CONSTANCE AND THE BAG LADY

librarian Constance gets surprised by an unlikely customer...

Sometimes Brumpton Public Library was more like the inside of an ancient mausoleum rather than somewhere used by the general public for their education and general edification. Not that it was ever dirty or dusty, you understand, but in the absence of any kind of clientele and with only Constance Bingley trying to look as if she had something to do there was an almost deathly hush about the place.

And it was at times like this that Constance hoped for her mood to be lightened by the literary needs of a stranger, and it did sometimes happen. She was always happy to advise on the romance section in particular, and point out which books had what she considered to be happy endings with a tear-jerking quality to them although she was equally content pointing out which travelogues were most tempting.

It was a Tuesday and the library was deserted. She thought of starting to read a recent addition to the cosiest romances but realised that such a thing might bring forth emotional reactions in the form of heavy weeping at precisely the wrong moment and desisted. Romance books had a tendency to do that, especially this series of titles about somewhere called The Lilac Club complete with handsome professional men and languid ladies. It was a weakness of hers.

So instead she started twiddling her thumbs, and the door opened.

Good, she thought, a customer…

And what a customer it was. She looked up and beheld the bag lady. Well, that was her automatic reaction to a middle-aged woman who she mentally placed in the bag-lady section of her brain on account of the fact that she was carrying far too many bags for a person to sensibly carry, most of them the thin plastic variety dispensed by supermarkets.

Besides being middle-aged she was disastrously over-dressed, though none of her clothes looked as if they were anything but rather grubby and old. She wore a hat, green, maybe, though the colour was indeterminate, and it had the remnants of a feather sticking out at a jaunty angle. Her face was round and looked as if a child might have traced along the natural lines that time draws on faces with an HB pencil. Further down, and jutting out of the bottom of her skirts (there were surely more than one skirt there) her legs were encased in thick stockings, again clearly more than one pair because a dull red showed through where the blue ones were holed.

And she stood, legs apart, and surveyed the library, taking note of where the various sections were located. Then,

“Ah, computers!” she said, pointing towards the three machines provided by a thoughtful borough council.

Constance was horrified. She had visions of this creature, this overdressed and yet simultaneously underdressed apparition, wrecking the complex machinery that was used on a daily basis by at least half a dozen regular readers.

“They’re for members only,” she said, trying to smile.

“I have one of these,” announced the bag lady, and she delved into a voluminous handbag that she carried over one shoulder, tut-tutting until she found the document she was looking for.

It was a library ticket.

“Is that your own?” asked Constance, certain that it couldn’t be anything of the sort.

“As is,” confirmed the woman, “look: my name: Anne Smedley. I used to come here a lot but I’ve been out of town on business lately. Things to do and people to see, you understand. It’s never possible to be in two places at the same time, I find, don’t you? And when a body has to be in one place then all others must suffer her absence… it’s a fact of life whether you like it or not.”

“I … I suppose so,” stammered Constance, for once out of her depth.

“Where’s Cedric” asked the bag lady suddenly, “I always used to see Cedric. He helped me on my journey through the various lands of fancy. He guided me towards Middle Earth, for goodness’ sake! So where is he?”

“M...middle Earth?” stammered Constance.

“Yes, Middle Earth and all those hobbits. Now tell me where he is or are you going to stand there for the rest of the day hoping that flies don’t find their way into that mouth of yours?”

Before Constance had been elevated to be the senior as well as the junior library assistant there had been a Cedric in charge. Indeed, it was because of his retirement some three or four years earlier that Constance had found herself in the elevated position of being boss, though as she was the only personnel employed on a full-time basis the general status suggested by the word boss didn’t add up to very much.

“Cedric?” she asked, still almost stammering, “you mean Cedric Bywater?”

“That’s the fellow!” almost bellowed she who called herself, according to her library card, Anne Smedley, “Cedric. Where is the chump?”

“He retired,” Constance told her, “and he moved to live near Ullswater up North where he started writing poetry, I believe, and even got some verses published in a church magazine.”

“Cedric? Retired? That can never be!” gasped the bag lady, putting her excessive collection of carrier bags down by her side and looking suddenly distressed. “But I came all this way to see him!”

Constance didn’t know how far all this way might have been, but hoped that it was a considerable distance and that the woman would decide any moment now to return whence she had come even if it was all this way.

“It’s a long way to Ullswater,” she told her, “I was invited to visit him a couple of years back but … there aren’t many trains going that way, and buses make me sick.”

“You poor thing,” muttered Anne Smedley, and she sat down in one of the computer seats, leaving her bags untidily mid-floor. “Well, I suppose I might as well make my way up North to see him. The poor fellow must be going bananas if he’s turned to writing poetry. It’s not like him at all, not poetry. I fully expected him to turn into a great novelist and create wonderlands of his own in words, but not poetry and certainly not the sort of poetry beloved by church magazines.”

She turned to the keyboard of the computer closest to her and, with a simple movement that was completely unexpected from a bag lady in full grime, she switched it on.

“Do you know...” stuttered Constance.

“Does a granny know how to suck eggs?” she chortled, “come over here, duckie, let me show you something.”

What could this untidy creature show her? What, even, could she want to show her? This was getting silly…

“Do you know...” she began again.

“Of course I do, duckie?” grinned the bag lady, “haven’t I got one of these at home and don’t I sit in front of it half my life? Look over there, on your book shelves…

Constance couldn’t help it. She looked at where the woman was pointing, at her favourite section of books, those she spent a great deal of her time at home reading and sometimes weeping over, the romances in which unbelievably lucky people fell in love and kissed and cuddled and lived perfect lives in a perfect world.

“Have you a favourite?” asked the bag lady, grinning, “I bet you have … you look the sort, a gentle lady needing what real life can’t give her, but words can… what’s your favourite, duckie?”

“I dunno … it’s ...” She did know, but felt suddenly shy about what motivated the private inner part of her soul. She didn’t want anyone to know… she had a sort of weakness,

“Would it be this?” asked the grimy woman, “would you say this was your sort of book?

And her fingers flew over the keyboard until a book cover flashed onto the screen.

She read the title though she recognised the image all right. It was “The Lilac Club” and it was filled with hope and love and all the warm and cuddly things she liked.

And it was by Anne Smedley.

The Anne Smedley.

This bag lady….

“People are rarely what they seem to be,” she murmured, grinning, the threadbare feather in her greasy hat wiggling..

© Peter Rogerson 31.12.17