Jilly Cooper - Imogen

For Lyn Adams

with love

The idea for IMOGEN first came to me in 1967. I wrote it as a long short story called THE HOLIDAY MAKERS and it appeared in serial form in 19 . In 1977 I took the story and completely re-wrote it, and the result is IMOGEN.

The little West Riding town of Pikely-in-Darrowdale clings to the side of the hillside like a grey squirrel. Above stretches the moor and below, in the valley, where the River Darrow meanders through bright green water meadows, lies Pikely Tennis Club. In the High Street stands the Public Library.

It was a Saturday afternoon in May. Miss Nugent, the Senior Librarian, put down the mauve openwork jumper she was knitting and helped herself to another Lincoln Cream.

‘I’ve never known it so slack,’ she said to the pretty girl beside her, who was dreamily sorting books into piles of fiction and non-fiction and putting them on a trolley. ‘Everyone must be down at the tournament. Are you going, Imogen?’

The girl nodded. ‘For an hour or two. My sister’s raving about one of the players — some Wimbledon star. I promised I’d go and look at him.’

‘I’m sorry you had to work this afternoon,’ said Miss Nugent. ‘You’re always standing in for Gloria. I wonder if she really was “struck down by shellfish”. I’m going to ring up in a minute and see how she is.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t do that,’ said Imogen hastily, knowing perfectly well that Gloria had sloped off to Morecambe for the week-end with a boyfriend, ‘The — er — telephone in her digs is in the hall, and I’m sure she’s feeling far too weak to stagger down two flights of stairs to answer it.’

Feeling herself blushing at such a lie, she busied about stacking up leaflets entitled Your Rights as a Ratepayer and What to do in Pikely . Bugger all, Gloria always said, in answer to the latter.

Miss Nugent burrowed inside her cream rayon blouse, and hauled up a bra strap.

‘Decided where to go for your holiday yet?’

‘Not really,’ answered Imogen, wishing some reader would come in and distract Miss Nugent’s attention. ‘My father’s swapping with a vicar in Whitby in September. I might go with him.’

She dreaded discussing holidays; everyone else in the library seemed to have planned trips to exotic places months ago, and talked about nothing else. She extracted a romantic novel called A Kiss in Tangier from books destined for the Travel Section and put it on top of the Fiction pile. On the front was a picture of a beautiful couple embracing against a background of amethyst ocean and pale pink minarets. Oh dear, thought Imogen sadly, if only I could go to Tangier and be swept off my size seven feet by a man with a haughty face and long legs.

The library was certainly quiet for a Saturday. In the left-hand corner, where easy chairs were grouped round low tables, an old lady had fallen asleep over Lloyd George’s letters, a youth in a leather jacket was browsing through a biography of Kevin Keegan, his lips moving as he read, and little Mr Hargreaves was finishing another chapter of the pornographic novel he didn’t dare take home, for fear of his large wife’s disapproval. Apart from an earnest young man with a beard and sandals flipping through the volumes of sociology and a coloured girl who got through four romances a day, desperately trying to find one she hadn’t read, the place was deserted.

Suddenly the door opened and two middle-aged women came in, red-faced from the hairdressers opposite, smelling of lacquer and grumbling about the wind messing their new hair-dos. Imogen took money for a fine from one, and assured the other that Catherine Cookson really hadn’t written another book yet.

‘Authors have to write at their own pace you know,’ said Miss Nugent reprovingly.

Imogen watched the two women stopping to browse through the novels on the returned books trolley. Funny, she thought wistfully, how people tended to look there first rather than at the shelves, how a book that appeared to be going out a lot was more likely to be in demand. Just like Gloria. Three boys had been in asking for her already that day, and had all looked sceptical on being told the shellfish story. But Imogen knew they’d all be back again asking for her next week.

You learnt a lot about the locals working in a library. Only this morning Mr Barraclough, who, unknown to his wife, was having a walk-out with the local nymphomaniac, had taken out a book called How to Live with a Bad Back . Then Mr York, reputed to have the most untroubled marriage in Pikely, had, with much puffing and blowing, rung in and asked Imogen to reserve Masters and Johnson on Sexual Inadequacy . And after lunch Mrs Bottomley, one of her father’s newest parish workers and due to do the flowers for the first time in church next week, had crept in and surreptitiously chosen four books on flower arrangement.

‘Vivien Leigh’s going well,’ said Miss Nugent, ‘and you’d better put David Niven aside for repair before he falls to pieces. When you’ve shelved that lot you can push off. It’s nearly four o’clock.’

But next minute Imogen had been accosted by a dotty old woman with darned stockings asking if they had any dustbin bags, which led to a long explanation about how the old woman’s dog had been put down, and she wanted to throw its basket and rubber toys away as soon as possible.

‘The dustmen don’t come till Wednesday, and I’ll be reminded of him everytime I see them int’ dustbin.’

Imogen’s eyes brimmed with tears. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ she said. After devoting five minutes to the old woman, she turned to two small boys who came up to the desk looking very pink.

‘Any books about life?’ asked the eldest.

‘Whose life?’ said Imogen. ‘Biographies are over there.’

‘You know, facts’a life — babies and things,’ said the boy. His companion started to giggle. Imogen tried to hide a smile.

‘Well the biology section’s on the right,’ she said.

‘Don’t be daft,’ snapped Miss Nugent. ‘Run along, you lads, and try the children’s library next door. And hurry up and shelve those books, Imogen.’

She watched the girl pushing the squeaking trolley across the library. She was a nice child despite her timidity, and tried very hard, but she was so willing to listen to other people’s problems, she always got behind with her own work.

Imogen picked up a pile of alphabetically arranged books in her left hand — so high that she could only just see over them — and started to replace them in the shelves. The collected editions were landmarks which made putting back easier. Sons and Lovers was replaced at the end of a milky green row of D. H. Lawrence. Return to Jalna slotted into the coral pink edition of Mazo de la Roche.

Even working in a library for two years had not lessened her love of reading. There was Frenchman’s Creek . She stopped for a second, remembering the glamour of the Frenchman. If only a man like that would come into the library. But if he did, he’d be bound to fall in love with Gloria.

A commotion at the issue desk woke her out of her reverie. A man with a moustache and a purple face, wearing a blazer, was agitatedly waving a copy of Molly Parkin’s latest novel.

‘It’s filth,’ he roared, ‘sheer filth. I just came in here to tell you I’m going to burn it.’

‘Well you’ll have to pay for it then,’ said Miss Nugent. ‘A lot of other readers have requested it.’

‘Filth and written by a woman,’ roared the man in the blazer. ‘Don’t know how anyone dare publish it.’ Everyone in the library was listening now, pretending to study the books on the shelves, but brightening perceptibly at the prospect of a good row.