KATE GRIFFIN

Flash-back-lash

There is paper stuck to the sole of his shoe. It annoys her that he doesn’t notice, or doesn’t care. It annoys her that he is without rage. The paper has a black, wavy edge where it has been burnt. Perhaps it is his testimony, a rageless witness. He is quite still on the hospital bench, leaning forward a little, one hand

on the top of his stick, the other - she’d rather not look, but she does, and anyway it is decently covered with the librarian’s hanky.

She pictures him, four thousand miles away, crouching under an Indian sky, balanced on haunch and heel.

’How did you do this?’ the doctor asks, peering at the ruffled, melted flesh. They always do ask. Sprained ankles, and broken toes, hours spent with Jane shifting from one plastic chair to the next on hospital corridors; she knows the procedure.

It weren’t meant to happen like that. Just a bit of fun, that was all it was. Bit of a doss. Anyway it weren’t his fault. They shouldn’t have sent him there. They

should have known. All them books. Worse’n school was that. Books.

The old man shrugs. Hides behind his foreignness. ‘An accident,’ he says, and his brown eyes defy her to tell the truth. But

he made his choice quite clear at the library and she does not betray him. ‘No police,’ he’d said. ‘No. No police. I wish not to press charges.’ His English accurate and uneasy.

The question is wrong. The doctor should ask ‘Who did this to you?’ And then the old man might be jerked into spilling the truth. But the doctor goes on to the next bit; weighing up damage to skin and muscle. Once, with Jane, the doctor had said, ’Schools are dangerous places, most of the injuries we deal with are done at school.’

Schools. And libraries. He’d not believe libraries.

They hadn’t a bloody clue in the office. Three days, the job, they’d said. Three days at most, cleaning down and painting. They’d not thought about the books, how they’d to be shifted first. That was the worst part. Books.

Flash-back-lash 15

And the rubber marks. They’d not said owt about that either. And how they’d had to sit and wait while Ant went back to the workshop

And the librarian had come, tip-tapping on her black heels, doing them

As if she’d known.

to get something to remove it.

a bloody favour, ‘Why not read a book? Plenty of books. Help yourself.’

Strange how things turn out, she thinks. ‘El Greco, Mum. Don’t forget.’ Who‘d have thought it’d lead to this? ‘I don’t use the library much,’ she‘d apologised to the librarian. Never,

if the truth were told, only she didn’t like to say. ‘It’s my daughter, you see. A project at school. She’s doing Art .’ The librarian was patient. ’She hasn’t time to call in, so she’s asked me. L. Greco. I don’t know what the L stands for. She didn’t say. Wants a book about him.’ And the librarian had swung round on her swivelling chair and fiddled with a computer.

It were like an oil can. Yellow with black writing. ‘Chappie in workshop said to be careful,’ Ant said. ’Highly inflammable.

That’s what he said. Says so on side, anyway. And for them’s as can‘t read there’s a picture.’

And Ant had looked at him. His mouth a smile that wasn’t a smile. Like old Adcock at school. And Jelly sniggered.

‘You’re not to use so much,’ said Ant. ‘A bit on a rag’d do trick.’

She hadn’t expected numbers. She’d not expected that at all. She’d thought they’d bring books to her. The slip of paper had two numbers on it, long numbers, split up in bits, like a credit card number, or like the phone number in France when Jane’d gone on a school trip. Only she’d never used it, not wanting to unleash a sluice of foreign words in her ears.

‘That’s the section,’ the librarian had said. ‘And that’s the number for El Greco.’

She looked out over the maze of wooden shelving. Not a phone box in sight. ‘The Art section’s over there,’ the librarian pointed, and returned to her computer.

After a while she gets used to his smell, garlic and something sweet and oily. There are, after all, many worse smells. She hates the nurses for shouting at him and she understands why he said ‘no police’. She sees that his balance, his dignity brings out the bully in the uniformed. And the un- informed.

16 Critical Quarterly, vol. 31, no. 4

You couldn’t miss them, the boys. She’d seen them - heard them as soon as she’d come into the library. Awful saw-toothed laughs. Someone com- plained about the noise.

‘As long as the job gets done,’ said the librarian, ’we can’t complain. You’ve got to take the rough with the smooth. Swings and roundabouts.’

Phone boxes and now fairgrounds. She took a deep breath and headed into an unknown world.

It weren’t his scene. They shouldn’t have set him on. Not in a library. All those books. Notices everywhere. Big black letters like those cards that that teacher had used with him. Kids’ stuff.

And Janice laughing at him because he’d had to go out during geography. Fucking remedial classes.

She’d not been able to cope with the numbers and hadn’t liked to ask, that was why she’d ended up in the wrong section. The covers weren’t like the other books. When she pulled one out she saw why. Squiggles. Then she saw the old man, his stick hanging on his arm, reading from a book full of squiggles, making sense of them. Absorbed. Who’d have thought? All those books full of squiggles, and she couldn’t even manage those numbers.

It weren’t meant to happen like that. It weren’t his fault. Not it all happening like that. It weren’t his idea. Ant started it, and Jelly just went along with it, like he always did.

Ant saw him first, the old man reading. ’Cor, Soz, get a look at that. All those shelves, just for them. All written

in wog language. Would you credit it?’

The boys went quiet. Coffee-break, she’d thought. That was when she’d found the Art section, relief like a hot flush. There were names that she recognised; Picasso and Constable. And the books were bigger, on bigger shelves.

She felt such a fool when she finally found the book. What must the librarian have thought? If only Jane had written it down. El Greco. Funny kind of name. There was only one book.

Is it a criminal offence, she wonders, does it count as stealing? After all, she reasons, it’s ratepayers’ money, and they’ve always paid their rates. If she explains, surely they’ll understand? In the rush, the confusion, just pushing the book in her bag. She’d not meant to. Hadn’t she heard that they had to

Flash-back-lash 17

prove intent to steal? And there certainly hadn’t been any intent. All she’d thought about was getting the old man to hospital.

Anyway, can’t have been too bad, the pain and that, because the old man hadn’t said much. His face. Surprise all over. Serve him right. Serve them all right. No business being here. Taking our jobs and that. Scrounging. Free this, free that. Filling up our libraries with their books.

It were the books that gave Ant the idea. They’d shown it on telly, all them in Bradford burning that book. Give ’em a taste of their own medicine, said Ant. Burn their bloody books. Ant hadn’t meant it to go so far. Just frighten him a bit. Show him. But the rag had flared up.

She can see from the way the nurse handles it that the ointment stings. But his hand on the treatment table doesn’t flinch. When he thanks the nurse with his deep courtesy she longs for him to curse. The bandage is brilliant against the old folds of skin.

’We shouldn’t’ve been allowed the stuff,’ said Ant, afterwards. ‘Danger- ous stuff like that. Could have been us as got burnt. Supervision for work like that. Just think - we could ’a been blinded. Compensation runs into thousands for blinding.’ Ant knew all about that kind of thing. He’d been clever at school. They all said it, the teachers, even old Adcock. They’d get mad at Ant for not working. No one had ever got mad at Soz for not working. Can’t help being stupid, lad, that was what Adcock had said to him once, you just haven’t got what it takes.

She couldn’t remember which it was she noticed first, the smell of burning or his voice, trembling, over the shelves, ‘What is it you want?’

Jane will never believe it when she tells her. Anyway, she’s got the book. Unstamped. She maps out an excuse in her head for bringing it back when Jane’s finished with it.

After he’d said, ‘What is it you want?’ the boys had laughed, she’d heard that. And his voice, again and again. And scuffles. She’d looked at the other people in the library. No one seemed to have heard. Was it a special day for the deaf?

‘Assault. That’s what that was,’ said Ant. ‘Common assault. Danger money for working in libraries. Worse’n a construction site, a library.’ CQ 3U4-B

18 Cn’tical Quarterly, vol. 31, no. 4

‘Don’t you think we should do something!’ she’d said, finally, to a tall

‘I’m sorry?’ but his eyes were wary. So she went alone. Three aisles. The old man was on his knees, groping among the burning paper. The

lad with the big head, Soz he seemed to be called, had a blazing rag on the end of a paint scraper.

bearded man, engrossed in a book on American sculpture.

He was the one she went for. It was a big book. They all were in the Art section. And heavy because

It made her feel good. The impact. It took her by surprise. That feeling.

of the kind of glossy paper they’d used for the pictures.

She doesn’t want to see him go. He has his green appointment slip and they are in the entrance hall.

She puts her hand over his, the whole one. ’I’m sorry,’ she says, but you don’t say words like that in a hospital and

they are sucked away in the droning of the floor polisher.

He is not looking at her. ‘Hindu,’ he says, ‘they didn’t understand. I’m not a Moslem.’ He is not smiling. It is not a fairground. And what goes up does not always come down. And

Some people can lose on both swings and roundabouts. things do not necessarily come out in the wash.