Drawing the Line

by Judith Cutler

‘Good,’ he said. ‘I’m glad to have been of use.’ He cocked his head to one side, obviously asking a question.

  I’d better try to buy time till the caffeine had pulled my head was completely back together. ‘Such a palaver. Do you have to go through that every time you want to use books?’

  ‘Members of the university are allowed more freedom,’ he said, as cagey as me. ‘But we all had to be vetted before we were allowed to borrow or use the reading rooms.’

  I nodded. I couldn’t think of anything I particularly wanted to say. But emotion always makes me hungry, so, on my feet again, I offered to get him some cake. Perhaps some Death by Chocolate would restore my brain a bit. Maybe I wouldn’t care if it didn’t.

  We ploughed through our enormous portions – we ought to have shared one, but that seemed altogether too friendly too fast – without saying much. In fact, I had a distinct feeling that he wanted to get away from me as much as I wanted to get away from him. So that we didn’t sit in complete silence, I asked him about his teaching and whether university students were as hard work as schoolchildren were supposed to be – and were, if my experience was anything to go by. He talked a bit about under-funding, which was something I was an expert on, in personal terms at least. At last, without a single direct question, he looked at his watch, made a token offer to pay, and got to his feet. I was so amazed I nearly blurted out the whole lot to him. Instead, I simply thanked him very much for his help, and hoped he hadn’t been put to too much trouble. Then, since Griff had told me that the gesture never came amiss, I stood up and kissed him lightly on the cheek. Amiss it might not have been, but it wasn’t welcome. Perhaps he was deeply committed to a relationship or the sort of gay who didn’t like female contact. It would have been good to have Griff with me to check him out. At any rate, he swallowed a couple of times, muttering things about hoping to see me again some day but making no effort to make it happen, and bolted.

  I had a fair idea that Griff wouldn’t be overwhelmed with customers, so I started with the next move in my search for my father. I needed a bookshop. There had to be bookshops in Oxford! Yes, I’d seen a big one, opposite the Bodleian. Blackwell’s. They wouldn’t have the hang-ups of the library about letting in a non-student. But they’d probably have preferred me to buy books than prop up a shelf looking at them, especially as they were big, glossy ones. The fireplace I’d remembered earlier that afternoon was too big for an ordinary house, the furniture on too grand a scale. And in any case your ordinary semi wouldn’t run to a copy of Natura Rerum on its shelves. So I leafed through as many guidebooks, including one to Oxford itself, and coffee table books as I could, desperate for a clue.

  I was so engrossed I didn’t realise it was my mobile that was ringing until an irritable assistant nudged me. Griff, of course: was I all right?

  ‘Fine. Still doing a spot of research,’ I said.

  ‘So long as you’re all right. But remember the Oxford rush hour,’ he said, ringing off.

  Once driven, never forgotten. So I replaced my last book and was on my way. Only to see Dan Freeman just across the street. I was about to yell and wave – he had been uncommonly generous, after all, giving his time and asking no questions – when I saw him turn and wave to someone else. No, he hadn’t needed to ask me anything. He was waving to the young woman now running towards him. The young woman who’d shown me Natura Rerum.

  Chapter Seven

  ‘All that this Dan character and the rule-bound librarian know, dear heart, is that you were interested in Natura Rerum. They couldn’t have known why. And for the life of me I can’t see how that knowledge will benefit them. Can you?’

  I stared at the brake lights of the car in front. I’d been staring at them for five minutes. Why hadn’t the driver slipped into neutral and used his handbrake? Better still, cut the engine? It was my generation and the next one that would be picking up the tab for all these thoughtless emissions. Why didn’t I get out and sock him? Or stuff something up his nasty polluting exhaust pipe?

  At least he’d given me a reason to feel angry. I hadn’t had one before, but I was seething all the same. And I didn’t know why. Or perhaps it wasn’t anger. One of my various social workers had pointed out to me that I wasn’t very good at identifying and labelling my feelings – as if that would have made them easier to deal with.

  ‘No,’ I replied eventually. ‘But that doesn’t mean it won’t. People don’t do what he did without a reason. Not unless they’re exceptionally warm, kind people and he never gave that impression. Oh, sugar!’ I smacked both hands down on the wheel. Then I realised it was well after six, after all, so I could have sworn all I wanted.

  Griff coughed. ‘Jane Austen would have despatched her protagonist – that’s the literary term for hero or heroine, dear heart, and as such should be committed to memory – to their bedchamber for a period of solitude and quiet reflection. Much as I would suggest you needed the same, I’m afraid your bedchamber is many hours away.’

  I nodded. The M25 had done its worst, and we were trapped in the middle lane, knowing, thanks to the overhead gantry, that there was an accident at the next junction. That was six miles away. After that we had another fifty before we reached Bredeham.

  Griff switched on the radio, not to Classic FM, which I was getting used to and even enjoying sometimes, but to Radio Three. In a way it made sense, because BBC local radio traffic reports cut into whatever it was playing at the time. Actually it made it worse to have no fewer than four successive cheery voices from different stations telling us we were well and truly stuck – which we knew already.

  Griff did what I knew he’d do. He folded his arms, dropped his chin on his chest and fell asleep. When Radio Three started to talk full-time, I flipped back to Classic FM, so he’d stay nicely soothed. One of us needed to be calm and refreshed.

  I ought to be over the moon. I wasn’t. For a start, I was still puzzled. Why should a man who seemed to be some bigwig in the University – even a lowlife like me had heard of fellows and professors – bother with me? Only seemed to be a bigwig, of course. Freeman had never actually come out and said what he was. Perhaps he wasn’t a lecturer at all. All that stuff about the Bodleian – it was all in that guidebook I’d flicked through in Blackwell’s. Anyone could have mugged it up and spun it out as their own knowledge. He’d never said anything about himself I could check up on and had made sure I hadn’t seen where he said he was based. Why hadn’t I used the sense I was born with and followed him? Answer: I hadn’t been born with very much.

  Going back over the day didn’t help much. The snotty librarian had snubbed me so loudly that one of the girls in the queue had overheard enough to speak kindly to me. But she hadn’t repeated the name of the book I was after – had she? If she had, with her penetrating tones every last person in Oxford would have known what I wanted.

  Freeman hadn’t mentioned the name of the book at any time. No, not all day. Not even after I’d seen it. Yet I’d been visibly shaken. It would have been the most natural thing in the world to ask which book had upset me. Not to mention why. Griff would have said it was stupid thick-skinned men from Mars stuff, and that there was nothing sinister. But having seen him with the librarian who’d escorted me – no, I wasn’t buying innocent explanations. Why, if he’d known such a responsible person, hadn’t he simply barged in at the outset, towing me along behind him, and said, ‘This woman’s harmless: why not show her the book’? Or phoned her or whatever.

  Even Classic FM was talking about the M25 crash now in the seven o’clock bulletin. Seven was the time Griff poured our first official drink of the day and sat us both down to relax. Not today. Not that Griff wasn’t relaxed. He was still asleep, snoring so hard that from time to time he’d wake himself up and shuffle in the seat to make himself more comfortable. Then off he’d drift once more.

  I found some mints and chomped.

  The young woman who’d shown me Natura Rerum had seemed pukka enough. She’d had an ID clipped to
her jumper. But she’d not asked the questions I’d have asked, just in an ice-breaking sort of way. ‘What are you researching on now? What are you going to do when you’ve finished?’

  No. I wouldn’t count that against her. She must see hundreds of researchers a month, proper researchers who’d pour out the story of their student loans and top-up fees and debts and how they’d need to get a top-earning job to pay everything off. That’s if they were anything like the odd students who dropped into our shop to see if we’d got any part-time work to offer. Earlier in the year one optimist had offered to catalogue all our books, which Griff sometimes got lumbered with at house sales. The old bugger had insisted they were already categorised: ‘Those we can sell, darling, and those we take to the Oxfam shop.’

  We’d had other students telling us in great detail about their theses. So perhaps the Ice Maiden had been sensible not to engage in conversation.

  But they had known each other, she and Dan Freeman. They had known each other. And deep inside, just as I’d always known when I was simply being passed from pillar to post as a child, I knew I was being taken for a mug. I was being used. And I was very angry. And something else too. Was I afraid?

  I was certainly confused. After all my lip chewing and head scratching, all I could come up with was a very feeble theory. There were always rumours floating round the antiques world about what was coming on to the market and what mustn’t be touched because it was hot. Had the academic world a similar grapevine? Was there a rumour that there was another copy of Natura Rerum around and everyone was trying to find it? That might make sense. After all, academics went to antiques fairs and might have seen my frontispiece. If, of course, my copy was a fake, they might have seen other frontispieces.

  And they knew I was a dealer. At least the snotty librarian did. I’d only been and given her my business card. It was a good job Griff was asleep – he wouldn’t have liked the words I said not entirely under my breath.

  Yes, I was definitely afraid. And even more angry.

  Thank goodness the traffic was almost stationary: in a paddy like this I could have been lethal at sixty miles an hour.

  Calm down, Lina. Just breathe – though God knows what’s in the stuff that passes for air in a jam like this – and listen to the radio.

  It began to work. I could think of a plus side, just about.

  Yes, I reminded myself, as at long last the car in front inched forward, I had seen Natura Rerum. Seen it; touched it, even if that was through cotton gloves; knew it was real. And I’d still got my own page and the memories it had conjured up. I’d cling to them. Maybe I’d get some more. Griff had always worried about my very poor memory, but one of his medical friends had suggested it might be because I had more to shut out than welcome in. Now Griff tried to give me what he called mental press-ups, little exercises in remembering, like learning new words like ‘protagonist’, and I was getting better. Slowly. The rate I was going I was sometimes afraid that by the time I’d got proper recall I’d be old enough to be losing my marbles anyway. But I’d never told Griff that. Protagonist. There. I’d remembered it.

  Way along the motorway, someone pulled out a giant plug. We started to move, first at five miles an hour, then at ten. And it wasn’t all that long before we were doing a merry forty, and the lither cars sixty and more.

  I didn’t want to wake Griff but I needed a loo, and Clacket Lane services called.

  What with one thing and another I was almost staggering I was so tired. I floated the idea of a cup of tea while we had the chance.

  ‘Tea? The muck they serve in places like this? My dear Lina, what have I done to deserve that?’

  ‘Coffee then?’

  ‘Even fouler. Think what awaits us at home!’

  I stomped in silence back to the van.

  Catching up with me, Griff coughed. ‘If you’d rather I drove –’

  Griff insisted that his driving had flair. His afternoon tea had involved a fair drop of gin or whisky with some of our colleagues, so goodness knows how creative that would have made his attitude to other road users. I shook my head firmly.

  ‘The thing is,’ I continued, waiting for a gap in the traffic to slide into, ‘that at least I’ve got a bit more memory back.’ The break had perked me up, after all. ‘Maybe if we go through some books together I shall recognise the type of window I saw, perhaps even the fireplace. And you’ll know what period they are and be able to point me in the direction of some houses.’

  ‘Point you in the direction! What do you propose to do then? March up to the front door and ask to see the study?’

  ‘Yes. Well, no. Not exactly. There’s loads of stately homes open to the public, aren’t there? So I shall tour round and see if anything else strikes a chord.’

  He was silent for a bit, as I pulled out into the middle lane. The M25 would shortly be splitting in two: we needed the right hand fork for the M26. ‘We’ll be able to rule some of them out,’ he said, once the manoeuvre was complete. ‘You need to start with those that have the original family still living there – tucked away out of Joe Public’s sight, of course, but still there. There’s no point in trying those that no longer have families living in them –’

  ‘We can leave them till last,’ I agreed. ‘When all else has failed. After all, there’s no knowing my dad’ll still be living where I saw him.’ Or still be alive. But I didn’t even want to think about that possibility. ‘He might have had to sell up. But there’d still be some sort of record.’

  Even to my own ears I sounded hopeful rather than sure. To Griff’s – well, who could tell? He pulled his cap over his eyes and pretended to be asleep again, a sign he knew he couldn’t win an argument.

  It wasn’t me who finally won it, but my WSPU ring. Griff’s contact was so pleased with it she forked out fifteen hundred pounds without blinking. You always wish you’d asked for more, of course, but while it was fair – indeed, vital – to be greedy with strangers, Griff said, you should be more charitable with friends. In any case, wasn’t the mark up good enough? Fifteen to fifteen hundred?

  I won’t say Griff took me by the hand and led me to the bank to stow it all safely, but he would have been so upset if I’d blown the lot that I had to be sensible. First, I repaid him; but since he insisted on opening a new account for what he called our joint venture capital, it was hardly repaying. Then I had my hair cut, ending up as today or even tomorrow as Mastercutters of Tenterden could make me, even though Griff might have preferred yesterday or even three weeks ago.

  Then Griff took me shopping. ‘You never know,’ he said darkly, ‘when you’ll need to look the part.’ He never specified what part. So we spent a morning at a big shopping mall near Ashford called the Outlet. Griff might make all the sewage jokes he liked – he always called it the Cloaca, for instance – but it did good deals on a lot of things. It didn’t need Griff to tell me that the trouser suit I found looked good, but it was he who picked out a shirt that really set it off and rooted round till he’d come up with a lovely pair of boots.

  Lastly, I bought what I considered a real investment: a year’s National Trust membership. If I was going to tool round all these historic piles, I was going to do it on the cheap. And even if I didn’t find my father, I’d at least have had what Griff called a good visual education.

  I also joined the mobile library. It’d certainly be cheaper to borrow all those books of photographs than to try to buy them, and the driver/librarian was so helpful I knew it was my duty to keep the service on the road: if it weren’t used regularly some bright spark on the council – maybe our no streetlights, no washing on the line on Sundays man – would axe it in the interests of economy.

  I fretted. I wanted to be out there straightaway, that instant, dashing from place to place. But I couldn’t, and didn’t even mention it because we had a little trouble at the shop. Nothing serious. No reappearance of Mrs Hatch’s bogus asylum seekers, whom Tony’s colleagues had, they claimed, checked out and found
no sign of. This was a dear little old lady popping in and putting her bag down in a very obvious place while she picked over stock. Next thing she’s accusing Mrs Hatch of lifting her purse. Outraged, Mrs Hatch calls the police, only to have the little old lady in tears because she’s now found the purse and isn’t she silly? Not so silly she hasn’t managed to stow in her clothes half a dozen Georgian silver spoons and a couple of other small but expensive items. That’s how silly. But the time Mrs Hatch discovers all this, the police have actually run the old dear home. Except it isn’t her home, as the police, who, rather red about the face, discover when they go back.

  Tony Baker was as glum as if it was all his fault when he called round to return our videotape.

  ‘Sorry it’s taken so long,’ he said, sitting on the floor and stretching his legs in front of him. They were extremely long, and, as I knew from our gate vaulting, nicely shaped, as was his bum. ‘The bloke who’s a real expert on these things was off sick, and there was a huge backlog of public order tapes he had to work through before he got to yours. You know how it is: kids pissed out of their skulls picking fights with lampposts.’

  ‘And what did this bloke find?’ Griff asked, topping up – or, as he put it, refreshing – their whiskies.

  I sipped my wine. If Tony thought bright red alcopops uncool, then I’d aim for a bit more sophisticated. I’d rather this hadn’t been a rather girlie pink, but Griff had promised me that rosé was coming back into fashion as a summer evening drink.

  ‘Absolutely nothing. Just these people in black with their hoods up. One might have been a woman, but there’s no saying. Have to wait till they try again, won’t we?’ he added, winking at me.

  We managed hollow laughs. Mrs Hatch was now so rattled that she was threatening to leave.

  ‘Nothing as coarse as handing in her notice, you understand, Tony,’ Griff laughed. ‘Mrs Hatch isn’t an assistant, darling. She helps out.’