It also revealed a folded sheet of paper bearing a badly smudged map of the world in an empty corner of the message board. Across the width of what survived of Asia, my name was neatly printed. Hastily, I read the note:
I should like to have a word with you about Millicent Blackwood. Could you please come to me in the Library on Monday at 1 p.m. before I raise the matter with Miss Braidwood. E. Fletcher.
My heart sank as I picked up the tone. Millie, poor dear, was yet another of the things I had to think about over the weekend. Oh well. I tucked the note in my handbag, switched off the lights and left the building to the mercy of the cleaners.
‘Bread,’ I said to myself. The pavements were damp and slippery with fallen leaves, the lights streamed out from shops and glistened on their trampled shapes. I looked up at the sky, heavy and overcast. There was no sign at all of the hills. I’d have given so much for a bright autumny afternoon. Then the hills would seem near enough to touch, just down the next road, or beyond the solid redbrick mill, or behind the tall mass of the tobacco factory.
But today they lay hidden under the pall of cloud, leaving me only the less lovely face of the city that had been my home for most of my childhood and all but two of my adult years. Thirty years ago Louis MacNeice called it ‘A city built upon mud; a culture built upon profit’, and it hadn’t changed much in all the years since.
I made my way to the little bakery where I buy my weekly supplies, a pleasant, homely place where bread and cakes still come warm to the counter from behind a curtain of coloured plastic ribbons. In my second year at Queen’s, Colin and I used to visit it regularly, to buy rolls for a picnic lunch, or a cake for someone’s birthday. It hadn’t changed at all. Even Mrs Green was still there, plumper and greyer and more voluble than ever.
She prides herself she’s known Colin and me since before we were even engaged. She’s followed our life as devotedly as she watches Coronation Street. Graduation and wedding, first jobs in Birmingham and visits home. I remember her asking if she might see the wedding album and how she marvelled at the enormous and ornate volume Colin’s mother had insisted upon. These days, she asked about the house or the car, the decor of the living room or the health of our parents, Colin’s prospects or our plans for the future.
I paused, my fingers already tight on the handle of the door. I turned my back on it and walked quickly away.
‘No, I can’t face it. Not today.’ No one had seen me, but I was shocked by what I had done. ‘Jenny McKinstry, what is wrong with you?’ I asked myself as I hurried on, grateful to be anonymous, invisible in the crowd.
It was something about having to perform a ritual. Having to say the right things, in the right tone. Responding to hints and suggestions in the right way. Taking my cue and playing the part of the young, married, working wife, as Mrs Green wished it to be. She was a good-hearted, friendly woman, but today I couldn’t keep up the bright bubble. It would have to be bread from the supermarket.
‘Telly, miss. Sixth edition. Telly.’
I put down briefcase and basket and hunted for change. The newsboy had no mac, only the worn jacket of a suit several sizes too big for him. I put coins into his damp, outstretched hand and read the headline as I picked up my things.
Thank God for that. The march was off. I didn’t read the details. The fact was enough. One less thing to worry about, for Keith and Siobhan would certainly have marched in Derry and everyone knew the police and B Specials had orders to teach them all a lesson.
‘You’re a coward, Jenny McKinstry,’ I said to myself and wondered if it was really true. Would I have the courage to march if I were a student, like Keith and Siobhan, or would I need to be as politically minded as they both were. Or was the problem more that I was one half of ‘a respectable young couple’?
That was the phrase on the bank manager’s file. Though it was upside down and in small print, I had managed to decipher it that day when he interviewed Colin about the loan for the car we were hoping to buy. We had laughed over it all the way back to our borrowed flat, where our worldly goods were stacked high, awaiting their final destination. It became a joke between us, a couple of words that encoded a moment in time, when we were happy, looking forward to our new jobs, and our first proper home.
I had stepped into the bookshop before I quite realised it. I turned round at the sound of my name.
‘Hello, Mr Cummings. My goodness, you’re busy this afternoon.’
‘Indeed, we are,’ he agreed, nodding vigorously. ‘Never known the place so busy. Come on down to my wee office. It might be best if I lead the way!’
I followed the tall, stooping figure between the book-lined aisles to the newly constructed and unpainted cubicle he dignified as an office. Beneath the sloping roof there was space for neither filing cabinets nor cupboards, but from rows of hooks on every vertical surface hung clips full of invoices, pink and yellow and blue. From beneath a small table piled high with similar clips, he drew out two stackable stools.
‘Do sit down, my dear. I think we’ve got them all, but we’d better make sure.’
He unhooked a clip, flipped through it deftly and extracted a sheet of pink paper. I glanced quickly down it and breathed a sigh of relief.
‘Wonderful, Mr Cummings. You’ve got the whole lot. I don’t know how you’ve managed it but I’m so grateful. I really was caught out, you know.’
He smiled broadly and settled back on his stool. ‘You shouldn’t make your subject so popular, Mrs McKinstry. Look at the problems it gives your poor bookseller when you come in and tell him your classes have doubled.’
I laughed easily at his mild complaint. Mr Cummings was an old friend. For years we had shared our passion for poetry and our enthusiasm for the young Ulster poets we both knew personally.
‘You’re very good to take all this trouble over such a small order. Three knights sharing a single copy of Richard III does rather cramp the dramatic style!’
He laughed and nodded at the bulging clips all around us. ‘There’s no lack of orders these days,’ he said flatly. ‘And you could hardly believe the sales on the fiction side. But it’s the quality that counts, isn’t it?’ he ended sadly.
I nodded silently. When his pleasant face shadowed with regret like this, I always thought of my father. They were probably about the same age, but whereas my father had an air of wry humour about him whenever he reflected upon his life, Mr Cummings always spoke as if his plans had never come to anything and it was now too late in the day to hope for anything better.
‘Another year, Mrs McKinstry, and the quality of business won’t be bothering me. At last I’ll be able to read all the books I’ve never had the time for.’
I saw the sadness deepen. I was wondering what I could possibly say when he checked himself and turned towards me.
‘Which reminds me,’ he went on briskly. ‘What’s this I hear about Miss McFarlane retiring? To the best of my knowledge, she still has several years to go. I remember taking her by the hand to the village school when I was in the top class. Surely she isn’t serious?’
‘I think Miss McFarlane’s mother has been unwell a great deal recently,’ I said cautiously.
I saw his lips tighten and his head move in a curious little gesture he always made when someone, or something, had really upset
