Chapter Nine
As Gabe read Ella’s email, which she’d oh so thoughtfully bcc-ed him in on, he hissed with annoyance. Then he realised that his eyebrows had pulled together. He tried to get them to separate without much success.
‘You can’t demote me,’ he told Ella, who was sitting in the back office of the library with him. ‘You’re forgetting, not for the first time, that we both wield equal amounts of power.’
Ella looked up from her contemplation of baby Avi’s downy head as he fed. ‘Having equal amounts of power doesn’t work if you’re going to automatically veto all of my ideas.’
‘Not all of your ideas. I was perfectly fine with you ordering a new recycling bin and giving Patrick a written warning,’ Gabe reminded her.
‘Patrick! He’s on very thin ground,’ Ella growled.
She was one of the sunniest people Gabe had ever met – their family always joked that Gabe had sucked all the grumpiness out of the gene pool – but once you got into her bad books, then it was best to sleep with one eye open. ‘About The Love Library …’
‘Can we not?’ Gabe begged. He was still traumatised from The Love Library’s inaugural date.
Tess’s article and her disdainful dismissal of him as a mere lackey had opened the wound all over again.
‘I’m sure there must be other ways we can monetise the library.
It’s one thing to call upon the author of a legal tome to ask their professional opinion, but fiction is a different matter altogether.
Don’t you think it’s quite exploitative of the characters in the books, to … to … pimp them out?’
‘Hush your mouth!’ Ella covered Avi’s little ears. ‘No one is pimping anyone out.’
‘But taking a character out on a romantic date … they have no say in that. It raises some difficult ethical and epistemological dilemmas,’ Gabe said carefully but not carefully enough because Ella was already rolling her eyes as she always did when Gabe talked about ethics or epistemologies or other things she thought were boring.
‘Please don’t use that word in the hearing of a woman who’s six months post-partum,’ she snapped.
‘I said epistemology. Not episiotomy,’ Gabe corrected her.
‘Oh my God, shut up!’ Ella switched Avi to her other side. ‘I don’t see that it’s that much different from you wanting to take all your pet philosophers out on a speaking tour.’
‘My philosophers and scientists and other great thinkers wrote the books. Of course they’d welcome the chance to share their ideas. But characters in novels …’ Gabe knew that his eyebrows were pulling together again but he was powerless to prevent it. ‘They don’t have the same agency or free will.’
It was an important point that even Ella couldn’t gloss over.
‘Yes, but they’d probably welcome the chance to go out on a date, have something nice to eat, maybe see a film or go dancing.
If I was Hester Prynne, I’d love to visit Nando’s for some extra saucy wings instead of being paraded up and down with a scarlet letter stuck to me. ’
Even though they were twins, there were times, like now, when they had nothing in common. Gabe wasn’t even sure they were speaking the same language.
‘I beg your pardon?’ he said.
‘If you could lower yourself to reading a novel every now and again, you’d know what I was talking about,’ Ella snapped.
Then she remembered that Gabe responded better to reason than insults.
‘Look, I appreciate that there were teething problems but it was the first date. That’s only to be expected. ’
‘Heathcliff nearly got arrested and we’re – you’re – lucky that woman didn’t do a complete hatchet job on the library.
’ The memory of Tess stomping off and having the last word was not a happy one.
Long before that, when she’d first clapped eyes on Heathcliff, there had been a lascivious glint in Tess’s eye that Gabe hadn’t liked at all.
Not one little bit. ‘Talking of ethics …’
‘We weren’t! Please don’t!’ Ella all but wailed.
‘Have you thought about what you’re going to do if someone makes advances on a date? The whole issue of consent is a positive minefield.’ Just thinking about it made Gabe shudder.
‘The library users or the characters?’ Ella asked.
‘All of the above.’
‘We’ll make everyone sign something,’ Ella said firmly.
‘We’re going to have to get a lawyer, several lawyers, to look over any new terms and conditions,’ Gabe pointed out. ‘Which is going to be more money spent rather than earned.’
‘Don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions!’
Gabe sighed long and loud. ‘The thing is, all I can see is problems.’
The two of them were silent for a moment, interrupted only by the happy snuffles of little Avi.
‘The thing is, Gabe, we can’t be the ones who oversee the library closing its doors because its debts outweigh its profits.
’ All humour was gone. Ella was gravely serious and daring to voice the concerns that Gabe himself agonised over on a daily basis.
The Sharmas that had gone before them might have had book smarts, but they certainly hadn’t any financial acumen.
‘If the roof finally collapses, then we’re done for. ’
‘Every time I look at the weather forecast and there’s an alert for heavy rain, I actually feel my blood pressure rising. It’s a very unpleasant sensation,’ Gabe confessed.
‘Look, if we just ironed out a few wrinkles, then I really believe that The Love Library could be a money spinner,’ Ella pleaded as she hefted Avi against her shoulder so she could rub circles on his back. ‘It’s got to be worth a try, right?’
Gabe nodded. ‘We don’t want to be the last ever head librarians. Or rather the last head librarian and her assistant.’ He paused. ‘That was a joke. Me trying to bring a little levity to the proceedings. I’m really not bothered about that demotion at all.’
‘But admit it, you are bothered just a little bit by Tess Hardy’s harsh dismissal of your exalted position?’
It had worked. Ella was grinning. Avi belched like he’d just downed five pints in quick succession and Gabe allowed himself a tiny smile. ‘Not bothered in the slightest,’ he insisted as his eyebrows pulled together yet again.
After Ella left with Gabe’s assurances that he was on board with The Love Library and ‘Yes, I will make it my personal mission to ensure that Ms Hardy has a successful second date,’ he wandered the library.
It was as busy as it ever was. Which was to say that it wasn’t that busy at all. Gabe liked the hush, the stillness, the solemnity of the space. Then, from one of the reading rooms, he heard excited female voices. Next came a deeper male voice followed by some very high-pitched giggles.
He checked the ledger on reception to see that Tess Hardy’s dream man, Fitzwilliam Darcy, was booked out for a seminar group of MA students from King’s College, who wanted to know his thoughts on the Corn Laws.
However, the publication of Pride and Prejudice preceded the Corn Laws by a good two years.
Gabe knew a flimsy excuse when he saw one.
He sighed. He was sighing a lot this afternoon.
This week. This month. Ever since he and Ella had assumed the reins of responsibility.
She was meant to be on maternity leave, in a blissful baby bubble.
Pausing a very successful career in marketing in a female-focused industry.
Which meant that she knew what women wanted.
Gabe certainly didn’t know what women wanted and would never claim to. But it was time for him to step up. After seeking a little counsel from a trusted source.
He scratched an entry into the ledger with the fountain pen they used for such auspicious occasions. It was only in the last thirty years, when Gabe and Ella’s father had put his foot down, that they’d stopped using a quill fashioned from a goose feather.
‘I’ll be in reading room five if anyone needs me,’ Gabe murmured to Mona, who was manning the Loans Desk.
‘If we suddenly get a rush on, you’ll be the first to know,’ she said with the smile of someone who knew the chances of that were slim to none.
Gabe headed for the section of the stacks which housed their collection of Greek philosophical texts.
Even if he were blindfolded, his feet and his fingers would know the way to a slim volume, its cover burnished with age, but which looked pretty good for a book that was almost a thousand years old.
Sadly not an original text – even Sharma’s Academic Library and Book Depository didn’t have books dating from 400 BCE or thereabouts.
Conversations of Socrates in the original Greek. Or rather ancient Greek. Though did Greek from almost a thousand years ago still count as ancient Greek? Or was it modern ancient Greek and ancient ancient Greek was much older? It was an interesting thought.
Still, when Socrates himself arrived in reading room five, Gabe knew that they’d muddle along with Socrates’ native tongue and the maybe ancient Greek that Gabe had studied at Oxford.
‘Greetings, young Sharma!’ the eminent philosopher said, adjusting his robes as he sat down on the comfortable but weathered leather wingback chair with a grateful grunt.
‘I do wish when you summon me that you would select an earlier section of the text rather than the later dialogues where I’m contemplating my untimely yet noble demise. ’
‘Sorry about that,’ Gabe said, cursing his own mistake for calling upon later era Socrates; in prison and waiting for his execution after being found guilty of the crimes of impiety and corrupting the young.
Later era Socrates was very peevish.
‘How may I assist you on this fine day? Perhaps a lively debate about the falsity of the gods?’ Socrates asked hopefully.
Gabe was going to disappoint him yet again. ‘Afraid not. We now live in a largely monotheistic society. I thought we might talk about family duty?’
Socrates tugged on his beard in a contemplative fashion. Maybe he was thinking of his three sons, Lamprocles, Menexenus and … Gabe could never remember the name of the youngest. He must miss them.
‘As you know, it’s an honour to inherit the role of head librarian and the responsibility of the library …’
‘With that sister of yours,’ Socrates said with a little sniff. ‘As you know, I believe that women should have the same pursuits and activities as men, even if they are the inferior sex.’ Another sniff. ‘Has their right to own property been revoked yet?’
‘No,’ Gabe said noncommittally because he was not getting into this with Socrates. Not again. Last time, it had all become quite acrimonious. ‘More of a philosophical question really. Should I put my personal beliefs aside for the sake of my family and the survival of the library?’
‘You know very well that I believe that the concept of the family should be abolished. The greater good should be a more powerful force than individual liberties and nepotism.’
Socrates would be furious if he knew about nepo babies, Gabe was quite sure of that, but they were getting off track.
He explained briefly, or as briefly as he could with Socrates’ constant interruptions and ponderings, about The Love Library.
Drawing briefly on the first disastrous date and how Gabe knew, in his heart of hearts, that it was doomed for failure, but he didn’t want to disappoint his sister, his family …
‘This Tess … she’s very annoying. That’s not the point, except it is.
She’s so annoying that none of our fictional heroes are going to enjoy going on dates with her.
Then she’ll be disappointed, she’ll give us a terrible review and Ella’s plan to make money will be a failure.
’ Gabe rested his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands.
‘Tess Hardy! Honestly, she’s incapable of following the rules. A troublemaker …’
‘The Love Library?’ Socrates queried sharply. ‘Then your plan to take me on tour, to meet with great thinkers, great leaders and the muskrat …’
‘Elon Musk …’
‘That scheme has been abandoned?’
‘In the short term,’ Gabe admitted. He still thought it would change the world for the better even though Diogenes and Socrates couldn’t be in the same room without things getting ugly. It was literally togas at dawn.
‘The entire success of your sister’s nefarious scheme relies on the good graces of a creature driven entirely by whim?’
‘Whim and Sauvignon Blanc.’ Gabe then had to explain what Sauvignon Blanc was. All the while Socrates was frowning ferociously.
‘A love library? Goodness me, I fear for the survival of mankind,’ Socrates said glumly.
‘I know you don’t believe in romance …’
‘On the contrary, young Sharma. I have never espoused such a contrary view. Yes, Xanthippe was not the best choice of a wife, that woman has a vicious tongue. But condemned as I was to a bad marriage, I devoted myself to my work instead.’ Socrates looked a little misty-eyed as he considered his legacy.
Then he fixed Gabe with a beady look. ‘However, when more fortunate men find contentment with a romantic partner, they find a second half who completes them. Who makes them whole.’
‘That’s certainly something to think about,’ Gabe said, although he was already whole. A finished work. He didn’t need a woman to complete him but rather to add a few pleasant flourishes to his life.
‘But that kind of idealised love can not be found betwixt the pages of a book … I am most vexed. You knew I was in eager anticipation of the lecture tour …’
‘I’m really sorry about that …’
‘Even if I had to encounter that colossal bore Diogenes …’
‘Yes, but I really think the two of you have more in common than you …’
‘Now what do I have to look forward to but drinking hemlock and dying?’ Socrates intoned dramatically, a hand to his chest.
Gabe knew that what happened in the books, stayed in the books. There was nothing they could do to alter the outcome of history or a scientific discovery or even the plot of some lurid Victorian potboiler romance. It was set on the page, ink on paper. So it was written. Still …
‘You know, you don’t have to drink the hemlock. Your friends and family offered you an escape route. Everyone, including the authorities, expects you to take that option.’
Socrates puffed up like an angry pigeon. ‘And go against my principles. What kind of man would I be then?’
‘An alive man,’ Gabe said dryly, but once Socrates started going on about his principles there was no stopping him. Although he’d be very angry and tell Gabe off the next time they met, he opened Conversations of Socrates while Socrates was too busy orating to notice and whispered, ‘Restore!’
If only it was that easy to restore peace to the rest of his life.