Exchange

by Paul Magrs

To the other kids at school he must have looked furtive and sneaky. Every gap between lessons he was going off to secret spots like behind the sports hall, or the cloakrooms of his house block. There he would read avidly, his eyes darting about shiftily, wary of being caught. He was shifty as a house burglar, snatching ten minutes here, half an hour there. He faked letters from his gran to his form tutor and his PH teacher, explaining how, due to stress, to grief, to a chronic stomach upset, Simon wouldn’t be running cross-country today, or indeed, anything else he didn’t really fancy doing.

  He schmoozed with the school librarian to get to stay in during lunch hours so he could sit at the polished wooden table in the centre of the room, working steadily through his novels. He could tell that the school librarian was at first pleased to see one of the pupils so keen on reading. And this was the boy whose parents had died in that plane crash. Maybe she was doing a vital service here, she thought. She was doing a good thing, letting him stay in when the school rules insisted that all children should be out, getting lashed by the autumn wind and rain. But after a while she started to fret about him. There was a feverish look to him; in the determined way he sat, as if ready to resist being dragged away. There was a steely glint of obsession in his eye.

  Never before had the librarian seen a boy his age reading the kinds of books he did. One day: a tale of partying socialite divorcees in 1960s New York. He read it with the same solid absorption as he did a huge Russian novel from the previous century. With unbelieving eyes the librarian had spied on him tackling that one, just a matter of weeks ago. She had the feeling that if she had given him the local phone directory he would have read it just as happily.

  She was wrong there, however. It was novels that Simon liked to read. He could have told her, had she come over and asked. What he read for, purely and simply, was story. That’s where he got his kicks. He wanted rich and vivid characters of each and every type and he wanted to find out what they got up to, and what they all did to each other, and behind each other’s backs. He wanted to see them set against the glittering, hugely panoramic backdrop of their society and time. He wanted to understand places and people unfamiliar to him. When he read, he couldn’t always follow the politics or the more abstruse plots or the more subtle nuances. Sometimes he skipped bits he thought were boring, but he kept on reading lor the sake of the characters. For the sake of imagining that he was one of them and finding out what became of them in the end.

  He read novels with the same committed interest and zeal as his grandad would watch the evening news. They both had to know what was going on out there, in the world. To Simon, his fictional world was just as real as that horrifying, violent world that his grandad watched and tutted over on the news.

  Hiding from the real world. That’s what he and his gran were doing. That’s what his grandad always threw at them: it was an accusation. It was meant to be an insult. To Simon it wasn’t that bad an insult. Not at all. Not compared to some others. He thought about replying: So what? What’s wrong with hiding from the real world, then? The real world is a terrible place.

  He loved novels because their writers took that raw, nasty stuff the real world was made of, and they fashioned it into… something better. Not necessarily something sugary sweet and rose tinted. But something brighter, maybe, larger than life and more dramatic. Simon’s writers recreated the world so that it started to make sense to him. Novels gave him the feeling that there were, perhaps, answers out there somewhere.

  His writers made him feel that life was purposeful, happiness possible, and people important.

  The news he watched with his grandad each night made him feel the complete opposite.

  He lay on his bed, mulling all this over. Suddenly an image popped into his mind. An image of that Goth girl in the shop, perching on her high stool, slowly and deliberately leafing through the pages of her paperback. She was meant to be an assistant to the man with two plastic arms, but she hadn’t been doing much assisting. She had looked too caught up in the story she was reading. She had been very cool and aloof. Nothing furtive or ashamed about the way she had been reading. She hadn’t looked at all apologetic about it. Once, she had looked up over her book and winked at Simon. He could picture her doing it right now.

  Why had she popped up in his mind just then?

  Just as quickly, he knew the answer.

  She is the same as me, he thought. He smiled to himself. That girl — she’s the same. She feels the same as I do, about novels and people and the rest of the world.

  It was Thursday night. He still had nearly two full books to read before he was finished and ready to return the whole batch to the Exchange. He would have to crack on. He wanted to go back this Saturday. He wanted to see it all again, to make sure that it was all real. Those books, the man and that girl, dressed in black and perching on her tall silver stool.

  Five

  He didn’t have a regular bedtime any more. Maybe his grandparents thought he was grown up now. They didn’t want to come on heavy-handed. They didn’t want to tell him he should get a good night’s rest for school.

  What he tended to do was read in the armchair in the corner of the living room while his grandparents went about their customary evenings. Only when he had exhausted himself, and read himself into a standstill, with the lines of words starting to blur one into the next, would he take himself off to his room. That small bedroom seemed that much cooler, with just a tinge of damp lingering in the walls and the white cotton sheets, as the winter nights deepened.

  His gran would always be first to go off to bed, with her oddly formal ‘Goodnight, all!’ from the doorway. She would be in her dressing gown and slippers, teeth out and holding one hand shyly in front of her mouth. She’d be clutching a book to her chest. She was the first to bed but she was almost always the last to sleep, Simon knew. All the doors in the bungalow were ill-fitting and if there was a light left on through the night, it would seep out onto the small landing. Getting up for the loo or a drink (Simon was a very light sleeper, especially that year), he would sec the warm light spilling out of his grandparents’ room. He knew she would be sitting up in bed with her side lamp on, her knees drawn up, book resting on the thick duvet. She’d be squinting at the words, ravelling them up through the night.

  Next to her, his grandad Ray would be fast asleep. The breath rattling in his throat as he lay there, flat on his back. Gran said Grandad could sleep through anything. He had come through the war aboard submarines, sleeping in hammocks as torpedoes struck. Surely he wouldn’t be disturbed by Winnie. She tried to be quiet for his sake. She tried to sit still. She didn’t crunch sweets or laugh aloud. It was hard, though, to suppress those reactions.

  She did try, though, she told Simon. She didn’t want to be a nuisance to Grandad.

  Simon watched the old man’s face as Winnie went off to bed. Grandad’s expression was dark; his eyes glowering after his wife.

  ‘That’ll be her, sat up all night again,’ Grandad muttered, half to himself, half to Simon. Simon was surprised at the sourness in his voice.

  ‘She’s completely obsessed with that book she’s in the middle of,’ Simon said. ‘It’s one of the ones she got last Saturday. She says it’s amazing because—’

  His grandad cut him short. ‘Do you know. I’m not all that bothered? I’ve had about enough of hearing about your books, you two. A lad of your age. And her! She hardly sleeps more than three hours a night. That’s no good for her health. And besides, she’s neglecting the housework. There’s a sinkful of dishes through there that haven’t been done. This whole place is starting to feel neglected…’

  Simon wasn’t even used to his grandad speaking to him on a one-to-one basis, let alone getting a sustained rant like this. Complaints about his gran! He was shocked — but thrilled, also, in a strange way. It was true that she had become a bit slipshod in her habits of late. The dishes weren’t clean tonight and the breakfast things weren’t set out ready on the table. There was a scatt
ering of dust on the mantelpiece and her ornaments. There were bits in the carpet that hadn’t been hoovered for days. Maybe she was reading for more hours of the day than ever before.

  But was that a problem? Simon didn’t think so. He envied her. At least she didn’t have to waste good reading time by going to school.

  She only slept three hours a night, his grandad said. Did that mean she was keeping the old man awake? And was she being so selfish and obsessed that she didn’t even know it?

  ‘I’ll have to say something to her,’ Grandad said now. ‘I’ll have to do something. It’s making me miserable, all this. It’s like living with two strangers. With two zombies!’

  ‘Are we as bad as all that?’ asked Simon.

  His grandad Ray looked at him and his expression softened. ‘I don’t see what the two of you get out of it. Really, I don’t. Maybe that’s my problem. But — God help me — I can’t understand what you’re doing with your waking lives. All those hours. I feel like… I may as well not be here. Like the two of you are trying to read your way out of this place altogether…’

  Simon didn’t have anything to say to that. He couldn’t deny it. He watched as his grandad got up stiffly out of his swivel chair. ‘Aye, well. I imagine that you, Simon, really are trying to escape. But your gran… She belongs here. With me. Where do you think she wants to get to?’

  Simon couldn’t tell him. But, oddly enough, he knew. That particular week, he knew where his gran was going off to in her head. He knew where she was imagining herself when she read for those long hours. He watched his grandad shuffle off to bed and he knew that his grandad was irritated with him, too. Simon felt like he had been asked for help and he had refused to give it.

  Simon sat alone, staring into space under the tassled standard lamp. He’d do the dishes himself. He’d tidy round tonight. Put out tomorrow’s breakfast things.

  It wasn’t just a vague ‘elsewhere’ that his gran had been escaping to that week. It wasn’t just some imaginary place. She had explained it to Simon earlier that day — teatime on Friday. She had been delighted, surprised and bleary-eyed as she had told him.

  Winnie had been escaping into her own past.

  ‘This one. Here. I knew straight away. I knew as soon as I picked it off the shelf last Saturday. Back at the Exchange. I mean, of course, I recognised the name. She’s a famous writer. But I didn’t know about this particular novel. Or what it was about.’

  Winnie was gabbling slightly. It was a habit Simon had too, when he got carried away about something.

  They were having tea, sitting at the colourful oil cloth on the kitchen table. The fat novel in question lay between them, amongst the side plates and the crumbs of flaky pastry.

  ‘Hang on,’ Simon said. ‘Let’s get this straight. You reckon that you know her?’ He touched the book’s faded, battered cover. In all honesty, the book looked a bit tacky to him. Not that he minded a bit of tackiness! But you had to draw the line somewhere, didn’t you? And this was one of those really tawdry, supposedly heart-warming romances all about love-against-the-odds and extreme poverty. On the front cover was a badly drawn street of back-to-back houses, urchins in the background, and in the foreground, on the cobbled street: a woman in a flowery dress. The title was embossed in gold foil — Mary and Agnes — and the author’s name, in even larger lettering: Ada Jones.

  Simon knew the name. Ada Jones was a local legend.

  ‘You never mentioned this before,’ he said. ‘Ada Jones is really famous. Worldwide! How do you know her?’

  His gran blushed. ‘It’s not the kind of thing you like to talk about, is it? People will think you’re showing off. It doesn’t count for anything, anyway, because I haven’t seen her in years. Decades. She wouldn’t even recognise me nowadays.’

  ‘How long is it? Since you last saw each other?’

  His gran shrugged and puffed out her lips. ‘Before you were born. Before your mum was born, even. Maybe it was just after the war. I can’t remember exactly. Well, she went off down south. She got married down there. Married a doctor. She never came back to our town. She forgot all about us lot. That’s what I thought.’

  ‘That’s a proper rags-to-riches story.’

  ‘At least,’ his gran smiled oddly, ‘I always assumed that she’d forgotten about us and about me. Until I started reading this.’ She tapped the book softly.

  ‘It’s about you?’

  She shook her head modestly, looking slightly confused. ‘Yes. I don’t know. Bits of it, perhaps. It’s about two girls growing up in a street very like the one where we grew up… me and Ada. It’s all very like. It’s just how I remember it.’ Her voice was going a bit shaky. ‘And I thought — so you did remember, Ada. You remembered me. You see, I thought she’d gone off and made this grand success of her life and she’d left us all behind. Turns out that wasn’t really so.’

  ‘And it’s definitely you? It’s about you?’

  ‘This was her first book. The first one she ever published. Back in the 1950s. I don’t know why I never read it. I’ve only looked at a couple of hers, over the years. She must have written about forty of the things. I was envious, I suppose.’ Winnie stared past Simon, through the Venetian blinds and out beyond the small front yard. ‘I’m a silly woman. Here was my story, all along. My own childhood and when I was a girl. They’ve been in a book. All that time. Only I never found them. But I found them in the Exchange, though. First book I laid my hands on. It just about fell off the shelf into my hand. Weird, isn’t it? I suppose I was meant to find it, just at that moment, after all that long while.’

  ‘Have you finished it?’ Simon flicked through the book, riffling the pages softly. There was nearly a thousand of them.

  ‘Not yet.’ She sniffed. ‘I’ve been reading like a maniac. Getting to know Ada again. Getting to know me again. As we both were, back then. It’s been wonderful. And frightening. And… I want to get to the ending. To find out how we end up. To see if Ada lets us be happy at the finish. And yet I’m also dreading it. Of course I am.’

  ‘Why?’

  His gran looked at him steadily. ‘Because I already know the ending, don’t I? The two girls get split up for ever. Childhood ends. Youth ends. Real life begins. Oh, do I know how the rest of the story goes…’ She sounded bleak. Her tone had gone dead. ‘So of course I don’t want to finish it.’

  ‘He’ll want it back,’ Simon said suddenly. He blinked. What had made him say that? Of all things?

  ‘Who will?’

  ‘The man in the Exchange,’ Simon said softly. ‘He made us promise, didn’t he? About returning the books for credit.’ She shook her head firmly. ‘I couldn’t give this back. I’m sure he’ll understand. This isn’t the kind of thing you can just give away again.’

  Simon wanted to say to her: just a week ago you didn’t even know that book existed.

  But there was still that distant, slightly hurt look in his gran’s eye and so he didn’t go on.

  At first Ada Jones was just one of the dirty kids next door.

  She was one of the youngest belonging to the new, rough family who made so much noise and who’d already started fights with the neighbours. The husband was a young bruiser with a chip on his shoulder. His wife looked like a common slut, Winnie’s mum had said. Also: the inside of their place was infested. It was a proper disgrace. They’d ruined it already and God knows how many they had living there. It was a proper slum indoors and they were bringing down the tone of the street. But — Winnie’s mum went on — her heart bled for the younger ones. The babies. They looked filthy. They were never even properly dressed. One of the toddlers was out playing in the street, wearing just one sock and an old vest.

  Ada Jones was terribly thin. She was just about white in complexion. The bones of her skull were sticking out in her face, so that, when her head popped up behind the garden wall, the day they first met, Winnie just about yelled out in horror. Ada’s hair was lank and pale. Her eyes, though — they were b
onny. Sort of minty green, Winnie thought. They seemed to change, according to her mood.

  And Ada’s moods changed quite often, quite dramatically. She could be teasing, laughing and joking one minute — and then she could fly into a temper. She’d go all offended and aggrieved, lashing out with her stick-thin arms and legs. Utterly fearless, she’d give anyone a belting, if provoked. As they went on to become friends, Winnie’s role was most often having to bail Ada out of the trouble she got herself into.

  Then, from temper, Ada’s moods could swing back down into miserable self-pity and wheedling: ‘You’re still my friend, aren’t you? You don’t hate me, do vou? Do you?’

  Even though Winnie knew Ada was a great one for putting on an act, she was always taken in. Even though she knew she was being manipulated by her tiny, pale, weedy friend, she loved her and didn’t mind.

  Ada was a slum kid. A street kid. A backyard waif. She was helping to drag up her brothers and sisters, and to make sure that they all survived. If she lashed out occasionally, so what? If she didn’t have perfect manners, or got a bit hot-tempered or dreamy sometimes — who cared?

  Winnie and Ada were best friends and it started the day Ada hopped up over the wall separating their two backyards and introduced herself by quizzing Winnie. She asked her the nosiest, most intrusive questions Winnie could imagine.

  ‘Is your father dead, then? Or did he just run away with a fancy woman? Who’s the old bird you’ve got living with you? She looks horrible. What does your mammy do? I’ve seen her go off first thing in the morning. Is she cleaning somewhere? Is she nice? She’s got a kind face, I think. Does she hit you ever? Have you got bruises? I have. Look at these! Look!’

  Winnie had been pegging out her mother’s washing and she was shocked by Ada Jones. Right from that first moment. No one ever talked like she did. Certainly no one that Winnie knew. She watched in calm astonishment as Ada struggled over the brick wall, smudging green mould on her already dirty frock, and came to show off her bruises. Livid, purple-yellow bruises up the backs of her arms and legs. They were the colours of pansies, Winnie thought.