writing_shadows

Public libraries came as a bit of a shock to me. Books weren’t quite a luxury item in my younger days, but they were certainly a little out of the ordinary. Literacy was on the rise, but not the norm, and libraries were restricted either to subscribers or to the members of an institution. When I found out that there were libraries that anyone could use I imagined they must throng with people.

The truth was a little disappointing. So was our most local library, but the one in Hertford is pretty good.

I struggled at first with the organisation of the library and the catalogue systems. I asked at the desk, but the librarian – Kay – was cripplingly useless. Full of gossip, but her main contribution to library management seemed to be asking tall men to put books back on high shelves and marking paths in the carpet with her heels. I wasn’t sure how she had become a librarian, but I suspected that she might have offended a witch with a keen sense of irony.

About a month after I started using the library, I was looking for something on carpentry. Maggie was just much better at it than me, and I was starting to feel like a bit of a burden. I’d got lost in the catalogue system again and I dared the desk to ask for help, only to find that Kay was off that day.

I’d seen Usha around, but never spoken to her before. I’d assumed she was very junior in the library, but it quickly became apparent that she was the experienced hand. She found her way around the shelves and the catalogues without thinking about it. She knew what books they had and what books they didn’t have, and which libraries in the area could get the books they didn’t have if I wanted them. She wore a knitted cardigan the colour of book jackets and she smelled of paper; she belonged in that library.

She not only knew the library, she knew how to explain it. I learned more talking to her for ten minutes than I ever had from Kay. After that I went to her with any questions, which seemed to annoy Kay. When I asked Usha why she just said “she called dibs” and blushed.

I liked Usha from the first. She was quiet and clever, with a sharp wit when she got up the courage to use it, although most of her jokes involved wordplay that made my head spin. Her father had moved to Hertford from India, which was as extraordinary to me as public libraries. She’d gone back to University after fifteen years working dead-end jobs and was working at the library to support herself through a PhD (which is a concept that contains so many things that are alien to me I had to laugh).

She was also desperately insecure. For the first month I knew her she wore a perpetual blush and brushed her hair over her face like a veil. The book-jacket cardie was pretty much the stylish centrepiece of her ensemble. No, I tell a lie; the glasses were spot on, although she usually wore them on a chain around her neck; when she needed the glasses she had to push her hair back to put them on and the shape of the frame was just… right, you know?

I was surprised how surprised she was when I kissed her. For all she made an effort not to be noticed, I wasn’t the only one who did.

She told me she tried dressing up once; it hadn’t worked. I got the impression she’d taken some tips from Kay and honestly that was never going to work. Different figure, different skin, different hair and eyes and… everything; Usha would have looked terrible in anything Kay wore.

It would have been easy to make Usha fall in love with me; not because of me, but because it’s something that she wants so much. What’s been harder is convincing her that she deserves more than me, when she believes so earnestly that she doesn’t.

Her parents are both dead, which is a mercy; it would be wrong of me to show up on a stranger’s doorstep to administer a stern lecture on how to raise a daughter – not to mention screamingly hypocritical, since mine apparently turned out a complete bitch – but I’m not sure it would stop me. There’s a few ex-boyfriends, a fiancé and some of Kay’s ilk it’s probably better I don’t have addresses for as well.

I hope that I’ve been good for her. Certainly she’s dressing more confidently and wearing her hair up. It looks good on her and I’m not the only one to notice. One day, she’ll notice someone else watching her and she’ll smile at him and he’ll smile back. One day, she’ll tell me it’s over between us.

I will have a moment of regret, because I’m sure she’ll never have looked lovelier, but it will only be a moment.