Another Life Altogether: A Novel - By Elaine Beale Page 0,4

the ingenious precision of the Dewey decimal system rather than complex and cruel social hierarchies. But most of all I loved the library because that vigorously imposed silence implied an awe of something far bigger than me, than all of us. It showed the deepest regard not for our need to talk or belch or scream—not for the silly chatter of little children, the gossip of older women, or anyone’s gasping need for a cigarette—but for those stacks and stacks of books and the words and worlds that lay inside them.

That afternoon, I claimed a desk in the reference section, having planned to do the homework Mr. Cuthbertson had given us—a series of questions about the tidal patterns of the River Humber. Instead, I pulled out the Reader’s Digest World Atlas. I thumbed through its thick pages and found myself tracing the route for my mother’s cruise ship. After chugging cheerfully away from Hull Docks, I decided, she had sailed into the North Sea, around the fat-bellied coast of East Anglia, past the Thames, and into the English Channel. Soon, she’d be making her way around the coasts of France, Portugal, and northern Spain. She’d stop in Calais, where she’d do a bit of shopping and, like all the English people who went there, load up on cheap French wine, perfume, and crunchy baguettes. Then she’d find herself exploring the coast of Southern Europe and taking in the entire Mediterranean. I recognized the names of places like Barcelona, Marseilles, Nice, Monte Carlo, the islands of Corsica and Crete, the cities of Athens, Venice, and Rome. Undoubtedly, she’d meet millionaires and high-stakes gamblers, racing-car drivers, fashion models, and perhaps even get to see the Pope make a speech from a balcony in Vatican City. Then, exhausted by the excitement, she’d venture back into the Atlantic, where her journey would continue. She’d travel all the way around Africa, India, Burma, Thailand, the Philippines, China, Japan. Then on to the Americas: Canada, the United States, and all those South American cities with mysterious, multisyllabic names—Montevideo, Buenos Aires, Tierra del Fuego. And perhaps then she might go on to the South Pole after all, leaving Cape Horn to sail past giant icebergs toward the massive continent of Antarctica.

When I arrived home, I found my father in the living room, sunk in his armchair, hidden behind his copy of the Hull Daily Mail. I knew he had been to see my mother earlier, and for a moment I wanted to ask him how she was and if they were taking care of her. But that might mean he’d ask me if I wanted to go and visit her at the hospital, and, more than anything, I did not.

“Make us a cup of tea, can you, love?” My father spoke from behind his newspaper. “News is on in a sec, don’t want to miss it.”

The BBC News was the highlight of my father’s day. Normally, he arrived home from work just a few minutes before it came on. He’d walk through the house, discarding his overcoat and suit jacket on the coat stand in the hall, battling the tight knot of his tie as he entered the living room. Then he’d turn on the television, drop into his armchair, and unlace his shiny black shoes, filling the room with his ripe, sweaty-feet smell. Sometimes he might sigh, turn to me, and say, “All right, Jesse, love?” But most days he just sat there silently as the BBC globe spun around and around, and that urgent, official-sounding music came on. Then, almost as soon as the newsreader began talking, my father would begin to yell, rolling his eyes and gesticulating, swearing and bouncing on the noisy, worn-out springs of his chair. “Stupid bosses’ lackey!” he’d shout at Richard Baker as he talked about another miners’ strike or the Watergate scandal. Sometimes he’d throw a shoe toward the screen when he was particularly annoyed at the BBC’s account of events, or when one of the Conservative politicians he hated most came on. But usually he reserved the full force of his vitriol for those end-of-news feel-good items about the royal family—Prince Charles playing polo, the Queen Mother visiting a children’s hospital, Princess Margaret opening a new shopping center. “Bloody useless parasite!” he’d shout, wagging his finger at the screen while the Queen Mum, in pastel pink and pearls, smiled benevolently and waved to an adoring crowd. “Should go out and get a real job instead of living shamelessly