9. Sexy, Scary, Library
‘I have insured you on my work car,’ Eugenia says, apropos of nothing, when she bumps into Briar and Westby in the corridor the next morning.
Briar had been attempting their patented in-and-out manoeuvre at breakfast, but Westby had spied them, and very effectively blocked Briar’s escape route with his walking stick.
‘Oh,’ says Briar. ‘Thank you?’
‘It’s a . . . pick-up truck,’ Eugenia says, her face twisting in disgust. ‘It is ugly. But practical. I don’t use it much, I have my own car.
I will leave a spare key in my office. You will need to talk to security each time you come and go, it is annoying.
But you can take the furniture for repairs, that place in the industrial estate, or to the tip. You decide.’
‘I don’t know which furniture is worth saving.’
‘I do,’ Westby says brightly. ‘What? I won’t go in the attic, Genie, I know it’s off-limits. Jones can lug the furniture down all those stairs and then I can appraise it. I have an antiquarian’s heart. And the legs of a wading bird, although that’s beside the point.’
Eugenia shakes her head. ‘If I were you I would be keeping my head down and hoping nobody else shoots me.’
‘Smart girl.’
At Briar’s school, a student would be soundly reprimanded for saying this to a member of staff at least twice his age, but Eugenia just sighs and saunters off.
‘A car. A car!’ Westby says. His face is so hollowed-out that when he smiles this wide he looks like a merry skeleton. ‘No scholar is allowed to keep one on campus. Oh, the places we’ll go.’
‘The tip,’ Briar says, swallowing a mouthful of terrible coffee.
‘Think slightly bigger than the tip.’
‘The industrial estate.’
Westby sighs, leaning heavily on his stick so that he can give Briar the full force of his disappointment. ‘You are a very sad creature, unworthy of sexy Genie’s pick-up truck. Oops - watch out.’
He bundles Briar through a doorway and into the empty classroom beyond, surprisingly nimble for somebody skinny as a breadstick and balanced on one leg.
They both stand there, Briar already knowing better than to expect a reasonable explanation, and a moment later Alistair Buckingham and his cronies stroll into view.
One of them has an angry rash over his face, coated in greasy cream, the skin raw and swollen. The second looks mostly unharmed, albeit pale, except for redness around his mouth; some of the hives there have been scratched bloody, leaving wet craters that give Briar the shivers.
‘The short, frightfully blond one is the Prince,’ Westby whispers.
‘Belcourt is the black-haired fellow with the glasses and the fucked-up mouth, and Sokolov is the scowling brunette. In fourth year, Belcourt got drunk and forced a billiard ball into my mouth while the others held me down. Chipped my tooth, the nasty fucker.’
‘Jesus,’ Briar mutters. They’re waiting, breath held, for Seb to appear. He doesn’t. And then Briar is annoyed to have thought of him at all.
The group confer about something, then Alistair hands his books to the Prince, who receives them with practised deference, before they all move off.
‘Accompany me to the library, will you?’ Westby says, not waiting for an answer, apparently assuming that Briar has nothing better to do. It’s only eight o’clock in the morning. Technically he’s right, for one more hour. ‘And later, I want to see this truck.’
As they walk, Briar can’t help but say, ‘She is hot, isn’t she? Eugenia. In a scary way.’
‘Good lord, like a grease fire. I’m not particularly inclined in that direction, but something about her makes me want to crawl around on all fours for her amusement, you know?’
‘You’ve lost me there.’
‘Ah, well. Not enough sickos at this school. I’m always saying it. Yes, yes, all right, don’t give me that look - plenty of sickos, but they’re in it for all the wrong reasons.’
The library, like much of the newer school, is a spectacle of neo-Gothic red sandstone from the outside.
Briar’s breath catches as they enter. They keep trying not to find Temple impressive, but this place - what surely must be the heart of an institution built entirely around books - is exactly as they’d always dreamed it.
The stacks are housed in a two-tiered gallery, with rows of scarred oak desks and a few armchairs scattered around the edges of the ground floor, further reading nooks just visible around tight corners.
The mezzanine level above, wrapping around the whole atrium, carries the collection all the way up to the ceiling.
The desks up there are arranged with a view over the room, divided by more shelving so that each of them becomes its own semi-private study.
The balustrades have ornate, delicate spindles, and the wooden pillars that repeat down the length of the room are carved with neat botanical friezes.
Briar loves it so much their chest aches.
At this time of day, almost all of the scholars are at chapel, except for a few industrious skivers. Briar spots a couple of daring first-years sitting on a dusty Persian rug in the shadow of a bookcase, and there’s definitely someone lounging on the half-obscured sofa in one of the offshoot nooks.
‘Can’t carry many books while I’m motoring about on this thing,’ Westby says, shaking his stick with vigour. ‘Wait here a minute.’
He limps off towards the stacks, and Briar puts their hands in their pockets and starts wandering slowly down the length of the room, perusing the dull-sounding gilt titles on spines of every faded colour, the grandeur marred slightly by the cataloguing stickers.
These don’t look like thaumaturgical texts; those must be shelved somewhere more secure.
They’re for more mundane study, although half of them must be horribly outdated.
It smells like warm, dusty radiators and just a hint of decay, the sort of smell that makes you want to curl up and take a nap in a corner, or go to the toilet for some reason.
‘Hello.’ Briar turns to find a man wearing a black staff lanyard smiling enquiringly at them.
He’s about forty, boyishly handsome, fashionable glasses and dark hair, wearing a very sensible jumper which almost eclipses his good looks.
‘Aha. Staff. Sorry, I didn’t recognise you, and I didn’t think you were a scholar.
’ He’s speaking softly, pointing at Briar’s ID.
‘We lanyards must stick together, lest we be eaten by hungry scholars. Although they mostly get their sustenance elsewhere. You wouldn’t believe the things people eat in here. Pizzas. Soup. Entire pies.’
‘In a library?’ Briar whispers back, scandalised.
‘I know,’ says the man, shaking his head, aghast at the state of the modern world. ‘Sorry - I’m Daniel, one of the librarians. I teach Research Fundamentals and a couple of other classes to the upper years. You are?’
‘Briar,’ says Briar. ‘I’m temporary.’
‘We’re all temporary,’ says Daniel. ‘But it’s nice that you’re facing it head-on at such an early age. D’you like to read?’
Does Briar like to read? That’s a complicated question.
A childhood full of fantasy has been replaced by teenaged years of thrillers, mysteries, straight-laced classics, literary fiction in which women hate or eat their husbands.
Flowery romance and any hint of magic have been avoided like the plague.
‘Yes. I like to read.’
‘Oh, good. You can check things out on your staff pass while you’re here. Anything from this main collection, or the ground floor annexes. The upper levels are restricted, but you’ll know, because security will be standing in your way. Just be nice to the books, please. Nobody is.’
‘Thanks. I will.’
Daniel smiles, pleased. He’s comfortingly normal, compared to the few other teachers Briar’s encountered. ‘Good. I like you already. Come for coffee sometime in my office, if this place is driving you mad. We can commiserate together. Invent wild punishments for crimes against literature.’
When he walks away, Briar feels lighter, like they have a comrade-in-arms. Maybe they actually will go for a coffee. Especially if Daniel has a better coffee maker than the ones in the lounge and refectory.
They continue to browse, Westby nowhere to be seen.
At the back of the room, they pause, realising that they’ve somehow found a poetry section amongst the joyless nonfiction.
They’re just sliding some Tennyson from the shelf, wanting to check the date of print, when the person on the sofa in the nook a mere ten feet away from where Briar is standing shifts - and Briar realises it’s Seb.
He’s not alone. Briar sways sideways a little to adjust their view, and sees that he’s looking up at somebody, somebody who must be standing with their back to the shelves, out of Briar’s field of vision.
The expression on Seb’s face is odd. Careful, absolute focus, like he’s tracking the progress of a large and dangerous animal, or about to receive the word of God.
Briar should put Tennyson back on his shelf and creep away. They don’t.
‘. . . hanging by a thread,’ Seb’s unseen companion says, his voice rising to a harsh, audible whisper.
‘So of course you don’t understand, and of course you don’t care, because when have you ever cared - it’s so fucking easy for you to act like it’s all a game.
I told everyone you were ill, but they knew I was lying. Obviously.’
Seb is silent. He stays perfectly still, gazing upwards, hair falling back over his shoulders, pale throat exposed.
‘Say something. You obnoxious fuck, you drive me up the fucking wall.’
It’s Alistair who steps into view, towering over Seb, and Briar’s fingers tighten on the book until the spine creaks.
But then Seb’s posture shifts. He leans to one side, cocking his head, and the tension between them changes so suddenly that it almost feels like a drop in atmospheric pressure.
He’s not at Alistair’s mercy; he’s bored, barely listening to this tirade, waiting for something more interesting to happen.
It does.