The Reading List(31)

After a slow start, Naina was proved right later that same evening. Mukesh hadn’t been able to tear himself away – he had felt himself taking on Atticus’s life lessons, putting himself in Scout’s shoes, seeing the world through her eyes. The ‘fraud, fraud, fraud’ was nagging at the back of his mind, but the story had well and truly taken over.

Mukesh lowered the book to reveal his face to the librarian – a huge grin brightening it, the memories of turning the final page, the sense of pride he’d felt then, returned to him. He took off his hat, and rearranged his hair, all blustered and flustered from the wind. ‘Yes! I finished it!’

‘Would you like to return it?’ the librarian asked, and he handed the book over, nervously. He didn’t want to let go of it, but he allowed her to ring it through her system.

‘That’s all sorted for you,’ she smiled back at him. He waited, not sure what to do next. He wanted to talk to her about it, but he didn’t know what to say, or where to start. He could feel his cheeks starting to blush – what if he said something stupid?

‘Erm,’ he started. ‘Walking in someone else’s skin.’ His voice came out all croaky and quivery.

‘I’m sorry, what was that?’

‘Walking in someone else’s skin, you know – that’s what Atticus says,’ he stammered.

‘Oh yes, I remember,’ she said, her eyes sparkling.

‘I think that’s what stayed with me most. It is very wise. Atticus, he’s very wise.’

Aleisha nodded. ‘Definitely.’

They looked at each other awkwardly. The silence hung between them.

‘When I finished it,’ the girl started, ‘I was so enraged, and so desperate to talk to someone about it.’

‘Me too.’ Mukesh nodded vigorously.

‘Well …’ The girl looked at her phone on the table. ‘I’ve still got some of my lunch break left, shall we have a chat about it?’

Mukesh could feel Naina prodding him, and he nodded again, warily. She led him over to a table by the window. ‘Feel free to sit here, Mr Patel,’ she said, very kindly.

‘Mukesh, please,’ he whispered back. He didn’t know where to start, but she was watching him, waiting for him to go first.

‘That line about stepping into someone else’s skin … well, we were in Scout’s skin, the little girl in the story,’ he said, slowly. It sounded like something someone would say in a book group, or in an English class, he thought: ‘We see Atticus through her eyes, don’t we?’

The young lady smiled, and Mukesh couldn’t tell if she agreed or if she was pandering to him.

‘I think that one line is very interesting – because if people could step into Tom Robinson’s skin, maybe they wouldn’t be so awful to him, accusing him of something he never did, when that lie could have ruined his whole life. And not as awful, but what if Scout and Jem could see what it was like to be the old neighbour Boo Radley, maybe they would have been kinder to him as well. He was a lovely soul … maybe just lonely. People don’t always understand lonely people.’ The words rushed out of him, like he wanted to get them out of the way. Maybe, if he spoke quickly enough, she wouldn’t notice him saying silly, stupid things.

Aleisha nodded again. ‘You’re right, but … it’s literally impossible, that’s the thing. People just live their lives, they can’t ever fully get … you know … understand someone else or what they’re going through.’ She spoke slowly, as though trying to put her own thoughts together. He wondered if she was just trying to make him feel less of an idiot.

‘I always used to think that when I was a young man, when I first moved here,’ he took a deep breath. The book had made him think of it, how out of place he felt in Wembley when he first arrived, how everyone looked at him and his family differently for a while, for ever. ‘I moved here from Kenya, you see. With my wife and our little girls. We wanted to start a brand-new life here – we had family here, always talking about all the opportunities, the jobs. But when I got here, it just felt lonely. I wondered why people were so unkind to me. I thought to myself, why didn’t they know who I was, that I was just like them? No matter what I did, what I said, no one even tried to understand me. Some of our neighbours were really lovely – but other than that, everyone else saw us as just different from them, impossible to understand. So they didn’t even try.

‘I’m sorry,’ Mukesh shook his head, trying to banish his thoughts. ‘This isn’t anything to do with the book. What am I babbling on about? My wife always told me I was a babbler.’

‘No, no, you’re not babbling. I think you’re right,’ Aleisha said, smiling kindly. ‘No one can ever really understand what other people have gone through. But people should try.’

For a moment, it was hard for Mukesh to align the grumpy person he had met a week or so ago with the young lady sitting in front of him today. He wondered whether, if he’d walked around in her skin that day, he might have understood her behaviour a little better.

‘So when I read this book … er, ages ago,’ she hesitated for a moment, her eyes darting around the room. She reminded him of his youngest, Deepali, who did the same thing whenever she was nervous, or fibbing. ‘Ages ago now … well, it makes you feel things. I’ve got a big brother, and we’re really different to Scout and Jem, but like reading about them as kids made me think of me and Aidan as children. Being silly. Seeing the neighbour as like a figure of fun and stuff. I’m sure we did stupid stuff like that when I was young, like the whole world was a big game to us.’