The Librarian

by Salley Vickers

  He bent and kissed her forehead. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I certainly hope you would have minded.’

  ‘Thank God for your honesty. If you had been coy, I’d have kicked you out of bed here and now.’

  ‘I don’t believe that.’

  ‘You’re right. I’d have considered that ungentlemanly. But I’d probably have kicked you out of my mind, which, I can tell you, is far worse.’

  Sylvia sat up. ‘That’s rather frightening.’

  ‘What is? Here.’ He lit two cigarettes and put one in her mouth.

  ‘The thought that I might get kicked out of your mind suddenly.’

  He laughed and said, ‘I don’t see it looming.’

  ‘Isn’t that what happened to Jeanette?’

  ‘Oh God, do we have to bring Jeanette in?’

  He got out of bed and put on pyjama trousers.

  ‘Sorry.’ He was in his dressing gown by the door. ‘Where are you going?’ She was genuinely frightened now.

  ‘To urinate. It’s not considered good form to walk stark naked down an English hotel corridor.’

  When he came back she was sitting on the end of the bed wrapped in the sheet.

  ‘Why are you wrapped up like a mummy?’

  ‘I haven’t got a dressing gown.’

  ‘Now you’re being sly.’

  ‘And you are being bloody unfair!’ To her horror, tears were spilling out of her eyes and she turned away, trying hopelessly to hide them.

  ‘Oh, darling Sylvia, I’m sorry. I’m a brute. Come here.’

  A little later, unlocking her naked body from his, she said, ‘That was only the third time I’ve made love.’

  ‘Who were the first and second? Not that I’m jealous.’

  ‘You were, idiot!’ It was safe to call him that now. ‘Last night. I’ve never, I mean you were, you are the first.’

  ‘Oh, Christ. I am an idiot. A blithering idiot. I should have known. Did I hurt you? You should have said. Sylvia?’

  ‘I didn’t want to. And no, you didn’t.’

  ‘Did you think I’d think less of you if you told me? God, I’m so sorry. Darling girl, are you sure I didn’t hurt you?’

  ‘No, honestly, you didn’t. It was, it was fine.’

  ‘Only “fine”?’

  ‘More than fine. Especially, well’ – here she became embarrassed – ‘the second time. I didn’t say because, because I thought you might change your mind.’

  ‘I doubt if I’d’ve been able to. Come here.’

  Later still she said, ‘Would you really not have been jealous if, I mean if there had been someone else before?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I really don’t know. You’ve had people before.’ She was careful now not to mention Jeanette by name.

  ‘That’s different.’

  ‘Why? Why is it different?’

  This time it was he who sat up. ‘I don’t know. It’s tradition, I suppose. The man is allowed to be experienced and the woman –’

  ‘Isn’t allowed to be?’ she interrupted.

  ‘I didn’t make the rules.’

  They seemed to have been parachuted back into the terrifying no-man’s-land of the restaurant the previous evening.

  Why did I come? Sylvia thought. I don’t know him. I don’t know who he is.

  After a few minutes he said, ‘Look, I’d better dress. I should probably make a token appearance at the conference. There’s a bathroom down the hall.’

  She began fumblingly to pick up her discarded clothes and, without looking up, he said, ‘Borrow my dressing gown, if you like,’ and went on putting on his socks.

  In the bathroom, while the taps were running, she sat on the bath mat and cried. Then she lay in a few inches of lukewarm water in the stained bath until someone rattled the bathroom-door handle and a stranger’s voice called crossly, ‘Can you hurry up in there?’

  Hugh was dressed when she got back to the room. Not looking at her, he said, ‘Do you want any breakfast because they don’t serve it here?’

  She pulled on her clothes hastily, her body still clammy. ‘Shall I go and pack my things?’

  ‘Yes, better had.’

  Outside, the sky above them was white and minatory. They walked side by side lugging cases and scrupulously avoiding each other’s body, to a coffee bar by the Tube, where a waitress with a beehive hairdo and pale lipstick waved them to a booth.

  ‘I’m glad you don’t look like that,’ Hugh said.

  Thinking of Jeanette Bell’s Alma Cogan outfit, Sylvia said, ‘How do you like women to look?’

  ‘I don’t know about “women”. I liked you in your flamingo dress. Where is it, by the way?’

  ‘It’s in my case. I brought it with me but then I didn’t feel like wearing it.’

  He laughed and said, ‘Daft apeth!’ and quite suddenly everything was all right again.

  Hugh said that if she could bear to wait he would be finished by one o’clock and then they had the afternoon.

  By the time they met in Trafalgar Square, the day had brightened along with their mood and they clambered up to sit by the lions and eat hot dogs bought from a hawker.

  ‘I’ve never had one of these before,’ she told him.

  ‘It’s the Yankees,’ he said. ‘They like to think they won the war for us and now they feel they have licence to take over our culture. Marigold has become the latest victim. She nagged us into getting her a gramophone of her own and now we have to suffer all this ghastly rock and roll.’

  It was his first mention of his daughter since they had met in London and some instinct in Sylvia kept her from making a response.

  He seemed preoccupied and for a moment she feared the black hole was opening up between them again but as he jumped her down from the high platform he said, ‘This sounds crazy but you wouldn’t put your flamingo dress on for me? I’d like to remember you here, as a flamingo among the lions.’

  And because it seemed that they had, after all, found each other again she went to the public lavatory at the corner of the square to change.

  When she emerged up the steps he grabbed her by the waist and whirled her round so that her skirt billowed out and a passing sailor wolf-whistled.

  ‘There, all the boys in town want you,’ he said, setting her down. ‘Aren’t I the lucky one? What now? The National or the Portrait Gallery?’

  ‘I’ve never been to either.’

  ‘Then you must say.’

  Unable to choose, Sylvia did a schoolgirl ‘Ip dip dip’ and it came out for the National Portrait Gallery.

  Arm in arm, comfortable together now, they discussed the portraits and argued about which of the subjects they would choose to invite for dinner. Hugh chose Handel. ‘He’s terribly ugly,’ Sylvia objected.

  ‘I didn’t know looks were a criterion. His music is divine.’

  ‘All right, you can sit next to him.’ She chose Richard III.

  ‘Why on earth? He was a monster.’

  ‘He wasn’t,’ Sylvia said. ‘That was all Tudor propaganda.’ She was delighted to find a subject about which she knew more than him.

  Hugh decreed that they should take a taxi to the station so they could hold hands. As he was helping her alight from the cab at Paddington, a voice said, ‘Evening, Bell,’ and a man in pinstripes hurried ahead of them into the station.

  ‘Damn,’ Hugh said. ‘That was Geoffrey Wynston-Jones.’

  ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘A neighbour. He’s usually drives into town in his company car, which he’s inordinately proud of. Why the bloody hell has he turned up here, today of all days?’

  ‘Oh, help,’ Sylvia said. ‘I remember that name. It’s Mr “Packard”.’

  She explained about Mrs Packard and the WI. ‘I think she’s got it in for me. I ducked her attempts to corral me for a soiree.’

  ‘Ah, yes, that’s her. I’ve had to suffer one of those.’

  They discussed damage limitation o
n the train home.

  ‘I can say you’re a colleague,’ Hugh said. ‘He can’t have caught more than a glimpse of you and you’re in your flamingo disguise.’

  ‘Not much I’m not. It’s mostly covered by my coat.’

  ‘He’s too busy thinking about his own image to be very perceptive,’ Hugh said. ‘I shall make sure to tell Jeanette I gave a colleague a lift to Paddington.’ And Sylvia, who held her tongue, was rewarded with ‘Look, I’m sorry I snapped about her. She’s my Achilles heel, if you know what I mean?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘The thing is, Jeanette was never enough “in” my mind to be kicked out of it. It was, well, I’ve told you, it was circumstance and then, after the war and all we’d been through, coming home and her waiting for me, or so I thought, and me being too bloody feeble to put things right and, oh, I suppose I feel guilty about that, and then Marigold.’

  Of course, she thought, there will always be Marigold.

  ‘And about Jeanette,’ Hugh said. ‘Her too. I feel guilty about her. She is who she is. She can’t help it.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And she’s not a bad mother. She does her best.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Damn these platitudes. Why in God’s name am I defending her?’

  ‘You’re loyal,’ Sylvia said. ‘It’s right to be loyal.’ She was thinking of her father as she said it.

  23

  Hugh’s wife had been much on Sylvia’s mind so it was a jolt when the following afternoon Jeanette Bell walked through the library doors. Sylvia was sorting out the shelves at the back of the room and it was Dee at the desk. She greeted Jeanette Bell with a less than cordial ‘Afternoon.’

  ‘Actually, Mrs Harris, it was Miss Blackwell I was hoping to speak to.’

  Dee turned an enquiring face to Sylvia, who, heart thumping, hurried forward. ‘Mrs Bell?’

  ‘I am sorry to trouble you, Miss Blackwell, but I wondered, has Marigold been here?’

  Relief made Sylvia gush. ‘I’m sorry, I’m afraid not, Mrs Bell, but wouldn’t she be at school today?’

  Jeanette Bell frowned. ‘It appears she didn’t arrive there this morning. I’ve been at the hairdresser’s and have only just received a telephone call from the school.’

  ‘Dear, dear.’ Dee was looking thrilled. ‘What can have happened? Maybe she felt unwell and went to the doctor’s.’

  Jeanette Bell’s frown deepened. ‘Obviously, I have checked with my husband.’ Turning her back on Dee, she addressed Sylvia. ‘I wouldn’t have heard at all – the school would have simply assumed she was ill – but today is her violin lesson and the teacher comes in specially so if Marigold isn’t going to be there we always …’ She trailed off and looked so bothered that Sylvia felt stricken. She’s human, she thought. I mustn’t make her into a monster.

  As if in response to this unspoken sentiment, Jeanette Bell’s frown softened. ‘I wondered if maybe she might be here or with your neighbour’s son.’

  ‘Sam?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He’ll be at school too. But I can ring his mother if you’re worried.’

  There was no reply from the Hedges’ phone. Sylvia promised to ask June about Marigold once she got home but shortly after four Ray also arrived unexpectedly at the library with the twins.

  ‘Hello, Sylvia,’ the girls chorused, hoping to be corrected by their father. When no correction was forthcoming they pointedly asked, ‘Can we look at the books, please, SYLVIA?’ and ran over to the bookshelves without waiting for permission.

  Ray said, ‘You haven’t seen my son by any chance?’

  ‘Sam? No. Why?’

  ‘He was supposed to collect these two from the school caretaker and wait for me to take them on to the dentist’s. I suppose he forgot, the ninny.’

  Sylvia began to feel uneasy. ‘I’ve not seen him, Ray, but if he happens along I’ll tell him you were here.’

  When Ray had rounded up the twins and shooed them through the door Dee said, ‘They’ll be truanting, the pair of them, the saucy monkeys.’

  The thought had been occurring to Sylvia. ‘Oh Lord, do you think so, Dee?’

  ‘It’s the girl leading him on. Girls do that. I’ve seen it time and time again. Sam’ll be off somewhere with Miss Bell, you see if I’m right.’

  Hugh had promised Sylvia that he would try to meet her after work at the foundry. She waited in the cold, smoking and reflecting on what Dee had said. It was true, Sam was captivated by Marigold and perhaps it did suit Marigold, who seemed to have trouble making friends with her school peers, to have Sam as an acolyte.

  Hugh didn’t appear at the foundry. She lingered there awhile in hope so it was late when she passed number 3 and Ray called out to her to come in.

  From the kitchen the twins could be heard in the bathroom arguing with June about how best to clean their teeth.

  ‘Come on, girls. It’s way past your bedtime.’

  ‘The dentist man said at least five minutes we had to brush and it’s not nearly that much time yet.’

  Sylvia asked, ‘What is it, Ray?’

  ‘It’s the boy. He’s gone missing.’

  Sam had not returned home and a call to his teacher, Sue Bunce, revealed that he had not turned up for school that day.

  ‘It seems Marigold has gone missing too. The doctor and his missis have been round here,’ Ray said, his wide friendly face crumpled with concern. ‘They rang the police station and the police are coming round.’ No one had seen either child since early that same morning.

  Ray’s account, especially his report of the visit by Hugh and Jeanette Bell, was disturbing. Sylvia was, in turn, visited by a horrible feeling that whatever had happened to the children she was to blame. ‘I’m sure they’ll be OK, Ray. Sam’s sensible.’ Or was.

  ‘I’ll tan his backside if this turns out to be one of his daft bloody jokes.’

  June appeared, looking harassed. ‘I can’t settle the twins. They know something’s up. Can you go and shut them up, Ray?’

  While Ray was attempting to quieten the twins June put Sylvia more in the picture. According to Marigold’s mother, Marigold’s new patent shoes and mohair sweater were gone from her room. June had thought at first that Sam had taken nothing but she’d just discovered his long trousers and best shirt were missing from the wash.

  ‘Looks like they might have run away together or something. Mrs Bell made it plain that she’s of the view that it’s all Samuel’s doing.’

  Recalling Dee’s observation, Sylvia said, ‘I can’t see why Marigold wouldn’t be at least equally to blame for whatever it is they’ve got up to.’

  ‘Probably six of one and half a dozen of the other,’ June agreed. ‘Anyway, who cares, so long as they both come back safe and sound.’

  The police had come and gone when, around midnight, Sylvia, anxiously awake, heard the sound of a car draw up. She got up and looked out of the cottage door to see Hugh escorting a shadowy Sam through the Hedges’ garden gate. A pale face that she took to be Marigold’s was pressed to the window of the Hillman.

  She got the gist of the miscreants’ adventure from June the following morning. Marigold had acquired a couple of tickets for a studio recording of Cliff Richard and his band and the two children had gone off to London to be part of the screaming crowd of fans. Afterwards, they had hung around in London, doing no one knew quite what, before catching a train home. Marigold had rung her father from Swindon station to beg a lift.

  Sylvia relayed this later to Dee. ‘They don’t know how Marigold got hold of tickets. It seems she had the money for the rail fares.’

  ‘It’ll be one of those teenage comics she reads. I’ve seen her stuffing them into her bag. That and too much pocket money. I told you she’d be behind it all.’

  ‘June says Marigold’s parents are blaming it all on Sam.’

  ‘Doesn’t surprise me. They’ll believe their precious lambkin can do no wrong. I could tell them a thing or two.’<
br />
  ‘What?’ Sylvia felt alarmed.

  Dee’s reply was not reassuring. ‘I’m keeping my counsel for the time being.’

  The truant officer came round to give Sam a talking-to and it was decreed that he was to be kept in at school for all breaks until the end of term. How Marigold was being punished – if at all – was not known.

  Sam was curt with Sylvia when she tried to make overtures but when after a day or so she offered to walk to school with him he grudgingly accepted. She was sorry for her young friend but also eager to discover what he and Marigold had got up to. In the Bells, she and Sam had common cause.

  ‘It must have been fun,’ she suggested, recalling her own flight to London with Marigold’s father.

  Sam looked suspicious. ‘What?’

  ‘Bunking off to London.’

  ‘S’pose.’

  ‘Sam, I’m not going to tell on you. Honestly.’

  Sam judiciously aimed a stone at the lock-keeper’s house. ‘It was OK.’

  ‘I hope it was better than OK, given all the trouble it has got you into.’

  Ned came out of the house and waved at them. ‘Hello there, Sam, Sylvia.’

  He beamed across the canal at them and Sam’s mood softened.

  ‘We went to the 2i’s, the coffee bar where Tommy Steele started. Cliff played there.’

  ‘Was Cliff Richard there?’

  ‘He doesn’t play there now.’ Sam sounded superior. ‘But we got his autograph after the recording. Well, I didn’t.’

  ‘Marigold did?’

  ‘I got one of the Drifters, that’s his backing group. I’m going to learn guitar.’ His clear grey eyes were alight with new possibilities.

  ‘How did you know all about this, the concert and the coffee bar?’

  ‘The 2i’s was on Six-Five Special. We saw it on TV when Marigold was round ours. And Marigold’s in Cliff’s fan club. She entered the draw in Valentine – that’s a magazine – and she won two tickets and she asked me to go with her.’

  It was a shame, really, Sylvia couldn’t help thinking, that the adventure had caused so much trouble. ‘It was very enterprising of you both. I wouldn’t have dared be so bold at your age,’ she volunteered, and was glad she had because Sam looked grateful. ‘How’s Marigold?’ she asked, but he said wistfully that he didn’t know.