The Queen's Margarine Read Online Free PDF Page A

wondered if you could help.’
    â€˜Yes, of course,’ Claire said, glancing with interest at his soaked and balding cords; their unusual shade of aubergine echoing the purple of his shirt, and pleased to see that this (apparent) poet fitted the Bohemian stereotype. Besuited gents like T.S. Eliot or Philip Larkin, whose photos had graced the display-board during the library’s Poetry Week, were less exciting altogether. ‘You’re welcome to use our computers. They’re over there, at the back. Hold on a sec – let me just check the booking-screen to see which ones are free.’
    â€˜No, you don’t understand. I have to leave – right now! I’m giving a reading in Bristol and I’ll miss the train if I don’t get off sharp.’
    â€˜Well, we’re open all day tomorrow.’
    â€˜Tomorrow I teach. We poets have to earn a crust, and no one seems frightfully keen to pay us for actually writing the stuff.’ He smiled disarmingly, reaching out a slender hand – effeminate again, with long, pale, tapering fingers, at variance with the dark, tangled hairs on the wrist. ‘Would it be an awful cheek to ask you to do the work?’
    Not so much a cheek as slightly tricky. People were meant to do their own research, and Julia was a stickler for the rules. Library staff could help, of course: show customers the range of stock in the catalogue, along with any relevant periodicals, or arrange computer sessions for beginners, to explain the mysteries of the Internet. It was fine to hold their hands until they’d grasped the fundamentals but, after that, they were left to their own devices.‘Never set a precedent,’ Julia was always saying. ‘If we start spoonfeeding one customer, we’ll end up spoon-feeding the lot.’
    Claire doubted it, in fact. This man was a one-off; seemed to possess the natural right to demand services and privileges denied to lesser mortals. And, frankly, she was grateful. One got bored with the usual punters: blue-rinsed matrons twittering over the latest Jilly Cooper; geeky nerds obsessing about arcane points of local history; run-of-the-mill enquirers checking holiday guides. No one had ever revealed their dreams to her before.
    â€˜And if you could dig out a few tulip books, that would be fantastic. Big glossy ones, if possible, with close-up photographs, so I can see the details of the petals and the leaves. The leaves in the dream were sharp and pointed, and really rather lethal, towering over me like huge, green, unsheathed swords, but I haven’t much idea about what real tulip leaves are like. To be honest, I know zilch about flowers. But, since the dream, I feel inspired to find out everything, then weld the two together – the dream-world and the natural world, so that—’
    â€˜My name’s Fergus, by the way,’ he said, suddenly interrupting himself. ‘Fergus Boyd Adair. Actually, you may have some of my books in stock – well, they’re only pamphlets, really, so, on second thoughts, probably not.’
    Definitely not, she corrected silently. Their meagre poetry section didn’t stretch to pamphlets. In fact, his name meant nothing to her, but it struck her as exactly right, with its air of cheeky bravado, not only for a poet, but for this one in particular. All three names were Scottish, although he spoke with no trace of an accent. Indeed, his voice was almost plummily English – rich and deep and sensuous, as if composed in equal parts of honey, brandy and buttermilk.
    â€˜Look, give me a piece of paper and I’ll draw the tulips for you, shall I? Then you’ll have something to go on.’
    She passed a sheet across, relieved that it was Bill’s day off, and that Julia was out of sight, still busy shelving books. Her two colleagues shared the view that if you gave anyone an inch, he or she would inevitably take a mile. She saw things rather