The Hope (11 page)

Without meaning to, Arthur said, “Amen.”

“And now,” continued Chartreuse, “I need another man like Walter, another willing to do the Lord’s work.” He paused for effect. “Do you know of any such man, Arthur Wade?”

The question hung between them for a full minute.

“I … may do,” said Arthur.

Chartreuse touched him gently, warmly, on the shoulder and left him alone.

Arthur heard Walter’s note crinkle in his pocket, disfigured words the truth of which could not be twisted, moulded or altered to suit the times. It was Walter’s admission of guilt. Even a halfwit could feel guilt, and it was not that surprising since he had been indoctrinated into a religion that celebrated guilt, worshipped guilt, made a perverse love out of guilt. With Walter’s confession Arthur had the power to condemn or exalt Reverend Chartreuse. He tingled with the thought. The Reverend was a great man, a greater preacher.

Arthur Wade sat and pondered the future and prayed for guidance.

READING HABITS

It had been twenty years before the librarian decided books were a load of crap, years spent sorting, coding, rearranging, stamping, filing, shuffling, reading…

He would go mad if he did it much longer. He huffed on his spectacles for the fifth time that morning, his breath cold steam, and rubbed around the lenses with his mitten. Didn’t they know the cold was bad for books? Balancing the specs on his nose, he found he could see even less than before.

His eyes had got worse over the years while the specs had stayed the same, and that was another thing. Why had they not allowed for an optician on this bloody boat? Silly buggers, they should have asked him to design the thing. He could hardly see to read, and what was the use of a blind librarian, eh? Tell me that. About as much use as an atheist priest.

The trouble with books was that, contrary to popular belief, you could not lose yourself in them. Reading was a shallow experience at best. While the reader was meant to be a passive spectator, he could in fact play God – jump from page to page, re-read favourite bits, miss out whole chapters, close the book if it was boring, never pick it up again if it was really boring. And although books brought a form of immortality for the author, the books themselves were far from immortal. Paperbacks browned with age were shrugging off their cardboard skins and losing pages like an old man loses teeth. Hardbacks parted company with their bosom companions, the slip-covers, to reveal scratchy cloth bindings. Moreover, in twenty years of reading, how many plots and characters could the librarian remember? Really remember? They were no more immortal than him.

Twenty years was a lot of your life, a lot of time spent sitting and growing fat and bald and not screwing around or pulling the birds in one of the bars, not that there was much to pull, the odd tart with laddered tights or hags old enough to be his mother’s mother. That cow with the inane grin who came in so often, she was all right in a wrinkled sort of way, and he could have fucked her at a pinch – tits like dewlaps, no doubt, but beggars can’t etc., etc. But she was only interested in books and he only recommended to her the weedy, romantic-type novels, Austen, Brontë, James, the sort of thing old biddies lapped up. In time, he might wean her on to Dickens or one of the great satirists, Swift, Thackeray, but it was unlikely she could cope with their vitriolic attacks on civility. At least she was a regular.

Christ, but this was a big place! Huge, and not a porthole in sight, stuck in the middle of nowhere with black walls and inadequate lighting. Rows of shelves receded into the distance, so high you needed a ladder to reach titles only halfway up, and hadn’t he nearly broken his neck on more than one occasion? They didn’t pay him much danger money. Come to think of it, they didn’t pay him much money at all. He could have got a decent job, entertainments officer or some such useless nonsense. Damn it, he could earn more working behind a bar! But no, he thought he could put his education to some use down here, cataloguing and cross-referencing, dividing and sub-dividing.

The heaters had been on the blink for two months now and his repeated requests for a janitor had met with bluff disregard. He was only the librarian, wasn’t he, and who read books these days? Answer: old people and odd people – the two characteristics usually went together. And though there were enough of both on the
Hope
, even they had better things to do. So why build a library on this bloody boat? He could have told them (if they’d asked him) to save their money, use the space for a massage parlour or a strip club or something of that ilk.

How did that joke about janitors go? He couldn’t remember a sod these days.

He fumbled with the date stamp, numb fingers unwilling to do what they were told. He could not even lick them to turn pages in case they got frozen to the paper. The stamp slipped from his hands and left half of the date in one corner of the flyleaf, no bloody use to anyone. Sod it.
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
. Who’s going to want to read that again? All that snow and comradeship, it made him sick. Miserable bastards, the Russians. There was one no N deck, Alexei Something-or-other-onov. Never smiled. Wife dead, screwed around a lot, drank vodka as if he wanted to kill himself, often to be found with a floozy on his lap, and he never smiled! Was he
ill
?

Careful, careful. Thinking about floozies was giving him a hard-on, and he wouldn’t be able to do a thing about it until the library closed.

Three people were wandering through the rows of shelves, letting their eyes pass over the titles, waiting for one to leap out and catch their attention. It was a fact, the librarian noted, that the more lurid titles went out the most often, all the Gothics and the science fiction. He detested Gothics and science fiction.

Eventually two of the people left without even glancing inside a book. They had probably come to relieve the boredom for an hour, because libraries gave you an excuse to wander round and look vacant and there was no one to see you except that dickhead librarian with his thick-rimmed specs and an upper lip like a bird’s beak. The third, however, came up with a paperback edition of
Romeo and Juliet
in his hand and plonked it on to the librarian’s desk.

“At last,” said the librarian humourlessly.

“Is it good?” asked the man. He was shaped like an avocado, had a carefully clipped moustache and spoke with an Italian accent.

“If you’re into death, families and sex, yes.”

“Excellent. I believe it is what I need.”

The librarian stamped it, controlling his hands enough to render the date almost legible.

“I myself can do without the first two,” he remarked.

“Thank you. Don’t you want my name?”

“To be honest, I gave up taking down names four years ago during an efficiency drive. You return the book or you don’t, I don’t give a toss either way. It’s not my book.”

The Italian looked at him, perplexed. Was this an insult or not? Did this man know who he was talking to? But the librarian’s face showed not a trace of insubordination or malice, just a frank incuriosity. Signor Bellini gave him the benefit of the doubt, thanked him curtly and left.

“Bloody wop,” the librarian muttered.

It was 16.47, too early for official closing time, but who was going to check? He switched off the desk lamp and got out of his old leather-covered chair. God, his back was stiff. They could have got him a decent chair, couldn’t they? He only had to sit in it all day, they might have thought about that.

He took one last stroll along the central aisle, glancing right and left along every row to see if there was anyone who had crept in without his noticing, some stopper wanting somewhere to bed down for the night, or a brat.

And by Christ, there was someone! In the D section (Dante to Dumas), a stooped, limping man with a rag tied round his head and broken shoes and a great iron on his leg. The librarian was suddenly hot beneath his jacket, very hot, and his breath came faster than steam from an old engine. He gave an odd squeal. The convict had seen him and spoke with a tongue that was gravel, coals, salt-licked wounds, broken stones.

“Hold your noise! Keep still, you little devil, or I’ll cut your throat!”

“Help,” the librarian said timidly, wishing he had a guardian angel to hear him.

“Tell us your name! Quick!”

“Er…” It was strange how, in moments of acute stress, one could not do the simplest things. The other night a whore had asked him if he was looking for a good time and he had been unable to answer her, as if the idea of looking for any sort of time had been whisked out of his brain. She had smartmouthed him and he had walked briskly off, not sure if he even remembered his own name.

“Once more! Give it mouth!” snarled the convict.

But he hadn’t said anything!

“Show us where you live. P’int out the place.”

P’int out? Where did this man think he was?

A churchyard, sprung about with nettles, tombstones of crumbled stone, and beyond, flat and featureless marshland. The librarian knew this place, but only as somewhere he’d never been. And he was inhaling its salted air and the sweet scent of decay, with a nose as sensitive as a cat’s or a child’s, not deadened by years of smoke and grease. The ground was springy and he felt unsteady on his feet, which were used to the steel walkways and bare floors and the ponderous roll of the
Hope
.

“I … I’m not sure what you mean by home. Sir.”

“You young dog,” said the man, licking his lips. “What fat cheeks you ha’ got.”

“Fat! You insolent pig!”

“Darn me if I couldn’t eat ’em,” said the man, and for no accountable reason shook his head, “and if I hadn’t half a mind to’t!”

This was absurd, quite absurd. The librarian didn’t have to stand there and listen to the ravings of a madman.

“Now lookee here!” said the convict. “Where’s your mother?”

“It’s none of your business, but she’s not here, if you must know.”

That had done the trick! The convict started and ran off a few yards before looking back over his shoulder with eyes that would have curdled the librarian’s blood, had he not been running in the opposite direction, short legs pumping the spongy soil, and thwack!

He found himself on his backside on the floor of the library, nursing a bruised bicep. Columns of books rose up over him, titles gleaming on bindings. The
Hope
vibrated the fat of his buttocks.

What the hot holy hell had happened?

The librarian rose shakily to his feet and brushed dust off the seat of his trousers. Twenty years of solitude had finally caught up with him. He had cracked. Taking a nervous peep behind him, he saw only books (Dante to Dumas). But he had recognised the convict and the churchyard, though he had never been near either in his life.

“Magwitch,” he said to himself, and inspected his watch. 17.03. The bars had opened.

The bars had closed by the time the librarian was pissed enough to contemplate his brief, disturbing encounter. With every glass, the possibility that he had nodded off and dreamed the whole thing became increasingly desirable. Not just desirable, but probable. He had often gone to sleep mid-sentence in a book and come to ten minutes later with the unshakeable conviction that he had been in a small boat for days grappling with a huge fish or that the pigs had taken over his farm. Some books sent him to sleep so often he had given them up halfway through –
Paradise Lost
for example. What monumental tosh that was! And
The Divine Comedy
. He hadn’t managed much of that. Reading Dante was like reading the ship’s safety manual, but less funny and less useful.

But the smells and the feel of earth beneath his shoes! The convict had appeared so solid, so vivid…

“Penny for them?” A tart. Christ, she was ugly! He thought he said “Fuck off”, and either he hadn’t or she was especially stubborn, because the next thing he knew was that he was in her cabin and she was undressing him and undoing his flies and he threw up on her head.

“I feel like a rat’s bottom.”

“You look like one.”

The ship’s doctor, Marcus Chamberlain, had the librarian lying on his back on a narrow couch, naked except for his Y-fronts, which could have done with a wash. Looking down his body, his tits and his blotchy pink belly, he wondered how clean his feet were. Dr Chamberlain was feeling his skull and seemed to know what he was doing. He was fresh-faced, seamlessly handsome, and his hands were cool and dry.

“Have you banged your head recently?” He sounded as if he had discovered a clue.

“No.”

“Oh. No, of course not.” Disappointed. “Banged any part of your anatomy?”

“Only my arm. And that was after I’d had the hallucination.”

“Um. After. Well, that’s no good, is it? Domestic problems?”

“No wife.”

“No domestic problems. I’ve got it! Alcohol. You’ve been hitting the hard stuff, haven’t you?”

“No. Yesterday evening was the first time in months I’d gone on a real binge.”

“But you’ve been drinking heavily?”

“No.”

“Steadily?”

“No.”

“Oh.” Dr Chamberlain took out his stethoscope, clamped it into his ears, placed the other end to the librarian’s chest, frowned, turned it over and listened again. “That’s better. Your heart sounds OK. Overworked?”

“Hardly. I just sit at a desk for eight hours a day.”

“And you say this hallucination was from a book?”

“
Great Expectations
, yes. Word for word. I looked it up this morning. Pip meets Magwitch the convict in a churchyard, and –”

“Yes, yes. Put your clothes on. I can’t see anything wrong with you, but I’m going to prescribe a course of pills.”

“What pills?” asked the librarian, struggling with his shirt in his eagerness to hide his body.

“Hang on, I’m thinking.”

“Are you a trained doctor?” he asked suspiciously.

“Yes, I am.”

“Really?”

“Well… No, actually. I was apprenticed to Dr Macaulay, and he died before I could finish my training. But I’ve read all the books.”