The Librarian

by Salley Vickers

  Predicting that it was only a matter of time before Lizzie would break, Sylvia had tried to warn Sam on the evening of Mrs Bird’s dramatic appearance. Sam had abandoned his regular place on her gate so she found an excuse to ask his help in moving some books on to a bookshelf that June’s dad had acquired for her.

  ‘He got it off one of his grand customers who was chucking it out. He says to say you’re welcome to it,’ June told her. ‘Dad’s a reader too.’

  Sam lugged down the old Swindon boxes from the spare room. He sat watching as she began to unpack the books.

  ‘Is this the book that Father William poem you read us comes from?’

  He had picked up her old copy of Through the Looking-Glass and Sylvia said, ‘No, that’s the one about chess – you might like to read it.’ Sam put down the book hastily. ‘How is the chess? I keep meaning to ask.’

  ‘I don’t play any more.’

  ‘That’s a pity. My father thinks you’re good.’ Sam shrugged and, not wanting to continue under false pretences, Sylvia said, ‘I don’t know if you’ve heard, Sam, but Lizzie’s in trouble.’

  ‘No. What?’ The alarm in his grey eyes looked genuine.

  ‘She’s been found with the book that was taken from the library. From the locked cupboard in the library.’

  His face very red, Sam said, ‘What book?’

  Sylvia was on the point of saying, ‘I think you know,’ but checked herself. How easy it was to join the ranks of persecutors. Instead she said, ‘From what I gather from her grandmother Lizzie has said nothing so far. But she’s bound in the end to say where it came from.’

  There was a silence.

  ‘How about a cup of cocoa?’ Sylvia suggested.

  They sat drinking cocoa in the room that Sam and his grandfather had decorated for her. This isn’t right, Sylvia thought. He’s a sweet, rather innocent boy. And brave. This is all bloody Mr Booth and bloody, bloody Marigold.

  For a while she let him sit, honouring his need for silence. Finally she said, ‘Look, Sam, I don’t suppose whoever took the book meant to steal it and, probably, whoever it was meant to give it back. The trouble is it has been reported as theft. And I can’t believe that it was Lizzie who took it.’

  More silence.

  ‘And Lizzie’s family are making a tremendous hoo-ha because the book’s –’

  Mumbling, Sam said, ‘Yeah, I know, full of dirty words.’

  ‘Did you read it?’ Sylvia was curious.

  ‘We looked at some of it.’

  ‘We?’

  A slight hesitation. ‘Me and Lizzie.’

  ‘Only you and Lizzie?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Sam –’

  Tight-lipped, he said, ‘I took it. Now you know.’

  ‘And no one –’

  ‘No one else.’ So he was going to be noble.

  ‘Sam, it’s important not to tell tales but this is going to cause an enormous fuss and –’

  ‘There wasn’t anyone else, I told you – I took it!’ he shouted. And ‘Sorry!’ he shouted again.

  ‘How? How did you take it?’

  ‘When I was at the library one day with you.’

  ‘I don’t think you could have done. I’d have seen you. And how did you get the cupboard open? The lock was pretty stout.’

  ‘I’ve got tools.’

  That was true enough. She had the little plum-wood vase with the jay’s feather in it to prove it.

  ‘Sorry, Sam, I still don’t buy it. Why would you want to take that book?’

  He shrugged. ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘Exactly. You’re not that interested in literature. And although you might be curious about, I don’t know, a book that had been hidden from you, breaking and entering isn’t your style.’

  But she could see that his resolve had hardened under pressure, the sign of a martyr’s temperament as much as a fanatic’s; indeed, she thought, the two are much alike.

  ‘There wasn’t anyone else,’ he insisted. ‘I didn’t mean to get Lizzie into trouble.’

  ‘It’s you that’s in trouble, Sam, not Lizzie. Why on earth did you show the book to her? That was plain daft.’

  Sam shrugged again and said, ‘I couldn’t think of anything else to do with her when you brought her round.’

  So it was all her fault. ‘But why did she take it home with her?’

  Sam shrugged again.

  ‘Was it because you don’t like her as much as she likes you that you gave it her?’ The kind of sop that will often cause more trouble in the end for the kind of heart.

  But if Sam grasped the truth of this psychological insight he didn’t bother to say so.

  25

  In the days and weeks after the recovery of Tropic of Cancer the book was the focus of excited debate in East Mole. If Henry Miller’s agent had set the whole affair up as a publicity stunt, Sylvia reflected bitterly, he could hardly have done better by his author. Next to adulation, notoriety must surely be what a writer most craves.

  Mrs Bird, true to her word, had delivered the book to the police station, where, despite Dee’s predictions, it had been retained. It was rumoured that the book was being sent to London to the Official Censor for his judgement.

  Mr Booth had applied unsuccessfully for its return. ‘It’s a work of literature,’ the desk sergeant reported him as saying. This, when widely repeated, only fuelled the indignation of the main body of local opinion, which had an inherent mistrust of anything intellectual. The local Conservative MP, when appealed to by Mrs Bird, had agreed to write to the Library Committee and Mrs Bird, who had been heard to vow that she’d ‘cut her own throat rather than vote Tory’, declared that Mr Ducannon was ‘a gentleman’ and would be getting her support at the next election. She quoted the MP, who had allegedly said that it was ‘the influence of left-wing socialism’ and that the book was banned in America. ‘Where they are still God-fearing,’ Mrs Bird occasionally threw in.

  The Reverend Austin was more charitable. ‘To be frank,’ he remarked to a fellow cleric who had heard of the scandal, ‘I am rather surprised at Booth. I had him down as more of a Peyton Place man.’

  Dee was in her element and relishing the fuss. The renewal of her affair with Mr Booth had lessened none of her contempt for him. ‘Ashley wouldn’t know literature if it stripped to the buff and danced a can-can in front of his eyes.’

  ‘What I don’t understand,’ Sylvia said, ‘is why on earth he got the book in the first place. It’s hardly choice reading for East Mole.’

  ‘It was a chap he met at the Birmingham conference – remember, the one I told you about? He said it was pretty ripe. He couldn’t house it in his library, even in the Restricted Access, because his boss would know and he’d smuggled it back from Paris. This chap claimed it was a masterpiece of modern writing, blah, blah, and passed it on to His Lordship. If you ask me, he only had it in the Restricted Access to hide it from his wife.’

  Sylvia said that if she lived to be ninety she would not want to read a single word of Henry Miller. She was too angry at what his book had done to the Hedges. Most especially at what it had done to Sam.

  Lizzie, once she had confessed, had been taken into the bosom of her family with all the fervour meted out to those who have suffered a wrong. Poor Sam, by contrast, was being outlawed.

  June and Ray had been summoned to bring their son to the police station, where he was interviewed by an officer from the Juvenile Bureau, who extracted from him a sulky assurance that he had ‘meant to put the book back’. Sam was read the riot act and told that any further instance of delinquency would result in a court appearance. His parents were advised that in view of his former good character he was being let off with ‘a warning’.

  ‘As if that’s any comfort. There’s never been a stain on our family’s character,’ a distraught June said to her husband as they left the police station with a sullen Sam.

  Ray, if anything, was taking all this harder than June.

&
nbsp; ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child,’ he said to Sylvia when she called round to ask how things had gone with the police.

  ‘I can’t believe that beating Sam would have helped, Ray.’

  ‘My dad hit us regular as kids and it didn’t do us any harm. I’ve been too soft with Samuel.’

  Sylvia was aghast to learn that Ray had been as good as his word.

  ‘Sam’s been lammed,’ Pam told her solemnly. It was a Sunday and the twins had called round to play.

  ‘It’s ’cos he didn’t tell the truth,’ Jem said.

  ‘No, it’s ’cos he stole,’ Pam corrected her.

  ‘I don’t believe he stole anything,’ Sylvia told them.

  ‘He did, too. Our dad lammed him for it.’

  ‘To be honest, I think it hurt Ray more than Samuel,’ June said later. Sylvia felt too implicated to express her concern but she could tell that June was troubled by this rare demonstration of paternal authority in the usually pacific Ray. ‘I was hoping that policeman would have frightened the living daylights out of him. He did me. But Sam hasn’t taken a blind bit of notice. You tell me you have your doubts but he insists it was him. And if it wasn’t him, then all I can say is he’s lying and they’ve been brought up to tell the truth.’

  There had been worrying talk of Sam being expelled from school. Sylvia heard this from Gwen and it had left her sick at heart. Sylvia had pointed out that Sam had not committed any theft from the school. Nevertheless, Gwen said, she thought that the policy was expulsion for any criminal activity. The Easter holidays had begun and Sam and his parents were left in limbo.

  Lizzie, who had been forbidden to see Sam or visit the library, ambushed Sylvia on her way home one Saturday lunchtime.

  ‘Will you give this to Sam for me, Miss?’

  ‘Lizzie, are you all right?’

  ‘I didn’t mean to tell, Miss. They made me. They said the school would expel me for a thief if I didn’t say I hadn’t done it.’

  The girl was a pathetic sight. Her mousy hair was parted in two greasy clumps, her pink wire-rimmed glasses had come to grief and were stuck with sticking plaster, her blue eyes were bleared from weeping and a glistening snail-track of snot was running from her nose on to the grubby Chilprufe vest visible beneath the cut-down frock she was dressed in.

  Sylvia took the sad little bundle in her arms. ‘Lizzie, no one could expect you to take it on yourself. You simply told the truth.’

  ‘Sam’ll hate me.’

  ‘He won’t, Lizzie.’

  ‘I’ll never see him again.’

  Sam screwed up the note when Sylvia presented it to him and threw it on the ground without reading it.

  ‘It’s not Lizzie’s fault, Sam. She’s almost as miserable as you.’

  ‘Who said I was miserable?’

  ‘All right, upset.’

  ‘I’m not upset.’

  ‘Have it your own way. But Lizzie and I are upset for you.’

  He went off, ostentatiously whistling ‘Colonel Bogey’. Sylvia retrieved the screwed-up note.

  Dear Sam

  I couldn’t help it. They made me. I am very, very sorry.

  Your loving freind

  Lizzie Smith

  By her name she had drawn in red crayon a small bleeding heart.

  All this while nothing was seen or heard of Marigold, or her father. Sylvia had come to the conclusion that Dee’s analysis made sense. Marigold, with her precocious taste in reading and bounding self-confidence, was far more likely to be the architect of an act of such daring. She had simply dumped the evidence on Sam. And it was love that was impelling him now to shoulder the blame.

  She swung insanely between fury at Hugh and a helpless desire to excuse him. Perhaps he didn’t know of the Tropic of Cancer debacle? Improbable given that it was the talking point of the town. He had acknowledged that Marigold was the likely force behind the London escapade but maybe, as Dee suggested, the thought that his beloved daughter had a part in a theft was for him a step too far. Marigold might have been forbidden to visit the library but her father had been there on her behalf and there had been that dangerous, ecstatic reunion. His failure to make contact pained and puzzled her. Why had he made no effort to see her?

  ‘I hate him,’ screamed a savage voice in her head. ‘I hate him, damn him, damn his bloody eyes.’ But the super-subtle voice in her heart whispered, ‘You don’t. You adore him.’

  She lay awake at night agonising: should she loiter in the vicinity of his house in the hope of catching him? But the fear that Jeanette Bell might see her was too great and what if he refused to talk to her? Should she write? But a letter could be ignored or read by prying eyes and, for the moment, at least, she wanted to cause no trouble.

  One night, unable yet again to sleep, she got up and went outside.

  It was a not-quite-full moon, whether on the wax or the wane she was unable to tell; but in her present mood it seemed to her a counterpoint to the young crescent moon which on the evening of The Dream of Gerontius had flung her into Hugh Bell’s arms. ‘Seeing that I seem to have become a lunatic,’ she said, ‘tell me, O Moon, what should I do?’

  The following day, she walked after work to Dr Monk’s surgery.

  With the advent of the National Health, the problem of doctors’ fees no longer arose but Sylvia had been bred to consider good health a virtue. Illness was costly and her mother’s genteel penny-pinching had encouraged in her daughter a disinclination to fuss. So she had had no thought since arriving in East Mole of seeking a doctor’s advice.

  She was therefore unsure of the proper form when she knocked at the door of the large Edwardian house, fronted in summer by dusty laburnums, where the two GPs shared a surgery. All she was sure of was that this was Dr Monk’s afternoon off and that therefore only Hugh would be available.

  Doctors’ receptionists in most general practices were the harassed wives of the GPs, who were expected to take phone calls, arrange home visits and assess the level of urgency when a patient presented with symptoms. But the practice receptionist here was Mrs Eames, of whom Sylvia had heard those worrying reports from Dee.

  She was admitted into the tiled hall by the housekeeper in a flowered overall, who gestured towards the waiting room.

  ‘There’s a queue. If it isn’t urgent, I’d advise coming tomorrow, when Dr M’s on.’ She moved closer to Sylvia and mouthed into her ear, ‘The women all want to see Dr Bell.’

  Sylvia tried to look nonchalant and said that she was afraid that it was quite urgent. She went into a room where chairs were placed around an oval dining table on which copies of the National Geographic, the Lady, the Field and some very tattered comics were left for the benefit of the waiting patients. There was a copy of Valentine, which Sam had mentioned as the source of the tickets for the Cliff Richard recording. For something to occupy her, she took it up to read.

  Sylvia was the last of the evening’s patients and by the time she was called by Mrs Eames, who appeared and announced, ‘I’m getting the doctor’s supper so I’ll leave you to see your own way out,’ her mood of defiance had leaked away and she climbed the stairs to the surgery, feeling shaky.

  Hugh was behind a desk, smoking and studying a card.

  ‘Your NHS number’s here and your date of birth but there seems to be nothing else.’

  ‘That’s because I’m never ill.’

  ‘You are fortunate then.’

  Across the desert of the desk they stared at each other. Hugh began to finger his stethoscope. ‘I’m assuming then this isn’t a medical matter?’

  ‘Not really. No.’

  Hugh sat there, then suddenly stubbed out his cigarette, got up and went out, leaving Sylvia wondering if this was a signal for her to go too.

  She looked round the room, which showed signs of having been Dr Monk’s study. Two pairs of oars were hung cross-wise above the mantelpiece, a tired-looking stuffed hawk sat dully on a tallboy under a glass dome and beside it a Chinese vase full of dri
ed pampas grass. A crewel-work screen half hid the examination couch, above which hung a line of framed certificates confirming Godfrey Monk’s success in various medical exams. A full-size yellowing skeleton was lolling in a corner.

  ‘Is that a real human skeleton?’ she asked Hugh when he returned.

  ‘It’s a standard requirement of our training. How can I help?’

  His voice, so far removed from the warm tones of affinity, prompted a redoubling of her resolution. ‘I’ve just been reading Valentine in your waiting room. I take it that’s Marigold’s contribution to the gaiety of nations.’

  ‘My dear girl, I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about.’

  ‘It’s a rubbishy teenage comic full of tripe.’

  He raised his eyebrows and made a face of incomprehension.

  Furious now, she hissed, ‘Jesus Christ, Hugh, haven’t you heard what’s been going on?’

  ‘Please don’t shout. Mrs Eames is just below us.’

  ‘I wasn’t shouting. Sam Hedges is being blamed for the theft of a book from the library. Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller. Haven’t you heard?’

  ‘I vaguely remember hearing something about the book.’

  Now she did raise her voice. ‘Not the book. I don’t give a damn about the book. Have you heard about Sam? He might be expelled.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

  For a moment there was a glimmer of contrition in his eyes, and Sylvia said more calmly, ‘I’m sorry too because he’s insisting that he took the book alone and I think – actually, I’m pretty sure – that Marigold was at least involved.’

  ‘Is there any evidence for that?’ All contrition had vanished and the eyes that had gazed so lovingly on her body in the Kensington hotel and sparked with such fierce passion beneath the rows of dusty Dickenses were terrifying little blanks.

  ‘Hugh? You can’t let this happen to Sam. It will destroy him. And his parents. He’s already badly messed up his mock exams.’

  It was this that under the silent counsel of the moon had decided her. Or, more truthfully, had given the aching desire to see her lover the added heady shot of righteous indignation. Sam, who was expected to sail through the 11+, had failed all his mocks. Ray had called round to tell her.