Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

N?’
    ‘My advice is this. When you are young and you read something that you very much dislike, put it aside and read it again three years later. And if you still dislike it, read it again in a further three years. And when you are no longer young – when you are fifty, as am I – read the thing again that you disliked most of all.’

    ‘That'll be Lolita then.’
    She smiled, which was unusual, so I said, ‘Shall I skip Mrs Oliphant?’
    ‘I think you might . . . although she did write a very good ghost story called The Open Door .’
    I picked up my pile of books for shelving. The library was quiet. It was busy but it was quiet and I thought it must be like this in a monastery where you had company and sympathy but your thoughts were your own. I looked up at the enormous stained-glass window and the beautiful oak staircase. I loved that building.
    The librarian was explaining the benefits of the Dewey decimal system to her junior – benefits that extended to every area of life. It was orderly, like the universe. It had logic. It was dependable. Using it allowed a kind of moral uplift, as one's own chaos was also brought under control.
    ‘Whenever I am troubled,’ said the librarian, ‘I think about the Dewey decimal system.’
    ‘Then what happens?’ asked the junior, rather overawed.
    ‘Then I understand that trouble is just something that has been filed in the wrong place. That is what Jung was explaining of course – as the chaos of our unconscious contents strive to find their rightful place in the index of consciousness.’
    The junior was silent. I said, ‘Who is Jung?’
    ‘That is not for now,’ said the librarian. ‘And in any case not English Literature A–Z. You would have to go to Psychoanalysis – over there, by Psychology and Religion.’
    I looked. The only people who ever went near Psychology and Religion were a man with a ponytail who wore a T-shirt, very dirty, that said EGO on one side and ID on the other, and a pair of women who pretended to be witches and were researching Wicca In Our Time. All three were over there, passing notes to one another as they weren't allowed to speak. Jung could wait.
    ‘Who was Gertrude Stein?’
    ‘A modernist. She wrote without regard to meaning.’
    ‘Is that why she is under Humour, like Spike Milligan?’
    ‘Within the Dewey decimal system there is a certain amount of discretion. That is another of its strengths. It saves us from confusion but it allows us freedom of thought. My predecessor will have felt that Gertrude Stein was too modern a modernist for English Literature A–Z, and in any case, although she wrote in English, or approximately so, she was an American and she lived in Paris. She is now dead.’
    I took The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas back to the Mini and I drove the Mini round to Mrs Ratlow's. I didn't go in for a while. I could hear her shouting at the boys.
    I looked through the kitchen window of the neat little house – not a terrace like Water Street, but almost a cottage and backing onto fields. The huge hulking boys were eating their supper and Mrs Ratlow was ironing and reading Shakespeare from a music stand set up by the ironing board. She had taken off her polyester jacket and was in a Bri-Nylon blouse with short sleeves. Her arms were fat and dimpled. Her chest was wrinkled and slack and fleshy and red. She was everything Nabokov loathed.

    Her eyes were bright reading Shakespeare, and every time she finished ironing one of the huge hulking shirts, she stopped, turned the page, hung the shirt, and got another from the pile.
    She was wearing fluffy slippers, pink on the black-and-white lino.
    She was giving me a chance. Winter was coming and it was cold sleeping in the Mini, and the condensation from a night's breathing meant that I woke up with drops of water all over me, like a leaf in the morning.
    I had no idea whether any of what I was doing was the right thing to do. I talked to myself all the time, out loud, debating with myself my situation. I was lucky in one way because our church had always emphasised how important it is to concentrate on good things – blessings – not just bad things. And that is what I did at night when I curled up to sleep in my sleeping bag. There were very good things; there was Janey and there were my books. Leaving home meant that I could keep both without fear.
    I got out my key, then I rang the bell out of politeness. One of the huge hulks opened the door. Mrs