56: Paper Roses, Only Imitation, Just Like Your Imitation Love, For Me

The Borrowers fold origami flowers from pages ripped out of the books. They cross out the swear words and complain about the bad plots, but still they tear and fold, making a huge paper wreath that they place gently at Complaining Borrower's Feet.

Complaining Borrower's head is leaking. It leaks all over the roses, all over the carpet. The roses are white, the roses are white and red, the roses are red.

The Borrowers stare. They turn as one, stop to listen, and head towards the kitchen, marching slowly, muttering softly. As they pass the barricade, they stop, and stare again. They think.

53: An Army of Borrowers.

The Borrowers aren't just Borrowers. They are individuals who require a User Centred Service. They are a Community that requires Engaging. They are Customers who desire Full and Frank Consultation on Service Development and Delivery. They have Cultural Needs. They have Information Requirements that need to be addressed. They have Learning and Literacy Challenges, or present Behavioural Obstacles to Patron Centred Service.

Sometimes Borrower who Leaves Pictures Torn Out Of Porn Magazines Inside The Children's Books and Borrower Who Rips Out The Barcodes and Then Denies It and Borrower Who Complains about Blasphemous Books and Borrower Who Asks for The Karma Sutra Every Single Pigging Day And Never Pigging Borrows It, and Borrower Who Winks For No Reason, and Borrower who Complains about Mobile Phone Noise Pollution, and Borrower Who Leaves His Books on the Newspaper Table then Gets Angry When They Are Still on His Ticket, and Borrower Who Brings Quality Street In At Christmas and Borrower who Cries, Silently, in the Science Fiction Section, come together and become something more than Borrowers.

Sometimes, they plan things. Sometimes Petitions, sometimes letters to The Council, and sometimes, much worse things.

The Borrowers who have managed to get up in the lift from the Basement Area walk towards the queue. But they keep on walking. They walk through the library, past the shining Rubber Plants and the Poster Paint on the carpet, and into The Dead Zone.

They circle the lump on the carpet. They kneel and pat Complaining Borrower gently. They make little growling noises, groans and confused whimpers.

When it becomes clear Complaining Borrower is not going to wake up, they gather together to mutter and plan.

They have come together. They are an Army of Borrowers now. They are not planning a petition.

They are planning a War.

44: Dead Zone

Back when John first started working at the library, The Boss gave him a little lecture about 'Dead Zones'. These are the places where, for one reason or another, the borrowers don't seem to loiter. Perhaps they are dark and the air smells differently there. Perhaps it's something to do with a draft. 'Dead Zones' need special attention. They need displays and face-out stock. They need racks of community information and other delights to tempt borrowers to browse them.

This library's Dead Zone is far away from the issues desk and the front door. The books are always very tidy because no-one looks at them. The Borrower Who Takes Books Out and Puts Them Back In the Wrong Place never ventures into the puzzles and games section. Masturbating Borrower used to come here a lot, but Linda had him banned from the library and he hangs out in the Samaritans' Office now.

Puzzles and games? John lets Complaining Borrower's Legs flop to the floor and stops to think. It is hard. He is tired. Complaining Borrower isn't what you'd call a light load, and John is well aware his Manual Handling Training Certificate is out of date. On top of that, he is absolutely starving.

John likes to frown when he thinks, but the skin on the side of his face is hot and tight. Thinking takes a long time. There is something about puzzles and games, about the books in the Dead-Zone, the 793s in particular, that he needs to remember. He isn't sure what. His files have been zapped. All the pages are in the wrong order. All his knows is that The Complaining Borrower belongs here, in this quiet, little-visited part of the library.

John bends and props him up against the shelves. The soft part of his face is troubling to look at, so he takes a book down and props it open over the area.

It's fine. Borrowers sleep like this in the library all the time, their faces hidden under books like masks. John takes one last look at him, his brown coat with the pockets stuffed with carrier bags, 101 Games For One resting over his face. John feels better. He turns away to find Katerina. For some reason, he is wearing her cardigan and he can't remember why.

40: Adjacent to Miss World

For John, all isn't well with the world. They've left him alone. He can hear Katerina laughing somewhere very far away. He thinks of his field and her green dress. There is a meadow, speckled with blue and white flowers. It smells beautiful. It is exactly the right kind of meadow. It looks, he decides, like a fabric-softener advert.

And then there she is, standing under a tree waiting for him. She is swirling her skirts about and laughing, but she is not laughing at him!

John realises very slowly that Katerina is laughing because he has been away somewhere else for a long time. Somewhere where his face hurts, and his back hurts, and his neck hurts, and humiliation rubs him all over like an old towel washed without fabric softener.

Fabric softener. That smell isn't the meadow, it is Katerina's hair, which is waving softly around her face. She is laughing because he's back from that place, and she is glad.

'Bob,' she says, with the curl of a smile in her voice, 'Linda would have you sacked for making a remark like that!' she laughs again, and it it a little tinkling that sounds just like the library bell.

There is another noise. Like someone patting a horse. Horsebook. No. It is the sound of hand against skirt-covered buttock.

John opens his eyes. He opens one of his eyes. The other is sealed shut. It hurts. John is sitting on the floor of the computer room. Katerina's cardigan is draped over his knees. It smells like fabric softener and her hair. He clutches it, and listens. Her voice is coming from very far away. From near the lift in fact.

This is as bad as G-----. Not worse, but just as bad.

John gets up painfully, and limps out of the computer room and into the library. Through his one good eye, he can see the path through the bays, around the counter, past the Enquiry desk and into the back room. He imagines the rest. The seventeen steps to Katerina's desk. And a sharp left, to the lift. That's where the sound is coming from.

Through his bad eye, he doesn't see Complaining Borrower approach.

'I've been waiting here for twenty minutes!' the voice startles John, and he turns, almost falling.

'You do realise, don't you, that it's my council tax that pays your wages?' Complaining Borrower says.

'Yes,' John says, truthfully. He is well aware of this. Someone points it out to him every day. He used to keep a tally, but he ran out of paper.

'You're a public servant, aren't you?' Complaining Borrower snaps.

'Yes,' John slurs.

'Serve, then! Come on!'

Complaining Borrower takes John's arm and pulls him back towards the issues desk.

'I've a good mind to complain,' he says, and pushes a pile of books at John. 'Book barricades! Those are my books! Who paid for them? Me, that's who. What's wrong with your face? Does your supervisor know this whole establishment is staffed by a gaggle of loons and misfits?'

John didn't know 'misfit' was one of his trigger words until Complaining Borrower hurled it at him. He can still hear Katerina giggling and this is now worse than G------. He reaches out his hand and lets his fingers curl around the first thing they touch.

'Misfit!' John says, hitting Complaining Borrower in the face with the metal date-stamp. 'Misfit.' (again) 'is' (again) 'right' (you get the idea) 'Next. To. Miss. World. In. The. 19. 94. Dewey. Decimal. Subject. In.dex!'

John raises his hand to keep hitting, but the Complaining Borrower isn't there anymore. Where he stood is now just another space in the library. Has he disappeared? John looks down and there he is again. He chuckles, and drops the date-stamp.

He'd better move the body before Linda notices the mess on the carpet.

31: Angry Library Music

Katerina is disappointed in Bob. She notices how Bob takes The Complaining Borrower to one side and starts pointing out special features in the barricade. The way the books intersect at the corners. The way the pink covers of the romance novels and the brown and white covers of the westerns intersect in pleasing ways, like tiles on a roof. Someone has bolstered the very top of the barricade with a double row of hard-back, large-print Crime novels.

Bob, she realises, is claiming all this work as his own. Bob is totally ignoring her. Bob thinks he is standing in his own back garden, pointing out the special features of his new garden shed to his next-door neighbour. Bob is showing someone the insides of his car. The 'Kit-Kat' period was short and sweet and now, she realises, it is over.

What went wrong?

Katerina is wondering why Bob thinks they need a barricade. She is wondering why they would want to stop people from coming into the library. She is wondering if Bob is expecting an Attack of some kind. She is thinking about all this while Linda is trying to get Bob's attention. Bob is ignoring her too. Linda is complaining about Manning the Defences. She is quoting the Equality and Diversity Policy. She is telling Bob that it really should be 'Personning The Defences.'

Then the music changes. It moves from strings to percussion. It sounds like a bin-bag full of saucepans being thrown down a flight of concrete steps. It is hard to talk on top of the music. Bob turns quickly. She can read his lips.

'Pigging Hell!' he is saying, 'Get under the pigging counter!'

Complaining Borrower grabs Katerina's arm. Bob grabs Linda's arm. They run across the library and crouch under the counter. It smells of printer toner and newspaper under there. The carpet is much cleaner there than anywhere else in the library.

The music is booming. Parts of it are like the sound that the tins tied to the back of a 'Just Married' car make as they bump and spark along the tarmac when the car drives away. Off to a hotel for a Honeymoon.

Honeymoon. Katerina frowns. Why doesn't anyone want to go on a Honeymoon with her? Why do Men never text her back? Why are there never any second dates? Why does it stop with a slap on the bum in the middle of barricade building? Emergencies are supposed to bring people closer together. This could have been her chance. The music is reminding Katerina of all her rejections, all her lost opportunities and disappointments. These men do nothing but stamp all over her dreams.

'Where's John?' Katerina asks. She looks at Linda, but Linda is looking in the pockets of her dungarees for her green bottle.

'Bob?' Bob is making gun shapes with his fingers and covering himself as he peeps over the counter.

The music is so loud now that the books start to fall off the shelves. The barricade is holding, for now.

27: Working Towards The Same Goal

Bob knows he must Keep His Cool if any of them are going to survive this. He catches Linda on her way past and helps himself to the gin she’s carrying, taking a big swig before handing it back with a wink. He breathes out through his nose. He is In Control again.

Where are my men?! he shouts. Where is my pigging team?

Linda and Katerina turn to face him. John and Garry are still AWOL. The girls will have to do.

The borrower who writes all the letters of complaint ambles over to join them. For once he is not complaining. The music seems to have subdued him. He offers himself as a willing helper. Bob gives him the once-over, and, satisfied that he is (a) male and (b) has decent biceps, he slaps him on the back and puts him to work with Linda and Katerina on Manning The Defences.

Linda is still thinking about the instructions from The Boss. She can’t quite figure out who’s meant to escape, but she carries on stacking the books on the chairs anyway. She is certain that it isn’t any of them, otherwise, surely they would have just Exited The Library In An Orderly Fashion when the noise started. She hopes she hasn’t got it wrong. As the Health And Safety Warden, it would have been her job to make sure that happened. But then Bob took charge. She couldn’t stop him. And her job is to Keep Everyone Safe, and that seems to be what Bob is trying to do. She takes a gulp of the gin and picks up some more books, satisfied that they are all Working Towards The Same Goal.

Bob stops to take stock of the situation. The barricade is more than adequate, he thinks. No one is getting in or out. Not on my watch. The noise doesn’t show any signs of abating, but this doesn’t trouble Bob. He is at his peak, after all. This couldn’t have come at a better time. He puffs out his chest and listens to the music, he listens hard. He is invincible, he thinks, he is God.