He spends his days buried deep in the past. The librarian wants to bring him up to date.
That’s how the librarian thinks of it, when she thinks of it, which is often. He’s going to be stacked, and she’s going to stack him. It’s a joke she keeps to herself, because nobody else would understand.
He spends too much time in the library. So says his ex-wife to friends who share her regular lunch table. The librarian sits nearby, listening, drinking coffee and plotting.
She wonders how anybody can spend too much time in a library. It’s one of the things they have in common – library time. What else do they share? Well, congruent space is about it, really. He isn’t fully aware of her yet. She’s careful to keep it that way. When her research is complete he will become her magnum opus.
She’s explored the possibilities; every postulation checked, every hypothesis hunted to its lair. There is only one way to do this, and she knows it as thoroughly as she knows her ABC. More thoroughly. The ABC, after all, is just a mimetic convention. In this exercise of knowledge and its limits, she’s aiming for a refutation of solipsism. He will know that she exists outside him. Immediately outside him. In fact, she intends to exist outside him and inside him simultaneously – let him refute that!
It was easy to bring him to this point. He has an academic email account and fell, like all academics, for any interest in his thesis. To move from there to subtle discussion of matters erotic (via eighteenth century marriage customs) was simple. To where they had arrived – explicit word-fucks – was scarcely more difficult. But theory and practice are different creatures. Just because the former feeds from her hand and whimpers for more, she should not assume the latter will jump, similarly fawning, into her arms – or rather – between her legs. She has done all she can. If he is there, waiting, she will only have one barrier to topple. Not his embarrassment, not scruples, not fear of discovery. The barrier will be the instinctive one of gut reaction. Will he want to fuck her, when he sees her?
She watches him as he reads. He is blind to the fate creeping up on him like a silverfish chewing through the spines of the books he is perusing. Soon he will peruse her, now that she has finished pursuing him. She moves to the rolling stacks, to check that no last minute aberration; no health and safety guideline, no leaking radiator, no prurient-minded student couple, has caused chaos in the ordered ranks. Nobody ever comes here. That’s a Freudian slip, or would be, if she hadn’t thought it out long ago – comes here. And it’s not strictly true, some people visit the stacks, but those who do can be predicted with metronomic regularity. Like him. So there are long periods, hours, when they are empty except for their neglected volumes.
She leaves the stacks, walking behind him as he sits reading. She could reach out and touch him and the urge so to do is unbearable. To rest a single finger between his collar and the hair that curls over it. If she did, would he turn and confront her? Or would he know, instinctively, that it was the summons they had explored virtually, but never actually? Would he wait, head bowed, until she gave a further signal, to let him know that he should follow her? She hopes so, she really does.
It’s difficult to walk. Her legs are liquid. The sight of him has turned her body inside out. She can feel her labia engorging, rich with blood, hot with desire. She is fluid with the need for him and the wish to pull him so deep into her that she will be able to press her hands against her lower abdomen and feel his glans thrusting up from inside to meet her fingers. She leans against a chair back, feeling the blood throbbing until a flush builds on her face and chest. She presses forward, hard, so that her pubic bone and the metal bar compress the flesh between them, giving her a moment’s pain and a respite from the ache that fills her. It is not quite time. Soon, but not yet.
She knows she’s not good looking. Nothing wrong with her body – she swims three times a week – but she’s got a forgettable face. She wears glasses, she ties her hair up in a bun; she is what she looks like – a librarian. Why don’t men notice what’s beneath the surface, like the heat and moisture that are seeping from between her thighs, beneath her long grey skirt? Would he notice her if she wore the kind of clothes the female students wore – girls in skirts no wider than belts with thong straps showing above the low waistbands? But he never pays attention to them – she knows, she’s watched him. He is trapped between the pages of history, lost in the behaviours of rural peasants who danced round maypoles and bonfires to make their fields fertile. Now she is going to turn ancient history into modern seduction.
She picks up her bag from behind the counter, watching the clock. She’s allowed thirty minutes – is that enough? Too long? Not long enough? The villagers he studies would have rutted like animals, lusty and unthinking – thirty minutes is about right for what she plans.
She nods to her colleague. He wants to get away early, and as soon as she gives the signal, he grabs his jacket and signs out, leaving her in sole charge. In the carrels there’s a chemist, researching the uses of atropine, a geographer working on glacial erosion, and him. She studied philosophy – the perfect degree for a librarian.
He is gorgeous though. That floppy dark and silver hair hanging over his collar, those grey eyes, always focused in the past. She can imagine him in a velvet jacket, but not naked. Not yet, anyway.
She takes the rest of her supplies from her bag: a corn dolly shaped like a phallus, set in a heart woven with red ribbons for passion; a mandrake root – the most potent symbol of sex magic; a small sachet containing celery seeds, dried lovage and horsetail, all reputed to cause erections, or as hedge-wives said in the eighteenth century, ‘to turne a man’s head’. Of course you had to be a historian to get the pun on head, because it meant that the woman who made the tea would find the man who drank it following her around, led by the head of his penis.
She boils the kettle, watching the clock. When the half-hour strikes, she rings the warning bell. He jumps when he hears it, glancing round the room, wondering if his mystery lover has failed to turn up. She pours green-grey herbs into a mug and adds water – it smells like a wet field.
She walks behind him again, feeling the wetness between her legs drawing her to him like a spell. And a spell is exactly what she’s about to cast, but not a magic one. No, the spell she’s weaving is logical – he’s spent his life pondering sexual relations in the distant past, and she’s going to bring him up to date.
She leans over his shoulder, placing the cup on his table. It’s strictly forbidden to drink in the library but that’s the least of the transgressions she plans. By the time he turns, she’s heading for the stacks, all he’ll see is her back moving away. He’d better drink the damn tea though.
She sets the mandrake root at the entrance to the stacks, and the corn dolly over her head, resting on a shelf marked ‘ML – MM’.
Deep in the stacks she pulls off her floppy grey jumper. Under it she wears a corset, but not some sexy Agent Provocateur confection. It’s of early Victorian construction with cambric panels and stays. The whalebone supports squeak whenever she moves. Her legs are encased in lisle stockings, which cost a damn fortune, and are as thick and lumpy as porridge. One garter has a green love-knot which shows a woman looking for a lover and the other has a small pansy emblem. The old name for pansy is ‘love-in-idleness’. These are symbolic conventions he will recognise. Between the corset and the stockings is nothing but her hot, moist flesh. The librarian lifts her skirt and runs her fingers across her naked abdomen. The skin shudders with pleasure like a horse shaking off flies.
He appears at the entrance to the stacks, brushing hair from his eyes as he peers into the gloom. He has the mandrake root in his hand, and an expression of bewilderment in his eyes. She starts to redden, whether from embarrassment or lust she can’t tell. As he approaches, she unzips the skirt and lets it fall. He takes in the garters and the corset, the old-fashioned stockings, and she sees something like panic in his eyes, but she holds out her hand anyway, and he passes her the mandrake root in silence. Nobody talks in the library, even though the injunction to silence was removed in 1974.
She lifts her right foot onto the lowest bookshelf and slides the root into her wet heat. His eyes widen and he presses forward, but she uses her free hand to wave him back. For a few seconds she enjoys the cool knobbly sensation, then pulls the mandrake free again and lifts it to her mouth, tasting her own juices. This time, when he steps forward, she points downwards and he understands, kneeling between her legs, caressing the coarse stockings, pushing his tongue immediately into her. Her own mouth is tingling from the mandrake, which she sets between her teeth, tasting its bitter juice as she bites down. She has to remain silent, whatever happens.
His hands roam her buttocks gently, tracing the edge of the corset, playing along the garters. His tongue, though, is demanding – thrusting and lapping. Her orgasm arrives without warning, slamming into her body and knocking several ‘ML – MM’ tomes to the floor. She loves him for not stopping, but her attention is divided between the actions of his mouth and the entrance to the stacks. Suppose the chemist, or the geographer, came to investigate the noise?
Once she’s sure they didn’t notice, or have already left, she takes the mandrake from her mouth and slides her fingers into his hair, lifting his head. His eyes are huge and dark, partly with lust and partly the effect of the herbs. She points to the corn dolly and he nods. It symbolises successful coupling, and that’s exactly what she wants.
He’s hard, and as she wraps her hand around him, he groans. She slips on the condom, and shoves the mandrake between his lips to shut him up. Her foot moves one shelf higher so she can slide him into her body. His hands come to rest on the shelf behind her, clutching at books. He thrusts wildly, staring at her breasts trapped by the corset. She pulls the mandrake from his mouth and kisses him, trying to get her tongue as deep into him as he is into her. She comes just before he does, muffling her pleasure by moaning into his mouth.
When he tries to speak, she lifts one finger, turns away, pulls on her clothes and packs the root and the corn symbol back into her bag. Then she returns to her desk to ring the final bell. On the way, she sets a small card on his carrel. It proclaims, “Your special reservation will be available from the library in three days’ time”.
He emerges from the stacks, brushing back his hair. He lifts the card, and looks at her, and nods.
The librarian lowers her head, but inside she’s smiling. He has been stacked.
