She had been rea.s.suring him like that for weeks. "English Literature," she said as if that were a present, which in a sense it was: he'd already unwrapped a volume of d.i.c.kens to add to the uniformed rank on his shelf. "You just remember all I've taught you."

His father looked up from sc.r.a.ping carbon off his toast, pushing his lips forward so that his black mustache appeared poised to vanish into the twin burrows of his nose. "He might want to keep in mind the questions his teacher said they might set."

"His teacher's got as little idea as you have," she said, and even more contemptuously: "If we ever want to learn about totting up figures we'll tell you."

Fowler would have liked to say that he appreciated the help his father had given him with mathematics, except that he'd been told not to let his mother know. He ate as much of his toast and almost raw fried egg as he could gather up. His father growled encouragement before his mother straightened Fowler's tie, picked paper off his face, wrapped her pudgy freckled arms around him and pressed her cheek against his. "I'll be praying for you," she vowed.

He wished she wouldn't work herself into a state on his behalf. He'd come home yesterday from sitting English Language to find her propped up shakily in bed, still praying for his success. Now her face was already as pale as then; her unbrushed red hair seemed to blaze. She gave him a last hug so fierce that he couldn't help wondering if besides trying to take his anxiety on herself she wasn't as sure of his preparedness as she wanted him to think.

He tried to ban the idea from his mind as he stood upstairs on the bus to school, clinging to a pole. He quoted Shakespeare to himself as if his mother were there, testing him. "First to sit down will be first in the cla.s.s," she often said, and so he hurried to the gymnasium which was being used as the examination room.

When all the examinees had taken their places the invigilator distributed the papers, bared her wrist and raised it to her face, stared at her watch and let her mouth hang open until Fowler thought her false teeth were about to slip. "Begin," she said at last, and the sound of opened papers soared beneath the ceiling. The scrabbling of pens and the smell of years of sweat surrounded Fowler like symptoms of fever as he gazed dismayed at the pages in front of him. Among all the questions on Much Ado About Nothing, there wasn't one for which his mother had coached him.

As for the questions about the other set books, there was just one he had been led to expect by his teacher. He ought to tackle that at once, to give himself more time to struggle with the others, but the sight of so many unforeseen questions was paralyzing his thoughts. He had been staring glumly for minutes, and was close to fleeing into the open summer air, when he heard a low voice near him.

He wouldn't look. Glancing at your neighbors was the way to get disqualified. Which of them was it? It didn't sound like Andrew Travis on his left-Andrew's voice was trying out octaves this year-and it wasn't Gozzy Milne on his right, because Gozzy always pretended to be adjusting his gla.s.ses or picking his nose in order to whisper in cla.s.s. Why wasn't the invigilator singling out the offender? Fowler crouched over his desk to demonstrate that he wasn't the murmurer, and then the voice grew clear.

It was behind him, too close to be from the next desk. The speaker might have been reading the questions about Much Ado About Nothing over his shoulder. "Beatrice and Bened.i.c.k's words get in the way of their feelings," the voice said. "They have to be tricked into saying what they won't admit they feel, and then they admit it by pretending they're saying the opposite."

His mother hadn't had much to say about the characters, except to mutter about people being tricked into marrying someone unworthy of them. What impressed him most about the quiet s.e.xless voice was its absolute sureness. As it began to repeat its comments, he s.n.a.t.c.hed up his pen and started writing. Before long he wasn't aware of hearing the voice, and yet he felt he was taking down its dictation as fast as he could write legibly. Having delayed at the outset left him barely enough time to deal with the required number of questions, and he was on his way out of the gymnasium before he had a chance to wonder whose voice he'd been hearing.

His cla.s.smates were celebrating the end of the examinations by boasting of their s.e.xual exploits or telling dirty jokes, Fowler wasn't sure which. He wandered onto the sports field, where a lone footballer was playing cat and mouse with a ball. "Are you there?" Fowler whispered.

Only the sky murmured a response, an airliner pa.s.sing overhead. "Are you there?" he repeated, and didn't realize how loudly until the footballer stared at him. Fowler covered his mouth and made for the gates.

What voice could he have been hearing except the voice of his own mind? His mother was constantly telling him to be true to himself, though he knew that she was really telling him to live up to her image of him. He hurried home to stop her worrying about him.

As he let himself into the house she darted out of her room, onto the dingy landing. She gripped the creaking banister and leaned down to scrutinize him. "You did well, didn't you? You did your best?"

"I think so, mother."

"I know you did. You'll never let me down." She frowned at him and pinched her nightgown closed over the tops of her freckled b.r.e.a.s.t.s. "Just let me rest now until your father comes home. He's bringing one of your favorite dinners and a cake."

Fowler read d.i.c.kens in the front room, where the antimaca.s.sars smelled of mothb.a.l.l.s and the window looked out onto a gardenless terrace like a reflection of the one that contained the room. Two chapters later he heard his father cursing the front door, a birthday cake in one hand and a packet of fish and chips in the other. It sounded to Fowler as if he hadn't had much of a day at the accountancy firm where he worked as a clerk.

Later, once they'd moved the chairs into the corners of the front room so as to unfold the dining-table, Fowler's father shared a bottle of beer with him. "That's enough," his mother cried, hairclips rattling between her teeth as she tidied her hair in front of the mirror over the mantelpiece. "Do you want him developing a taste for alcohol before he's even gone to university? Anyone would think you didn't want him to make the most of himself."

"I made the most of myself today," Fowler blurted.

"I knew you would after all I taught you."

"Just so long as he's pa.s.sed in a few other subjects as well."

"Of course he has. Anyone would think you resent his abilities, your own son's. Not that I haven't seen a few howlers in your handwriting over the years."

"I'm starving," Fowler said, hoping that dinner would require a truce. At the table, however, his parents talked at each other through him. He went to bed early, pleading a headache brought on by the examinations, and listened to the m.u.f.fled sounds of the television downstairs, of his mother in the next room complaining about the noise. He was vaguely expecting to hear the voice that had helped him, but instead he fell asleep.

He forgot about it as the school term drew to a close. He spent most of the holidays reading or at the local library. Sometimes he encountered schoolmates, usually with girls to whom they would introduce him as if they were doing him a favor by acknowledging him. Once a group of schoolmates followed him, scoffing because he was reading a book as he walked. He felt most at home in the library, and managed not to stammer when he gave his name to the blue-eyed young woman at the counter.

Her name was Suzanne. She liked cycling, Indian food and jewelry and music, mountain walks where the clouds came to meet her, films with endings so happy that they made her cry or so sad that she had to smile at them. This much he learned from overhearing her conversations with her colleagues, especially with Ben, a broad-shouldered man in his twenties with hairs in his ears. Ben stood closer to Suzanne than Fowler liked, though she sometimes flicked her variously blonde hair back until it seemed likely to sting Ben's eye, and crossed her arms over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s whenever he approached. Once, as Ben marched away with the trolley from which Fowler was selecting books, Fowler saw her heart-shaped pink-lipped face wrinkle its snub nose in a comment he was almost sure had been meant for himself alone.

He ought to have said something. Each time he went to the library he tried, hanging back in the queue to ensure that she would deal with him, and each time he felt more helpless, his failures to speak blocking his mouth. Every time he gave his name it sounded more like an admission of defeat. No wonder, he thought, that his schoolmates used to call "Fowler Noll sleeps with a doll" after him.

One day he was staring in embarra.s.sment at the books he was returning, which his mother had frowned at and none of which he'd had the enthusiasm to finish-a cyclist's guide to the surrounding countryside, a collection of stories by Tagore, a book about mountaineering and a study of Hollywood weepies-when she said, "Waiting for results?"

He wanted to grab his tickets and run. "Fowler Noll," he repeated, ma.s.saging his windpipe and feeling as if he were trying to strangle himself.

"I know," she said with a friendly laugh. "Waiting for your exam results, are you? I remember feeling just as nervous as you look."

"They were supposed to come this morning. I hung around the house till after lunch and never saw the postman."

"You should have done well, you read more books than I do. Will you be celebrating?"

"I might have some fish and chips."

She laughed and handed him his tickets. "Tell me how you did next time you're in."

Fowler grinned painfully and lurched toward the shelves. Had she meant him to invite her to celebrate with him? He wandered blindly up and down the aisles of books, tilting his head to make it appear he was examining the spines. At last he launched himself towards the counter, swallowing a breath which he vowed he would use to ask her, and saw Ben leaning over her, propping himself with his fists hairy as pork. Fowler sneered at him, and fled.

His mother would want to know why he hadn't borrowed books. He could only sneak up to his room and pretend that he had. But as he stepped into the hall she came out of the front room to meet him, smiling so thinly that her lips were even paler than the rest of her face. For a moment he was sure she knew about Suzanne, and then he saw the envelope that she was thrusting at him-his examination results.

How bad must they be to make her look like that? His fingers almost wouldn't close on the envelope. Even more disconcertingly, .it proved to be still sealed. He tore it open and unfolded the typed sheet. He'd pa.s.sed in all six subjects that he'd taken, and could hardly have done better in English Language and Literature. He showed her the page, but her smile grew even grimmer. "You're thinking this will be your first step on the way to university, aren't you? Now you ask your father why it can't be."

His father was sitting amid the smell of mothb.a.l.l.s. As he met Fowler's eyes he looked unexpectedly young and responsive to him, more like the father who used to play with him before his wife's disapproval had intervened. "They've brought in computers at work, son. They've been trying to show me the ropes but it's beyond me. I'll still have a job with the firm, but not up to the one I've been doing. It's good of the young boss to keep me on at all."

"Never mind, dad," Fowler said awkwardly, and was about to go to him and touch him, though he hadn't for years, when his mother cried, "Never mind never minding. You'll mind that he won't be earning enough to pay for you to go to university and yet he'll be paid too much for you to get a grant. That's where he's left you after all the trouble I've taken with you."

At once Fowler thought of a solution to their problems. "I can get a job. I know what I want, to work in the library and do all their exams and be a head librarian like you were going to be, mother, before you were ill."

His father ducked as though avoiding a blow. Fowler had forgotten that they weren't supposed to mention how his mother's nerves had lost her her job once she'd had to worry about his first year at school. "You said how much you liked it there," he added hastily. "I'd be with books all day and helping people improve themselves."

She seemed no longer to be hearing him. "Have you and your father been planning this?"

"Of course not, mother," Fowler said, too vehemently, and felt his father withdraw unapproachably into himself while his mother stalked off to the kitchen to throw pots and pans about in the sink.

He sat on his bed with an atlas of the world across his knees and wrote a letter to the city librarian, asking for an interview. He found an envelope on the dressing-table, under a stack of Victorian fairy tales whose reflections seemed to grow dustier as he separated the books from them, and went down to ask his mother for a stamp, which she produced from the battered handbag she carried everywhere. When he came back from posting the letter she stared at him as if she no longer recognized him.

She kept that up until he was given a date for an interview, and then she started worrying on his behalf, her voice growing ragged with resentment that made him feel guilty, but what could he do? He borrowed books about librarianship from the library, and a book of ways to deal with interviews. This one kept him awake at night, trying to remember how to dress, how to shake hands, how to sit, what tone of voice to use, what to say, what not to say... He heard his mother praying harshly in bed, his father stumping about downstairs to indicate that it was time she stopped.

On the morning of the interview she made Fowler a breakfast whose elements, which ranged from charred to almost raw, spilled off the plate. He gobbled it to get it over with, though he felt sick with antic.i.p.ating the interview. She watched him with a sadness that made him feel condemned, but as he headed for the front door she grabbed his tie, adjusting it so tightly that he gulped, and muttered, "Don't let me down."

At the last moment Fowler scurried upstairs to grab two books about librarianship. She watched him along the street, her face glowing with increasing pallor. His father had arranged to be late for work, and marched along with Fowler, swinging his arms, miming determination. On the bus he leaned against Fowler as if to press strength into him, and squeezed his elbow, looking away, as Fowler reached his stop.

The library was wide as the block of shops that faced it across a square in which a dried-up fountain stood, its basin weedy with graffiti. A dauntingly broad flight of steps led up to a hushed revolving door that admitted him to a foyer so quiet he felt as if he were in church, his footsteps far too loud and numerous. The uniformed man at the security desk seemed to know who he was and why he was there, and phoned for a young woman whose backless sandals made even more noise than Fowler. She led him along several paneled corridors to a muscular leather sofa. Before he had time to grow apprehensive, she came back to usher him into the city librarian's office.

The librarian was a small bald red-nosed man whose head and upper torso stuck up from behind a desk that dwarfed him. "Mr. Doll," he said.

"No, actually," Fowler said as the door cut off the flapping of the secretary's heels, "it's Noll."

"As I said, Bister Doll," the librarian articulated, and Fowler realized with a shock which made him clutch at the books that the man had a heavy cold. "Bake yourself comfortable, Bister Doll," the librarian said.

Fowler did his best once he was seated, placing the books on his lap and then on the floor, tugging at the knees of his trousers and shaking the cuffs down again over his pallid ankles, until he became aware that the librarian was watching his antics. "I'm ready," he said, and sat up, miming eagerness.

"What bakes you feel you are suitable for library work?"

"Well, I'm always in the library. Not this one, the one by me, I expect you know the one. I mean, this one sometimes..." Fowler heard himself babbling, but there seemed to be no other way to distract himself from the sight of the drop of liquid that was growing at the end of the man's nose. "I got these books in the other one," he said desperately.

"How would you describe the difference between this wad and the branches?"

"It's bigger. Lots more books. Different kinds of them," Fowler stammered, agonizing over whether to look away or pretend he wasn't seeing. "More for students. Proper books, like these ones I've got."

"Are there any kides of books you feel we shouldn't stock?"

The question sounded like a trap. The drop of liquid lost its grip and plopped on the blotter. The librarian gazed at him, not quite patiently, as another drop took its place. "What radge of politics do you feel we ought to represent? All kinds within the law."

"What?" Fowler said, and then, "I mean, beg pardon?" as he realized what he'd heard: not the librarian answering his own question, but a third voice. "All kinds within the law," he said rapidly.

"And bust we cater to all readers?"

"To every reader according to his needs."

"To every reader according to his needs," Fowler repeated.

"What do you ibagid library work edtails?"

"Knowing where books are," Fowler said before he could be prompted, and added what he heard himself being told: "What their numbers are."

"For idstance?"

"English Literature is 820," Fowler said, and paused to listen. "Librarianship is 020, English History is 942 ..." Soon he was too busy remembering numbers he'd seen on spines of books to pause or to notice when the voice ceased. When the librarian asked him about dealing with the public, Fowler found that the voice had given him enough confidence to repeat what the book about interviews had said. It occurred to him that having to look at someone's leaky nose while talking to them was proof that he could deal with people. All the same, he was glad when the librarian terminated the interview, standing up and dabbing at his nostrils with a handkerchief while he said like a fortune-teller, "You'll be receiving a letter in the course of the dext few days."

Fowler strode out of the somber corridors, across the foyer and into the square, feeling as if a series of lids were being lifted above his head. "Thanks for helping," he whispered.

"No more than my duty."

Fowler almost dropped the books. Three shopgirls eating lunchtime sandwiches on benches were staring at him, and he wondered if they could hear the voice too. "You're still there," he said.

"Whenever you most need me, and before you know you do. Hush now, or you'll have people thinking you aren't right in the head."

He thought that unfair, since it was the voice that was making him talk, but it did seem to know what was best for him. He was afraid to question it further in case it went off in a huff. Though he hadn't been to church for years, the idea of guardian angels still appealed to him. Did other people hear theirs and talk to them? Perhaps the world was full of people who did, but the experience was so private that they never spoke of it. He was suddenly ashamed to have let the shopgirls overhear him, and averted his face as he made for the bus.

On the ride home he felt as if he and the voice were playing a game to see which of them could stay quiet longest. He didn't need to talk, he knew he was being watched over. He was smiling as he reached home and heard his mother praying for him. He eased the front door open so as not to let her know he'd heard how concerned she was for him, but she cried, "Who's there?"

"Just me, mother."

She blundered onto the landing, her hair disheveled, her doughy cheek marked where she'd pressed her folded hands against it. "Don't ever creep in like that again unless you want to be the death of me. Well?"

"Of course I don't," he said, then realized what she was asking. "I got all the questions right, I think."

"I should hope so."

He heard what she was feeling, a mixture of pride and helplessness and rebuke so fierce and unmanageable it seemed to underlie her att.i.tude to him for days afterward, all the more so when the letter arrived to tell him that he'd got the job and was to report for work on Monday at his local branch. "I'm proud of you, son," his father said.

"And of yourself, no doubt," his mother snapped.

On Monday morning she left Fowler a plateful of cold fried egg and bacon and went back to her room. He thought she was letting him see how unhappy she was, but she reappeared wearing the outfit-dark suit, starry stockings, glossy black shoes and a tortoisesh.e.l.l comb the width of her head-which she wore on her expeditions into town, to meet the reference librarian for coffee and a chat about old times and then to stroll through the department stores until she tired of deploring the latest fashions. "I suppose you won't object if your mother walks along with you on your first day at work," she said.

She hurried him along the half a mile of streets to make sure he was early, calling out, "His first day at work. You can't hold on to them forever" to anyone she knew. In the shopping precinct the confectioners' and the betting shop were being unshuttered while pensioners queued outside the library for first read of the newspapers. She strode to the head of the queue, gesturing furiously at him to join her. When the librarian, a portly stooping middle-aged man who appeared to be permanently blushing, arrived and tried to let himself in without acknowledging the queue, she tapped him on the shoulder. "This is my son Fowler. He's starting work here today."

The librarian made a sheepish sound and held the door open just enough for Fowler to squeeze past. Fowler's mother waited outside with the pensioners while the librarian, blushing more than ever, showed him the mechanics of dealing with returned books and replacing them on the shelves.

Suzanne arrived as the librarian was admitting the queue. She unzipped her jacket as she tripped in, and swung it over her shoulder by its tag, her dress momentarily rising above her bare knees. She gave Fowler a brief smile that dazzled him. "Why, it's you," she said.

His mother had come in behind her, and saw. She squared her shoulders and marched up to the counter. "Be a credit to me," she said to Fowler, and pushed out past the slowest of the pensioners.

She was relinquishing her hold on him at last, he thought. Suzanne had shown her that she had to. Did she think there was already more between him and Suzanne than he secretly hoped there might be? That evening she wanted to know all about his day, but beneath her pride and resignation he sensed her suspicion that he was holding something back.

As the weeks pa.s.sed, he was: the way Suzanne smiled at him when her bare arm brushed his, her perfume lingering on his skin; the touch of her hair on his face when she leaned down to murmur to him, the warmth of her breath in his ear. Once, at the counter, the back of his hand accidentally touched one of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and that night he took her faint ambiguous smile to bed with him.

For a while he blamed hairy-eared Ben for his having to fantasize. Ben proved to be second-in-command at the branch. When it became clear that Suzanne preferred Fowler's company to his, he kept them apart as much as he could, giving them work at opposite ends of the library or insinuating himself between them at the counter. But they had to be together sometimes, and then Fowler felt his inability to ask her out almost choking him. Her being two years older surely wasn't insurmountable; only his silence was. Even when he put his hand over his mouth and whispered to the voice to come and help him, there was silence.

Ben was at least indirectly responsible for his hearing the voice again. That Sat.u.r.day Ben was in charge, and not only sent Fowler to search for misplaced books while Suzanne worked at the counter but left Fowler to run the library while Ben joined Suzanne in the staffroom for the mid-morning break. When they reappeared, Fowler gathered that she'd refused to go over to the pub with Ben for lunch.

Fowler's mother came in about twelve with a packet of sandwiches for him, as usual. Some of her hair was straggling out of the tortoisesh.e.l.l comb, and one of her stockings was crooked. It dismayed him to see how she was beginning to resemble the pensioners whose second home was the library. She must be lonely now that his father went to the football ground on Sat.u.r.days, not that she would admit it to herself. If the librarian were here she would chat to him about how well Fowler was settling in, but she hadn't taken to Ben. She nodded curtly to him and frowned at Suzanne's bare knees, and trudged out, mopping her forehead.

At five to one Ben stationed himself beside the door to bar any last-minute arrivals, and slammed the bolt into the socket as soon as the slowest of the pensioners left, wheezing. "Don't hurry back," Ben muttered, and turned to Suzanne. "Make me a coffee as long as you're having one, there's a good girl. No point in going to the pub if I'll be drinking by myself."

She virtually ignored him. "Would you like one, Fowler?"

"I'll make them," Fowler said, and glimpsed a moue of childish anger on Ben's face. He might be years older than Fowler, but his secret self was younger. Fowler ate his sandwiches, thick unequal chunks of bread between which fatty meat lurked, while he waited for the kettle to boil, and carried the mugs out of the kitchen into the staffroom, a small room with net curtains and three unmatched easy chairs. "I like more milk," Ben complained.

"He knows where it is then, doesn't he, Fowler?"

"I'll put it in," Fowler said.

Ben glared at the mug when Fowler had topped it up with milk, and unfolded the Telegraph so sharply Fowler thought it would tear. Suzanne winked at Fowler and began to talk about a film she and some girlfriends had dared each other to watch, the kind of film Fowler's schoolmates would brave. If Ben weren't there, Fowler thought, this would have been his chance to ask her to see a film with him. Suppose he spoke too low for Ben to hear? He was struggling to open his mouth when Ben let the newspaper drop. "If it's shocking you want, we've got books that would make you sit up."

"I'll keep that in mind."

"I'll show you," he said as if she had contradicted him, and stalked into the library.

Fowler took a deep breath, and then another and another. "I don't suppose you'd, if you aren't, I mean, some night when you-"

Ben came back with two fat books. "Here, read this," he said, and opened one. "This turned a few stomachs."

"I'd rather not, thank you."

"Not afraid of contemporary German literature, are you?" He read her a pa.s.sage about eels inside a dead horse and someone being sick. "That's more real than your spooks and monsters."