“ Your name? Your name?”
It was all a con. They made their job so important – perhaps they needed to convince themselves. Put people behind a counter or in a uniform and they’d enjoy their power. The more insignificant the job, the more rigidly they exerted their power. “Please don’t turn down the corners of pages. We haven’t much money to spend on books, you know.” The old lady trudged away, looking bewildered, humiliated, resentful.
The temptation of petty power affected Peter too. One reader always cleared his throat before his name: “Huh – Barnes.” It sounded hyphenated. “Pardon?” Peter would say, to make him omit the cough – but he never had. Nor could he meet your gaze while saying his name. Afterwards Peter had detested his own trivial sadism.
A massive woman with a face like a boxer’s advanced on him. “Can I have that book?” She jabbed a finger thick as his thumb at the trolley in the staff area.
“ We’ll be putting the books on the shelves in a minute.” His position behind the counter allowed him to fear nobody.
It was all false. The job let him play a role, avoid himself. Wasn’t that true of all jobs? The minute hand snipped away the time to five o’clock. Soon he would be free. Cathy had suggested he work in the libraries. The only good thing had been meeting Anne and Sue, and smoking with them in the staffroom.
An old lady struggled up to him, trying to manage a pile of books and a poodle like a woolly toy with eyes bright yet inexpressive as the stones in its collar. “Do you like my little doggie? You can stroke him. He won’t bite.”
God forbid. He grabbed the books as they spilled. Nurse Nightingale’s Last Doctor. Operation – In Search of Love. Two Against the world. “That’s a lovely book. I expect it wouldn’t be your style, though.”
Why did she bother saying so? Why must she be so oppressively nice ? “Thank you so much,” she said when at last he extracted her tickets. “Say goodbye to the nice man, Hercules,” she said, waving its paw. Peter felt as though he’d been forced to swallow a mixture of sugar, saccharin and molasses. He was full of loathing.
Jesus, where was five o’clock? The clock’s hands appeared to shift minutely, but perhaps that was an echo of his acid trips. A queue passed sluggishly along the counter; they were all coming in now that it was nearly closing time. “Open your books, please. One on top of the other.”
Quarter to five. All the windows were boarded up, and protected further by heavy wire mesh. You couldn’t lock people and their problems out, any more than you could lock them away. He wished he’d had a joint – except that would have made him feel more oppressed, shut in with the artificial light in daylight. No wonder kids broke the windows when the city council spent so much on building a new library, yet expected them to live in shit and tower blocks.
The librarian patrolled, intoning “Closing in five minutes.” An old man woke grumbling; another shuffled newspaper pages together like huge unwieldy cards. Some children ran in to dare the notice: NO
CHILDREN ALLOWED IN THE LIBRARY WITHOUT TICKETS OR NOT IN THE COMPANY
OF AN ADULT. One of the staff chased them, calling “Now then, now then” like a stage policeman. He was playing a game as much as they were, Peter thought.
“ We’re closed, I’m sorry,” the librarian said, barring the way of a group of men. “Closed, I’m sorry. Closed.” Peter had heard the men talking in the pub next door; they were communists, unemployed. One of these days they won’t be able to lock you out, brothers.
“ Goodbye, Peter,” the librarian said. “I hope you do well with your studies.”
“ See you,” Peter said generally, and “See you, brother” to longhaired Mike, who read the New Statesman.
He strolled along Great Homer Street. The line of shops, low boxes of orange brick, dwindled behind him; some of them were already locked in metal, impregnable as safes. Opposite them on a patch of waste stood two market stalls, Scrawny frameworks of tubular steel, picked almost clean of merchandise. He wouldn’t be seeing those sights again. He was free.
Girls stood beneath a tower block. “There’s the library man,” one said.
“ Where?” another hooted. “That’s a girl.”
Ah, irresistible Liverpool humour, the famous Scouse wit, the instant quips. Their squeals of laughter set the back of his neck ablaze. He ought to have retorted “If I’m a girl then what the fuck does that make you?” Often he replayed scenes in his head and gained the advantage – more often since taking acid.
The bus laboured uphill, away from the Mersey. Back there, stars were drowning – lights on the river, blurred by mist. Ahead, floodlights blazed over Anfield football ground, a glare of lightning prolonged for hours. Football fans piled onto the bus.
Ranks of lit shops passed close on both sides. Scarved fans disembarked. A newcomer asked Peter “What’s the score?”
“ Half an ounce of Moroccan hash.” Pretending frustrated him, and nothing interested him less than football. Sometimes his refusal to pretend landed him in fights – at least, with the threat of them. This time he didn’t need to worm his way out. The man sidled away, shaking his head, to question someone else.
Lights sank into fog. West Derby Road. Boaler Street. The gay porn bookshop on Holt Road. Lodge Lane. Trees stirred dimly in Sefton Park, like the onset of a trip. He hoped Cathy was out shopping; he liked coming home to an empty flat. When he’d lived with his parents he could always retreat into his room when he grew irritable.
The flat was as empty as the house sounded: good. He had still to grow used to this new experience, marriage. It had seemed to promise total security, an end to all problems – but it felt less real than living with Cathy had. It weighed him down with bourgeois ambitions and the fear of failure. He was wary of giving himself to the marriage, in case he did something wrong.
Was he being lazy? He released the vacuum cleaner from its cupboard and led it about, snatching at dust. “Darkies all work on the Mississippi,” he sang. When he’d finished he felt virtuous. Time for a joint.
He crumbled the resin. Where had Cathy put his books now? Her idea of tidying was to clear things out of sight; it didn’t matter if you couldn’t find them. There they were, hiding in a corner. Most were library books, which he’d borrowed as a member of staff. One day he’d return them – maybe.
Most were set books for the University. He must do some reading. Nineteenth-Century Litteratchah. Dickens – Christ, what a turgid turd. “Discuss the effects on Dickens’ style of the tension between melodrama and social comment.” Should he write something now, while Cathy wasn’t here to distract him? But the flat seemed distractingly large and silent. If he played a record, the music would carry his thoughts away. He’d get his head straight soon. He could work during the rest of the vacation.
He felt the cannabis take hold. Time slowed. The sound of a passing car became an event in itself, prolonged and fascinating. He reached for an unread Silver Surfer, and admired the sleek metallic curves of the inhuman superhero. “Leave comics alone,” his parents had used to say. “They’re beneath you.” He hadn’t looked at a comic for years, until one day when he was wandering stoned.
Now Cathy disapproved. Couldn’t she see that in time the comics might buy them a house? Often he went to the Comics Marts, to share a few joints and to marvel at the comics dealers’ prices. He wanted a house as much as she did: he’d like a room to himself. But they had no chance of a mortgage now. Christ, why would he want to trap her here? He had more reason to want to move than she had. He thought he might have seen the killer before he’d murdered Craig, and had done nothing.
The first time he’d seen the man watching Craig – when Craig had been complaining about the stereo – he’d known the two of them were involved. He hadn’t needed to glimpse the man lurking among the trees to confirm it. One of Craig’s ex-boyfriends, no doubt. Peter had wondered what he was up to, but hadn’t been about to get mixed up with those people: Craig had always disturbed him, with his simultaneous heftiness and grace, the qualities of Oliver Hardy. Perhaps if Craig had been open about what he was, he would have been less alienating.
Whoever the man was, he had something to hide; he must have, to have conned Fanny into thinking he was a detective. Maybe he just hadn’t wanted her to know he was gay, Stupid cow – she was as stupid as her name. She deserved the same as had happened to Craig.
He shuddered. He’d had a brief vivid image of the killing. Shit, he couldn’t have prevented it. The joint was setting his thoughts adrift; they floated over one another, overlapping. Suddenly he saw Craig against the wall. His mouth and his flesh were gaping. Peter felt the razor part his own skin.
