CONSTANCE AND THE THIRD STORY

A little bit of noise from the children's section attracts Constance's attention...

Sometimes, despite apparent evidence to the contrary, libraries are busy places, and this particular Saturday morning with the weather outside half way between sunshine and showers was one of those sometimes.

Constance was busy, too busy to put down her date stamp and close its inky pad and go towards the alcove reserved for children to put a stop to something she detected might be starting, using her antenna of experience which was invariably right when it perceived that something might be brewing up out of adult sight. But mature readers needed her attention, sometimes required to exchange with her the odd conversational bit about plot details in a sloppy romance or a war-torn yarn filled with social chaos, and occasionally even needed to consult on the meaning of an obscure word or even more obscure reference. And those readers were important because they were going to come back again and again and thus do their bit to ensure her own future employment in a job that she loved.

But there was trouble brewing, maybe, in the children’s section because that’s what it sounded like and it was up to her to put a stop to it before it started.

Once, when she’d been a child, she’d spent a lot of her childhood in that section and she knew all about the brewing of trouble because even though the Secret Seven and Famous Five were fictional, they had the kind of adventures that she and her equally literate friends would love to have and consequently imagination prompoed them to occasionally find themselves seeing mystery where, maybe there hadn’t been any such thing. But, she knew, children will be children and their imaginations were often rampant.

And something rampant was brewing up now.

She stamped the three books that Mrs MacDonald had selected, her ears more on the children’s section than on Mrs MacDonald.

“I’m going to have the time of my life reading these,” burbled Mrs MacDonald, “and I hope there’s a bit of … you know what I mean dear, don’t you, rumpy pumpy? A bit of tasty something for a quiet night at home in them. A little chapter or two to remind me of … well, I needn’t go on, need I? But we all have out moments, don’t we?”

“Yes,” replied Constance vaguely, stamping her own thumb instead of the date due column, and shaking it absently because it hurt.

“I remember when I first dated my Tom,” rabbited on Mrs MacDonald, “back in those days there wasn’t so much to do but he had plenty of ideas! And I do like being reminded about it sometimes, other people in the pages of these books getting up to goodness knows what on dark nights in darker corners! It makes me tingle when I read it, it really does, and doesn’t half take me back...”

“Excuse me!” interrupted Constance, finishing Mrs MacDonald’s books and seeing there was a lull in the queue of people needing her attention. Time to sort those kids out before a world war started!

“Well I never!” muttered Mrs MacDonald as Constance made her way towards the children’s section. Not for the first time she found herself regretting that the architects, when the place had been refurbished a few years ago, had foolishly left the children’s alcove completely hidden from the main desk where she worked. It had been a deliberate policy, to offer young readers a degree of autonomy and privacy for their various journeys into the worlds of fantasy. That was all well and good, thought Constance, but the little ones weren’t all angels.

She knew that. She’d been an angel way back, of course she had, but there were some who hadn’t been.

Sylvia, for instance, who’d had an entrepreneurial streak in her make-up and had the cheek to charge a penny for a peek at her knickers. It was disgusting, but she always had some takers, curious little boys with more money than sense. Why, she had known even then, you could see those same knickers on the shelves of half a dozen shops in Brumpton for free, no pennies involved!

And there had been Danny who had a nervous twitch that he simply couldn’t control, and that made other children bully and tease him. Constance had tried to befriend him, of course, but to no avail. Wherever poor little Danny went there was bound to be more noise than was good for a library.

Constance paused in the entrance to the children’s section and looked in.

She could hear whispered voices and odd little giggles but there were only two children in there, sitting opposite each other at the child-sized tables, and with a book each open in front of them. At a first glance they were the perfect picture of developing intellectual pursuit, engaged, as they were, in quality literary exploration. She shrunk back into the main library so that she was almost out of sight and struggled to listen. Maybe if they didn’t know she was there they would give themselves away as the monsters she was sure they were and she would be able to give them their marching orders.

“As he walked past the cave mouth he trembled,” whispered one of the children, a boy of about seven, “his heart filled with fear...”.

“And a savage came out of the bush and set fire to the alien spacecraft, rubbing two sticks until there was a glow of a spark and spiral of smoke … I think it’s spiral...” whispered the second child, a girl of about the same age.

“A smell of rotten cheese wafted out, and a roar like that of some dreadful beast hungry for flesh drifted like poison on a warm puff of air...”

“Whilst the savage looked up and made an ear-piercing cry that sounded very much like a prayer to the gods as the space vehicle smouldered,” intoned the girl.

And they both giggled. 

What are they up to? Constance wasn’t sure, but it didn’t seem they were doing anything particularly evil. So she remained still and continued listening.

“When the creature emerged it was clear from his awful smell that he was the son of dragons,” said the boy, serious again.

“For when the gods looked down they saw him and what he’d done and blasted him with a wind from the heavens,” added the girl, and the two giggled again.

Constance was confused and she decided to sort out what was going on once and for all, so she drifted from her place of near-concealment and went up to the two children at the table, as seraphic a smile on her face as she could muster.

They both had a book open in front of them and were running their fingers along the text, and taking their turns to read out in an amused whisper to each other. Yet the books they had were different titles. Constance was confused. They were different books telling different stories.

“Well, what are we doing?” she asked the children.

The boy looked up, grinning. “I’ve got one story,” he said, “and Emily’s got another story. And I’m reading mine and she’s reading hers in turns, and they make a brand new story that sounds a bit daft! It’s fun!”

Constance smiled, but couldn’t help wondering if it represented bad behaviour or not because, after all, even though they were whispering loud enough to be heard across the whole library, which might annoy others, they didn’t seem to mean any harm. And what if every so often they were giggling, which was considerably louder than whispering? It might be even more annoying but there wasn’t really any harm in it.

And anyway there was nobody else around in the children’s section. There was nobody to annoy.

“It sounds like fun,” she said, smiling, and returned to her station, her heart almost overflowing with the joys she felt at the idea of children creating a third story from two.

There was a short queue at her desk, but nobody was anything but delighted to see her, but the queue didn’t last long as she stamped the morning away.

© Peter Rogerson 08.01.18