The Librarian

by Salley Vickers

  ‘I’m not a child. I know you have many claims on your time.’ She sensed he was scrutinising her averted face.

  ‘Well, I’m very cross that I’ve not seen you. So there.’

  ‘Dr Bell is looking for Marigold,’ Sylvia said as Dee swung in through the doors. ‘I was telling him you saw her here earlier.’

  ‘I thought you said you saw her outside.’

  ‘Oh yes, I was forgetting. She’s gone into Salisbury with Sam. I’m sorry, Dee, I seem to have spilt your varnish.’

  Dee gave Sylvia an old-fashioned look and said, ‘All right if we lock up now, only I’ve got to get on?’

  ‘You go, Dee. I’ll see to it.’

  ‘If you’re sure, then I’ll be off.’

  When Dee had gone Hugh said, ‘I’ve missed you like hell and, by the way, that spot isn’t so very terrible.’

  ‘I never have them usually.’

  ‘Of course not.’ He brushed a hand over her hair. ‘But I rather like it that you’re still really a teenager. Listen, I’ve been unable to get away because my partner, Dr Monk in the surgery, is ill so I’ve had to work double time. And Jeanette’s been in a pother over Marigold …’

  ‘I thought you’d gone off me,’ she said, trying not to show the uprush of tears.

  ‘More likely you’ll go off an old buffer like me.’

  Reconciled for the moment, they stood holding hands beneath the plaster gaze of Mr Gladstone.

  ‘Look,’ Hugh said, ‘this dodging about and hiding in corners is no good at all. I was wondering, I mean, you must say if you’d rather not, but there’s a weekend conference for GPs about managing a practice in the NHS coming up next month which I can legitimately say I have to attend. I was thinking that maybe you might like to come too, if only for an evening dinner, or …’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘London. They put us up in a not half-bad hotel and I could always get you a room there if … I mean, there’s no need to decide now. You can think about it.’

  It required no thought. ‘I’d love to come, if you’re sure it’ll be all right.’

  ‘Oh, it’ll be all right, all right,’ Hugh said, kissing her.

  22

  The prospect of the forthcoming trip to London with Hugh was disrupting Sylvia’s days and had overtaken her nights. Her sleep was undermined by waves of anxiety, the fear that some catastrophe – another storm, a life-threatening illness in Marigold, a general strike – would upend the whole enterprise, and a conviction that the whole affair was hopeless. She swung like a madwoman between planning a trousseau complete with silk underwear and mentally composing a brave note to Hugh hinting at self-denying reasons for her leaving East Mole. Somehow, this left no room for any feelings of guilt over his wife.

  Sylvia had not liked to probe Sam about his trip with Marigold to Salisbury but from his few remarks she gathered it had gone well. They had apparently found a coffee bar with a juke box, where Marigold had produced money to play the latest hits. Marigold, it seemed, was now a committed follower of Cliff Richard and The Drifters.

  ‘Who are they, Sam?’

  Sam looked scornful. ‘ “Move It” ’s been in the charts since last summer.’

  Since the Salisbury outing Sam had become almost ostentatiously helpful at the library. In an effort to salvage some sanity, Sylvia had attempted to float her Roman Britain project.

  ‘I can’t seem to get your colleague Sue interested,’ she had complained to Gwen one evening at the Troubadour.

  ‘Sue’s a bit of a shrinking violet.’

  Sylvia had met Sue Bunce and had grown sceptical of her supposed fragility. ‘To be honest, Gwen, I wouldn’t say that was the first image that comes to mind.’

  Nevertheless, she had ordered in all the Rosemary Sutcliffs.

  ‘What’s this about?’ Sam asked, holding out a copy of The Silver Branch.

  ‘It’s part of a trilogy about Roman Britain. The hero’s a Roman doctor,’ Sylvia began, and the demon that compels us to voice the names of those we are smitten with made her add, ‘Like Marigold’s father.’

  Sam shared this malaise. ‘Marigold says her dad might take her and me to Bath to see the Roman baths. There’s a Wimpy Bar she says he’ll take us to.’

  Marigold’s visits to the library had resumed. Nowadays she arrived unaccompanied and she and Sam spoke in lowered voices and guffawed together in corners so that Sylvia had to banish them to preserve the quiet.

  She was proud of her library. Her early hard work had borne fruit and the East Mole children and their parents now came regularly and eagerly to change their books. At times she experienced surges of overwhelming love for her little customers, prospecting the shelves for new finds, or sitting spread-legged on the floor, absorbed in exploring the varied kingdoms to which the books she had chosen for them had opened doors. Enthused by the affair with Hugh, she had set up a Poetry Corner, where poems she had Roneod on the copy machine were posted up, and started a Story Club for the underfives.

  Although she missed Hugh’s visits to the library, there was London to look forward to and she was glad on the whole not to have to meet him with Dee around. Dee was sharp-eyed and continued to make the odd allusion to Sylvia’s ‘love life’; Sylvia was banking on the affair with Mr Booth guaranteeing her colleague’s discretion.

  While Mr Booth had recovered a veneer of politeness and made no further outright mention of the unpleasantness with Mr Collins, he referred from time to time in vaguely threatening tones to the Library Committee. Sylvia was conscious that her boss’s dislike of her had grown incrementally with her popularity. There was nothing he could say about the Poetry Corner but she suspected he was looking for reasons to close down the Story Club, which Mad Mary had taken to attending and where mothers left their children so they could get in their shopping unencumbered. So when one morning he met her in the hall with a grave face and pronounced solemnly, ‘Miss Blackwell, a word,’ she followed him to his office guessing that he had contrived some new angle of attack with which to try to close down this enterprise.

  But it was not the Story Club that he had summoned her to speak about.

  ‘I am afraid, Miss Blackwell, there has been a very serious incident. A theft has occurred.’

  ‘Oh dear, what has been taken, Mr Booth?’

  Mr Booth’s brow contracted. ‘I am sorry to have to tell you that the Restricted Access cupboard has been rifled.’

  ‘Heavens! What has gone?’

  Mr Booth looked fleetingly discomposed. ‘I am not at liberty to reveal that at present. Suffice to say that one of our most artistic acquisitions has been removed.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘That, Miss Blackwell, is exactly what I wanted to ask you.’

  His hard-boiled eyes stared at her and Sylvia, to her intense annoyance, began to blush. Damn this wretched habit of hers! ‘Honestly, Mr Booth, I don’t know anything about it.’

  Her boss marched her back along the corridor to the Children’s Library. Dee was already there, inspecting the Restricted Access cupboard.

  ‘We put it here in the corner to be well out of the kids’ way. It was locked when I last checked and you have the only key, Mr Booth.’

  Mr Booth shot her a warning look. ‘It would appear,’ he pronounced, ‘that the Restricted Access collection has been entered by other means.’

  Whoever had penetrated the cupboard had done so skilfully. It had been prised open with some care and then, with the use of chewing gum, stuck shut in order to give an impression that nothing had been tampered with.

  ‘How did you discover it?’ Sylvia asked.

  Dee looked at the floor and Mr Booth said, ‘I asked Mrs Harris to check it, as a precaution, to make sure that all was well, and the theft became apparent.’

  ‘Has much been taken?’ Sylvia asked.

  ‘Just the one book.’

  Sylvia looked at Dee, who looked quickly back down at the floor. ‘I suppose the book is replaceable?’


  Her boss flushed. ‘It was published in Paris, a special edition. It is unlikely that we can readily avail ourselves of another copy.’

  Dee winked at Sylvia. Dee, she surmised, had used her renewed position with Mr Booth to ask if she could view the contents of the cupboard.

  Mr Booth had rung the police to report the theft but when a policeman turned up he hurried out of the room, saying, ‘Back to work now, you two.’

  ‘He doesn’t want you hearing what was taken,’ Dee said once he was out of earshot.

  ‘What was taken?’

  ‘Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller. Blue as an Eskimo’s arse in winter, by all accounts. I don’t blame whoever took it but I wish they’d had the decency to let me have a dekko first.’

  ‘Who do you think it was, Dee?’

  ‘Himself has no need. He has the key.’

  ‘And I’m assuming so do you now, so to speak?’

  ‘It’s how he discovered it,’ Dee said rather smugly. ‘I was on at him to let me have a look. He’s quite proud of his power there, you know, so after quite a lot of buttering him up he agreed and that’s when we found that someone else with an equally dirty mind had got in beforehand.’

  ‘Oh Lord,’ Sylvia suddenly realised, ‘if it can’t be him or you then I’m bound to be the chief suspect.’

  ‘It wasn’t you, by any chance?’ Dee asked.

  ‘Of course not!’

  ‘I did wonder.’

  ‘Dee!’ Sylvia was hurt.

  ‘Don’t get your knickers in a twist. Curiosity’s perfectly normal. If you want my opinion, shutting books away like that just fires your imagination; only makes you want to read them more.’

  This was the start of a fuss that was to become the chief talking point of East Mole for many weeks. But at the time Sylvia had more personal matters on her mind. As the day for her visit to London approached, she seemed less and less able to function normally. She borrowed Misty and Melanie from the Hedges and marched them restlessly up and down the towpath. A couple of times she encountered Lizzie’s cousin Ned fixing the windows in the lock-keeper’s cottage.

  He greeted her with, ‘See you’re keeping fit.’

  ‘I like walking.’

  ‘You must, in this weather.’ The weather had turned foul and the towpath was a slurry of mud. ‘The wind’s coming through these windows like a hound from hell.’

  The second time he saw her he invited her in for a drink.

  ‘You all right then?’ he enquired, handing her a whisky and ginger.

  Sylvia was stricken with the fear that her demeanour must be giving something away. ‘Yes, I’m fine, thank you, Ned.’

  ‘Funny old place, East Mole,’ he opined.

  ‘I like it.’

  ‘There’s no accounting for tastes.’ Ned got up to tip more coal on the fire.

  ‘I came from a London suburb that was dull as ditchwater. I like …’ What was it that she liked …? ‘I like the countryside, the birds and the flowers, and the people too. I’ve made good friends here.’ She schooled herself not to blush as, inevitably, her mind summoned Hugh. ‘Gwen Williams, the teacher at the school, and my neighbours the Hedges and their children and you, Ned, and your cousin Lizzie and, well, all the children who come to the library. I –’ She wanted to say ‘love them’ but was too shy. ‘I like them a lot. Don’t you then?’

  ‘Like them or East Mole? I was born here, remember. The kids are all right but there’s some evil tongues around. Nice as pie to your face, those old biddies, but behind your back …’ He grimaced.

  Suddenly apprehensive, Sylvia said, ‘You make it all sound rather sinister.’

  ‘Don’t mind me. Anyway, you have to make the best of things.’

  ‘I suppose you do,’ Sylvia agreed. For a moment she juggled with the idea of confiding about Hugh.

  ‘You’re all right,’ Ned said. ‘Auntie Thelma likes you. She can’t speak well enough of you since you helped our Liz. Her word goes a long way round here.’

  Sylvia abandoned any idea of confiding. For all he appeared so trustworthy, Ned was Mrs Bird’s great-nephew and she was beginning to know enough to recognize that whoever else she might trust it was not quite safe to trust Mrs Bird.

  It had been agreed between Hugh and Sylvia that she would come to London to meet him on the Saturday afternoon when she had finished work.

  ‘I’ll be tied up for most of the day, worse luck,’ Hugh had said. He had sounded nervous and among Sylvia’s anxieties was the apprehension that he was now regretting his invitation. She was old enough to have learned that the things we most look forward to often turn out to be disappointing, just as the things we dread are usually, in practice, less awful than we suppose. Reminding herself of this bleak truth, she tried to concentrate her efforts on fearing the weekend but, boarding the train in Swindon, she felt weak with a deluge of excitement.

  Hugh had given her money for a taxi – ‘I can’t take this,’ she had protested but he was adamant: ‘I don’t want you getting lost in London. It’s for my peace of mind.’ And she had to admit she was glad of it because by the time she alighted at Paddington her legs had begun to shake so much she wasn’t sure she could have managed the Tube.

  The hotel, a tall white stuccoed house with a man in green uniform and gold braid standing guard at the entrance, was near the museums in South Kensington. She was shown to a room on an upper floor with a single bed and grimy windows that overlooked a noisy street.

  Sylvia unpacked her case, put on the coral-coloured frock she had worn at the Elgar concert, took it off again, studied herself in her underwear in the looking glass, changed first the bra and then the knickers and put back on the skirt and blouse she had travelled in. For some reason this made her feel more secure.

  Hugh had said he wouldn’t be free until six so she spent an hour in the Natural History Museum, pretending to look at dusty-feathered birds with dead eyes and their plundered eggs and the stuffed elephants standing lofty and imperious in the great central hall. Then it was time to meet Hugh.

  He met her by the entrance to South Kensington Tube station.

  ‘Hello there.’

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Journey here OK?’

  ‘Fine, thanks.’

  ‘No difficulties with the taxi or anything?’

  ‘No, it was fine, thanks.’

  ‘Your room all right at the hotel?’

  ‘Yes, thank you, it’s very nice.’

  ‘Sorry the weather isn’t better for you.’

  This was dire. She followed him round the corner to an Italian café.

  ‘I wasn’t sure where but if this isn’t …?’

  ‘No, honestly, this looks fine.’

  They sat opposite each other at a table by a window, which laid them open to the stares of passers-by. Feeling exposed, Sylvia said that she didn’t know what to order so Hugh ordered spaghetti Bolognese for them both. They drank red wine out of a raffia-skirted bottle and tried to recapture the will-o’-the-wisp spirit that had led them there.

  Hugh examined the dessert menu for longer than the content could warrant while Sylvia tried surreptitiously to wipe away with a wetted napkin a tomato stain she’d dripped on to her skirt.

  ‘Ice cream or fruit salad and cream, though the signs are both may be out of a tin?’ he asked abruptly.

  Sylvia said, ‘Out of a tin’s fine and, if you like, I can go home.’

  After that it got better.

  They walked hand in hand up the road to the park and along to the Albert Memorial.

  ‘Poor old Albert,’ Hugh said.

  ‘Why “poor”?’

  ‘Consider his life with that monster of a woman.’

  ‘I thought they were supposed to be madly in love. Weren’t they a great love story?’

  ‘That was her story! If you ask me, he died to get away from her.’

  There was a jazz concert about to start at the Albert Hall.

  ‘Shall we go?’ Hugh said.
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br />   ‘I don’t know anything about jazz.’

  ‘That don’t mean a thing. You don’t need to “know” about jazz. But it’s up to you, my darling. You say.’

  He had called her ‘my darling’, which was enough for her to want to fall in with any plan. They bought tickets and sat, Hugh with his arm around her, high, high up at the back of the hall. Far below them men in striped waistcoats and narrow ties played saxes and trumpets and clarinets. One of the band, with a neat beard and a bowler hat, began an improvised solo on the clarinet.

  ‘That’s Acker Bilk,’ Hugh whispered. ‘Listen.’

  She listened. But afterwards she could recall nothing but the effect of the music which was to take her somehow bodiless up into the great grandiose dome where her mind seemed to loosen and drift deliciously away from her.

  Walking back after the concert, in answer to his question, she said, ‘I can’t say whether I “liked” it but it was – it was different and strange and I liked that.’

  ‘Funny child.’

  Not entirely relishing this, Sylvia tried to sound adult. ‘I wish I knew more about music. How do you know so much?’

  ‘I don’t really “know” all that much. But I find it consoling.’

  ‘Like me with books?’

  ‘Music is my private prescription for my moods. I have a feeling you don’t have moods.’ He pulled her closer to him so that her hipbone knocked against his. ‘A pair of walking skellingtons, we are.’

  But she wanted to hear more of his moods. ‘Surely everyone has moods, don’t they?’

  ‘It’s a matter of degree. I’m willing to bet my stethoscope I’m a whole lot moodier than you.’

  ‘A stethoscope’s not much to bet.’

  ‘That’s what you think. They’re darned expensive. But OK, my blood-pressure unit too.’

  As they arrived at the hotel door he said, ‘Listen, darling Sylvia, I honestly don’t mind how you answer this but you must say if you want to go straight up to your own room now.’

  ‘Did you really “not mind” how I answered your question last night?’ she asked the following morning. She would have bet she hadn’t slept a wink but had awoken with him leaning on one elbow, gazing down at her.