The Book Club

Jan played with the phrase' keeping body and mind together', rolled it around in her mind. In her own case, she felt that keeping them apart would have been more appropriate. By way of a break from that insight (hatched at the interface of her laptop screen) she flashed up the local ad.noticeboard.

The Wotuwant inbox had filled up with the usual postings. The pickings would, as usual be thin and Jan would have to wade compulsively through the dross in order to find anything of interest, anything that waved at her.

Half-coincidentally though, the phrase 'book club' glinted at her from amongst the activities list just as she was contemplating the idea of posting up a notice herself for a film club.

The enforced celibacy, the loneliness of Twenty-first Century singledom had been eating her soul away (complete with body) and she had to find some form of social interaction that would result in actually meeting other people. However, she was of a mind that would not quite accept surfing the Net for relationships.

Her new job at a health consultancy would, she hoped provide the chance to socialise. There was bound to be someone of interest at Wellcare, someone she fancied. The first two weeks had been bewildering but after that the hierarchy of authority and personality had begun to emerge like the wreckage of a stricken tanker set in its sunken grave, looming through dark green waters.

Her superior, a twentysomething from Chiswick had landed her new job in Liverpool nine months ago and with the easiness that accompanies youth had settled into a flat, then a first mortgage on a house in Allerton. She was from a wealthy family and had not yet experienced any of the 'slings and arrows of outrageous fortune'. She had a habit of folding one arm across her lap while the other dangled loosely, rising occasionally to smooth an imaginary wisp of hair. She was, as yet unattached.

Occasionally, shards of envy would lodge themselves in an otherwise untroubled mind (not that anyone else would have noticed). She fended off any forays into her personal life, or lack of it by the phrase 'don't go there.'

Gemma Deveraux was, at twenty-five, starting to worry about when she would have a baby,and with whom to have it. Men were in short supply (eligible ones anyway) nowadays, or so it seemed.

Jan had started working at Wellcare shortly after Gemma. She sensed a froideur when, taking her place at her workstation one afternoon the liveliness of a conversation between Gemma and one of the juniors had ebbed, becoming tightly knotted. Gemma's confessional, from which Jan had pricked out the words 'issues' and 'cover' finally died back altogether.

She had felt unexpectedly vulnerable when Gemma had suddenly invited her to a 'staff leaving do' at the end of busy week.Jan had noticed an epidemic of 'staff leaving does' in the last two months. Gemma was always cool, terse with her. Several times she had turned away from Jan on slightly-heeled shoes when the danger of a conversation seemed imminent.



In the third week of her post (Deputy Assistant Manager) Gemma Deveraux had taken a week off without warning.

Jan found herself wedged between staff requests, spreadsheets, in-house e-mail traffic and the reality of being a newby in a sea of corporate faces.Suddenly, perversely her workload trebled.

It was at home during that particular week that Jan had found the book club notice. Clicking on it revealed that it had generated a fair amount of interest.So she e-mailed her enthusiasm with an offer to find a public meeting place.

The book club, she read, had been meeting in Esperanto's, the latest bar to have taken root in
cosmopolitan Aigburth. How on earth could they have discussed anything in there, she thought. How could the nuances of thought and observation be passed warmly, intimately against a cacaphonous noise-level? She discovered that there were fifteen members of the book club, that they were mainly professionals and that half of them worked in the medical and social care professions.

They had recently been formed and had so far discussed two novels,'High Fidelity' by Nick Hornby and 'Fingersmith' by Sarah Waters.They sounded interesting.They were currently reading a collection of short stories,'Bad Dirt' by Annie Proulx.That clinched it. Jan decided she would go along.

The first book club meeting was an exciting prospect even though it was three weeks away.
She found that month's read in Aigburth Library and was still mentally shrugging at the idea of a book club meeting in a busy, glass-and-chrome bar.

She left it to the last minute to read 'Bad Dirt.' (partly because it would be fresh in her mind and partly because Jan was a procrastinator). She ripped through the first half of the book,falling in love with the prose.The remaining stories she saved in her store-cupboard of desire.

It would be useful, she decided, to make critical notes. 'Annie Proulx', she wrote 'is an artist making beautiful sketches of character, place and time.She takes a long, hard, quizzical look then quickly and deftly sketches, setting in type what the artist does with a brush.'