* * *
—
Just when it had begun to seem to Gwendolen that the drudgery of her life might go on for ever, Mother had surprised her by beginning to fail. The Library service gave Gwendolen an unpaid leave of absence. Gwendolen had nursed many men near to their end, but she did not think that any of them had clung to life as stubbornly as Mother. The dull days of her dying seemed to stretch ahead with no end, just as the dull days of her living had. The Misses Tate, Rogerson and Shaw sent a little card, forget-me-nots, the kind you would send to a sweetheart, writing, “We are thinking of you, dear, from your friends at the Library.” （Not Mr. Pollock, she noted.） Gwendolen was so touched that she wept, but quietly, for her mother would have been monstrously jealous of such emotion. She had claimed grief for her own long ago.
Gwendolen had missed the gentle, April-violet-scented presence of the Misses Tate, Rogerson and Shaw. Missed the quiet talks about nothing that threaded through the Library days. “Gossip,” Mr. Pollock called it dismissively, but Gwendolen thought that was the word men gave to women’s conversation. Men talked in order to convey information or to ruminate on cricket scores and campaign statistics. Women, on the other hand, talked in an effort to understand the foibles of human behaviour. If men were to “gossip,” the world might be a better place. There would certainly be fewer wars.
“Goodness, Miss Kelling, you are quite the radical,” Mr. Pollock said when Gwendolen voiced this opinion. It had been during a rather heated discussion on acquisitions. There had already been a long-running battle over The Green Hat, by Michael Arlen, Mr. Pollock fearing its ability “to corrupt the provinces” with its immorality. There were topics in it, he declared, that he couldn’t even name in decent company. “Venereal disease? Homosexuality? Promiscuity?” Gwendolen offered, unable to stop herself. Mr. Pollock looked quite apoplectic. It was so very easy to light Mr. Pollock’s fuse and then watch him go off.
The battle over The Green Hat was won by Gwendolen mostly by dint of the fact that she was the only one in the Library who had read the novel. She disliked Arlen’s writing, disliked his narrator, disliked his green-hatted femme fatale, Iris Storm, and her abstracted, irritating character. They said she was based on Nancy Cunard, that the whole thing was a kind of roman à clef, and Gwendolen wondered what it would be like to find yourself in a novel. Infuriating, she suspected. Nonetheless, she was willing to go into combat for it, arguing that it was important for the Library not to be out of step with modern times, and also, was it really their job to decide what people could or could not read? （“Yes,” Mr. Pollock said.） Of course, part of her didn’t really care, but she had rather enjoyed these sorties with Mr. Pollock.
There was a constant stream of requests from female readers for the “racier” writers of the day—Elinor Glyn, Ruby M. Ayres, Ethel M. Dell. “The hot stuff,” Miss Shaw giggled. Lately there had been a positive deluge of calls for the new E. M. Hull novel, The Sons of the Sheik, something Mr. Pollock, in particular, objected to.
But why shouldn’t they stock the popular novels of the day? Gwendolen argued. What was so wrong with a little harmless pleasure, for heaven’s sake, especially after so much that had been endured. Must everyone read Scott or Smollett? Even Austen was heavy going for some readers. Mr. Pollock himself lauded Addison and Carlyle. Gwendolen could think of nothing worse. The sequel to The Sheik would be acquired over his dead body, he said, causing the benevolent coven to turn their grey heads and regard him speculatively, as if he had just spelled away the remainder of his grey and dusty life. Gwendolen couldn’t help but laugh.
* * *
—
As the deathbed vigil finally neared its end, Gwendolen vowed to herself that if she returned to the Library, she would tolerate Mr. Pollock in a saintly manner. A counsel of perfection that, she knew, was bound to fail. But she didn’t have to go back. She didn’t have to categorize books and stamp tickets. Nor did she have to scrub saucepans and darn stockings. Gwendolen was finally discharged from a daughter’s duty, for even malingerers die eventually. The winds had picked up, she was out of the doldrums.
In the Library she had been, naturally, the subject of many sympathetic condolences on her mother’s death from the Misses Tate, Rogerson and Shaw and had accepted them with due sobriety. Her colleagues had sent a small wreath to her mother’s funeral, From your friends at the Library, and Gwendolen thanked them, saying, “Mother would have been touched.” In fact, her mother would probably have complained at the paucity of flowers or that they made her sneeze or were the wrong colour. She had been overly fond of purple shades—it was a dreadfully suffocating colour to put up with. Gwendolen would be happy if she never saw mauve again.