The Keeper of Stories, page 2
Today there are no ghosts, only the sisters, for the two librarians could be nothing other than sisters. They have the same particular shade of auburn hair – strawberry-blonde woven with touches of copper. One sister wears her hair shoulder-length, curling under; the other has one long plait drawn slightly to the side. This reminds Janice of a little girl, even though this sister must be close to fifty. Janice thinks it suits her and likes the way she has woven multi-coloured threads into her plait. Janice knows little about them apart from that they are indeed sisters and there are four sisters in all. The younger of the sisters (with hair worn loose) had once said to her, “Mum had four of us. Dad never could get himself a boy.” Her elder sister had added for emphasis, “Four, can you imagine that? The poor man. A houseful of women.” The younger sister had gone on to explain that all the sisters were very close and all looked remarkably similar. “Of course,” the elder had stressed, “we are all very different.” Her sister had nodded. “Yes, we call ourselves Brainy, Beauty, Bossy, and Baby.” They had both laughed. “A family joke,” the eldest had said. “Yes, a family joke,” the other had repeated, smiling at her sister.
Janice had thought of her own sister and tried to imagine the two of them working together, sorting through books in a library in Cambridge. She knows it is a fantasy – thousands of miles and unspoken memories separate them – but she draws the imagined thought out sometimes in the same way that she selects stories to re-visit. The sisters have no idea she is a sister too, but they do know she loves books and they chat to her about her favourites. The sisters are not women who believe you should keep quiet in a library. “Well, of course people who love books are going to want to talk about them,” the younger sister had once said.
Janice has tried to work out which sister is which, but hasn’t liked to ask for fear of getting it wrong. She privately thinks the younger must be Beauty and the elder sister Brainy, or possibly Bossy. She has seen her clear the library at closing time in less than two minutes.
Today they both greet her in unison. “Janice, your book is in.”
Janice is currently re-reading old favourites and has ordered a copy of Stella Gibbons’s Cold Comfort Farm.
She takes the book with a word of thanks, and then thinks to ask, “Have you ever thought the library might have a ghost?” As she says it, she feels foolish and wonders how the young man could have talked about the subject with such assured certainty.
The elder sister leans a little further over the counter. “Well, it’s funny you should ask that. You’re the second person who has been in today talking about the library being haunted.”
Ah, the young man. “And are you? Haunted, I mean?”
They appear to give the subject their serious consideration. The elder sister says, “Well, I don’t know. I have sometimes thought the books have a life of their own. But I just think that is old Mr Banks, who never puts anything back where he finds it.” The younger sister considers her sibling for a moment. “But of course, everyone knows ghosts like to read. So maybe…”
Before Janice can ask another question – how do you know? Or maybe, how come everyone seems to be aware of this but me? Or is this just what you heard the young man say? – they are interrupted by a gaggle of young mothers with their toddlers who need the sisters’ attention.
Janice takes her thoughts, her copy of Cold Comfort Farm, and her cheese sandwiches to the hidden table at the back. She sits for some time, her book unopened in front of her, considering the question: are people’s stories defined by where they fit in a family? But if so, where does that leave her? She has no desire to follow this thought so instead imagines a ghost browsing the shelves after closing. She finds the prospect calming rather than worrying – any ghost that likes books can’t be all bad. And this calm is a relief. The truth is, Janice is a worrier. And the list of things she worries about seems to be growing daily. She worries about the state of the oceans, plastic bags, climate change, refugees, political unrest, the far right, the far left, people who have to feed their children from food banks, diesel cars, could she recycle more? Should she eat less meat? She worries about the state of the NHS, zero-hours contracts, why in this day and age many people she knows get no sick pay or holiday pay. She is deeply concerned about all the people who rent with little security, or live at home until they are nearly forty. And she worries about why anyone would want to troll another human being or shout at a person in the street just because of the colour of their skin.
She used to read the newspaper and enjoy the crossword. Now she checks her tablet quickly each morning, just in case there has been an earthquake or some major royal has died. But she cannot read on. Each news story adds to her list of worries. And the worry seeps into the rest of her life too. Instead of challenging herself with new and exciting books from the library, she comfort reads old classics and familiar favourites: Austen, Hardy, Trollope, Thackeray, and Fitzgerald.
She opens up her copy of Cold Comfort Farm, ready to sink into the humorous familiarity of the story. Plus, here is a heroine she can really relate to: Flora Poste is a woman who likes things to be kept in order, and so is Janice.
Half an hour later, Janice is leaving the library, re-tracing the path of the young man who believes in ghosts. She is on her way to her next job – Dr Huang – before, finally, the last job of the day. She is halfway down the steps when she sees a familiar figure on the opposite side of the street. The tall man has an unmistakable rolling gait. He sways from the ball of one foot to the other as he walks. It always surprises her that her husband, Mike, is such a bad dancer when he walks with such a lilting rhythm. But what is he doing here? She checks her watch. He should have been at work hours ago. As he disappears from view, Janice finds little relief in the fact that she does not have to add worrying about her husband to her list. He is at the top of her list already.
Three
Stories within storeys
It is nearly 4pm when Janice reaches her final job on Monday: sadness. Laughter to start her day, sorrow to finish it. The red-brick semi-detached house is set back from the road, broad and squat, as if it had once settled down here on its haunches and decided not to budge. The modest front is deceptive; like all the other houses in the street it has been extended at the back, with long, light kitchen/dining rooms stretching into each parallel garden. And in the lofts all along the street are home offices, playrooms, guest rooms, and, in this instance, Janice’s favourite room which she thinks may be the centre of a story. Fiona’s story.
Opening the door, Janice immediately knows Fiona and her son, Adam, are out. An empty house has a singular sound all of its own. Not only does it feel like the inhabitants have gone but that the house has in some way closed itself off, stepped away somewhere else. The silence is so absolute she can hear it. She has noticed this with houses at other times. A house early on Christmas Day can be devoid of noise – but not quite. The house is clearly not asleep (unlike the inhabitants), but instead is breathing very softly and from the walls she can almost hear the plea for, ‘Just five more minutes’, before the onslaught begins. A house on the morning of a funeral has a particular sound – or maybe it’s a feel, she’s never been quite sure: tense, waiting, steady. Two years ago, she felt this here. It was the day Fiona buried her husband. The last time Adam said goodbye to his dad.
There is a note from Fiona on the hall table.
Taken Adam to the orthodontist (more problems with the braces!)
* * *
Money on the kitchen table.
Janice exhales with a deep sense of relief and then immediately feels guilty. She likes Fiona and looks forward to a coffee break with her in her study, but the truth is, sometimes she hopes she won’t be here. On consideration, she thinks there are probably three reasons for this. Firstly, she knows she can get the cleaning done quicker without her around. Secondly – and this is where she knows her guilt comes from – she wants to avoid the sadness she sees in the pleasant, middle-aged woman who sits opposite her, sipping the coffee she has just poured them from the bright red cafetière. The truth is that she worries about Fiona (another one to add to her list). But, of course, Fiona’s life has nothing to do with her. She is just their cleaner, as her husband keeps reminding her.
By the time she has accomplished the bulk of the cleaning she can acknowledge the third reason she is glad Fiona is out. It gives her more time to spend in her favourite room in the house – the long, low room in the loft. She will still be cleaning, of course, (Janice has strict rules about this) but she will be thinking about Fiona’s story too.
In the loft, on a broad table that once held a train set – the marks from the tracks still visible on the green felt – sits a doll’s house. It is a large, Regency-style house with three storeys and – like Fiona’s home – extra rooms in the roof. But on the ground floor, instead of dining rooms, kitchens, and pantries, is a commercial property. Living space above, business premises below. In gold-leaf paint, Fiona has created an elegant miniature sign for the business: Jebediah Jury: Undertaker. Janice has no idea where the name came from, but she must admit it has a certain ring to it.
She sits down and opens the front of the house. Most of the rooms are complete, perfect in their miniature form. Bedrooms, a drawing room, a nursery, and Janice’s favourite, a beautifully fashioned country-style kitchen with pastry part-rolled on the table alongside a bowl of plums the size of pin heads. And there is a new addition since last week; Fiona has finished one of the bathrooms. She thinks the blue and cream paisley print wallpaper looks perfect with the mahogany suite and claw-foot bath. Janice reaches out and straightens the tiny navy bath mat that hangs over the miniature towel rail. There is another change she spots too. Downstairs in the back workroom she sees that Fiona has made another coffin – walnut, with tiny brass handles. She does not think this is something any doll’s house emporium sells. Why would they, when most people look for miniscule dressers, a piano, or even a dog basket? No, she knows Fiona will have made this herself. She sits frowning at it, not knowing quite what to think.
When Fiona’s husband died she had been working as an accountant in a law firm. Within two months of his death she had given up her job and was retraining as an undertaker. Over coffee she explained to Janice that it was something she had always been interested in doing, but had never said it out loud as she thought people would think it was rather odd.
Janice did not find it odd at all. She knew that when people marry there are magazines and online guides to help you. Everyone gives you advice; you can’t stop them. But when someone dies you can find yourself alone in a world of self-conscious silence. Janice sometimes helped out a friend who ran a catering business and over the years had found herself volunteering for the wakes and avoiding the weddings. At a funeral people were often lost, not just in their grief but, being English, immobilised by the fear of saying or doing the wrong thing. A gentle word from the ‘staff’, rather than from a fellow mourner, was often welcomed. So, yes, she could quite see why Fiona would want to be a funeral director.
Fiona had worked part and then full-time for an undertaker’s, completing the required training to become a funeral director, and Janice had no reason to believe she had ever regretted her decision. But another coffin? Were there not too many already stacked up in the back? Since then, Fiona had gone on a series of residential courses and moved away from undertaking and specialised as a civil celebrant, focusing on non-religious funerals. Janice can understand this too – the need to bring order and offer security when you do not have religious rituals to follow. She knew people – atheists – who had received a religious funeral purely because the family had turned to established doctrines, unsure what else was available.
Janice draws a long thin tube from the pocket in her apron and from it pulls a metal wire on which are attached rows of tiny green feathers. Fiona is not the only one who can make things. She sets about dusting each room in turn, marvelling at the detail that has gone into creating each setting. Is building this tiny world in miniature enabling Fiona to make sense of her world? She isn’t at all sure it is.
Janice does think her new job has helped and she knows Fiona has eased and guided others with great kindness through the shock and sorrow that comes with death. And it was because of Fiona’s work that Janice had first heard her laugh after her husband’s death.
They had been having coffee together in Fiona’s study. Fiona had been curled up in the low leather armchair, feet tucked under her tweed skirt. She wore a pale green jumper and all Janice had felt she needed was the addition of a dog-collar, for her to be the picture of a country vicar. Perhaps that was why the bereaved found her so comforting? Fiona had pushed her glasses up into her short, ash-blonde bob and put aside the piles of notes in her lap. She’d explained that these were her numerous attempts at a eulogy for a man who appeared to be universally disliked by all who had known him.
“You’d be amazed,” she had said, looking up at Janice, “how many families leave the eulogy to me.”
“Maybe they’re afraid of speaking in public?” she had tentatively suggested. Janice knows she is not only a worrier, she is also a mouse.
“Doesn’t seem to stop them yelling and fighting in public,” Fiona had replied, smiling.
Janice had nodded. She had seen that at the wakes too. For a mouse she was surprisingly effective at breaking up fights.
“How about this?” Fiona had said, and picked up her top page of notes. “He was a man of his generation.”
“Hmm, not sure.”
“He was a real character?” Fiona had suggested doubtfully.
Janice had considered for a moment. “How about…” She paused for a while staring out the window. “He was a man who will not be forgotten by those who knew him best.”
Janice had turned back quickly at the sound of Fiona’s laughter. It had been months since she had heard her laugh. She found she wanted to cry.
“Bloody perfect,” Fiona had said, grinning.
She finishes dusting the exquisite doll’s house and clips the door shut. She wants Fiona’s story to be represented in this beautiful piece of furniture. An allegory for a new, unexpected direction that leads to healing and recovery. That is a story she would like in her collection. But she is less and less sure that Fiona’s story has a happy ending. There is a darkness hidden in the story – a huge, unspoken issue that she thinks is being ignored. Something is lurking. This makes her uneasy, leading her to think of her own childhood, and if there is one place she has no wish to be, it is back there.
Four
Everyone has a song to sing
(And a reason to dance)
Waiting at the bus stop, Janice finds herself wondering if it will be the driver from this morning. She can’t rid herself of the feeling of something left unsaid in that fraction of a second just before the doors sighed and shuddered closed. She begins to imagine the driver sighing along with the doors. What was he going to say to her? When the bus arrives and she pulls herself on board, she nearly laughs. This bus driver could not be in greater contrast to this morning’s driver. She wonders if someone up there (whatever that means) is mocking her. This evening’s bus driver is a man in his early thirties and he is simply enormous – she suspects more muscle than fat. He has a bald head, a tremendous beard, and tattoos running up the side of his neck. This man looks like a Hell’s Angel. This morning’s driver looked like a geography teacher.
Only when she sits down does she realise how tired she is and for a while she debates easing her shoes off her swollen feet. The trouble is, it can be so tricky to get them back on again. Instead, she lets her weight sink into the seat and she relaxes her body so it sways in time with the movement of the bus. She empties her mind and prepares to idly tune in to the conversations around her. She does not consider this eavesdropping; she just lets the talk wash over her. Then, occasionally, her mind may reach out and catch at a thread of something. Sometimes these loose threads lead nowhere, but if she is lucky she may follow one and get a tantalising glimpse of a story. The journey from the centre of Cambridge to the village where she lives only takes half an hour, so usually it is up to her to fill in the gaps in the stories from her imagination. She is more than happy to do this – and it occupies the time walking home from the bus stop. However, she is very strict about where she keeps these stories: they are filed somewhere between fiction and non-fiction in her mind.
She is not hopeful about tonight’s journey. The bus is only half full and for the moment there is only the barest murmur of conversation. Not that she would ever claim to have developed a second sense of where a story will lie – that is the joy of being a story collector, you can find the unexpected just about anywhere. She recalls the frail, elderly lady in the laundrette (Janice had been washing a client’s duvet) who it turned out had been an air stewardess on the first commercial jet flight from London to New York. As the woman had carefully folded her satin-edged blankets (her husband could never abide a duvet), she’d told Janice of the moment they landed. “You see, PANAM had taken out adverts saying they were going to be the first to break the record, but my boss at BOAC had pulled me aside about a week earlier and made me sign a confidential document and told me they were going to beat them to it – and did I want to be in the crew. You can imagine what I said to that.” She recalls the old woman pausing to straighten her non-descript, quilted anorak. For a split second, her hand had wavered midway to her head, as if to check her cap. Instead, she had curled her grey hair about her ear and continued. “Well, we were always very smart, us girls. More military than the uniform stewardesses wear today. But oh, on that day we pulled out all the stops. I still remember the shade of red lipstick I wore: ‘Dashing Delight’. I thought it was rather apt. Well, we did it. And when we landed and walked away from the plane, all the PANAM staff came out and booed us. But we didn’t care. I walked across that runway as if I were six feet tall.” The woman had smiled up at her and Janice had tried to imagine the younger face that would have held that same triumphant smile. She had helped the old lady carry her blankets to her car and that was the last she ever saw of her. But she still has her story. She pulls it out on the days when she can’t summon a smile herself. The woman’s smile had been so bright it would have lit a space far larger than a laundrette in a back street of Cambridge. It would have illuminated something as large as, well, as large as an aircraft. And Janice thinks, it probably did. She catches sight of her reflection in the rain-streaked bus window. She can see the ghost of a smile on her face. Yes, a good story. And yet another reminder – not that Janice believes she needs it, but no harm in repeating it – that you should never underestimate the elderly.
