The steps beside the door

An original first-person fictional account of an invented library reopening.

For years, entering the library had meant climbing three sandstone steps. Their centres had been worn into shallow curves, as though thousands of shoes had patiently pressed the stone aside. As a child, I had tried to fit both feet into the deepest hollow. Later, I used to reach for the iron handrail without looking.

When the library reopened, the steps were no longer in front of the door. A wide slope of pale paving rose from the pavement, with a smaller flight of new steps set to one side. I stopped at the gate. For a moment, it seemed not that the entrance had changed, but that the whole building had shifted while I was away.

My hand lifted towards the place where the rail should have been. There was only air. A notice described the new entrance as an improvement. The word irritated me. It made the old steps sound like a mistake which had taken generations to notice.

A member of the project team saw me studying the paving. She explained that the former entrance had been too narrow and uneven to serve everyone. I nearly replied that people had managed perfectly well. Before I could speak, a man using a walking frame came steadily up the slope. Behind him, someone pushed a double buggy through the doorway without stopping or asking for help.

I looked down at my shoes. My complaint had not disappeared, but it had become less comfortable to make.

The project worker led me to a low wall beside the entrance. The old stones had been built into its top. I recognised the long scratch near one edge and the hollow where rainwater now rested. Keeping the stones should have pleased me. Instead, their new position seemed wrong. They were like words from a familiar sentence arranged in a different order: nothing had been thrown away, yet the meaning had altered.

Then a child dragged a finger through the water gathered in one of the hollows. An older visitor stopped beside her and said that she remembered those steps from her first visit to the library. They began comparing which hollow had once been the deepest. Neither of them seemed troubled that the stones no longer reached the door.

When I left, I could have used the new steps at the side. Instead, I followed the slope. It carried me to the pavement so gradually that I hardly noticed the descent. Halfway down, I looked back. The old stones still led nowhere, but two people had paused beside them, talking, while the library door remained open behind them.