Talking Books

Sidney Proctor had a lifelong affinity with books; a connection that entertained, amused, and even scared him at times. They were like old friends whom he consulted most days for words of wisdom and worldly advice. However, two weeks ago, while Sidney was reading chapter three of ‘1984’, the narrator’s gravelly voice diverged from the text to forecast a winner at the Epsom Derby. In furtive tones, it said to put money on Winston Smith riding Comrade Ogilvy at 30 to 1. 

Now, I’m no gambler, but with those long odds, who’d resist a flutter on a dead cert?

* * *

Sidney grew up listening to his mother reading stories at bedtime and relished her enthusiasm for animating the text. It didn’t matter whether the characters were male or female; heroes, villains or victims; mammals, birds or reptiles; she vocalised them all and populated his impressionable mind with hundreds of memorable voices. Her son’s joy delighted Mrs Proctor, and she nurtured both his literacy skills and storyteller’s sensibilities before attending junior school. 

   However, it was after Sidney learned to ride a bicycle that he developed a ravenous appetite for books and writing. He’d dash to Richmond Lending Library first thing every Saturday morning to discover new titles and scribble untold short stories. On Sunday afternoons, his family cycled alongside London’s gentle waterways to the hustle and bustle of Portobello Road and its intriguing second-hand stalls and bookshops. His mother had an eye for pre-cherished bargains and Sidney perused stacks of dusty paperbacks for inspiring first lines to risk his pocket-money on.

* * *

In an age when his contemporaries wanted televisions in their bedrooms, Sidney Proctor loved nothing more than talking about books with his parents and asked for more shelving to house his expanding library. Sidney’s father accommodated the request before his untimely demise and bequeathed the lad his collection of battered classics for future reference. 

   There wasn’t much that Sidney recalled about his father, other than an acrid waft of pipe tobacco as he scoured The Racing Post, and occasional words of sage advice. What was it he said once? Oh, yes. Never argue with a man whose TV is bigger than his bookcase.    

   Certainly, Sidney’s book collection was extensive and he could carry a convincing argument, but they would’ve both benefitted from a bit more exercise. Mr Proctor’s doctor had advised him to give up smoking and get some fresh air, but he took no notice. He couldn’t be bothered hoofing a ball to his son in the park when the turf was beckoning him home on the radio. And Sidney? He was never keen on soccer when there was a gripping novel to finish. By the age of ten, Sidney’s experience of the great outdoors had become virtual, long before there was a virtual reality to be bothered about.

* * *

Mrs Nesbitt, Sidney’s teacher at Darell Primary School, discovered his passion for writing short stories and read his latest creations out loud in morning assembly. Alas, this didn’t do Sidney any immediate favours; his class mates hated him for it. They despised Sidney’s literary talent and excluded him from any fun and games in the playground. After Sidney’s slender social circle dwindled to nought, he retreated to the hush of the reading room every lunchtime. It was amongst those faded volumes protected in sticky-back-plastic that Sidney made friends for life and discovered a multitude of reverberant voices. 

* * *

His literary companions’ adventures affected Sidney’s imagination, and he preferred their imaginary worlds to his own dreary existence. After all, it’s simpler to turn a page in a book to start a new chapter than learn from experience and progress in real life. I’m sure there’s a point in everyone’s life when one comprehends the difference between fact and fiction, however Sidney learned the hard way on his thirteenth birthday. 

   Harry Potter was an enormous influence on Sidney’s peer group during their third year at secondary school; they all enjoyed the stories about the boy-wizard. Sidney asked to transfer to Hogwarts School, like everyone else in his class, but in the real world it was never going to happen. Nevertheless, he studied an ancient grimoire in Richmond Library and convinced himself he had magical powers. Sidney practiced casting spells at home, swathed in his father’s dark velvet dressing gown, cavorting in front of his mother’s full-length mirror. He twizzled his homemade wand aloft and recited incantations with aplomb, invoking nefarious powers to do his bidding. 

   His attempts to make inanimate objects vanish were convincing theatre tricks, but cunning performances nonetheless. At school, his classmates laughed at his attempts to perform disappearance spells and they soon tired of his tedious chanting. They snapped his pointy stick and spectacles, trashed his cape, and frogmarched him to the boys’ toilets, where they dangled him upside down in a vacant cubicle and bog-washed his tousled locks. 

   Many happy returns, Procter! They said, cheering. Cast a spell on that!

   Sidney gave up on sorcery soon afterwards, however, he remained on speaking terms with his imaginary companions at the wizard school and would often revisit his soul mates for inspiration and advice. They told him he was special and said he should take it as a compliment that his classmates thought he was different. After all, who wants to be like them? 

* * *

By compromise, he forsook the boy-wizard’s cubby-hole under his parents’ staircase and returned to sleeping in his childhood bedroom in the attic. Sidney’s unpleasant birthday altercation shattered his self-confidence, and he shifted his literary interest to mystery and suspense fiction. He abandoned young adult books and investigated dark works inhabited by unreliable narrators and shady characters operating in an ambivalent twilight world, where fiction and truth collided, and alternative facts were a matter of belief.

* * *

Sidney developed a love-hate relationship with literature as his GCSE exams approached. He abandoned his studies in favour of reading an increasing number of page-turning novels. To his mother’s regret, he never applied himself and failed to gain the grades required for a university place. 

   I’m surprised you didn’t want to study English literature, she’d said to him.

   There’s always another year, Sidney said, muttering in response. 

He had little ambition and was content to cruise along until life happened for him. Sidney was sure his luck would change and things would work out.

   Ironically, it was at Worcester College that accepted him for the post of assistant librarian. At the interview, he impressed his new employer with in-depth knowledge of the Dewey Decimal Classification scheme, which wasn’t a surprise, having spent his adolescence in Richmond library. 

* * *

Sidney soon relaxed into his role at the College library and enjoyed whiling away his days in the criminology department; browsing the back catalogue and ordering the latest editions of contemporary crime novels. It was here that he met Thea Billington, his future partner in crime. She’d started her research position in the library around the same time that Sidney had commenced his post. How they met was by pure coincidence, but they made a perfect match; like shampoo and conditioner. 

   It transpired that Thea had experienced a similar process of exclusion during her years at school. She’d read from an early age, loved talking books and aspired to becoming a novelist and an author of true crime fiction. It all seemed too good to be true. What were the chances of two misfits meeting and hitting it off in a genteel College library full of earnest under-graduates swotting for their various degrees? Highly likely, according to the police. 

* * *

   Despite the couple’s secure position, they discovered a mutual desire for mischief-making. Who knows, maybe it resulted from their disrupted and curtailed childhoods? Anyway, the pair spent more than a year altering library books with garish collages and occasionally obscene text. Sidney believed the books offered their own suggestions for abuse and inspired him with various irreverent ideas. Although Thea played along with Sidney’s shenanigans, she never claimed the volumes spoke to her.   

   That’s ridiculous, Sidney. Next, you’ll be telling me they can predict the lottery.

   It's funny you should mention that, Thea.

   Don’t even go there, love. 

   The targets ranged from biographies and volumes of Shakespeare to novels they viewed as inferior quality. Their pranks were private jokes at first. They’d hover close to the vandalised editions, hoping to capture video footage of visitors’ reactions to their literary time-bombs. As the number of tampered books increased, so the social media exposure and speculation increased in intensity. After a year, there was a good chance that there’d be several revelations per day.

   A zealous library manager eventually rumbled their furtive campaign, and the police interviewed the couple under caution concerning theft and malicious damage. The college didn’t press charges, hoping to avoid an embarrassing trial, attracting adverse tabloid publicity, and damaging the institute’s reputation as a haven for serious academic pursuits. The college authorities dismissed both Sidney and Thea, preferring to draw a line under the embarrassing affair and resume its business.

* * *

Murder and mystery nights had always appealed to Thea’s sense of fun and intrigue. In her former life at an advertising agency, she’d been invited to a team-building day event held at an escape room. She’d rather enjoyed the experience, unlike her more jovial colleagues, who felt claustrophobic when they were locked inside the warehouse. Thea got the idea and calculated how to undo all the boxes, shift the levers, and open the doors. Her experience inspired Sidney to compose scripts for costumed detective nights and between the two of them, they organised and hosted a range of lucrative events in local hotels and disused storage facilities. 

   Their clientele came from a narrow demographic and included wannabe sleuths and detectophiles. They were middle-aged business men and women who were addicted to the narcotic value of an engaging detective story. The reviews for the couple’s Murder, Mystery nights were impressive and soon they were inundated with requests for company days-out. Their work load increased to where they were delegating duties to a moderate-sized team and employing a full-time bookkeeper to manage their accounts.

   In the end, the couple were a victim of their own success. Their personal writing projects fizzled out and any literary ambitions ceased to exist. The money should have kept them both happy, however sometimes enough is never enough. Sidney’s literary accomplices reappeared to advise him about his future and remind him about his duty as a novelist to write. Meanwhile, they relayed important information pertaining to his interest in horses. They left cryptic clues, guiding him towards certain volumes in his library, which contained the names and times of pre-ordained winners. 

   Sidney wasn’t convinced at first, however, as the winners started crossing the winning post with frustrating regularity, he succumbed to chance and tried his luck. When Thea discovered his addiction, she lost her temper and lashed out at him. It was their joint savings he was using to gamble. Sidney had been dipping his fingers in the savings pot for a year. And now? Well, they had a problem now. Thea wasn’t about to call the police, and besides, what could they do? 

   However, as the books increased their communication with Sidney, that’s when Thea worried. She’d suffered from sharp stabbing pains in her stomach the other week and now suspected Sidney’s literary accomplices were infiltrating his mind. Was Sidney capable of poisoning her? Thea believed he’d made attempts on her life already. Knowing Sidney was influenced by literary figures throughout his life, she panicked when she discovered an old copy of Patricia Highsmith's early short story anthology. He’d left ‘Little Tales of Misogyny’ open at a particular page that described a man wrapping his unconscious wife in a carpet, binding her with rope and rolling her into the river. Drowning wasn’t an appealing thought. She called her old school friend, Melanie, who advised her to leave him. And so, that night, before Sidney returned from the bookmakers, she packed a bag and departed for her friend’s house.

 * * *

A hand-written card greeted him on the doormat when Sidney returned from a late-night trip to the bookmakers. It was a note from the local police requesting his presence at the station concerning the whereabouts of his partner, Thea Billington. Melanie Cartwright had reported Thea’s concerns, and said they needed to speak to Sidney regarding her allegations of harmful and life-threatening behaviour. Thea said she no longer felt safe in her own home and wanted an investigation into his suspicious activities.

* * *

   Your partner claims you’ve been taking orders from talking books, sir.

   But that’s ridiculous, officer. Inanimate objects can’t communicate. 

   Quite so, sir, however, we’d like to hear your explanation for her concern.

   You’ll be telling me vacuum cleaners can give commands next.

   Does she often claim the hoover can talk, sir?

   Absolutely. All the time, officer. 

   Mm-hm. Is that so?

   She’s impossible.

* * *

There was little progress, however the Duty Sergeant released Sidney after they confirmed Thea was safe and well and residing at Miss Cartwright’s address. The police noted the occurrence as an Incident of Interest and they took no further action. However, they recommended that the couple avoid each other’s company until they could investigate further and get some closure.

The End