Short story
Everything's in books
Beryl Bainbridge
Next year, I won't be here to undergo the indignity of being lend-leased for Christmas. If there's any justice in the world, which I doubt, I shall be six foot under.
They first mooted it in September, the night I would have taken home a packet of tea and two tins of sardines from the Whist Drive if some swine hadn't broken into the office and stolen all the prizes. I wouldn't give the idea house-room at first. The fact that I'm not of the Christian persuasion didn't apparently matter. Slight inconsistencies of that sort simply don't occur to them. They talked a lot of insane rubbish about how one ought to see how the other half lives and how it's good to be taken out of oneself. I can't argue with them -they're not on my wave-length. After eighty-nine years of struggling to get into myself I'm not prepared to listen to some ignoramus telling me I've been barking up the wrong tree. What decided me was Mrs Flaherty and that fool Doris Menzies saying they were going to give it a whirl. I wasn't going to sit for the next six months, every Tuesday afternoon, hearing how they'd got on. So I said yes. Mind you, I did stipulate I didn't want a family with very young children and that I had to be on the ground floor. If I was going to be of any use I had to feel comfortable.
`Oh, yes,' they said. 'We quite understand. No tiny tots and nothing higher than the fifteenth floor.' Doris Menzies said she was sorry but she couldn't go near West Indians. She's not very bright. I could have told her that West Indians keep their old folk until they die. They don't have to go looking for them at Christmas. Of course, Doris Menzies never opens a book and consequently her mind's like an open space.
They gave us a little lecture the last Tuesday before Christmas, though they had more sense than to look at me when they were drivelling on about integrating and minding our P's and Q's. It was Mrs Flaherty they were spot-lighting. Even if they'd been sensible enough to find her a family who'd signed the pledge, she wouldn't be an easy customer and she's got some very odd notions about hygiene. Doris Menzies asked if she would be expected to play the piano they said they didn't think it likely. They implied all we had to do was to sit there and keep quiet.
'You wouldn't prefer us to be bound and gagged?' I asked, but they never let on. They're not qualified, you know, and some of them have very unsatisfactory backgrounds.
We were supposed to be collected on Christmas morning by a member of the family to whom we'd been allocated, but something went wrong with the organising, as per usual. I daresay transport was arranged for the others at the last moment, but then Doris Menzies, when excited, goes soft in the head, and Mrs Flaherty can't walk ten paces without keeling over and calling for a nip of brandy to put her on her feet again. I wasn't bothered. I simply asked the man over the road to drive me to Belsize Park. He wasn't overjoyed but he had an Anti-Nazi League sticker displayed in the rear window of his car so he wasn't in any position to refuse. Once he mended my gas fire, and another time he nailed the head back onto my broom handle and on both occasions I gave his little boy a bar of plain chocolate. I wasn't under an obligation.
When I reached my destination, I thought, so far, so good. Knowing their intelligence I wouldn't have been surpiised if they'd sent me to a council flat or the Chinese Embassy. True, the house was the sort that certain persons on television say is going up in value, when anyone with an atom of nous can see it's practically falling down, but I could tell the area was a decent one. There weren't any Alsatian dogs running wild.
Of course, the inside of the house left a little to be desired. No curtains at the win dows and no carpets on the floor. I'm not ignorant. I read two library books a week and I do know how people live. There was money about, you could tell, even if they had done their best to disguise the fact. There was a very solid table in the centre of the room, nicely laid out with cutlery and glasses and things, and they'd knocked a wall down to make it into a kitchen plus living room. There were two sofas on either side of the fireplace, one of which was taken up by a youth lying under a rug. I thought at first he was an invalid, but later, when the turkey was carried to the table, he jumped up and as far as I could see his legs were perfectly sound.
I could have done with a little more introducing. I was told names Charles and Oliver and Nancy and so on but they never said this is my wife or my husband or whatever. The man who seemed to be in charge was very polite. He said it was good of me to come.
'My pleasure,' I said. 'I hope I'm not too early,' which I obviously was because he was wearing some kind of heavy pyjamas with a stripe up each leg, and the lady called Nancy was in a red nightgown. They were decent, mind, I don't want to give the wrong impression. Nothing was hanging out.
'Oh, no,' he said. 'You're just on time. Lunch will be ready soon. Perhaps you'd care to look at a book.' Fortunately he gave me a picture book, photographs of buildings Spectator 30 December 1970 and so on, which was a relief because 1 hadn't brought my magnifying glass. The Charles man was a bit of a fool. Nice. but a fool. He kept sighing and rubbing his eyes with his knuckles. Doris Menzies can spot them at a hundred yards but then she watches a lot of television. I couldn't tell if it was that, or just that he'd been to a gn°1 school. He told me he'd been down a coal mine for three weeks on a holiday. It was splendid, he said. If the conversation had stayed at this level I might have quite enjoyed myself and 11° regretted that! hadn't stayed at home with a good book. I was prepared to make ances. The Christmas dinner was we cooked and they didn't do anything absurd like setting fire to the pudding or inaistil on wearing paper hats. The woman calle Nancy, the one in the red nightgovvn, was quite intelligent. Twice she winked at Me' once when Charles was drivelling on ab°114 coal mines and another time when he said that cracking nuts was terribly tiring. It wa' only after the meal that things went wrolg,; and partly I blame myself. I had allow myself to become too friendly, tan enthusiastic. Of course, some fool at the. Social Club may have told them was Jewish. I've never looked washed out like l Doris Menzies or others I could mention -a do have a certain boldness of expression,lc light in the eyes, Thoral eyes I often tit, ° even if I can hardly see out of the (14' things. ,d It began with the Charles man saying he'd, given Nancy a book for Christmas. 'Oh ,Yesr: she cried. 'Such a beautiful book. Al's:: lutely fascinating.' And like an idiot! had.viv open my mouth and ask to see it and gleiv the general impression that I'd foam at mouth with disappointment if I didn't. SO Nancy went to the sideboard and lifted olif an enormous book with a cover made the newsprint, and we sat side by side on t" sofa and she opened the pages.
'It's a big book, I said. 'They're reproductions,' she said, 'of the_ front pages of The Times. From 1880 td°. 1914. Its quite riveting'. Then quite2,tt denly, without warning, she asked: `v0 year were you born?' She had the sense ,.`e see she'd gone too far. She explained Su only wanted to know because she felt l might be interesting to discover what was happening in the world the day I was boll' She said she felt events shaped the flit°. 'After all,' she said. 'Everything's in books. Don't you agree?'
I did begin to tremble slightly excitement, though it's certain I haven much future left. The trouble is, my Ine„,111ory isn't what it was, and whole pieces 01g”-if life have disappeared, like chalk rubbed a blackboard. 'October 29th,' I said. '1889,,,'' and regretted it instantly. It sounded '0,ancient, so prehistoric. I don't know h° d she made me tell her Doris Menzies a" Mrs Flaherty have never dared to ask. 'What hour were you born?' she sal, staring at me as if she believed I was Mei" merised by her. , In the afternoon,' I said, though God Knows if it was correct. Who the hell cares anYway, certainly not my poor dear mother gone beyond recall. • , 'Now,' she said. 'Let's find the page.' And there was a little silence during which I may have laughed scornfully, though all the time there was a small bead of terror and delight telling through my head. 'Right,' she said loudly, and she began to read. 'At the moment of near birth, two cousins chose to marry, an Albert Cohen and a Georgina Goldberg. They stood in the _crnpress rooms at the Kensington Palace Hotel and were married by a Rabbi and two assistants. At the Lyceum, Henry Irving was aPPlYing powder to his brow during the m_ atinee interval of Robespierre. At the Shaftesbury theatre the stage was being rept for the evening performance of The bombarding New York. The Boers had been uernbarding Mafeking for two hours and would continue to do so for another two, managing to kill one dog, breed unknown. , ne dear Queen went out for a drive with rrincess Henry of Battenberg and remarked the weather was mild. At the Precise moment you slid with curled palms ?,nto the cotton sheets of your mother's delivery bed, Prince Frederick Augustus of Saxony fell from his horse and sustained a Slight fracture of the skull.' I don't know why I didn't scream. All I said Was: 'Oh, dear. What if it were true?' b 'But it's all here,' she said. 'It's in the c,°°k. And here's something very strange. rorneone far away in Bohemia was writing a de.rrer to the newspapers saying he was isturbed by the growing amount of anti.8einitism. Now if that's not an omen, what I felt quite unwell, and it had nothing to ,(_) with the brandy sauce. Almost as if I'd 'en present at my own beginnings and if °91Y I'd had prior knowledge I could have' cried out ... no, not now. . . later. . . don't ,ive birth to me now. My heart swelled up ubke a brown paper bag and I turned my clack on them, hoping they'd have the e' ceneY to notice I was suffering, but they d n't, and the Charles man remarked it was a ld -fuPerfectly marvellous book and far more nrlY than reading the tea-leaves. It shows ow ignorant they are for all their edu cation, for everyone knows that the old are Ike the young and you should give them sweetie not home truths. Of course I hadn't e,sgci..,r 14 magnifying glass with me so 1 t';u, dn't verify if the Nancy woman was Zuirig the truth or not, and it still worries not knowing, and thinking maybe she missed out something vital and important p. an earthquake or a cyclone, something -',„Ore enlightening than all that rubbish that Henry Irving and his powder puff and It doggie dying at Mafeking. w "Pea we played Scrabble afterwards or khc)rd games, but I can't remember. I do " ttew they sent me home with a carton of 1,1ecurn powder, which I haven't used / ?use I don't care if I smell of roses or not. snail give it to someone, sometime. I've never breathed a word of my day to the Social Club. I merely said I had a nice time. They didn't hear much from Mrs Flaherty either she was almost certainly too drunk to take it all in, and Doris Menzies was under the impression she'd been to the sea-side, when everyone knows she went to a house near the Swiss Cottage swimming baths. I can't explain how I feel, They offered me a part but not a whole. They shouldn't have looked in the book. It was as if I'd been taken to the theatre and in the middle of the first act someone rang down the curtain. I don't know why I should be so surprised at their behaviour to me. Have I not been reviled all my life? Did not Prince Augustus of Saxony sustain a fracture of the skull the moment I was born?
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