CONSTANCE AND THE POP STAR

There's a great deal of unnecessary noise outside the library one morning...

There was too much noise on the street outside the library for Constance’s peace of mind, and she scowled to herself.

It had all started before she arrived at work around nine o’clock that morning (the library opened half an hour after that, but books needed tidying and the post, if it had arrived by then, needed sorting) and there had been a considerable amount of fuss on the street, fuss that had involved rows of folding chairs being lashed together and portable barriers and loudspeakers erected in disharmonious ugliness.

There was, apparently, going to be a politician booked to address the populace, one whose sole task was to placate a growing intolerance in the public because the government, even by its own members, was considered to be a shade worse than useless. And as an introduction to that speech a little concert involving a winner of a television talent show that had proved, according to the voting public, that he had talent, had been booked in order to rouse the public to the state at which they’d probably applaud anything.

And all this distressed the librarian, a thirty-something called Constance Bingley, because she knew what was going on and despised it. The public, or rather the opinion of that public, was being bought and the price paid for it was the fee (possibly outrageous) of a nobody who was likely to warble half a dozen meaningless songs before disappearing with his entourage into the most expensive pub in Brumpton, and the politicians would disperse and make decisions that nobody would like.

So Constance tut-tutted to herself and slammed the date-stamp onto its pad as proof of her own frustration. And the library door squealed open.

A young man walked in.

He was smartly dressed and looked nervous as well as fed up.

Ah, thought Constance, I’m not alone in the world, hating all this fuss, this looks like a kindred spirit… and as confirmation of their mutual loathing of fuss she smiled warmly at him.

“Can I help you?” she asked, equally warmly.

He smiled back and then shook his head. “I thought I’d take a look around,” he said in a quietly cultured voice. “I love libraries and books,” he added, “they remind me of when I was a kid and my gran used to take me to the library in the town where she lived, when I stayed with her, which happened quite often on account of my folks going to work.. I’d sit in a corner where there were some little-kiddy cloth books and a few toys while she spent ages looking at book after book trying to find one she hadn’t read. She might have been an old biddy, but she had a secret that I knew all about because the books had very similar covers to each other: she liked reading love stories, mostly, it seemed, about doctors and nurses, and I reckon she must have read most of them!”

“I like romances too,” said Constance, smiling, “they’re my little weakness and I find them heart-warming!”

“It was horrible when she died,” mused the young man, sitting at a table and facing the counter, “it was like my own childhood, or the best bits of it, were buried with her and the whole world suddenly turned a shade grey. I still hanker for the silly times we had at the library with me watching her face as she picked up book after book and smiled sometimes when she must have remembered what it was about, which character’s heart was being broken and by whom, so to speak, and then moving on to another...”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” whispered Constance. She’d mourned for her own grandmother not so many years ago and knew what it felt like when a precious member of her family passed away. “Grandparents are so precious,” she added, “but we know them for so little time, really.”

“I know.” He sat there thoughtfully, then: “I remember how quiet it was back then,” he said, “none of the razzmatazz and nonsense that’s going on out there,” he indicated the street outside the door with a shake of his head.

“It’s politics,” murmured Constance. “The politicians are bribing us in order to be forgiven for being rubbish,” she added. “I live in fear of them closing this library using the excuse that they can’t afford to keep it open. But we get plenty of customers over the course of a week, people who need a resource like this, women like me who need a bit of surrogate romance in their lives… And if they close it I’ll be out of a job, which scares me.”

“Is that’s what’s happening?” asked the young man thoughtfully, “are they using a concert by a third rate pop singer as a bribe to get the people on their side before they close libraries, swimming pools and the health service just for the sake of it?”

“It’s politics,” sighed Constance. “Politics is making the people believe lies so that the politicians can get away with whatever they want to get away with. They’ve even committed us to wars we didn’t want against people who were no threat to us just because they fancied the idea. Yes, that’s what politics really is: massaging lies until they sound like the truth.”

“You’re very clever,” sighed the young man.

“Not really,” replied Constance, blushing, “and I think it was unkind of you to suggest that the singer they’ve got is third rate! I don’t know much about him, but my part time assistant is in love with him, and she’s nobody’s fool.”

“He was on the telly,” said the young man, “and the telly did him no favours, you know. He became a commodity only there to fill the pockets of talentless agents! And he found, once he’d won the competition, that he was expected to sing trashy songs rather than the stuff he’d written himself, stuff that he believed in. He got one track of his own on the album that came out once the show was over, and I know deep in my heart that he won’t be recording much more. And now his name is fading he’s being booked to appear at shows like the one out there, whether he believes in them or not.”

“You know a lot about him,” said Constance, wondering.

But she didn’t wonder for long. The door opened and a scruffy man who was trying to look twenty but must have been fifty poked his head round and spoke.

“Ready Sunny,” he said, roughly, “you’re on in ten. Make it a good ‘un because this sort of trash pays good and we want more gigs like it.”

“Sod off,” said the young man, and he smiled at Constance. “I’ll give them a show,” he said quietly, “but it will be my show. That’ll cause a few ripples, especially when I tell the folks what’s really on my mind! I’ll pop back in when I’ve finished, before they lynch me, if that’s all right with you, and we’ll have a natter about the way things should be and not the way they are!”

And he walked out of the library and onto a stage outside.

There was a roar of applause from a crowd that had grown from nearly nothing to plenty, picked up a guitar from its stand and grinned winningly.

“This is for the honest folks,” he said into the microphone, “and I guess the politicians won’t like it very much… it’s an old song by my hero Bob Dylan, and it goes like this...”

And quietly, and melodically, he gave a killing performance of Blowing in the Wind before a storm of applause drowned out shouting from his manager who scowled and punched the air towards him, and then he winked at Constance who was standing by the library door, clapping.

© Peter Rogerson 05.01.18