SHORT STORY
OVERDUE
Iain Grant
After 53 years behind the Returns
desk at the Birmingham Central
Library, Phyllis Corby had
become accustomed to certain
questions and comments.
These ranged from the inane —“You must
really like books, eh?” — to the insultingly
personal—“Surely you shouldn’t be
working at your time of life?” — and most
of them she politely ignored. But whenever
asked what the secret was to her long and
seemingly happy years of service, she was
quick to respond: “Turkish Delight and a
large bottle of gin stashed beneath the
counter. Of course, this was not strictly
accurate. The space beneath the counter
was not tall enough to house even a short
bottle of gin and having such things on
the premises would scarcely have been
professional but the bit about the Turkish
Delight was true enough. Phyllis always
had a box of the pink powdery sweets close
to hand and whenever the books piled up
too high or her feet started to ache she
would pop a cube into her mouth and let
the sugars do their work.
So, on one damp Wednesday afternoon
— the kind which filled the library with
equally damp old boys who just wanted an
hour or so in the dry — when Phyllis felt a
strange whooshing light-headedness and
queasiness come over her, she reached
automatically for the box of Turkish Delight
beneath the counter. She had managed to
slip a square of it under her tongue and
surreptitiously lick a dusting of sugar from
her fingers when a customer approached
the desk.
The customer was a curious looking
gentleman. Even she would concede that
he was dressed about 90 years out of date.
Over a sombre black suit, he wore a long
shapeless coat that was more cloak than
coat and he carried a tall black hat under
his arm. Other, younger members of staff
would have instantly quipped, “Off to a
fancy dress party, mate?” but Phyllis had
more respect for the man’s privacy than
that. She quietly decided that he was
probably an undertaker, one of those ones
whose horse-drawn hearses were very
popular with dead gangsters, and left it at
that.
She smiled primly but said nothing; she
had a mouth full of Turkish Delight and her
light-headedness had transformed into a
small but very specific headache. She took
the one book he held out to her and looked
at the due date on the inside cover. The ink
that had used to stamp the date was thick,
blotchy and smeared. She peered closer.
“It’s overdue,” said the man helpfully.
“Is it?” she said around the diminishing
lump of Turkish Delight. “It’s hard to tell.”
The man smiled. It was a gentle and
unassuming smile. “I know. I sometimes
have the same problem.”
“Oh. You’re a librarian yourself?”
“Of a sort,” the man replied.
Phyllis swallowed the last melting slither
of her sweet. “It’s overdue,” she concluded,
closed the book, saw the title and suddenly
smiled. “What is it?” said the man. Phyllis
shook her head and ran her hand across the
cover. “It’s nothing,” she said. “I remember
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