A few days pass, and I decide to go back to the phone box down the road. I dial, but nobody picks up the phone, so worried that maybe I called the wrong number, I dial again, but again it just rings out, and so I stand there listening and wondering what I should do now. I don’t have enough money to go to the pub, but I need something to help me sleep, for it takes me ages to nod off, and no sooner have I nodded off than I find myself suddenly awake again, for any little noise or movement seems to disturb me. The day before yesterday I went to the small library opposite the tube station and asked the man behind the returns desk if he would give me a job as I had experience in library work. I told him, I like the smell of books, but he looked at me as if he hadn’t the foggiest idea what I was on about. He was a young bloke, definitely younger than me, and he asked me about my previous employment, but I just stared at him because it got me remembering. About a month after the social worker came to the library, Denise called me into her office and asked me to close the door. Then she just asked me straight out if I’d been around to a Mrs. Gilpin’s house this morning, because she’d just had her on the phone. That’s when I understood what was going on. I didn’t deny it, and I told her that I’d gone around there and knocked on the door and told this Mrs. Gilpin that I wished to see my son, but she just looked me up and down like my label had fallen off and told me that I had to go, but I let her know that I’d go only once I’d seen my son, and that’s when she started to get nasty and said she’d be calling the police if I didn’t leave. Not wanting to provoke a full-scale row, I gave her a piece of my mind and left, but apparently she thought better of calling the police and chose instead to phone my job, and that was all the excuse Denise needed to tell me that I couldn’t work there anymore. Despite our friendship, she said, which made me bite my tongue. What friendship? Ever since I came back from convalescing, she’d kept her distance and treated me like a leper. Monica, despite our friendship, I can’t overlook the fact that you’re habitually late and you just don’t seem to be able to keep your mind on the task at hand. I had to calm this Mrs. Glipin down, as she was ready to send the police around to have a word with you. Now you know that I can’t have police officers coming into the library, you know this, don’t you? I started to tell her that this wasn’t fair, but she told me that she’d already spoken with the council head office, and with my social worker, and everyone was in agreement. They were going to pay me till the end of the month, but as it turned out, they did have a part-time position in another library, if I was willing to think about that, but as of now I was free to leave. And so that was that, and although I didn’t tell the nice young man at the library the whole story, I did tell him that since moving to London, I’d worked at a community centre, but my heart was really in the library profession. Well, he said, but I could see that he was talking and thinking at the same time, we don’t have anything at the present, but if I wanted to try again in the autumn, he happened to know that one of the part-time staff would be on maternity leave. He lowered his voice as he said this, and I thanked him but it didn’t seem right to let on that I’d be back at university in the autumn, so this wasn’t going to work.
I tried the other branch library, but I lasted only a week. It was located on a side street behind an out-of-date shopping centre. Today nobody would think of building a shopping complex that didn’t have a roof, and piped music and warm air, and places to sit down, but this concrete monstrosity was arranged in a big L shape around a huge car park. At one end of the place was a post office, a newsagent’s, a shoe mender’s, a bookie’s, and a dry cleaner’s; at the other end was a supermarket, and hugging the right angle in between was a secondhand charity shop, a maternity boutique, and a council office where you could pay your rent. On the far side of the car park, where the main road was at the farthest point from the shopping centre, there was a row of bus stops with identical plexiglass shelters, and a few seats on which the shoppers could sit themselves down while waiting for their buses to appear.
Around three o’clock in the afternoon was when the first of the men liked to wander into the library. By four o’clock all three of them had arranged themselves around the central reading table, and they busily flicked through the daily newspapers whose spines were wooden sticks. It took me only a day or so to realize that their preferred seating matched exactly where the large clunky radiators were located. It was February now, and the weather was chilly, and these three men liked to spend their afternoons idling in the warmth before I imagined they took themselves back to the pub for the evening. I was pretty sure that their mornings would most likely have been wasted in the bookie’s, before a lunchtime packet of crisps and a pint of beer and then a slow trundle around to the branch library, where they would make themselves at home for a few afternoon hours. Not that I cared, but my new boss clearly did, for I caught the woman glaring at the men and making little attempt to disguise her contempt for them.
By the time the large clock above the door — with roman numerals decorating its face as opposed to numbers — showed five o’clock, I’d have already finished my reshelving, collected my handbag from its peg in the seedy staff room, and be heading out, having nodded a sociable good-night to my boss. But the woman never said a dicky bird in reply, nor did she raise her head up from the checkout desk to look me in the eyes. Resentment, I assumed, at the fact that the local council had placed me in her library as though I were some kind of dodgy gift, and she’d therefore not been given the opportunity to do a conventional interview. Besides me there was only Miss Williamson, who had officially retired five years earlier but who had agreed to help out from time to time, for she was both familiar with the place and had little else to do. However, my sour-faced boss need not have worried herself, for I’d already decided that I wasn’t staying. I’d made up my mind on the very first day that this depressing branch library wasn’t going to be in my future, and on the Friday afternoon I handed in my cards.
I pour the whisky into a cup, but I know that it’s not going to agree with me. However, I need something to help me sleep. When I wake up, it’s bright in the room, and once again I’ve no idea where I am or how I got here. I remember losing Tommy, and the hospital, and then Bridlington, and Christmas Eve at the Mecca, and then trying to see Ben, and Denise getting rid of me, and the useless branch library, and catching the train to London. I remember the room at the top of the house, and the American man in his pinny who’d run away from fighting in the war. I dash into the bathroom, and I’m sick all over the place. I’m feeling too ill to do anything but a little wiping off with some toilet paper and then a quick flush. I drag myself back to the settee and lie down and close my eyes, but my head’s still pounding, so I sit up and try and steady my nerves. I suspect that it’s warm outside, for the daylight bleeding around the corners of the curtains is getting in my eyes. I don’t have a bathing costume, but I reckon if I take off my shoes and strip down to my bra and pants, then I’ll still be respectable. I stand up and hide the bottle of whisky back in the cupboard, and I open the last can of beer and drink it quickly and leave the empty tin on the kitchen counter.
Don’t you have any shame? When I open my eyes, I can see the man from next door staring at me, but I’m not interfering with him. I’m sitting on the small step by the French door minding my own business, and I ask him why he’s looking at me. Now he’s really got his mad up, and he’s shouting and calling me indecent, and why don’t I take a hint and clear off like the other slags? That’s what the man at the Mecca Ballroom called me on Christmas Eve when I wouldn’t let him take me home. You’re just a sorry old slag, he said, and I threw a glass of beer at him, and he said, You’ve bloody gone and done it now. I laughed at him, and then the manager came and asked me to leave. But I’m not going to give this man the satisfaction, so I just stare at him as though he’s talking a foreign language, and when he’s finished ranting, I tell him, all nice and quiet, Don’t talk to me. I can see it on his face that he’s still angry, but he gives me a dirty look, then turns and leaves, and I hear him slam his back door as he goes inside. I’m enjoying the sunshine, and I have a right to be here because my friend said I could stay as long as I wanted and he gave me a key.