Something Remembered

She had slept in late again, and it was almost noon by the time she sat with a cup of coffee to sort through the morning’s mail. “More junk,” she said to herself, and put everything in the bin except a handwritten envelope she felt should probably be opened. Inside was a card and a cheque addressed to Mrs Sandy Hall for $20,000. Her eyes widened, but the shock was by now so familiar that it passed almost immediately. Still, this was a big one, and had come all the way from America. “Here’s another one Tiddles,” she said to the cat.

Sandy walked over to the side table and put the cheque on top of the other donations. It had been her sister’s idea to create the gofundme after David died, although why she'd agreed to it she had no idea; it’s not like she was short of cash. She supposed it was just what one does these days. At first it was only friends and family wanting to help with funeral costs. However the circumstances of David's death soon caught the attention of social media and some big names had got involved. For weeks the money poured in from the gofundme page, then somehow her address got out and she started receiving flowers, cards and cheques in the mail. She’d stopped counting after the first £100,000 or so.

Nothing had arrived for the last few months however, and she had started to forget about the small, unwanted fortune piling up on the side table. She couldn’t bring herself to do anything with the money that had come to her at such an awful price. It had been a bleak six months, but now she was starting to have some good days peek out from the bad. She looked at the cheques, and decided she would try to make today a good day.

“Where are we going to put all this money then?” Sandy asked the cat, who was walking away from her towards the front of the house. Since David died it had been hard for her to live in the big house. The pile of cheques wasn’t the only pile of unwanted things in there. There were piles of papers, piles of books, piles of boxes, piles and piles of memories of David all over the house. David had called himself a collector, but looking at the junk around her the word hoarder came quicker to her mind. She knew she needed to downsize, that the old house was too full of memories and the souvenirs of half a lifetime spent together, but it was too overwhelming to face. “Oh David,” she said, and following the cat she began scanning the house for somewhere to put the cheques.

Killed by a falling light rig at a music festival. She repeated it again to herself as she had done countless times before, but still it had that feeling of unreality about it. In front of Paul McCartney of all people (of whom David often used to say had a disappointing post-Beatles catalogue). Some people had suggested she use the money to put on a festival in David’s honor, but the truth was that he'd hated festivals, and he was only there that day because an old student of his was giving a reading in the poetry tent. Is that irony? She asked herself. No, it wasn’t irony. It was tragedy.

Moving through the front rooms she went up the first flight of stairs and opened the door to David’s study. In the corner stood an antique roll-top desk they had bought at a flea market when they first moved into the house. David had often sat there ‘writing his memoirs’ as he used to say, but Sandy had once looked over his shoulder and seen him doing crossword puzzles. She picked her way towards the desk through piles of books that were covering most of the floor. Books were also lining the walls in shelves David had put together himself, but they had reached capacity some ten years before. The cat slunk in behind her and prowled the now rarely-visited terrain. Opening the desk, Sandy began sorting through the paperwork to clear some space. Letters from the bank, utility bills, the usual litter that you’d expect to find, and then a small black notebook caught her eye at the bottom of a drawer.

She opened the book, and inside were lists of names and numbers in David’s handwriting. At first she thought they must be answers to crossword clues, but then she started to see familiar names listed in alphabetical order. “Austen, Bronte, Dickens...” Looking up at the walls of the study, it dawned on her. It was an index. Flicking through the pages she supposed that every book in the room was accounted for in this little notebook, and she was taken aback that David had been so… organised.

But then, books had always held a special place in their lives. The first time she met David was in the University library where he seemed to spend 90% of his time. It was David who had rekindled her passion for reading, who inspired her to change her degree from business to English literature which eventually led to her doctorate and teaching position at the University. She remembered the hours of peace they had shared reading on the sofa, and their heated discusions over this translation or that use of symbolism after sharing a bottle of wine. She so missed those little arguments.

And how many books had David given her over the years? For birthdays and Christmases, and often just because he'd found something he knew she’d love. She looked again at the books surrounding her. How many were here? Tens of thousands probably. And not just in the study, but in every room in the house the walls were crammed with books of every kind, all of them listed meticulously in the little black book. Once when David was a student he'd been so hard up that he’d sold his book collection, but as soon as he could afford it he’d bought back every single one. He wouldn’t have wanted those books to be sat here collecting dust, unread and unloved.

Then her eyes rested on the pile of cheques sitting on top of the desk, and she was struck by an idea. She wouldn’t let David lose his books again. “Tiddles,” she said to the cat, “we’re going to open a bloody library.”