by Anita Anand
As Kerry Pillai in Swansea points out, the same thing is happening now. ‘When people lose their jobs, the first things many people do to save money is to get rid of the computers and the Sky TV contract. But if they’re looking for a job, they need to be online. We’ve got sixty-five terminals here, our customers get two hours’ free internet use each day, and we run CV workshops and sessions with the Job Centre. Libraries are a lifeline.’ Or, as another senior librarian puts it, ‘Nobody knows it, but we’re the secret social service.’
The great unsold truth of libraries is that people need them not because they’re about study and solitude, but because they’re about connection. Connection with other worlds and different views, even if that’s no more than being among other people thinking and breathing. Paul Forrest worked first in Brent and now in Richmond – geographically close, but economically miles apart. He used to go out with the mobile library around the deprived areas of Edmonton. ‘It was quite shocking how isolated people are sometimes. There’s people out there who haven’t left their homes in years. They need oxygen canisters to breathe, so they can only walk as far as the plastic lead allows them to. It’s like a dog on a chain. Sometimes books or talking books are the only connection to the world they’ve got. And the mobile librarians really know their customers’ interests – not just that they like romances, for instance, but romances with a bit of spice, not too much sex, a bit of history. Those books are almost a form of medication; I reckon we save the NHS a fortune in anti-depressants.’ Not for long. If the rise in e-books continues, then in theory anyone with a computer would be able to ‘borrow’ the digitised text or audio version online. They wouldn’t need the vans and the librarians; that last contact with humanity would vanish.
Because they provide a haven and because they don’t discriminate about who they admit, libraries can often end up attracting problems. In some areas, their attempts to counteract drug use in the toilets has had mixed results. Some tried installing infrared cameras, which should in theory prevent anyone trying to shoot up from being able to find a vein. The cameras worked great until someone realised that all users had to do was mark themselves up beforehand with a poster pen.
Libraries also have odder uses. Tramps and the homeless have always used libraries, since they’re warm and full of comfortable spots in which to sleep. In Edinburgh, the Central Library is just up the hill from what used to be the city’s main doss-house in the Grassmarket, so when the homeless were pushed back out onto the streets every morning, they’d head straight to the library for the day. Security apparently took a ‘compassionate’ view, as long as no one was being disruptive or smelt too much.
In Marylebone, they still take a lenient view. ‘As long as they’re vertical, it’s alright,’ says Nicky Smith, senior librarian. ‘If they’re horizontal or snoring, then we wake them up. Mind you’, she adds cheerily, ‘we were always told to wake people well before closing time, because if they turn out to be dead, then you won’t get home before midnight.’ Marylebone has particular cause to be vigilant; it has the unusual distinction of being one of the few libraries in Britain where someone has actually died. Edgar Lustgarten was well-known as a TV personality during the ’50s and ’60s. He presented an early version of Crimewatch, talking the viewers through the topical murder mysteries of the day. On the 15th of December 1978 he went to the library as usual and was found some time later dead at his desk. What had he been doing? ‘Reading The Spectator.’
And of course every library has its stock of regulars. One Home Counties library had an old lady who walked around town with ‘a massive proper talking pirate’s parrot’ on her shoulder. The parrot was chatty but conversationally limited, and since both it and its owner used the library’s computers every day, the staff eventually had to put a notice up banning pets. Shortly after that, there was the unscheduled mobility-scooter ram-raid. ‘There was an old lady who came in on her scooter, and I think she must have lost control and pressed the accelerator. I just remember us all standing there at the desk, watching her heading straight for the crime section. All the books and the shelves came down on top of her. It took ages to get her out – I don’t think she knew how to get it into reverse.’
Issues and recommendations continue to present a challenge. Peter Collins: ‘I regularly get people saying, “I took a book out of the library about ten years ago. It were blue. Have you still got it?” In Marylebone, one member of the House of Lords comes in every day to check the Peerage, presumably to find out if any undesirable types have tried sidling into the nobility overnight. ‘One of our oddest requests came from the council,’ says Ian Stringer in South Yorkshire. ‘They asked us for an assessment of outcomes, not output. Output was how many books we’d stamped out, and outcome was something that had actually resulted from someone borrowing a book. So say someone took out a book on mending cars and then drove the car back, that’s an outcome, or made a batch of scones from a recipe book they’d borrowed. It lasted until one of the librarians told the council they’d had someone in borrowing a book on suicide, but that they’d never brought it back. The council stopped asking after that.’
Odder still was Worksop’s resident book-eater. ‘We kept noticing that pages had been ripped from some of the books,’ says Peter Collins, ‘Not whole pages, just little bits. It would always be done really neatly, just the tops of the pages. And then we started noticing these little pellets everywhere, little balls of chewed paper cropping up in different parts of the library. Eventually, we figured out who it must be. None of us wanted to say we’d noticed him munching away at the books, so I approached him and said something like I’d noticed “tearing” on some volumes. He said he didn’t know anything about it, but we’ve never seen him back. And we had a streaker once. In Tamworth. He got into the lifts, and somewhere between the first and the second floors he managed to take off all his clothes, run naked through Music and Junior, and then vanish out the front doors. The library there is right next to a graveyard, so goodness only knows what happened to him. All part of life’s rich tapestry.’
It’s an odd thing that libraries – by tradition temples to the unfleshly – can sometimes seem such sexy places. Perhaps it’s their churchiness or the deep, soft silence produced by so many layers of print, or simply the hiding places provided by the shelves. ‘There’s a big following on the internet for sites on librarians and people with library fetishes,’ says Kerry Pillai, manager at Swansea library. ‘I don’t know why. But we do have a lot of attractive staff here.’ Has she ever been approached? ‘I did get sniffed once,’ she says. ‘In the lifts.’
For many years, Ian Stringer worked on Barnsley’s mobile libraries. So potent was the South Yorkshire service that at one point during the ’80s, we had four couples leaving their spouses for each other. We ended up calling it the Mile Out Club.’ What was going on? ‘I think it’s because you used to have two people going out, usually a man and a woman, in the van sometimes for nine hours at a stretch. Often it would be an older man and a younger woman, and I reckon some of the younger women had married young, and this was the first chance for them to see what an older man could be like. And some of the spots they’d get out to, like the farms, they’d be quite secluded. Not that anyone ever delayed the service, of course.’ By the time the fourth couple got together, the erotic charge of the vans had grown so great that ‘all the relatives ended up having a fight on the loading bay, everyone pitching in, all chucking boxes of library tickets at each other’.
Back in Worksop, Peter Collins is still keeping the faith. Books are not dead, reading still matters and the need for libraries is just as vital now as it was during the 1940s when Philip Larkin complained of stamping out so many books in a week he ended up with a handful of blisters. ‘Reading is a much more alien concept for a lot of kids,’ says Collins. ‘The pace of life is different now, and people expect art to happen to them. Music and film do that, a CD will do that, but you have to make a book happen to you. It’s betwee
n you and it. I always have a sense of trepidation when I open a book, because when you start reading you’re giving yourself over to it, entering another person’s world, opening yourself up. It’s a relationship, and like any relationship, it can also make you feel guilty or resentful or happy or relieved. There’s something of the importance and power of books that doesn’t come from anything else. Nothing else has that magic, that combination of ink and discovery. Some people find books scary, but that’s just an indication of their power. You’re never going to get that mischievous sense of danger from a computer.
‘People can be changed by books, and that’s scary. When I was working in the school library, I’d sometimes put a book in a kid’s hands and I’d feel excited for them, because I knew that it might be the book that changed their life. And once in a while, you’d see that happen, you’d see a kind of light come on behind their eyes. Even if that’s something like 0.4 per cent of the population that ever happens to, it’s got to be worth it, hasn’t it?’
THE BOOKSTEPS
CHINA MIÉVILLE
When she came to school the next day, Deeba’s bag was packed. It contained sandwiches and chocolate and crisps and a drink, a penknife, a notepad and pens, a stopwatch, a blanket, plasters and bandages, a sewing kit, a wad of out-of-date foreign money she’d gathered from the backs of drawers all over her house, and other bits and pieces that she thought might just be useful. On top of them all Deeba had put her umbrella.
That morning she’d hugged each of her family members for a long time, to their amused surprise. ‘I’ll see you later,’ she’d said to her brother Hass. ‘I might be away for a while. But there’s something I have to do.’
She reminded herself several times that her plan might not work. That all her preparations might come to nothing. Still, her heart was going very fast most of the day. She thought it was excitement; then she thought it was fear. Then she realised it was both.
That morning she didn’t talk to anyone. Becks was watching her suspiciously and Zanna looked confused. Deeba ignored them.
At lunchtime she went to the school library.
There were a few other pupils in the room, doing homework, reading, working at the computers. Mr Purdey, the librarian, glanced up at her, then went back to his paperwork. Apart from a few whispers, the room was quiet.
Deeba walked past the desks and the other children and in among the bookshelves. She went to the furthest end of the room and stared at the shelves in front of her. She pulled on the glove made of paper and words.
The multicoloured spines of hardback novels stared back. They were slightly battered and coated in clear plastic. Deeba looked up. The shelves rose a metre or so above her, to the ceiling.
‘Right,’ whispered Deeba. She checked the contents of her bag one more time. ‘Enter by booksteps,’ she said, reading her hand. ‘And storyladders.’
No one was watching. She stepped up carefully and put a foot on to the edge of a shelf, then reached up and took hold of another. Slowly, carefully she began to climb the bookshelves like a ladder. One foot above the other, one hand above the other.
The books didn’t leave much space for her fingers or toes. She felt the bookshelves wobble, but they didn’t collapse. Deeba concentrated on reading the titles just in front of her fingertips.
She knew she must be close to the ceiling. She didn’t slow and she didn’t look up. She stared straight ahead at the books and climbed.
A little way up the spines looked less battered. Their colours more vivid. Their titles less familiar. Deeba tried to remember if she had ever heard of The Wasp in the Wig, or A Courageous Egg.
It took a moment for her to realise that she was still climbing. The library floor looked further down than it should be. In front of her was a book called A London Guide for the Blazing Worlders. Deeba kept climbing. She was definitely beyond where the ceiling had been. Still she didn’t look anywhere but straight in front.
She clung to the edges of the shelves and climbed for a long time. A wind began to buffet her. Deeba tore her gaze from a book called A Bowl for Shadows and at last looked down. She gave a little scream of shock.
Far, far below her she saw the library. Children walked between the shelves like specks. The bookshelf she was ascending rose like a cliff edge, all the way down and as far to either side as she could see.
Vertigo made Deeba nauseous. She had to force herself to keep going up.
She stopped to rest when her arms and legs were shaking. By this time all she could see was an endless stretch of bookshelf. Behind her back was nothing but darkness.
Deeba tried to take a book off the shelf to take a look inside it. She almost lost her grip. She heard herself shriek and she clung to the storyladder while her heart slowed.
She wondered if her friends below would hear a tiny tinny sound, and if she fell whether she would keep tumbling until she landed back in the library.
Eventually she fished her umbrella out of her bag and climbed like a mountaineer, hooking a shelf high above with its curved handle and hauling herself up.
Once there was a hard squawking and a noise from the void behind her. Something approached her on wings.
Without looking, Deeba grabbed a handful of books and flung them over her shoulder, rustling like rudimentary wings. There was a thud and an angry cawing. The avian noise receded. She did not hear the books land.
Though relieved, Deeba felt vaguely guilty about mistreating them.
She stopped being aware of time. She was conscious only of an endless succession of titles and of wind growing stronger and louder and of darkness around her. Deeba’s fingers closed on leaves. She went through places where ivy had claimed the shelves and tangled roots into the books. She went through places where little animals scuttled out of her way.
I might be climbing the rest of my life, she thought, almost dreamily. I wonder how far this bookcliff goes. I wonder if I should maybe start moving left. Or right. Or diagonally.
It was growing slowly lighter. Deeba thought she heard a low noise of talking. With a sudden shock, she realised that there were no more shelves.
She had reached the top. She reached up and hauled herself over the top of the wall of books and looked out over UnLondon.
Deeba clung exhausted. Below and all around her was the abcity. The loon shone down. She was so tired and confused that for several moments she could not make much sense of what she saw. She hooked her umbrella carefully over bricks and swung her leg over. Then she looked around.
Deeba swayed giddily. The wind pushed her hard.
She was straddling the rim of an enormous tower. It was a cylinder, at least a hundred feet in diameter, hollow and book-lined. Outside, bricks went down the height of countless floors past small clouds and flocking bats to UnLondon’s streets. Inside, it was ringed with the bookshelves she had climbed. The vertical tunnel of books was dim, but lights floated at irregular intervals in the dark void below. It didn’t seem to end. It wasn’t a tower: it was the tip of a shaft of books that went deep into the earth.
At some point during her ascent, what had been a flat shelf-cliff must have curled around and joined up behind her back, so gradually she hadn’t detected it. It had become a chimney poking from a vertical universe of bookshelves.
There was motion below her. There were people on the shelves.
They clung to the edges of the cases and moved across them in expert scuttles. They wore ropes and hooks and carried picks on which they sometimes hung. Dangling from straps they carried notebooks, pens, magnifying glasses, ink pads and stamps.
The men and women took books from the shelves as they went, checked their details, leaning against their ropes, replaced them, pulled out little pads and made notes, sometimes carried a book with them to another place and reshelved it there.
‘Hey!’ Deeba heard. A woman was climbing towards her. Several men and women turned in their tethers and looked curiously.
‘Can I help you?’ the woman said
. ‘I think there’s been some mistake. How did you get past reception? These shelves aren’t open-access.’
‘Sorry,’ said Deeba. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
The woman moved like a spider just below her. She looked at Deeba over the top of her glasses.
‘You’re supposed to put in a request at the front desk and one of us’ll fetch whatever you’re after,’ she said. ‘I’m going to have to ask you to go back.’ She pointed over at UnLondon.
‘That’s where I want to go,’ Deeba said, pulling off the glove and putting it in her bag. ‘But I came from inside.’
‘Wait … really?’ the woman said excitedly. ‘You’re a traveller? You came by storyladder? My goodness. It’s been years since we’ve had an explorer. It’s not an easy journey after all. Still, you know what they say: “All bookshelves lead to the Wordhoard Pit.” And here you are.
‘I’m Margarita Staples.’ She bowed in her harness. ‘Extreme librarian. Bookaneer.’
(This is an extract from China Miéville’s novel Un Lun Dun, published by Macmillan.)
ALMA MATER
CAITLIN MORAN
Home-educated and, by seventeen, writing for a living, the only alma mater I have ever had is Warstones Library, Pinfold Grove, Wolverhampton.