by Helen Slavin
Mrs Atkinson wasn’t listening, she was reaching into her bag, digging out her big bunch of keys.
‘Yes you do, Ruby. They come second only to pigeons on the council’s list of nuisances. Anyway, what the council feels about anything is not our concern. We’re…an information system…’ Her voice was scornful but steady. ‘…We’re in the information business…and…if…I can…just…’ She lost patience with herself and tipped out the contents, picked out the elusive keys from under a pair of spare knickers. She handed them to me, a silver Yale one between her finger and thumb.
‘You might find some “information” of use upstairs. In the store rooms. The one at the end of the corridor is packed with more of the Brecks’ belongings. All sorts of documents and personal effects they brought from Kite House when it was sold off…boxes of it…I’ve never had the time to get all the way through. Feel free, Ruby.’
I took the key and she gave a wistful smile. ‘Save whatever you can from redevelopment.’
She dropped her eyes back to the paperwork, adjusting her glasses further down the bridge of her nose. I turned away, towards the stairs and smelled the piney smell again, as if I had disturbed a forest carpet of needles. It was heady, dizzying, melting the basement into woodland, and as soon as I stepped back into the corridor it was wafted away. Instead I breathed the papery dustiness, the polished wax of the parquet flooring.
Her worry about the council was just the surface, there was something more. It was something I recognised the way you recognise yourself suddenly reflected in a window or a mirror when you aren’t expecting it. She was hiding in the archive too.
Megane o kakenai to miru koto ga dekimasen
I can’t see if i don’t wear glasses
‘You want to get yourself webbed up,’ Harvey suggested to Mrs Milligan, shovelling battenberg cake into his mouth during a rainy Friday lunch break. Harvey could eat an entire battenberg, just as if it was a KitKat. You’d have said that might account for his portly shape, but Harvey was not, is not, a fat man. Solid. Stocky. But nothing wobbles anywhere and he doesn’t have man boobs. He has a strong defined chest and in the summer, when he wears short-sleeved shirts, you can see his arms, his biceps and triceps sculpted, flexing and stretching as he loads up the mobile library. What he reminds me of is a gorilla.
‘Get yourself a PC and a modem. New Zealand’s as good as next door on line. Get emailing him. You could even get a webcam.’ Harvey moved to the wastepaper basket to tip crumbs from the well he’d made in his jumper. Underneath, his T-shirt was trapped and lifted. Mrs Milligan’s eyes flittered over the brief view of the curling dark hairs of his belly and she visibly brightened, as if the cartoon lightbulb of thought had popped on over her head. In all her distress and confusion of feeling email simply hadn’t occurred to her.
Mrs Milligan had mourned her son’s decision to abandon the country, but in a round-the-world way it gave her the freedom to abandon her own country, to take steps. That first month she had been hiding in the staff tea room. The cut sides of Alex’s departure had not yet healed over. Taking a look at her, clinging to that sofa clutching those cups of tea, you might have thought they never would. But they were scabbing up, the wounds were repairing and she knew it. We all know it when it comes upon us. It is the process we fear most. Letting go.
‘I’ve never had anyone to email before,’ she confessed later, smiling over a fresh cup of tea brewed by Harvey in the little china pot from the back of the cupboard. Before lunch was over and the exchanged French teenagers arrived to wreak havoc amongst the periodicals, Mrs Milligan was on a sure thing at PC World with Harvey.
You wouldn’t automatically associate an out-of-town computer superstore with a den of romance but Harvey told me later that it was home territory for him. He knew where he was amongst the modems and scart plugs. He could talk to her easily; he was not worried and so he could concentrate on doing something for her instead of impressing her with a wine list or a flashy car. Harvey, it is now clear to everyone, has his head screwed on straight.
Once the computer was purchased and in the back of his car he could extend their companionship into the supermarket. They’d already visited there together, it was an easy move. They didn’t even spend the time in the supermarket together, just armed themselves with their separate baskets and headed off for their individual shop. It was only as they stood side by side at the checkouts that each looked in the other’s basket and noticed the similarities. The same cheese, the same bread, the same chocolate biscuits. The same saying nothing about it.
* * *
It is a coming-to-rely-on that happens. It’s that thrill of knowing that there will be hours in the day spent with that person, the glimpses of the back of their head, the sound of their footfall on a stair. Sometimes I think maybe we shouldn’t move any further than those petty minutes. Keep safe behind the barrier of not knowing. But Harvey and Mrs Milligan weren’t going to be warned. And the first I knew, I could smell it.
It was just a citrussy tang in the air at first. I had come in early and was already making a start trying to match Lady Breck’s journals with another stash of photographs I found shoved in a shoebox labelled Sundries. The second I turned them over the light shone out of them. They could only be Lady Breck’s work. I was unpicking two strands of her life woven tightly between the pages of her marbled notebooks.
The new finds included a sequence of not-quite-formal portraits of the hunting shooting and fishing that went on at Kite House. She had captured smirks and a flash of ankle; shut eyes, a smudged Earl. For years the archivists and collectors had assumed they were simply taken by a servant, or by the local photographer who was often on hand to record the antics of the gentry. But I found the journal that matched up. I could recognise her eye and the way it looked out on her world.
And I was so delighted with my detective work, I decided to emerge from my burrow for a cup of tea. As I moved up the stairs from the basement I was thinking of a triangle or two of the genuine scotch shortbread Mrs Atkinson had brought in the day before in its tartan tin. I didn’t tune in immediately to the voices I could hear above me. What pulled me into focus was the hint of a smell of vanilla and rosewater. A true distillation with all the clarity, the decoction of pod and petal. And then the voices were distinct.
‘…they’ll be starting to arrive at about seven so we need to have the chairs out by half six. What do you think, Harvey?’
‘Yep. Sounds organised.’
Harvey was erecting the events easel, a cork board on a flip chart stand, as Mrs Milligan was pulling out the flier for tonight’s Romance and Ruination event from her events calendar file. This time Devlin Kennedy, clearly a jack of all trades, was coming to give a talk on romantic novel writing to a group of dedicated creative writers and other interested parties. There was going to be wine and cakes, and some anxiety about whether Kennedy, flying in on a cheapy charter ticket from a book signing in York, was going to make it back in time.
I watched from between the stone banisters of the steps to the archive. I had only a back view of Harvey and a slice of Mrs Milligan, her right hand side as she sorted her publicity items, the author photo, the banner that declared, excitedly TONIGHT!
‘Be a tight squeeze if you want to grab something to eat,’ Harvey mentioned, as offhand as he could manage, but I saw how he snagged the soft skin between his thumb and forefinger snapping down the easel support. His face pinched tight with a grunt of pain. They were like scissors, those easel struts, ever ready to snip into you.
‘I brought sandwiches. I remember the rush last time.’ Mrs Milligan was making last-minute poster adjustments with one of Mrs Atkinson’s permanent markers.
There was a sudden squally gust as one of our borrowers shushed through the chickenwired doors into the lobby and swizzed out through the revolving doors. The concussion of air ruffled and flittered the papers Mrs Milligan had laid out and my slice of her danced slightly out of view as she dipped to retrieve t
hem from the floor. She bent from the middle and I caught the hungering and delicious glance that lit Harvey’s face. The parabolic curve of her arse illuminating him, exactly like a full moon.
‘So I couldn’t persuade you to a pizza at the art gallery café then?’ You could hear the pent-up courage, the daring that breathed through every word.
Mrs Milligan missed it. ‘Sorry? What’d you say Harvey?’ she dodged back into view then, reloading the staple gun. I held my breath. I held Harvey in my gaze. Willing him.
‘I was just saying…’
Do it.
‘…just saying that I don’t like sandwiches. Much.’
Do it. Don’t blink. Don’t move. Breathe through. Do it.
‘Nor me. Bloody hate them in fact, but needs must. I got beyond it last time and I can’t be bothered cooking when I get home. Does that look all right Harvey?’
She was faffing about arranging the author picture. Harvey only had eyes for her.
‘Perfect.’
He had not blinked. I maintained my gaze, imagining it was a tractor beam, holding him in orbit around her. Do it. Now, Harvey. Harvey went one better. As Mrs Milligan stapled the author picture at a jaunty angle Harvey took one step to move behind her. Then, his muscled arms reaching out over her shoulders, his face not quite touching her hair, he unfurled the TONIGHT! banner. She took a step back to examine her handiwork, a step back into Harvey.
‘You. Me. And a pizza?’
There was a terrible Einstein second of silence before her voice came like a whisper, the tiniest nod of her head, a scent of toasted cinnamon.
‘That would be lovely. I would love to.’
And she stapled TONIGHT! into place.
* * *
Eventually I arrived in the staffroom to find it was Mrs Atkinson’s turn to boil the kettle dry. She was standing by the window looking over some papers, something a couple of pages long stapled together. I popped the lid back on the kettle and refilled it through the spout. It made a vicious hissing sound but even that didn’t bring her round. She was stooped over the two pages, flicking back and forth. I had to crane slightly to see that it was the schedule for fixtures and fittings for a house sale. The telephone began to ring, a harsh bleating sound. She took a deep breath then, surfacing to pick it up.
‘Central Library, Mrs Atkinson speaking…oh…hello. Yes…yes…they came this morning in the post…yes…not a problem…’
I wanted to escape and yet bolting for the door would break cover. So I took careful slow-moving steps backwards until I felt the wall. I leaned into it, as if it might meld me into itself. The hem of the curtain seemed to tap at my fingers, ‘Hey, here I am, take cover,’ and I rolled myself into the fabric.
‘…I’ve not made any problems about this. If you think about it I’ve done all the donkey work for you Grae. You’ve not had to deal with any of this…Well if I’ve been obstructive how come the house is sold?…No. I only said I didn’t really want the sign up…Because some half-cocked idiot will trash it over a weekend. You remember when the Hargreaves sold up and their sign showed up in everyone’s garden at at some point…I’m not exagger…Oh think what you like.’ And she hung up the receiver.
I could see her through the weave of the curtain, so that she was standing behind a cloud of stylised sixties dandelion heads in a field of murky green and sulphurous yellow. Harvey had already commented that the curtains were a vintage print. Too precious for eBay, but he had a friend who was into vintage textiles and made handbags and hats who had already made him an offer if he’d steal them for her.
Standing behind them, watching Mrs Atkinson salt her tea with tears, I thought they’d need dry-cleaning first. They reeked of forty years of librarian book-breath.
Toshokan wa shizuka na hazu desu
The library is supposed to be quiet
I was prepared for the sleeplessness. It had been that sort of day. No doubt there are psychologists somewhere who say that my expectation of insomnia guaranteed it would happen. My view is if you’re going to be awake all night, face up to it. Get comfy.
I enjoyed my perch on my improvised roof terrace. It was very cold that evening and I fished out the old gloves again from where I’d left them on the top of the fridge. Miss Nudey Gardener downstairs was at her yoga class but I was still careful not to make a noise. It felt good to perch up there, catlike. I had a tray of tea resting on the kitchen windowsill so that all I had to do was reach in for a refill. Possibly I should have had a saucer of milk, although I haven’t ever seen a cat lap at a saucer of milk. The cats I have encountered have generally preferred tearing the heads off sparrows.
I reached for the binoculars, pulled focus on the backsides of the other homes, jigsaw-pieced through the branches of the trees and shrubs. The lean-tos, the decking. The man in the workshop planing wood, making a frame like ribs and a spine. I watched him for a while, lost in his work, and felt guilty that he was oblivious.
Sometimes I think that perhaps we can handle the past better. That’s why most of us live there. We know what’s happened. We’ve got the pictures and, most of all, we know we are safely out of it. The future is infinitely dodgier, like one of those games when you stick your hand in a bag and it has been hinted to you that there is, at the very least, a tarantula in there. That’s it, my philosophy based on experience. The future is hairy and black and possibly venomous.
* * *
I headed back to the library at about three a.m. It seemed pointless to while away the night time bloating myself with endless pots of tea when I could be in the sanctuary of the archive keeping company with Lady Breck. I let myself in with the key, and took a torch so that I wouldn’t have to turn the lights on and give myself away.
‘…is too pompous, too stuffed a shirt,’ she was bemoaning when I opened the pages. Her Traveller observations were crashing into her daily life.
* * *
…rigid in his petty and snobbish insistence that the Roma are wastrels and hobbledehoys casting curses and telling fortunes. I have seen their culture first hand throughout this last year. Their strong held beliefs and traditions are as worthy as anything Breck holds dear. Our own Dr Hamer would do well to consult the women and their wide ranging knowledge of herbalism and healing.
Vancy Kircher, a matriarch of our local Roma camp at Gabriel’s Hundred has questioned my lack of offspring. At first, I know, it was an attempt to wrongfoot me, possibly frighten me off but now it has become something more. It is a bridge between us. Mrs Kircher has an eagle’s eye and has seen what I am about, that I mean neither disrespect nor harm to her or her kinfolk. That eagle’s eye has seen how I too question why I have not been with child. Vancy Kircher has offered healing. In her society, as in mine, the arrival of a baby is a vital and celebrated event, the continuation of the bloodline into posterity. It is clear after this difficult evening that Breck will hear naught about it, will not countenance such measures.
Of course, some matters cannot be healed with herbs.
Breck has declared that my visits to the Roma camp at Gabriel’s Hundred should be curtailed and a visit to the October Horse Fair is similarly forbidden.
Is it conceivable that he has lived all this time with me and does not know that such a phrase is but a gauntlet thrown down? Or that I will always accept the challenge?…
* * *
It seemed to me that just as Lady Breck prepared for her Horse Fair Rebellion I heard the bull grunt in the corridor. My eyes didn’t leave the graceful slopes of her copperplate handwriting, only my ears tuned harder. A lorry drove past, clanging over the manhole so it tolled like a bell. Nothing. Nothing? No. There it was again. Low, reverberant, close by. Animal.
I used to be afraid of the dark. Not now. If it is a monster it will be careful not to be seen. No one has ever yet taken a photo of the creature under the bed, have they? It was coming from one of the side rooms facing me. I took a quiet step, kept my torch beam down low.
The first room revealed t
he stationery store. The second revealed Mrs Atkinson in a sleeping bag on a lilo. As my torch beam skittered away from her face she shifted slightly, rolled over, caterpillar like in the sleeping bag and stopped snoring.
I was quick and quiet gathering my things. I did not even need the torch as the security light’s steely glow lit the way for me. It was past four now. Outside, the bitter cold was as welcome as the sun. Every breath I took in seemed to clean me. Orion the Hunter strode across the black sky and the usual yellow fug of street light seemed bronzed now in the iced air.
I walked vaguely homeward. I was in no hurry, for I was no longer tired. It was as I passed the small park with its benches, the tiny bucket-sized duck pond and the couple of swings that I scented the air. It was something synthetic, the afternote of something that had been there. A soap or cologne leaving its trail.
I stopped, glanced into the darkness of the playground for a moment. The swing at the far end was in motion, jagging and tipping as if someone had just knocked past it.
* * *
I was at the desk the next morning. Martha had called in sick for the second time that week. Mrs Atkinson had ‘arrived’ wet-haired, having been to the leisure centre for a shower. She was heading off to County Hall for a meeting with Heather and some councillors, so I had to abandon my time travel for the day and man the desk. There was an air of battening down hatches against a couple of nasty viruses rumoured to be making their way around the schools. It was clear Martha had fallen prey first because she’d been busy the previous week with Welcome to Words and spent three days being breathed on by battalions of snotty-nosed, nit-haired brats from the local primary schools.