The Librarian

by Salley Vickers

  ‘Not the arithmetic, surely, Ray?’ Sylvia was appalled.

  Ray’s large handsome face looked pouchy and pale. ‘His report says he only got forty per cent. That’s a fail.’

  ‘Have you checked that with the school?’

  ‘To be honest, we don’t like to. Not after all that with the twins.’

  To add to the Hedges’ shame, the twins had been sent home before the Easter holidays for reciting a ‘rude rhyme’ in the playground. All June would say was, ‘I keep worrying that it’s the language in that book that put it into their heads.’

  And now Hugh, for whom Sylvia would have laid down her life, was looking at her with a face that betrayed no more concern for this tragedy than the hollow skull of the skeleton in the corner.

  ‘I’m sorry but I can’t see how my daughter comes into this.’

  He took out a fountain pen and wrote something on the card.

  ‘That’s my medical card! What are you writing?’

  He looked up. ‘I’ve written a diagnosis of dermatitis, in case Monk needs to know why you came.’

  ‘Dermatitis?’

  ‘It’s a skin complaint.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A skin complaint,’ he said again, and smiled. A professional doctor’s smile.

  ‘Fuck you, Hugh,’ Sylvia said. ‘Fuck you and fuck your fucking family.’

  In her hurry to get out of the room her shoulder brushed against a frond of pampas grass which, toppling the Chinese vase, brought it crashing to the floor.

  It was late when Sylvia left the surgery, too angry for tears. Passing the big houses fronted with ugly yellow privet and a pervading aura of complacency, she swore aloud. Field Row and the Hedges, Sam and Lizzie and, yes, Marigold, never mind Hugh, had become her little universe – the first that she could properly call her own.

  And it was she, or rather her library, that had been the source of this devastation. It was the library that had brought Sam and Marigold together, had brought her and Hugh together, if it came to that. If she were not a librarian, would Mrs Bird ever have thought of asking her help with Lizzie? Without that, would Lizzie have ever been close to Sam? But Lizzie had at least gained a place at the Grammar School. It was Sam, her own ally, who had helped and befriended and trusted her, who was the sufferer.

  The evenings were beginning to stretch towards light. Not wanting to return to Field Row and the silent reproach of the neighbouring Hedges, Sylvia walked purposelessly and ended up in the High Street. The ABC Café, where she’d eaten before the WI meeting, in the days when she had a picture of herself as an angel of enlightenment, was open and, suddenly famished and in need of physical comfort, she went inside.

  There were quite a few local customers eating there and she found a corner table, praying that she wouldn’t be recognised. She had ordered when she saw a woman wearing a tweed jacket approaching her table.

  Instinctively, Sylvia flinched. Conversation would be intolerable. She dimly recognised the woman’s face but couldn’t at once place her. Then she saw the cream-coloured whippet at her heels.

  ‘May I?’

  Without waiting for permission, the woman sat down. Although she was heavily built she moved with a dignity that suggested deportment training.

  The whippet pattered round to Sylvia and pressed her nose into her lap before settling at her feet.

  ‘Sylvia recognises her namesake,’ the woman observed. ‘Have you ordered?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t eat here often but they do good scones. Much better than the tea shop. I don’t care for the tea shop. Too dark.’

  A waitress in a frilled cap and apron came and took the woman’s order. Sylvia politely waited to drink her own tea till this arrived. The woman poured herself a cup and extended a soil-encrusted hand.

  ‘Flee Crake.’

  A little reluctantly, Sylvia took the hand. ‘I’m Sylvia Blackwell.’

  ‘Yes. The new librarian. I heard about the’ – the woman paused, apparently searching for a word – ‘shenanigans at the library and had hoped to speak to you so this is fortuitous, though I am not in fact a believer in coincidence.’

  ‘I’m not that new,’ Sylvia said. ‘I came here last year.’

  The woman waved a dismissive hand. ‘I gather the theft occurred in your province – the Children’s Library.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But it is not a child’s book. I have been unable to discover the title.’

  ‘It was Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller.’

  Miss – for surely she was a ‘Miss’ – Crake opened her handbag and took out a spectacle case and a small notebook. Sylvia, who half expected lorgnettes, was amused to see that her glasses were the same round National Heath model as Lizzie’s. She folded the wire arms carefully over her ears and opened her notebook.

  ‘The book is not on my current list. Do you recommend it?’

  ‘I haven’t read it,’ Sylvia said. ‘It was in the Restricted Access cupboard and to read anything there you have to apply to the Head Librarian, Mr Booth.’

  Miss Crake had a face which, though pale and rather flat, conveyed authority. ‘Such nonsense. All prohibitions inflame resistance. You would imagine people would have grasped that by now.’

  Too drained by the encounter with Hugh to do more than indicate assent, Sylvia nodded.

  ‘I gather from the buzz of gossip that the book is avant garde. I am not averse to the avant garde, provided the style is good. I’m told that the boy who took it is a neighbour of yours.’

  The reference to Sam reignited Sylvia’s anger. ‘Sam Hedges. And I don’t believe he took it.’

  ‘Ah.’ Miss Crake raised an eyebrow. ‘I did wonder. I am acquainted with the boy’s grandfather. A good man. A genuine autodidact and very skilled at his trade.’ She bit into her scone and chewed slowly. ‘Do you have any recommendations for books?’

  ‘I’m really only a judge of children’s books.’

  Miss Crake looked pained. ‘Only fools disregard children’s literature. Clarity of vision is shed with childhood but one can sometimes recover a glimpse of it in the best children’s literature. I re-read Lewis Carroll about once a year.’

  ‘Father William was in an 11+ paper,’ Sylvia said.

  ‘Imbeciles. How to put young minds off.’

  Sylvia, who had sensed that her companion would be sympathetic, felt gratified. ‘The questions the children were being asked – it was as if the examiner didn’t at all see the poem’s point.’

  Miss Crake shook her head. ‘The trouble is, few adults retain a true recollection of their childhood. Are you acquainted with My Friend Mr Leakey?’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t know him.’

  ‘You misunderstand. It is the title of a book written by a colleague of mine,’ Miss Crake explained. ‘I shall send you a copy for the library.’

  Sylvia reflected. ‘A book I can recommend is Tom’s Midnight Garden. I’ve just read it myself.’

  Miss Crake reopened her notebook. ‘What is it about?’

  Sylvia considered. ‘That’s hard to describe without giving the point of the book away. It’s about a garden where two children meet.’

  ‘Something of The Secret Garden?’

  ‘No,’ Sylvia said. ‘Not really.’ She felt it didn’t give too much away to say, ‘A clock strikes thirteen and it happens – the children meet, I mean – in a garden which is both in and outside time.’

  Miss Crake asked for the author’s name and wrote this down in her notebook with a gold propelling pencil. She beckoned over the waitress for her bill. When this was paid she stood up, brushed down her skirt and summoned the whippet, who scrabbled to her feet with an effort, shivered and limped obediently round to her mistress’s side.

  ‘Sylvia and I suffer with arthritis. But we are fortunate in having each other to complain to. I shall order your book tomorrow. Goodbye.’

  Sylvia walked back along the towpath pondering this encounter. Miss Felic
ity Crake – who, while awaiting the change from her bill had accounted for her name: ‘My parents were Humanists who believed in the possibility of universal happiness’ – was the first person she had met in East Mole who seemed to share her own passion for books. Their conversation had lightened her mood. But walking home, the black misery seeped back.

  The evening had darkened, it was cold and, without her bicycle lamp to show her the way along the towpath, she was glad of the lights from the lock-keeper’s cottage.

  As she drew near it the door opened and someone shone a torch across the water.

  ‘Sylvia?’

  ‘Ned?’

  ‘Fancy a hot toddy?’

  Intending to refuse, she said, ‘Thank you, Ned, I could do with one.’

  ‘Come over then. I’ve a fire going.’

  The little cottage was warm and the cramped sitting room friendly. Sylvia sat down on the sofa and, suddenly squeezed of all emotion, felt as if she might never rise from it again. She accepted a glass of hot whisky and ginger and sat back, welcoming its effect.

  ‘D’you know, Ned, I hardly touched alcohol before coming here. I’m becoming a regular drunk.’

  ‘I doubt that.’ Ned’s voice was kind and his ugly lumpish face, innocent of any malice, seemed to her suddenly beautiful. Extraordinary to think that he was related in any way to sharp-featured Mrs Bird. As if he had read her mind, he said, ‘You don’t want to take too much account of Auntie. She loves a to-do but it never lasts.’

  ‘You’ve heard then?’

  ‘I’m afraid it’s everywhere.’

  ‘She’s been to the police and Sam’s had some nasty official warning. It’s upset his family dreadfully.’

  ‘Ah, that I didn’t know.’

  They sat in silence. Sylvia began to wish she had not accepted his invitation. It seemed impossible now to dig up the energy to leave.

  ‘Young Sam. How’s he bearing up?’

  ‘He’s pretending he doesn’t care.’

  Ned grimaced. ‘Boys. I did that.’

  Sometimes exhaustion of the kind that follows a serious illness has the effect of demolishing inhibition. ‘Sam didn’t do it, Ned. He’s protecting someone.’

  ‘Not our Lizzie?’

  ‘No. Another girl he has a crush on.’

  ‘That’ll be the doctor’s daughter.’ He was looking away from her into the coal fire. ‘I seen the two of them together enough times.’ Then it was likely he had seen her with Hugh. Sylvia felt herself begin to flush. ‘And the two of them scarpered off together, to London, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She not said anything about the book, the girl?’

  ‘She might have done if the police hadn’t got involved.’

  ‘I see that.’

  She shivered. He got up and walked over to a window and pulled it shut. ‘The draught keeps the fire going. You haven’t had a chance for a word with the doctor?’

  ‘Yes,’ Sylvia said, ‘I have,’ and burst into tears.

  Ned said nothing while she dried her eyes. Then he said, ‘The reason I took this job is because of a fondness I had for someone. I thought there was a fondness back, in return. And perhaps there was and perhaps there wasn’t but anyway I never found out.’

  Sylvia, sure that no one’s tragedy could compare with hers, was nevertheless polite. ‘What’s happened to your –’

  ‘Dead,’ Ned said.

  Aghast, she said, ‘Oh, heavens. I’m sorry, Ned.’ Then, as he said nothing, ‘Did you, have you, I mean, got over it?’

  ‘You don’t “get over” things,’ Ned said. ‘You get used to them.’

  They sat drinking the hot whisky together until Sylvia felt her head would split open with knocking weariness.

  As she began to stagger up to go, he suggested, ‘You can stay here if you like. That settee’s quite comfortable and there’s plenty of blankets.’

  ‘I’d better go.’

  ‘Suit yourself. I wasn’t –’

  ‘Oh, no, I didn’t think …’

  They laughed, embarrassed at first and then more easily, and she said, ‘D’you know, I will stay, if that’s really all right. Thank you, Ned. That is truly kind.’

  He bedded her down with a cushion and an eiderdown and a blanket made of coloured knitted squares.

  It was the blanket of a childhood story, about a sick child staying at her grandmother’s. One she had read to herself before she even went to school. ‘I always wanted a blanket like this.’

  Ned nodded. ‘My mum made it. When she died, I slept under it for years. It still smelled of her.’

  He went out, turning off the light, and Sylvia lay there listening to the small rustling feral sounds along the canal outside. Rats, very probably. And shrews and mice. Far off, she heard the shriek of what she now knew was a barn owl. If only, she thought, you could choose and I had fallen in love with Ned.

  26

  Over the Easter holidays the Children’s Library was almost sinisterly quiet. Mr Booth strode about in a manner that conveyed he was nursing a grievance. Sylvia’s suspicion that he might be holding her responsible for the Henry Miller debacle had grown stronger. This was irrational, but when did rationality have anything to do with the human need to blame? Dee was as friendly as ever but her affair with Mr Booth made her, in Sylvia’s mind, something of a double agent. With the Hedges, too, she felt uncomfortable. June’s face had become drawn and Sylvia felt too guilty about her role in Sam’s disgrace to drop in at number 3, as she had been used to doing. Bereft of her lover, her colleague and her companionable neighbours, she took to reading the library journals in search of a new post.

  There was also the prospect of the possible expulsion hanging over Sam.

  Sylvia tried to talk to Gwen about this one evening. ‘All this is having a dreadful effect on Sam and his family. I can’t begin to see how he could have failed his mocks, Gwen.’

  Gwen said she had been told by Sue Bunce that Sam had scribbled down strange calculations on the arithmetic paper and written nonsense for his comprehension and verbal reasoning.

  ‘He’s on strike,’ Sylvia said glumly. ‘Though did anyone check the calculations? From what I know about Sam, it might have been some very advanced maths.’

  ‘He could be Sir Isaac Newton but it counts for nothing if he didn’t answer the questions set. Can’t you talk to him? He adores you.’

  ‘He won’t talk to me, Gwen. Believe me, I’ve tried.’

  Gwen said that she and Chris were off camping again if she fancied getting away, to Dorset this time.

  But Sylvia didn’t dare ask for any more time off. ‘Mr Booth keeps dropping hints about problems with funds and the Library Committee. I can’t help wondering if he’s out to get me sacked.’

  ‘Surely not after all you’ve done for the kids with the library.’

  ‘That was before all this bother about Tropic of Cancer.’

  ‘It’s sex,’ Gwen said. ‘People get into a flap about sex.’

  ‘What was it the Hedges twins said that caused such a rumpus at school, Gwen?’

  ‘It’s a hoot. It was that silly rhyme about Buffalo Bill.’

  But Sylvia didn’t know it.

  ‘You must have had a very sheltered childhood.’

  Gwen recited it for her.

  ‘Buffalo Billy

  Had a ten-foot willy,

  And he showed it to the girl next door.

  She thought it was a snake,

  And she hit it with a rake,

  And now it’s only five foot four.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ Sylvia said, laughing in spite of herself. ‘I can see, coming from five-year-olds, that might have caused a stir.’

  ‘It’s nothing compared to some of what you hear. They’re a pair of monkeys but they didn’t have a clue what they were saying.’

  Sylvia, who knew the twins better, wasn’t so sure.

  One afternoon, Sylvia was startled to see Ivy Roberts from the WI, dressed formall
y in a hat and gloves, come through the library door. She looked nervous.

  ‘Miss Blackwell, I haven’t come for books, not that I’m, you know, against them or anything, but since all the, well, really I came to ask you, like I said I would, if you would like to come to tea?’

  Sylvia, who would once have hoped to duck this invitation, was grateful. ‘Thank you, Ivy. I’d be delighted. When shall I come?’

  Ivy said next Saturday would be best and wrote down her address.

  On Saturday, Sylvia called at the appointed time at the Roberts’ house. Ivy was alone. Her husband, she explained, was at the football.

  She showed Sylvia into a room thick with rugs and furniture. Two budgerigars were visible in a cage by the window. ‘The tea’s all ready in there. Len’s a bit, you know, because of all the fuss about that book – not that I – anyway, I thought best to ask you when he was out.’

  ‘I don’t want to cause you any trouble, Ivy.’

  ‘He can be funny but he’s – it’s about all that I wanted to see you. Do you take sugar?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘That’s why you’re so slim. After all the rationing I can’t find the willpower to stay off these.’ Ivy offered Sylvia a plate of foil-wrapped teacakes. Not wishing to seem impolite, Sylvia took one. ‘What I wanted to say,’ Ivy continued, ‘was that I’ve heard, I mean, people are suggesting, what with the funds needed over the repairs for the library and the to-do about the book and all that, well, what I wanted to tell you was there’s a mood to have the Children’s Library shut down.’

  Something cruel and sharp pierced Sylvia in the region of her ribcage. ‘Shut down? Why?’

  ‘On account of what happened, you know, with the little Hedges boy.’

  ‘But that’s nothing to do with the Children’s Library,’ Sylvia said, indignation rebuffing tears. ‘It was a Restricted Access book taken. Nothing to do with the Children’s section. It was mere chance, the storm damage, that it was there.’