Free Public Library and Other Stories by Ali Smith Page B

‘divesting’. They now call what used to be public libraries ‘community libraries’. This is an ameliorating way of saying volunteer-run and volunteer-funded.
    Just in the few weeks that I’ve been ordering and re-editing these twelve stories for this book, twenty-eight libraries across the
UK
have come under threat of closure or passing to volunteers. Fifteen mobile libraries have also come under this same threat. That makes forty-three – in a matter of weeks.
    Over the past few years, just in the time it’s taken me to write these stories, library culture has suffered unimaginably. The statistics suggest that by the time this book is published there will be one thousand fewer libraries in the
UK
than there were at the time I began writing the first of the stories.
    This is what Lesley Bryce told me when I asked her about libraries:
The Corstorphine public library was a holy place to me. It was an old building, hushed and dim, like a church, with high windows filtering dusty light on to the massive shelves of books below. And the library had its own rituals: the precious cards (only three each), the agony of choosing, and the stamping of dates. The librarians themselves were fearsome, yet kind, allowing the child me to take out adult books, though not without raised eyebrows. My parents were readers, but we did not have many books in the house, so the library was a gateway to a wider world, a lifeline, an essential resource, a cave of wonder. Without access to the public library as a child, my world would have been smaller, and infinitely less rich. All those riches, freely available, to everyone and anyone with a library card. All children should be so lucky.
    There’s a great kids’ library at the end of our street now where we live, in Notting Hill, soon to be sold, along with the adult one, though they claim to be rehousing it nearby.

The ex-wife
    At first I thought it was just that you really liked books, just that you were someone who really loved your work. I thought it was just more evidence of your passionate and sensitive nature.
    At first I was quite charmed by it. It was charming. She was charming.
    But here are three instances of what it was like for me.
    1: I’d be deep asleep, in the place where all the healing happens, the place all the serious newspapers talk about in their health pages as crucial because that’s where the things that fray or need patched in our daily lives get physically and mentally attended to and if we don’t attend to them something irreparable will happen. Then something would wake me. It’d be you, suddenly sitting straight up in the bed so all the covers would be off
both of us, then it’d be you not there, I mean I’d come to myself and the covers would be off me, I’d open my eyes into a blur of dark, put my hand out and feel the place going cold where you should be. Then a light would come on somewhere in the house. Then a small noise would be happening. I’d get up. I’d blur my way downstairs, one hand on the wall. I’d blur into the front room, or the kitchen, or the study. You’d be sitting at the table. There’d be a too-high pile of books on it. Even in the blur I’d be able to see that that pile was going to topple any moment. You’d be sitting beyond it, looking through a book. Your eyes would be distant, as if closed and open at the same time. I’d stand there for a bit. You’d not look up. What’s going on? I’d say. It’d come out sounding blurry. Nothing, you’d say, I just need to know whether Wing was actually the original kitten of Charlie Chaplin. To know what? I’d say. In a letter to Woolf somewhere, you’d say. There’s a kind of family tree, and I know Athenaeum is one of the kittens that Charlie Chaplin gave birth to. But there’s another one and I’m pretty sure it’s not Wing or at least not called Wing in this particular reference and I need to know what its name is and whether it’s another name for Wing, or whether