Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Thursday is dull, flat, much as I feel after last night. Driving into work the blocks of flats merge into the dreary, grey skin of a sky. The traffic lights are pin pricks of colour in this drab, draining world. I've got a leaden feeling in my stomach and I'm doing my best not to think about Bill. At the lights I swing my battered Micra to the left into the car park arriving at the barrier. There's the usual pantomime as I play hunt the pass card. I dig through the pockets: no card. I wind the window down and press the ‘Help’ button on the stand by the barrier. There's a long pause, the sound of static. There's a queue growing. I'd like to run and hide but I'm stuck. Someone’s crunching towards me. Can you have car park rage?

            “Can I help?”  I can hear the smirk. I stare rigidly ahead, “When will you ever learn Mr Dafoe? 

            “Just open the barrier Liz”, I plead resignedly. As I roll  through I glance in the rear view mirror and Liz salutes. She’d have blown a fanfare if she’d had a trumpet.

            I park the car and Liz’s, (rather her husband’s) silver Mercedes SLK slides into the next bay. I dig around in the passenger foot well, picking up papers that have slid onto the floor. My wallet slips out of my jacket landing open in my lap. Both the ID and the car park card are there, stuffed next to the debit card. I look  up. Liz is standing by the back of my car, briefcase in hand waiting for me.

            “Okay, I know I should be more organised but I’m going through one of those phases,” I say, clambering out of the car.

            “Tony, I've never known you to be in anything other than a phase. Take the time the night before to get sorted.  Things will run that much smoother.” 

            There are five of us to run the library: me, Bill, James (never Jim), Mary and Liz. Liz is the oldest, a woman of a certain age. She came back to work after the youngest of her four children left home 20 years ago. I remember Liz in the library when I was a student. She mothers us all.

            She always makes an effort. Today it's a blue two piece trouser suit with navy court shoes. The hand bag is cream; the brief case is Italian calf skin, a memento of some holiday along the Riviera, no doubt.   It’s probably worth more than my car. (None of us has ever fathomed what actually is in the brief case, it’s never opened in our presence, but each day it makes the journey into work.) 

            The library itself stands three storeys tall. It’s made from red, glazed bricks with the doors and windows framed in sandstone. The bricks are smooth to the touch, reflecting the world back, but the sandstone is warm and rough. It has swirls and eddies of colour that run and flow through it like the tide; each block is different, natural whereas the man-made bricks have been fired into uniformity. The building is raised up, exalted with a flight of steps running round three sides, topped by a small terrace. You can walk round this looking down on the rest of the town. From here you look down the main high street to the square and the town’s church; mind and soul catered for.

            As we walk across the car park we do the normal pleasantries. I'm hoping that Liz doesn't mention Bill or what went on last night. Last thing I want is the maternal third degree.

            “Didn’t you and Bill leave together last night?”

            There it is. I shrug

            “Did Jonah join you?  I thought Bill said he was a way. You know I’m worried about her. Do you think everything’s all right?”

            I decide: at this moment I really resent Bill, I couldn’t give a damn about her or Jonah. I did her the favour. I could've said 'no' about last night. Then where would she have been.

            “Well?” demands Liz. She believes that we are the parents of our little working family, she because she is the oldest, me because I’m the titular head.

            “Well what?” Bespectacled James greets us and I'm grateful for the interruption. He’s been hiding in one of the building's nooks to shield himself from the cold. He’ll have done his usual fast walk up from the bus depot; small red dots on his cheeks show his exertion. Tight, black curly hair pokes through his green woolly cap. He is wearing a military great coat, which could happily house another person.  Stuffed into the pockets are the Big Issue, some militant group’s newsletter and the Guardian. However, he’s been reading the Telegraph, ‘strictly for the sport and to see what the ruling elite are thinking.’  There’s a cardboard coffee mug at his feet; the need for his first shot of caffeine is greater than his political imperative to boycott companies that exploit so many. I’ve known him to picket a coffee shop having popped in first to get his fix.

            “Well, what are we going to talk about at the staff meeting?” Liz asks and I feel relieved. Clearly she’s not prepared to air Bill's problems in front of one of the 'children'. I'm saved, for the time being at least. Liz taps the code into the digital lock; Shakespeare’s birth year (the only four digits we could all guarantee to remember) and we push on the door.

            Buildings feel different at different times. End of the day, there is a mixture of fatigue, the place is jaded as if all the energy has been used up or turned into some poisonous product. Start of the day it’s different, like plants that need carbon dioxide for photosynthesis, so the books and the building seem to have sucked out all that was bad in yesterday and started again. It feels pristine but I know it will be sullied only by what you, I, we bring into it.

            “Right, who needs a coffee?” ask James, heading off to the kitchen area. Liz pushes the doors open to the main library, flicking the bolts down and locking them open. We proceed to the computers and the ritual switching on which is echoed across the site, town and country. James rejoins us, coffee mug in hand.            Liz frowns at him and follows it with usual reprimand, “No drinks in the library James for all users and that includes us.”

            James blithely ignores the command propping himself against a bookshelf; a temporary one containing new books and yesterday’s returns. He clasps his mug, his eyes half closed savouring the aroma of the coffee. His reverie’s broken as the doors are pushed thunderously open.

            “Where on earth were you last night McFadden?  Where were you?”  The strident tone doesn't fit the petite woman who’s marched into the library. She ignore us, focusing on James. She stops abruptly in front of him. The stare is fearsome, jade eyes boring into James, gem stone cutting flesh. He blanches and backs away. The book shelf wobbles.

            Liz and I are frozen, not sure what to do.

            The woman un-shoulder’s her bag. Like the voluminous navy coat, it's military surplus, khaki with a long strap. She takes the bag in her left hand, looping the strap round her fist shortening. James is looking for help or an escape route, but he’s nowhere to go except backwards, pressing into the books behind him. She stops a few feet from him swinging the bag. James feels the rush of air as it pass his face. It's is a precision act, missing James’ nose by millimetres.

            She pauses.

            “I stood outside the King’s Head last night and where were you?  I rang your mobile, I left messages. Where were you?  You said you could make it, you even said you’d be early.” 

            James’ mouth is trying to form words, (“I don’t expect to be treated like this”), the combination of the forensic gaze, (“I missed the first band because of you”) and the threat from the bag that's bobbing to and fro, (“It’s just typical of you”) might be swung again in anger means nothing comes out.

            “Well, I’m waiting.” 

            Hesitantly James starts, “Look I'm sorry but...”

            Barely are the words out of his mouth than the bag is being whirled. It comes in from the right slapping into his stomach. He tries to catch it but misses and is off balance for the blow that follows. He staggers back into the shelf. It’s leaning perilously..

            “Stop! Now! Please!” I can see what is going to happen.

            The third blow is landed. James can't take it and rocks back. To his horror the book shelf isn't rigid, it flows with him.

            The shelf begins to topple, books sliding off as it falls. James rolls to avoid another blow from the bag. Liz and I charge across to catch the shelf before it hits the floor or one of the neighbouring shelves. For one moment I've this vision of bookcases toppling like dominoes across the whole library. I catch the shelf behind the falling one leaning full in to it to prevent it from tumbling as well. Several books fall, and the shelf rocks but it remains stable. Peering through a newly created gap I see the shelves that James has been leaning on is now stuck on the one that I’m propping up. His book case is denuded of books. They lay scattered on the floor, leaves fallen from a tree. James has rolled clear. He’s flat on his back, looking skyward, ruefully smiling.

            “Oh,” says the bag wielder surveying the devastation she has caused.

            I've now inched round the shelf I’ve been propping up to help Liz right the one James was leaning on. To get it to stand straight I have to kick several hard backs to one side.

            “Careful Tony,” Liz scolds.

            “Ah, Mary, Mary quite contrary,” smirks James from his recumbent position, “Sorry, Matt came round and we had to sort the arrangements for London, I didn’t think to check the mobile.”  He sticks a hand out and Mary pulls him up from the floor.

            “Yeah, well make the effort next time.”

            “So there’ll be a next time?”

            “Yeah,” and with a gentle tug she pulls him into her and they kiss.

            “I do wish you two would deal with your domestic issues outside of work,” I say this in the full knowledge that they won’t. “Come on, let’s sort this out.”

            It's at this point, that Bill arrives. She's late as only she can be.   She stops and stares, James and Mary still together, Liz and I working our way round the floor picking up books.

She looks awful.