Reference Section, by Philip Rudd

An original novel extract set in the twentieth century.

For seven weeks Graham Lister had left the house at twenty to eight with his briefcase, and for seven weeks the briefcase had contained a round of cheese and pickle, a flask of tea and the Situations Vacant pages from the Express and Star. He kissed Carol at the door. He said, ‘Don’t wait up if I’m late.’ He was never late. There was nowhere to be late from.

The reference library on the second floor was warm and quiet, and nobody there asked what you were for. He had a table by the radiator, under the portrait of some forgotten alderman, and he had learned to turn the pages of the newspaper slowly, so that they lasted until five. At first it had felt like a holiday from himself. Now the hours stretched out ahead of him each morning like a corridor with no doors in it.

He was circling an advertisement for a stores clerk, a job for a man nineteen years younger than him, at half the money, when the doors swung open and a crocodile of schoolgirls came in with a teacher and a clipboard. Bottle-green blazers. He knew the blazers before he knew anything else, and by then it was too late.

Kirsty was fourth in the line. She saw him at once.

He watched it happen to her face: the puzzlement, then the understanding, arriving slowly, like a bus coming round a corner, and then something worse than either, a kind of careful blankness. She looked away. She said something to the girl beside her and laughed, a little too brightly, and walked on past him to the local history shelves as if he were the alderman in the picture.

Graham sat very still. He felt the shame go through him and come out the other side, leaving him hollow and light, the way he had felt once after a fever. She had protected him. His fourteen-year-old daughter had looked at him, and understood, and decided in a second to protect him.

He folded the newspaper along its old creases. He would have to say something tonight. He would have to walk into the kitchen with his briefcase and his empty flask and look at her across the tea table.

He sat there until five, as usual. He did not know what else to do.

How does the writer show Graham Lister’s thoughts and feelings about hiding the loss of his job?

You should consider:

• what the writer says about Graham
• the writer’s use of language to show his thoughts and feelings

You must refer to the text to support your answer, using relevant subject terminology where appropriate.