The Lights are Going Out.

 

I needed a book for the next day. It was a children’s book. I rang the bookshop that was closest to me, and was surprised when both numbers listed in the phone book did not work.

I jumped into my car; there was only an hour before the shops closed. I figured I had enough time to quickly get there and buy the book. I knew just where to look on their shelves.

I drove towards the bookshop, and saw to my great sorrow that it had closed down.

I negotiated the one way system I was trapped in, winding my way back through narrow streets in order to return to the main road.

There was no choice, I’d have to drive into town and try Waterstones.

Things didn’t look promising in Waterstones. I couldn’t even find the author’s name on the shelf, or any of the author’s other books. A kind assistant checked the computer, and no, the book wasn’t in stock. She didn’t think she could order it either as it seemed to be out of print.

I was on my way back to my car when I remembered the library.

I hadn’t been to the library in the centre of Northampton for years. I used to go every week and borrow at least ten children’s books when I had a pre-schooler in tow. You could once park for free just outside the library’s doors, which was brilliant when there was a tot in the car. Once the street became pedestrianised, and the nearby free parking spots became metered, I stopped popping into town to go to the library. It was logistics and expense. I used a smaller local library instead.

I hadn’t got my library card, but I figured that if I could find the book then at least I could sit and read the book until the library closed.

I was shocked when I first entered the library; the hustle and bustle had gone. The strict librarians who announced fines and used to look curtly at their customers were gone too. Even the check out desks had gone. Instead there was a vast open space with a single computer screen flickering away in a corner. There was a table with a book sale; and squatting on the floor in one of the corners was a small crowd of gossiping young people.

The place looked neglected and shabby. The floor was dirty. There was a terrible air of neglect. I had the feeling that nobody would dare challenge the young people who had claimed a corner of the library as their own.

I went quickly towards the children’s shelves.

The shelves that were once crowded and packed with books had been thinned to make the area look more open. Books that had once been carefully stacked on shelves were in disarray. The first shelf I approached was offering more books for sale.

I searched the shelves for the book that I wanted. It wasn’t there, but with all the disorder I wondered if it might still be somewhere in the library. I tried to check for myself using the library’s computer system, but I couldn’t get it to work.

A helpful librarian tried the search on my behalf using a different machine.

‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s not in the library.’

‘Thanks anyway,’ I said.

‘Just a minute,’ she said. ‘I’ll see where it is.’

‘Oh no, don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I needed it for the next day.’

But she had already begun a search.

‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s not in this library. In fact it’s not even in the county.’

I was shocked. ‘Not even in the county?’

‘No,’ she said smiling, ‘but it’s an old book isn’t it!’ as if this was reason enough for it to be struck from the catalogue.

I thanked her for her help, and walked out, past the book check-out desks where librarians chatted as they waited for someone to check out a book; past the table with books for sale; past the computer’s mocking screen; through the vast untidy empty hallway of a room; and past the young adults who now were engaged in pursuits that I’d never witnessed in a library before; and went home.

I went home feeling saddened to live in a town where bookshops were closing, and where the town library had been emptied of its most prized possessions: its books. I was devastated to discover that books in a library now seemed to be discarded once their ‘best before date’ had expired. That books with timeless stories, were being pulled from shelves and dumped like stinking vegetables on the book sale tables. And that the library was becoming nothing more than a public place to shelter from the rain and cold.

I’m sure that the library once had the book that I wanted to read. That it did not, and that there is now a gap on its shelves, and empty gaps where other books should be, is a tragedy. A library should hold all it can, and more, fit to bursting, shelves upon shelves, row upon row of books, of precious books; books from all times and all ages; books that we can by chance explore, and learn from, and enjoy.

With each missing book a precious light has gone out.

Soon, like those young people I saw sitting on the floor, everyone will be just groping in the dark.

Note

The book I’d been trying to find was The Ghost of Thomas Kempe a Carnegie Medal winner in 1973 written by Penelope Lively.