The Librarian

by Salley Vickers

  Looking up, there was Hugh.

  He was standing on the far side of the gate and his face was frozen and, yes, surely he was frightened.

  Sylvia’s was a naturally kind heart but the kindest heart is hardened by hurt. Her lover had hurt her, hurt her friends and their son; and it was his wife’s influence which had helped to bring about the closure of her library, which she also loved and had worked hard for.

  ‘Hello, Dr Bell.’

  Still he stood there, saying nothing.

  ‘At least you don’t run away like your daughter.’

  ‘Has she been here?’

  ‘Oh, so you can speak?’

  But she had silenced him again.

  ‘The last time I saw your daughter she fled, no doubt feeling guilty at having implicated the son of my friends the Hedges – who by the way have lived in East Mole for generations with an unsullied reputation, unlike your family, who are pushy newcomers – in a crime he didn’t commit. Two crimes now, quite possibly – I suppose you’ve heard about the fire?’

  He nodded, wordless.

  ‘Your daughter has so beguiled this unfortunate boy that he is valiantly defending her, refusing to give her up to the authorities for punishment, a punishment she richly deserves. Unlike your cowardly daughter, he has acted with nobility – a nobility I cannot agree with but which is nonetheless admirable – in taking upon himself the sole blame for a theft for which he is not responsible and as a result of that being landed with a serious police warning which could adversely affect his whole future life. Now it seems he may be shouldering the blame for an act of arson to boot.’

  Later she couldn’t imagine where the ‘to boot’ had come from but at the time she was in full spate.

  ‘But this cowardice in your daughter isn’t surprising. Obviously, she has learned it from her father, who is also a coward and a seducer and speaks words of utter, utter …’ But rage and resolution buckled and gave way to helpless weeping.

  ‘Sylvia!’ Fuck it, he had got over the gate and got his bloody arms round her.

  ‘Get off me! Get off!’

  ‘Sylvia!’

  ‘Get off me or I’ll bloody bite you.’

  ‘Christ, Sylvia!’

  ‘I warned you. He was rubbing his hand. ‘I hope it bloody well hurt.’

  ‘I hope it’s some comfort that it did.’

  ‘It’s no comfort.’

  ‘If you could calm down a minute –’

  ‘Don’t you dare tell me to calm down. That’s another form of bullying.’

  ‘Where did this sudden fluency come from?’ She, too, was surprised by it. ‘Why are you laughing?’

  ‘I assure you, I wasn’t laughing.’

  ‘Smiling, then.’

  Now she did laugh, but harshly. ‘I was thinking what a bloody little fool I’ve been, with my la-di-dah ways, as Dee would say. Imagining I could transform East Mole. Imagining I was the love of your life.’

  ‘You are.’

  ‘Don’t you fucking dare.’

  He said nothing and she said, ‘Do you know, that day I came to your surgery was the first time I ever said “fuck”? I’ve been saying it ever since. My mother used to say, “Once you’ve crossed a line, Sylvia, you can never go back.” ’ She didn’t add that her mother was speaking of sexual intercourse.

  ‘Could we sit down? I won’t touch you. I only want to talk.’

  Too wrung out to resist, she sat down by him on the wall where they had sat months ago, when all that had happened since was waiting in the world’s wings to unfold.

  ‘Well?’ She was still shuddering with fury.

  He took off his glasses and passed a hand across his eyes.

  ‘Sylvia, you’re younger than me and you have what I’ve not got – purity, no, don’t laugh. Please. When one is young it’s easy to be pure, pure in spirit, I mean, undivided, whole, wholesome. I’ve been thinking, a lot of growing up is about becoming fragmented, fractured, if you’re unlucky, with different parts of yourself not terribly in sync, so the thing you say and mean, truly mean, one day, you don’t or can’t the next because a different part of you has taken over. Is this too unbearably pompous?’

  ‘I don’t know yet.’

  ‘You are the love of my life. I’ve truly never felt about anyone the way I feel about you but –’

  This was intolerable. ‘You mean how you felt at the surgery?’

  ‘I know. I’m coming to that. Just because I love you doesn’t mean I feel nothing for Jeanette. If I met her today for the first time, she’d mean nothing at all to me. Less than nothing, I probably wouldn’t like her much, probably not at all – and I’m paying you a kind of awful compliment in saying that because I feel very guilty admitting it. But I’ve lived with her too long to simply dismiss her. She’s not a bad woman, not an especially good one but not a bad one either. Probably with a different man she would be nicer and better, and me being as I am – and you’ve not seen the half of me – hasn’t been exactly a picnic for her. The war, or maybe it wasn’t the war, but something changed me, changed in me, I should say. I get the black dog on my shoulder and that can be hell to live with. It’s a cliché to say your wife doesn’t understand you but I hope you’ll forgive my saying that Jeanette doesn’t fully understand me. And why should she? There’s no requirement in the marriage ceremony for one to be understood. Hers is a very different character from mine but she’s no fool and she sensed something was up and she knows me well enough to guess that you would be the sort of girl I’d want, if I had my time and my chance again. But – here’s the tricky bit – she trusts me – or did – and it was only a faint unease until recently. Although, apparently, according to her, you and I were very obviously avoiding each other at that God-awful drinks party.’

  ‘She’s right about that. We were avoiding each other.’

  ‘Yes, well, Jeanette’s no Sigmund Freud but she has the usual woman’s intuition and she’d already sensed you were some sort of rival. The business over that bloody book was simply fuel to her fire. Do you think I could have one of your cigarettes? I’m out.’

  Silently, she offered him the packet and he took one and lit hers for her, careful not to touch her hand.

  ‘I would like to tell you something, if I may?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s this. A week or so ago, in fact the night before you stormed my surgery, Jeanette and I were in Salisbury and went for supper at the George, where you and I ate before Gerontius. Remember?’

  She could hardly forget.

  ‘I’ve avoided it since – for sentimental reasons – but we were nearby and she suggested it and I could find no plausible reason to refuse. Jeanette had gone to the Ladies when the manager suddenly appeared with a bundle, which turned out to be the clothes you left behind that evening, and she came back just as he was explaining how “my wife” had rung and left a message with the duty manager and he hadn’t known where to send them and here they were …’

  ‘What did you say?’ She’d forgotten – no, not forgotten, been too distracted to pursue – those clothes.

  ‘I couldn’t really deny it. He had plainly recognised me and then your name is sewn into your skirt.’

  ‘My mother used up all my school nametapes on anything she could find when I left home.’

  ‘Yes, well, I expect Jeanette would have rumbled anyway. I told her we’d met by chance in Salisbury and –’ He stopped. The mournful look that had always moved her now irritated her.

  ‘What?’ she asked angrily.

  ‘What you don’t know is that I was actually going alone to that concert. Jeanette was never coming – she can’t bear, she doesn’t care for classical music. So I told her that it was sheer coincidence that we met and that you were going to the concert independently – which she didn’t believe.’

  ‘No,’ Sylvia said. ‘Naturally, she wouldn’t credit me with that degree of taste.’

  He looked anguished. ‘To be fair …’

&n
bsp; But she didn’t feel like being fair. ‘All right, I admit that I’d never heard of The Dream of Bloody Gerontius before you delivered me from my slough of ignorance.’ He and his wife had ruined that special experience for good.

  ‘Shall I stop?’

  ‘Yes. No. Go on. Tell me the worst.’

  He sighed. ‘I’m not enjoying this. Understandably, Jeanette wanted to know why had I said nothing before and what about supper with you and how come this collection of your clothes? I think she imagined that we hadn’t gone to the concert at all, that we had slept together there and then, that evening. I showed her the programme later but as she pointed out I could have easily bought that to cover my tracks.’

  ‘Does she know we have – what you said – since?’ She wasn’t sure she could live if Jeanette Bell had details of their night in London.

  ‘She asked, of course, and I denied it. I don’t know if she believes me. She’s a proud woman and she’ll probably convince herself that that’s the truth. Incidentally, about seduction, if it’s not too much getting my own back, it was your changing into your flamingo plumage that gave me a flicker of hope that you might be just a little interested in me.’

  Sylvia had the grace to blush. ‘What happened then?’

  ‘She had obviously been going over it all in her mind in the car and when we got home we had a blazing row, which, unfortunately, Marigold overheard. Jeanette threatened to leave with Marigold and to never let me see her again and, for what it’s worth – probably not much – I contemplated letting her do just that. We didn’t realise that Marigold had overheard until she confronted us a few days ago. We calmed her down, or thought we had, she’d been acting very oddly already, and we assured her – I’m sorry, but she’s my daughter and I really had no option – that there was no plan to separate. Then on Saturday night we found she was missing again.’

  ‘Where was she?’

  ‘She wouldn’t tell us but she came home in a pretty dire state.’

  Sylvia tried, and failed, to feel sorry for Marigold.

  ‘Sylvia, listen. I would leave Jeanette today, this minute, for you, if it weren’t for Marigold. I did say’ – he sounded almost distressingly humble – ‘that day, that evening, in the car in Salisbury.’

  ‘I can’t leave her. There’s Marigold,’ he had said.

  She nodded. ‘But why were you like that to me at the surgery?’

  ‘I’m sorry. That was vile of me. I was in a panic. Mrs Eames is a busybody. I’ve had to take Monk to task over her breaching confidentiality and I was terrified she’d overhear and report me and then the cat – and believe me, Mrs Eames is a cat – would have been truly among the pigeons.’

  ‘You could have made some sign.’

  ‘I know. I know, and I should have done. I’m sorry. It was a shock after the scene with Jeanette, your coming in like that, unannounced. I’d only just clocked it was you from your card and I wasn’t prepared for it. I’ve served, you see, so long in the line of duty.’

  She frowned and he said, ‘You, meeting you wrenched me away from all that. But one reverts, you see, or maybe you will one day, to an accustomed shape. And then I … and Sylvia, you looked so different.’

  Inwardly, she brushed away the appeal in his eyes. ‘So did you.’

  ‘I don’t know if you know this but your face becomes a sort of visor when you narrow your eyes. You were doing it when you were haranguing me just now.’

  ‘Your face takes on a public-school smirk.’

  ‘I suppose there’s sides of each of us the other won’t know.’

  Suddenly, the galvanising anger evaporated, leaving her raw and exposed. ‘Yes. Yes, I mean, no.’

  ‘I don’t mind you having a visor. I’m glad, in fact, because you may have a fight on your hands over the library.’

  So he didn’t yet know that she’d got the sack. Well, she wasn’t going to let him have the satisfaction of knowing. ‘I mind your smirk.’

  ‘I don’t blame you. You are right, I am a coward. An emotional coward, anyway. It’s one of the faults you could probably cure me of.’

  ‘I can’t do anything for anyone,’ Sylvia said. ‘I ruin everything for everyone.’

  ‘That sounds very melodramatic.’

  ‘Look at it: I’ve messed up your marriage, which was fine, or reasonably fine, before I came along, maybe messed up Sam’s chances of getting to Grammar School, which he was a dead cert for before. And I was trying to seduce you. That’s not what I told myself but I was. I didn’t give a fuck about Jeanette, nor, if I’m truthful, a fuck about Marigold.’

  ‘To employ your new word! May I?’ He held out his hand and she put hers into it.

  ‘I’m sorry, Hugh.’

  ‘Christ, don’t be. That makes me feel even more of a heel. I’m the one who’s sorry, in every sense. Listen, I’ve loved every minute with you and every particle of you – even when you were assaulting me with your peroration. You were magnificent.’

  ‘That sounds patronising.’

  ‘I mean it. It’s that purity I was speaking of. I don’t have that. I don’t know if I ever had it but if I did I lost it along the way. I have a sort of wishy-washy, namby-pamby fudge which I call being reasonable and sensible, and when I’m being particularly dishonest, tolerant. It isn’t. It’s faint-heartedness and feebleness and spinelessness. But your mother’s right. You can’t go back. What’s she like, by the way, your mother? You’ve never said.’

  ‘Conventional. Quite like Jeanette, in fact. Sorry.’ They both laughed awkwardly. Sylvia reflected. Very likely her mother was like Jeanette; married to a different man, she might have developed differently.

  ‘For someone like you that must have been –’

  Dreading his sympathy, she said, ‘She’s not to blame, my mother, I mean. She’s had few opportunities, and by her own lights she has done her best for me. She doesn’t understand me well but well enough to sense that I keep a lot from her and that I prefer my father. I’ve not thought this before but that must have been difficult for her.’

  ‘Difficult for her daughter too?’

  Not wanting to admit this, she said, ‘Is Jeanette jealous of Marigold?’

  ‘She might be, I haven’t thought. It’s true that I love my daughter more than my wife.’

  ‘My father does too. I mean, he loves me more than he loves my mother, at least I think he does.’

  ‘I’m glad we have something in common.’

  ‘It sounds incestuous, put like that!’

  ‘Nothing wrong with incest, provided you keep it out of the family. According to Freud, all love is transference.’

  ‘I don’t want you for a father!’

  ‘Nor I you for a daughter. The one I have is quite enough.’

  They sat and smoked. Far off, a cuckoo called.

  ‘ “In April, I open my bill,” ’ he quoted and when she looked puzzled, ‘It’s an old rhyme about the cuckoo.’

  ‘What are you going to do about Marigold?’ Sylvia asked. She was remembering her dream of the steam train and the girl in the cab. ‘She met Sam the night of the fire.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘They were seen. Sam’s already taken the blame for the book and if he’s suspected of this fire and he takes the blame for that too it will go to court and that will mean prison or a Remand Home or …’ The idea was too horrible to continue with.

  Again he passed his hand over his eyes. ‘I can only devoutly pray that neither of them had anything to do with it. Look, I’m not avoiding the question but I have to find her first. She’s gone off again without telling us, she’s been doing this, and I came here to see if I could track her down.’

  You will tell me when you’ve talked to her?’

  ‘When I find her I promise I’ll tell you. But to do that I’ll have to see you again. Is that all right, Sylvia?’

  There was no help for it. ‘Yes, it’s all right, Hugh.’

  28

  When Sylvia got back
to Field Row a large green car was parked by her house and when she reached the gate she saw Miss Crake sitting by the upturned barrel in her garden.

  ‘I called at the library but your colleague told me you were unwell. I was just leaving you a note.’ Her caller indicated a paperback. ‘My Friend Mr Leakey, the book I mentioned.’

  Sylvia eyed the book, which had a picture on the jacket of a man in a top hat, a small red dragon and a turbaned angel. ‘Mr Booth said that?’

  ‘Not Booth. A woman with a regrettable taste in scent.’

  ‘That’s Dee. But I’m not ill, in fact.’

  ‘I am glad to hear it.’

  Sylvia read the short biography of the author, J. B. S. Haldane. ‘Who is he?’

  ‘A first-class geneticist and one of the world’s wittiest and most accomplished men. We worked together.’

  ‘Are you a geneticist?’

  ‘I was. I retired after JB left for India.’

  Not knowing what else to say, Sylvia asked, ‘Why did he go there?’

  ‘He is Indian, though he was born here, but he left for political reasons. He is a passionate Marxist and he believes India is more politically advanced.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘I doubt it but ideologues are impervious to reason. How is the Hedges boy?’

  Sylvia sighed. She hoped that it appeared she was sighing over Sam and his plight but in truth it was because she wished Miss Crake would go away. After all the conversations, first with Sam, then Mr Arnold and finally Hugh, she felt worn to a ravelling, with no words left in her. Politely, she said, ‘Sam has clammed up and refuses to talk.’

  Miss Crake glanced towards the green car. ‘A boy appeared briefly when I parked. He had an honest face. I see there has been a fire next door.’

  ‘Yes. Luckily, no one was hurt.’

  ‘You mentioned when we met over this book affair that in your view the Hedges boy was not the one responsible for the theft.’