pieces. How was I supposed to identify with any of them? Westerdale Road didn’t have too many colonels, housemaids, vicars, flighty debutantes, dowager duchesses or cigar-chomping tycoons. Certainly, none of our neighbours had ever attended a country-house party, let alone found a string of bodies in the library. Nobody owned a library, and country houses were places you were dragged around on Sunday afternoons.
At least Conan Doyle’s solutions possessed a kind of strange plausibility, whereas Christie’s murder victims apparently received dozens of visitors in the moments before they died, and were killed by doctored pots of jam, guns attached to bits of string, poisoned trifles and knives on springs. ‘It is a childishly simple affair,
mon ami
. Brigadier Hawthorne removed the letter-opener from the marmalade pot
before
Hortense the maid found the burned suicide note in the grate,
after
Doctor Caruthers hid the adder, easily mistaken for a stethoscope, under the aspidistra,
at exactly the same time
as Lady Pettigrew was emptying arsenic over the jugged hare.’ The only thing I ever learned from an Agatha Christie novel was the lengths to which county people would go to show how much they hated each other.
In the East Greenwich Public Library I caught glimpses of a world beyond my experience. I loved looking at the covers of books by Dickens, Huxley, Woolf, Forster, Waugh, Wodehouse, Firbank, Faulkner, H. H. Munroe and M. R. James, but I wasn’t old enough to take any of them out. It was a small library with a good librarian, Mrs Ethel Clarke, a woman of thrillingly diverse tastes who stocked her shelves with the widest possible array of books. The first time I met her she scared me with a laser stare intended to weed out time-wasters.
‘If you want to join the library, you’ll have to fill this out.’ She slid a purplish mimeographed sheet across her desk at me. ‘You’ll need a reference from a friend.’
‘I haven’t got any friends,’ I told her.
She peered over the half-moon glasses chained to her neck and pursed duck-lips at me. ‘Hmm.’ Looking around the library, she pointed out a pair of old ladies perusing the romantic novels. ‘Go over there and
make
a friend.’
Greenwich Council should have given her a gold medal. Instead, they plotted to have the place torn down and sold off behind her back. In my mind’s eye I could only ever see the library becoming emptier and emptier, as this gentle, thoughtful lady remained seated at her counter with a look of doomed hopefulness on her face. A custodian of treasures with the power to improve more young lives than any politician, I imagined her facing the forces of ill-informed darkness with a rallying cry like that of Boadicea, if Boadicea had been a suburban librarian rather than the Queen of the Iceni. 6
Amazingly, the axe did not fall on the library. Over forty years later it continued to stand in the same place, its doors open to anyone curious enough to explore the world through the printed page.
One week before Christmas, while I was still seven, I clambered on to the enamel flap of a freestanding kitchen cabinet, tipping the whole thing over and burying myself in a heap of smashed crockery. My mother came running in, thought I was dead, screamed and gave birth to my brother on the scullery floor. He had been due on Christmas Day, so I was able to blackmail him for years to come by reminding him that if this accident had not occurred he would only be getting one batch of presents.
The baby’s name was Steven. He was adorable, with a quiff of whispy blond hair and big pale-blue eyes. He was a good, quiet baby whom everyone loved, so naturally I wanted to drop a paving stone into his cot.
My mother was thrilled because the birth had been so easy. ‘Not like having you,’ she told me ruefully. ‘That took six hours and was like passing a hot copper kettle.’
After Steven came along I saw even less of my parents, and began reading in
At least Conan Doyle’s solutions possessed a kind of strange plausibility, whereas Christie’s murder victims apparently received dozens of visitors in the moments before they died, and were killed by doctored pots of jam, guns attached to bits of string, poisoned trifles and knives on springs. ‘It is a childishly simple affair,
mon ami
. Brigadier Hawthorne removed the letter-opener from the marmalade pot
before
Hortense the maid found the burned suicide note in the grate,
after
Doctor Caruthers hid the adder, easily mistaken for a stethoscope, under the aspidistra,
at exactly the same time
as Lady Pettigrew was emptying arsenic over the jugged hare.’ The only thing I ever learned from an Agatha Christie novel was the lengths to which county people would go to show how much they hated each other.
In the East Greenwich Public Library I caught glimpses of a world beyond my experience. I loved looking at the covers of books by Dickens, Huxley, Woolf, Forster, Waugh, Wodehouse, Firbank, Faulkner, H. H. Munroe and M. R. James, but I wasn’t old enough to take any of them out. It was a small library with a good librarian, Mrs Ethel Clarke, a woman of thrillingly diverse tastes who stocked her shelves with the widest possible array of books. The first time I met her she scared me with a laser stare intended to weed out time-wasters.
‘If you want to join the library, you’ll have to fill this out.’ She slid a purplish mimeographed sheet across her desk at me. ‘You’ll need a reference from a friend.’
‘I haven’t got any friends,’ I told her.
She peered over the half-moon glasses chained to her neck and pursed duck-lips at me. ‘Hmm.’ Looking around the library, she pointed out a pair of old ladies perusing the romantic novels. ‘Go over there and
make
a friend.’
Greenwich Council should have given her a gold medal. Instead, they plotted to have the place torn down and sold off behind her back. In my mind’s eye I could only ever see the library becoming emptier and emptier, as this gentle, thoughtful lady remained seated at her counter with a look of doomed hopefulness on her face. A custodian of treasures with the power to improve more young lives than any politician, I imagined her facing the forces of ill-informed darkness with a rallying cry like that of Boadicea, if Boadicea had been a suburban librarian rather than the Queen of the Iceni. 6
Amazingly, the axe did not fall on the library. Over forty years later it continued to stand in the same place, its doors open to anyone curious enough to explore the world through the printed page.
One week before Christmas, while I was still seven, I clambered on to the enamel flap of a freestanding kitchen cabinet, tipping the whole thing over and burying myself in a heap of smashed crockery. My mother came running in, thought I was dead, screamed and gave birth to my brother on the scullery floor. He had been due on Christmas Day, so I was able to blackmail him for years to come by reminding him that if this accident had not occurred he would only be getting one batch of presents.
The baby’s name was Steven. He was adorable, with a quiff of whispy blond hair and big pale-blue eyes. He was a good, quiet baby whom everyone loved, so naturally I wanted to drop a paving stone into his cot.
My mother was thrilled because the birth had been so easy. ‘Not like having you,’ she told me ruefully. ‘That took six hours and was like passing a hot copper kettle.’
After Steven came along I saw even less of my parents, and began reading in
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