CONSTANCE AND THE POSTMAN

When an old book turns up Constance starts thinking...

The library door opened with a loud squeal followed by a bang and a hearty voice called out POST, a monosyllabic ejaculation which sent Constance, the librarian, scurrying from her little cubbyhole where she had rudimentary tea-making facilities and an uncomfortable easy-chair the council had thoughtfully provided for her to use when things were quiet.

She knew the postman and rather liked him, probably because of the uniform though it may have had something to do with the shorts he wore all year round. She liked men in shorts, and the combination with a uniform jacket made little spirals start spinning in her stomach.

“Fancy a cuppa, Jeff?” she asked, recognising this particular postman from the almost overwhelming beauty of his knees. Even in January, and she knew it was cold in the world beyond the library doors, those knees were quite distinctive, to her at least.

“You’re my last delivery, so I’ve got a few minutes,” agreed Jeff, licking his lips.

He slammed a small parcel on the desk and sighed before grinning and telling her that it was bloody cold out there to which she replied not too cold for shorts, then, to which, in turn, he grinned and said never!

“What do you reckon’s in that parcel, then?” she asked him, eyeing the small book-sized object wrapped in plain brown paper and with a white label stuck on it.

“This is a library so I reckon it’s got to be a book,” he said, knowingly.

“Or a wad of money tied up in string and ready for a half-starved librarian to spend on new shoes and handbags,” she trilled as she carried his cup of something that may or may not have been tea to him.

“That would be nice, and I’d let you split it with me,” he laughed.

She picked up the package and weighed it in her hands, then felt the contours underneath the brown paper, and sighed. “It’s got to be a book,” she said, “probably from a publisher, though they don’t usually send them straight to me but in bulk to the council offices.”

“It’s in a plain paper wrapper,” he sniggered, “which might say something about the sort of book it could be! Like the fifty shades of grey stuff that everyone was buying and nobody was reading a year or two back?”

“There’s no call for that sort of stuff here,” she said, sniffing. “Though a few youngsters have asked if we stock it! But they’re just after seeing stuff they’ve never heard of and might never dared do in print.”

“Have you read it?” he asked, coyly, “do you know what to do when a real man enters your life?”

“Now that kind of talk will do, Jeff Whistleton!” she said firmly. “Let’s see what this parcel’s all about. I’ll tell you now, it won’t be an explicit adventure on the high seas of sordid romance, that’s a certainty.”

She carefully opened the brown paper parcel. She always opened parcels carefully because she always tried to keep the wrapping paper intact for possible future use. You never know when you might need it, she told people who asked what the pile in the drawer under the counter was all about.

It was a book.

But not a new book fresh from the publishers but a tatty old volume that had seen considerably better days, together with a brief note.

Just moved into an old house, said the note in the kind of writing that spoke of a low educational attainment though the spelling was good, and this book was stuffed behind a cupboard and from the stamps inside I think it belongs to you. But I didn’t borrow it and I’m not paying the fine.

“Looks quite old,” said Jeff after Constance had read the brief note out loud, “I’d say it’s been hanging around for months.”

“Or years,” Constance corrected him, “look at the date-stamps. The last one is in 1947! I mean, 1947! That’s, let me see, more than seventy years ago!”

“I’d say it was overdue, then,” nodded Jeff.

“Very,” she replied drily. “Let me see if it’s still down as stock.”

Her fingers flew over the keyboard of her computer and she nodded her head. “Look,” she said, turning her monitor so that he could see it, “it’s here all right but down as mislaid. I’d say it was mislaid if it didn’t turn up for seventy years! And as it’s never been replaced I’d guess nobody’s asked for it in all that time. Let me see if there’s any clue as to who borrowed it last.”

Her fingers flew over the keyboard again, and then she sighed and shook her head. “It’s got the code d/d, which means deceased,” she said, “that’s sad.”

“If it was somebody wanting to read a book like this, and the print’s quite small, the chances are he would be dead by now anyway,” Jeff pointed out.

“It was printed during the war, the second world war, when they were careful about how much paper they used, so it had to be printed economically,” Constance told him. “And the paper was soften poor quality too. Everything was done on the cheap back then unless it was bullets and bombs.”

“Does it say when the bloke died?” asked Jeff.

“I’ll check on the original index card it it hasn’t been destroyed,” said Constance, beginning to feel like a detective researching something vital from the dim past.

The old cards were still in the card-index drawers that must have been installed in the library when it opened early in the twentieth century, though they were pushed to the back of her cubbyhole, thus reducing its size quite considerably. 

“Keep an eye open,” she told Jeff, and she vanished into the darkest recess of her comfort room, though, truth to tell, if offered virtually nothing in the form of comfort.

“Here we are!” she exclaimed, “fancy them recording this! Miss Penelope Nugent, retired Headmistress of Saint CuthJeff’s school, Brumpton was the last person to borrow this book and she died three days before the date due stamped in the book. Look!”

She held up a card, surprised that such a record still existed.

“Does it say what she died of?” asked Jeff, interested in a morbid sort of way.

“Of course not! But the book was paid for by whoever reported her death. Look! It says one shilling and eleven pence was paid by … I can’t make it out, Miss someone-or-other I think, probably another old biddy I suppose, they often lived together back then, single ladies of a certain age, and she paid it because she claimed not to be able to find the thing.”

“Because it slipped behind a cupboard,” suggested Jeff philosophically.

“So it would seem,” sighed Constance.

“So the book doesn’t belong to the library, not if someone paid for it,” remarked Jeff.

“Indeed it doesn’t,” said Constance thoughtfully, “not if the loss was paid for.”

“Then if I were you I’d keep it,” suggested Jeff, “as a souvenir of working here and finding out about retired Headmistresses who died seventy-odd years ago,”

“I’ll probably do that,” nodded Constance.

“And I’ll be off before they send out a search party-looking for me,” grinned Jeff.

“It’s been interesting if nothing else,” said Constance.

“What’s the book about anyway?” asked Jeff.

“Oh, I hadn’t noticed. Let me see. Ah, it’s called A Close Look at Brumpton and District Cemeteries… quite appropriate, I think.”

“Then why don’t you do a bit more research, maybe find where, what’s her name, Miss Penelope Nugent has been resting all these years?” suggested Jeff.

“Spooky!” grinned Constance, “I will if you will!”

“Then you’re on,” replied Jeff, blushing and suddenly sounding absurdly shy.

© Peter Rogerson 03.01.18