Another Life Altogether: A Novel - By Elaine Beale Page 0,21
as she looked me up and down. She was a solid woman, shapeless as a tree trunk, in a sturdy green wool dress. Her face was broad, with big jowly lines around her mouth and a deep frown etched between her eyebrows. Her hair was blue-black, the kind of color that only comes out of a bottle; it gave her skin a grayish tinge, as if she hadn’t seen daylight in a while, and somehow made me feel as if, upon stepping into the mobile library, I’d entered into a fiercely guarded lair. “I heard there was some new people moving in,” she said. “You’d be surprised how much I find out here in this little van. Go all over this side of the district, I do.” I frowned, wondering if somehow she had already picked up some choice snippets about my family. My father would be thrilled. “So, like a good read, do you?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Reading, that’s a good quality in children. Beats all that rock and roll—all that nonsense about free love and drugs. All these layabouts you get on the dole. Far as I’m concerned”—she wagged a stern finger in my direction—“you can blame most of the evils of this world on a lack of reading. If more kids these days read instead of watching the box and getting all kinds of rubbish in their heads, the world would be a much better place. Oh, no, you wouldn’t find young girls unmarried and having babies if they’d been reading instead of messing about with some boy, now would you?”
I nodded in agreement. She did, after all, have a point.
“Now, you want to sign up then, do you? Want to take out some books?”
“Yes, please,” I said, eyeing the shelves that lined the van.
“Oh, good, a child with some manners finally. I can’t tell you how many kids these days don’t know the meaning of ‘please’ and ‘thank you.’ Get you a long way in the world, do those words. Here.” She pushed a form toward me. “Fill out this and you can pick five books. Keep them out no more than a fortnight. I usually come round once a week.”
I filled out the form and handed it back to her. She looked it over and pointed me toward the bookshelves. “Don’t take all day about it, mind. I’ve got to be at the Reatton church hall by twelve. They’ve got the pensioners coming for a browse and a cup of tea with the vicar. They’re a demanding lot, them pensioners. And they’ll be a bit put out today, since the Bleakwick Young Wives Club already took out half my Agatha Christies.” She shook her head slowly to amplify the gravity of this occurrence. “I keep telling them over at the main library to get in more Agatha Christies. But listen to me, do they? Of course they don’t. After all, they’ve all got their fancy degrees from some fancy university. And me—well, I’m just a lowly nobody with nothing but a few O levels and a love of literature.”
I tried to pull an expression that showed deep sympathy for her plight.
“I keep trying to tell them that mysteries and romance is what goes down best with the folk round here. But what is it they send me?” She paused and seemed to expect an answer. I was about to try to give her one when she continued. “Rubbish, that’s what. Well, of course they wouldn’t call it rubbish, would they? But what these hoity-toity types at main think is a good book is not what interests the Reatton Derby and Joan Club, is it? And you should see some of the stuff they send me.” She wrinkled her nose and lowered her voice. “Well, suffice to say it’s not suitable subject matter for the young wives or the pensioners. I prefer to keep it off the shelves.” She began to whisper. “Back there.” She indicated a stack of books immediately behind her. “That’s what I call my slush pile. And slush it is, I can tell you.”
I leaned over the desk, trying to make out some of the titles on the spines of the stack of books. The librarian waved me away. “Like I said, not suitable material. Now you’d better get yourself something picked out. I’ve not got all day.”
There were a lot of books—the tightly packed shelves lined the van from floor to ceiling—but when I began looking at the titles I couldn’t see much