The Woman Who Died a Lot

She was in full flow by now. We had all stopped eating and were staring at her. I think she mistook our shock as agreement, and so she carried on with even more gusto.

“To deny modern children the historical context of an age in which most foreigners were untrustworthy and women were useful only for the kitchen denies them a realistic window into a bygone era that we should be promoting as an ideal to be cherished rather than a past to be improved and airbrushed.”

She stopped and smiled, then began to distribute leaflets that defined in more detail her Blyton-based political ideology.

It was true that Blyton books had been extensively revised over the years to move with shifting opinions, and it was also true that her books had been unfairly marked out as being a lot more offensive than they were—probably due to a certain degree of intellectual snobbery and a fundamental misunderstanding over why they were written. The argument had raged for decades on either side and culminated in the so-called Noddy Riots of 1990, when the warring factions clashed on the streets of Canterbury, inflicting almost 6 million pounds’ worth of damage and leaving six dead—not even the Marlowe/Shakespeare riots of 1967 had been that fierce.

“Let me get this totally straight,” I said. “You don’t want to just stop any more changes—you want to return the books to their prerevisionist state and use them as a template for your view of a new and better England?”

“I couldn’t have put it better myself,” she replied, beaming happily. “A woman’s place is definitely in the home, England functioned better when the working class knew their place, and foreigners are incorrigibly suspect. What do you think ‘Fundamentalist’ means in ‘Blyton Fundamentalist’? In fact,” she went on, now in something of a lather, “we aim to reinterpret and enhance the texts to more subtly export our own ultra-English worldview and have even written a series of commentaries as to what Our Blyton truly meant when she penned her great works. It is our intention to run the nation upon this new and radicalized Word of Blyton—we will insist that England is returned to a world of perpetual summers, simplistic politics, the expulsion of anyone who looks even vaguely foreign, and we will make the sacred words ‘gosh,’ ‘crikey’ and ‘wizzo’ a compulsory part of the English lexicon.”

Landen leaned toward me and whispered in my ear. “What’s Chinese for ‘Fetch me a straitjacket’?”

“Ssh. Well,” I began, “here’s my view as head of the Wessex All-You-Can-eat at Fatso’s Drink Not Included Library Service: Enid Blyton’s work is a force for good in children’s literature because of its simple readability and exciting basic concepts of adventure, independence and the incontrovertible notion that adults are pretty useless and good only for supplying meals and calling the police. Yes, the books should be revised and modernized to more fully embrace modern society, and yes, they have shortcomings, but the essential truth about Blyton is that the books get children into the habit of reading—and reading is a habit worth having. I utterly reject your proposals and your politics, and what’s more, I think you’re dangerously insane.”

The smiled dropped from Mrs. Hilly’s face.

“Modern life is not perfect,” I went on, “but at least it attempts to reflect the tolerance of diversity and social inclusiveness that much of fifties England lacked. I will battle your every attempt to malign the books to suit your own twisted ideology.”

There was silence. We all stared at Mrs. Hilly to see what she would say, and I saw Phoebe’s hand move toward her pistol. When it came to fundamentalism, stakes were high.

“It’s like that, is it?” said Mrs. Hilly, standing up.

“Yes, it is.”

“The chief librarian’s role is nonpolitical,” she warned me. “We will petition Commander Hicks to have you removed at the soonest opportunity.”

“You may try,” I replied coolly, “but his negative views on literary extremism are well known.”

We stared at one another for a few seconds.

“Then we have no more to say,” she ennounced in a haughty tone of voice. “You haven’t heard the last of me. Good day.”

And she threw her napkin on the table.

“You haven’t finished your dim sum,” said Landen.

And with an almighty harrumph! that rattled the windows and is still spoken of down at the Happy Wok, she was gone. “That was a shame,” said Phoebe.

“I don’t think it was a shame at all,” I said. “Perverting the texts for their own political ends. I’ve a mind to make the Blyton Fundamentalists a Banned Association Within Library Boundaries, along with the paramilitary arm of the Anti-Farquitt Brigade and those idiots who like to dress as Zharkian storm troopers.”