as she had feared. The Queen’s Christmas address was to be televised for only the second time and Sylvia’s father had capitulated to his wife’s desire to keep up with the Joneses and bought a TV on Hire Purchase. The example of the Hedges had been used in this campaign. ‘But theirs was one June’s dad got off a customer and renovated,’ he had protested. But the Joneses won the day and Sylvia and her parents squashed up together on the sofa to witness the miracle of a crowned monarch brought into their sitting room.

  ‘Very dignified,’ was Sylvia’s mother’s verdict.

  ‘She’s a chip off the old block,’ her father decided. ‘You were quite right, Old Girl, making me get this.’

  Sylvia’s choice of presents went down well too – her father delivered extracts from Churchill’s speeches and her mother actually wore her scarf. Her parents’ gift to her was a bulky package.

  ‘What is it?’ Sylvia was flummoxed.

  ‘It’s a Teasmade,’ her mother said. ‘So you won’t have to risk your neck going down those dreadful stairs in the mornings.’

  ‘Your mother ordered it specially,’ her father said proudly.

  And Sylvia, who almost above all things enjoyed standing in the mornings watching the birds through number 5’s window while the kettle boiled, felt her eyes prick with tears. Her mother had tried to think about her. Do you have to remove yourself, then, to be wanted? she wondered. If so, then maybe it was as well that she was at a distance from Hugh.

  The library was closed till the New Year but Sylvia had made an excuse for getting back to East Mole earlier. She was greeted by exuberant twins.

  ‘SYLVIA! SYLVIA! We LOVE the Grinch.’

  ‘Oh, good. I am glad.’

  ‘He stole Christmas, the Grinchy did,’ Jem said with satisfaction. ‘Will you read it us? Please, please, Sylvia, PLEASE.’

  ‘Let me settle back in first.’

  Sam, not far behind his sisters, said, ‘I made you a thank-you present.’

  ‘That’s very kind, Sam.’

  ‘We made you one too,’ Pam said, ‘but it got thrown out.’

  Sylvia had hardly finished unpacking when Sam came to the door. He handed her a length of hollowed-out wood. ‘It’s from the plum tree that got hit in the storm.’

  ‘It’s beautiful.’ Sylvia examined the carvings of leaves spiralling round the wood. ‘Who taught you to do this?’

  ‘My grandpa. I’ve got some of his tools.’

  She propped the carved branch on the kitchen windowsill. ‘I can put leaves and feathers and things in it. Thank you, Sam, I shall treasure this.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Sam was looking at the Teasmade.

  ‘A machine for making tea automatically. It wakes you up in the mornings so you don’t need to get up and put on the kettle.’

  ‘Is that why it’s called a Teasmade?’ Sam said, reading the packaging. ‘’Cos the tea’s made in it?’

  ‘D’you know, I’d not thought of that.’

  ‘Can we try it?’

  ‘You’ll have to read the instructions. I can’t make head nor tail of them.’

  Sam filled the Teasmade with water and set the alarm to go off while he helped Sylvia make up and light a fire. He stood on the hearth rug, saying nothing for so long that finally Sylvia asked, ‘Is there something you want to say, Sam?’

  He muttered but all she could hear was ‘… old Gingernut-case’.

  Sylvia had worked out the mystery of the surprise appearance of mistletoe at the Bells’. ‘Sam, did you by chance rob Mr Collins’ apple tree to give Marigold the mistletoe?’ Sam assumed his blank stare and she said, ‘I’m not cross. I’d just like to know.’

  ‘Did she say?’

  ‘No. But I did hear that some mistletoe had turned up on their doorstep.’

  ‘It wasn’t for kissing.’ Sam looked fierce. ‘It was a dare. She dared me to it. Only I slipped coming down and the branch broke off.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘The thing is …’ Sam started, and stopped again.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Dad was asking and I didn’t want him thinking I was lying so I kind of said it was for you.’

  ‘Why for me?’

  ‘Dad wouldn’t mind if I done it for you.’

  ‘ “Did” it for me, Sam, not “done”.’

  She saw his grey eyes begin to fill and felt contrite. Only sadists enjoy the sight of the proud being set down. ‘Sam, listen, that’s the Teasmade going off. Let’s sample the tea over a chocolate Digestive and you tell me exactly what it is you’ve said I said that you could do.’

  Afterwards, Sylvia saw the row over Mr Collins’ apple tree as the harbinger of all the troubles that followed.

  It began with her being kept waiting in the late-afternoon chill on his doorstep. When at last she heard his slippers shuffling to the front door he opened it a mere crack.

  ‘Mr Collins, may I come in?’

  Her neighbour fumbled with a chain and stood with his back pressed against the wall, as if she were the carrier of some infectious disease.

  Number 4’s door opened straight into a living room. The room was sparsely furnished with a couple of utility armchairs. No pictures, only a framed photograph on the mantelpiece beneath which one bar of an electric fire gave off a feeble heat.

  Sylvia stood uncertainly in the middle of the inhospitable room. ‘It’s about your apple tree I’ve come, Mr Collins.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I may have unintentionally misled you.’

  ‘Indeed?’

  With the first rush of resolution ebbing away, Sylvia floundered a little. ‘It seems that I may, that I unintentionally gave Sam Hedges the idea that I would like the branch of your tree that overhangs my path removed.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Yes,’ Sylvia went on, trying to collect her story. ‘I left Sam a note requesting him to tid
y the garden, especially round the path, because my landlord, that is to say my landlady’s husband, Mr Bird –’

  ‘I know who Jim Bird is.’

  ‘Yes, well, he, Mr Bird, had told me, while Sam was with me, that that branch of your tree which overhangs …’

  ‘Which overhung!’

  ‘Yes, of course, which overhung your garden, was by rights mine, as their tenant, the Birds’ tenant, to remove, since, technically …’

  ‘So it was you?’ Mr Collins asked. His pale eyes stared.

  ‘Not as such,’ Sylvia said. She was overtaken by a strong desire to laugh.

  ‘I see.’ Mr Collins’ little rosebud mouth was set. ‘The boy denied it – most vehemently. And his parents too.’

  ‘Yes,’ Sylvia said, hoping she sounded suitably placating. ‘I know. His parents didn’t know, they weren’t aware. Sam was alarmed that he had unintentionally done the wrong thing and as I was away and he couldn’t –’

  ‘But I asked you about it, Miss Blackwell. I asked you most specifically before you went away. I have the date in my diary.’

  ‘Yes,’ Sylvia said, foraging rather desperately for inspiration. ‘You did and I’m sorry. But at that point Sam hadn’t had a chance, we hadn’t had a chance, I should say, to speak and –’

  ‘Miss Blackwell,’ her neighbour interrupted. ‘You are a public servant. A public servant whom I had a hand in appointing. This behaviour is really most unusual.’

  He scratched his freckled scalp and a cloud of dandruff settled on the shoulders of his jersey: an old school jumper shrunk in the wash, moth-eaten and too tight across his little paunch. Distressed by this vision of elderly inadequacy, Sylvia averted her gaze and found it directed at a solitary Christmas card on Mr Collins’ ugly sideboard. Although she had delivered cards to the Hedges and to all her East Mole acquaintance, she had not even considered sending her neighbour a card.

  Looking at the crude picture of the baby Jesus in his crib being worshipped by a couple of shepherds and a snooty-looking Heavenly Host above, she said, ‘I’m most awfully sorry, Mr Collins. I’d like to make it up to you.’ June’s gift to her had been a tin of mince pies. ‘Could I maybe invite you to tea?’

  As if divining her thoughts, he brushed his shoulder irritably. ‘That won’t be necessary.’

  ‘It would be nice if we could be friends.’ And at that moment she truly believed this was possible.

  But her neighbour closed his eyes, as if such a notion were peculiarly abhorrent to him. ‘I shall have to consider reporting this to your superior at the library.’

  Sylvia was suddenly spurred to anger. ‘Do, by all means, Mr Collins. But I think you’ll find that I was perfectly within my rights over removing that branch.’

  Mrs Bird had said so. In this at least she could trust Mrs Bird.

  21

  Sylvia was not too surprised when the following day she was summoned to speak to Mr Booth.

  ‘He wants you in his office,’ Dee told her. ‘Something to do with your neighbour.’

  Her boss was sitting behind his desk, apparently sorting through some papers, when she tapped at the open door.

  ‘Sit down, please, Miss Blackwell. This morning I received a complaint from one of your neighbours.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Mr Collins,’ her boss continued. ‘Who, I am sure I need not remind you, is the Chair of the Library Committee. He informs me that there has been an issue over his property.’

  It crossed Sylvia’s mind to say: What the hell’s it got to do with you? ‘It’s about his apple tree, I expect, Mr Booth.’

  ‘He suggests that you are responsible for damaging it.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You deny that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Mr Booth looked at the open page of a spiral notebook and read out in a pompous voice, ‘ “I became aware that a large section of the tree had been torn down.” ’ He cleared his throat. ‘I am quoting Mr Collins’ own words.’

  ‘Yes?’

  Mr Booth continued to read from his notes. ‘ “Suspecting that Miss Blackwell might know the perpetrator, I approached her and she denied any knowledge of how the damage had come to occur. Subsequently –” ’

  This was too much. ‘ “Subsequently,” ’ Sylvia interrupted, ‘I told him that I was inadvertently responsible.’ Mr Booth began to speak but Sylvia pressed on. ‘My neighbour’s son removed a branch which overhung the garden path of the property I am renting. Legally, it seems, one can remove vegetation that overhangs one’s property. My landlady spoke to the Council about it.’

  There was a silence, during which each weighed up their opponent. Then Mr Booth said, ‘Mr Collins has of course checked his rights.’ He coughed and began to read aloud again. ‘ “It is a requirement that the owner of the said shrub, bush or tree is first invited to remove any extraneous growth himself.” ’

  Sylvia’s apparently placid disposition was proving to conceal a temperament that became cold and resolute under fire.

  ‘You see, Mr Booth,’ she said sweetly, ‘the branch was a hazard.’

  ‘A hazard?’

  ‘A health hazard. Sam was quite correct. I did have it in mind to remove the branch. He merely jumped the gun. My landlady’s husband, Mr Bird, gave his eye a nasty graze on it when he came to help with the garden. I was afraid one of the little Hedges might run into it and hurt themselves and then, you see, I would have been responsible. The tree suffered damage during the storm and the branch was just at the children’s eye level – I heard of someone once’ – she began to enjoy herself – ‘who ran into a branch, a perfectly innocent-seeming branch, and went stone-blind.’

  Mr Booth’s hyper-thyroidish eyes blinked.

  ‘I, naturally, apologised to Mr Collins,’ Sylvia continued, confident that the moral high ground was now hers, ‘the moment I worked out what had occurred to cause all this confusion. And I invited him to tea. An olive branch’ – here she had a flash of inspiration – ‘to offset the apple branch, you see. Sadly, he was otherwise engaged.’

  She left the office feeling, as she put it to Hugh, like Daniel leaving the lions’ den. Except that Hugh, save in her mind, wasn’t there.

  She had seen nothing of him. Not even a letter, which, over their lunch in Salisbury, he had hinted he might send to soften his absence over Christmas.

  This is madness, she said to herself. I’m involved with a married man. What a cliché.

  To distract herself she tried to revive her plans for the school.

  ‘How about a Roman Britain project?’ she suggested to Sam. ‘There’s plenty of Roman remains round here.’

  Sam’s interest in reading had receded with the departure of Marigold to her new school. He had painstakingly ploughed through A Tale of Two Cities and had come faithfully to the library in the hope, Sylvia was sure, of discussing it with Marigold. But neither Marigold nor her father made an appearance. Sylvia didn’t know whether to be worried or angry and veered crazily between both states of mind.

  After two bleak weeks Sam didn’t even fake an excuse for accompanying her to the library. He mooched along the towpath, morosely kicking stones and audibly swearing when he missed his mark. Sylvia had developed a rare spot on her forehead and had picked at it so that it resembled a Hindu bindi and was now trying to pretend to herself that she didn’t care what she looked like or who saw it.

  They were both therefore surprised to find Marigold sitting on the library steps. ‘Hi there, slowcoaches!’ she yelled.

  A change had come over Marigold. Her Edwardian-style girl’s frock had been replaced by a pair of tight blue jeans. Her copper-coloured hair was scraped up in a ponytail, she wore a sloppy mohair jumper and over her shoulder an army haversack.

  ‘Hello, Marigold,’ Sylvia said. ‘You look as if you’ve run away from home.’

  Marigold sighed. ‘No such luck.’

  ‘What you doing here?’ Sam tried to sound indifferent.

  ‘Waiting for you, f
athead. I came to see if you fancied going into Salisbury.’

  Sam assumed his super-casual tone. ‘Yeah, don’t mind if I do.’

  ‘Righto,’ Marigold said. ‘Let’s go, Daddy-O.’

  ‘I found the Bell girl in here cool as a cucumber without so much as a by-your-leave when I arrived,’ Dee said. She had taken to coming in on a Saturday, which Sylvia guessed had something to do with her affair with Mr Booth. ‘She claimed she was waiting for you. I packed her off outside. Little minx.’

  ‘I think it was Sam she was waiting for,’ Sylvia said.

  Dee assumed a disapproving expression. ‘I didn’t so much as look at a boy till I was well gone fifteen.’

  Sylvia, who rather doubted this, said, ‘She’s probably just a bit in want of companionship.’ She made no mention of Hugh’s concerns about Marigold’s lack of friends.

  Dee’s expression became knowing. ‘I wouldn’t be so sure. They start young these days. I read in the Express that they reckon it was the war.’

  It was a dull morning. Few children came to change their books and those who did chose mostly books Sylvia disliked. By a quarter past twelve she was in a thoroughly bad temper. The spot on her forehead hurt and seemed to have spread and a malicious ladder had appeared in her stocking.

  ‘Damn, that’s my last matching pair.’

  ‘Do you want to borrow my nail varnish?’ Dee asked.

  Sylvia was bent over, applying nail varnish to her stocking, when from behind her she heard, ‘I was wondering if by chance you’ve seen my errant daughter.’

  She spun round, tipping nail varnish down her skirt. ‘Oh, bloody, bloody hell!’

  ‘Hey,’ Hugh said, grabbing her arm. ‘Are you all right?’

  Sylvia looked swiftly round. Dee had disappeared and they were alone.

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Oh, nothing. Just life.’

  ‘You’re too young to say, “Just life.” ’

  She had turned her face away so he would not see her spot and she couldn’t judge his expression. ‘I said it, didn’t I?’

  ‘Sylvia, are you by any chance cross because you haven’t seen me?’