by David Lodge
Yours sincerely
Amy Rottingdean
The address at the head of the letter was in Bayswater.
Adam was flooded with excitement, and felt an urgent desire to communicate it. He gave Camel, who was dozing at the neighbouring desk, a nudge. Camel woke with a start.
‘What is it?’ he said crossly.
‘I’m on the brink of a literary discovery,’ whispered Adam. ‘You remember months ago, when I was still working on Merrymarsh, I wrote to his publishers asking if there were any unpublished Mss around?’
‘I seem to recall something of the kind.’
‘Well, they must have passed on the letter to the family, and I’ve had this letter from Merrymarsh’s aunt, niece I mean. Look.’ He passed the letter, scrawled in green biro on black-edged mourning paper.
‘She sounds a bit potty,’ said Camel, handing back the letter. ‘And I thought you’d lost interest in Merrymarsh.’
‘Well, I’ve got it back now,’ said Adam. ‘Don’t you see? There’s bound to be something publishable here. Good for an article or two at the least. There might be some interesting letters. Merrymarsh was a hopeless writer, but he knew some good ones.’
Camel gave him an ironical glance. ‘So you’re going to chuck criticism and go in for scholarship?’
‘Well, criticism hasn’t got me anywhere,’ said Adam defensively. He was prevented from continuing by signs of disapproval from neighbouring readers. His voice had been steadily rising in volume during the conversation. Adam returned to the silent perusal of his letter. Well, why not, he thought. Why not abandon his unfinished and unfinishable thesis, and start afresh on the letters of Egbert Merrymarsh? There was nothing very difficult about editing, was there? With luck he could finish the job by June and get his Ph.D. And then he would get it published. He saw the neat, slim volume in his mind’s eye. The Letters of Egbert Merrymarsh, edited and with an introduction by Adam Appleby. It was the sort of thing the Sunday reviewers would fall on with cries of glee. ‘Mr Appleby has performed a valuable service in bringing to light these documents of a vanished, but peculiarly fascinating corner of English literary life . . .’
Adam began to feel distinctly cheerful. Perhaps Barbara was not pregnant after all. Now he came to consider the matter calmly, it was obvious that she could not possibly be pregnant. How often in the past they had worried themselves into gloomy certainty that conception had taken place, only to be disproved, and how absurd it always seemed afterwards that they should have entertained any anxiety at all. Of course Barbara was not pregnant. He would ring her up and tell her so, at once. And tell her about the letter.
In the phone booth, Adam discovered that he had run out of change. He went to the post-card shop near the Elgin Marbles, and obtained a handful of threepenny bits at the cost of purchasing a sepia likeness of the British Museum. When he finally rang Barbara, however, there was no reply. Mrs Green was evidently out, and probably Barbara had taken the childen to the park. Adam thought of his wife pushing their creaking, lop-sided pram through the grey, damp afternoon in Battersea Park, past the ghost-town of the Fun Fair, closed for the winter, brooding on her possible pregnancy, and a pang of pity and love transfixed him. If only he could reach her, and assure her that all was well.
He returned to his desk in the Reading Room, but could not convert his good spirits into industry. The laboriously accumulated notes of his thesis filled him with impatience. That was all behind him now. Let the long sentence trail its way through English fiction as it willed—he would pursue it no longer. He took up Mrs Rottingdean’s letter again, and began to draft a reply, asking if he could come round and see the papers as soon as possible, proposing the following evening. Yet he could scarcely contemplate the suspense of waiting even that long. Why should he not phone now, and propose calling on Mrs Rottingdean that very day? He looked again at the letter. Yes, a telephone number was given. Adam left his seat, and hurried back to the telephone.
As Adam pushed the door of the phone booth shut with his posterior and, trembling with excitement, dug in his pocket for change, a telephone bell rang, loud and insistent. Adam looked about him in bewilderment, unable to accept at first that the sound emanated from the instrument before him. But it evidently did. He lifted the receiver, and said hesitantly, ‘Hallo.’
‘Museum Double-O-One-Two?’ demanded a female voice.
Adam obediently scrutinised the number at the centre of the dial. ‘Yes,’ he replied.
‘Hold on please. Your call from Colorado.’
‘What?’ said Adam.
‘Sorry it’s taken so long, Museum,’ said the operator brightly. ‘The lines are absolutely haywire today.’
‘I think you’ve got the wrong person,’ Adam began. But the operator had gone away. Adam wanted to go away too, but didn’t have the courage. Besides, he wanted to make a phone call himself. He opened the door of the kiosk and, still holding the receiver to his ear, leaned out to look into the foyer of the Museum, hoping to catch sight of the fat American.
‘Are you there, Museum?’
‘Oh. Yes, but look here—’ Withdrawing his head too quickly, Adam banged it on the door and dropped the receiver, which swung clattering against the wall. By the time he recaptured it, the operator had gone again, and a faint American voice was saying anxiously:
‘Bernie? Is that you, Bernie? Bernie?’
‘No, it’s not, I’m afraid,’ said Adam.
‘Ah, Bernie. I thought I’d lost you.’
‘No, I’m not Bernie.’
‘Who are you then?’
‘My name’s Appleby. Adam Appleby.’
‘Pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr Appleby. Is Bernie there?’
‘Well no, I’m afraid he isn’t. I’m sorry you’ve had all this trouble and expense, but—’
‘He’s out, is he? Well, O.K., you can give him a message. Will you tell him he can have one hundred thousand for books and fifty thousand for manuscripts?’
‘One hundred thousand for books,’ Adam repeated, mesmerised.
‘Right. And fifty grand for manuscripts,’ said the man. ‘That’s great, Adam, thanks a lot. You been working with Bernie for long?’
‘Well, no,’ said Adam. ‘As a matter of fact—’
‘Your time’s up, Colorado,’ said the operator. ‘Do you want to pay for another two minutes?’
‘No, that’s all. ‘Bye, Adam. Say hallo to Bernie for me.’
‘Goodbye,’ said Adam weakly. The line went dead.
Adam replaced the receiver and leaned against the door, wondering what he should do. He might never see the fat man again. He couldn’t carry this undelivered message around with him for the rest of his life. It sounded important, too. A hundred thousand for books. Fifty grand for manuscripts. That meant dollars. Perhaps he should report the whole business to the operator.
Adam dialled ‘O’, and tried to rehearse a coherent explanation of the situation as he listened to the ringing tone.
‘Is that the police?’ a male voice enquired.
‘Eh?’ said Adam. He could still hear a ringing tone.
‘My car has been stolen,’ said the man. ‘Would you please send an officer round at once?’
‘You’d better dial 999,’ said Adam. ‘I’m not a policeman.’
‘That’s what I did dial,’ said the man crossly.
‘What number do you require?’ said a third voice, female, sounding very faint. The ringing tone had stopped.
‘I told you, I want the police,’ said the man. ‘Look here, my car has vanished. I haven’t time to wait here while—’
‘Are you there, caller?’ said the operator.
‘Do you mean me?’ said Adam.
‘Well, you dialled “O” didn’t you?’ inquired the operator, ironically.
‘I keep telling you, I dialled 999,’ screamed the man. ‘What kind of a fool d’you take me for?’
‘Yes, I dialled “O”,’ said Adam, dimly aware that he was the
only member of the trio that enjoyed two-way communication with both the other parties.
‘Well, what do you want then?’ said the operator.
‘I want the police,’ sobbed the man.
‘He wants the police,’ explained Adam.
‘You want the police?’ asked the operator.
‘No, I don’t want the police,’ said Adam.
‘Where are you speaking from?’ said the operator.
‘Ninety-five Gower Street,’ said the man.
‘The British Museum,’ said Adam. ‘But I don’t want the police. It’s this other man who wants the police.’
‘What is the name?’
‘I don’t know his name,’ said Adam. ‘What’s your name?’ he added, trying to throw his voice in the direction of Gower Street.
‘Never mind my name,’ said the operator, huffily. ‘What’s yours?’
‘Brooks,’ said the man.
‘His name is Brooks,’ Adam passed it on.
‘Well, Mr Brooks—’
‘No, no! My name is Appleby. Brooks is the man whose car was stolen.’
‘You’ve had some books stolen, from the British Museum, is that it?’ said the operator, as if all was clear at last.
‘I’ve had enough of this foolery,’ said Brooks angrily. ‘But I assure you, I’m going to report it.’ He slammed down his receiver. Adam registered his departure with relief.
‘Look,’ he said to the operator, ‘are you the one who put through a call just now from Colorado for a man called Bernie?’
‘Burning?’ said the operator. ‘You don’t want the police, you need the fire service.’
Adam quietly replaced the receiver, and crept into the next booth. Essentially, he felt he had had enough of telephones for that day, but his anxiety to contact Mrs Rottingdean overcame his unwillingness to pick up the receiver again. Repeated dialling, however, elicited only a persistent engaged signal. Adam suspected that the line was out of order, but could not summon up the courage to ring the operator again. He tried ringing Barbara, but Mrs Green answered to say she was still out. Adam made one more unsuccessful attempt to ring Mrs Rottingdean, and retired, defeated and disgruntled, from the telephone. His excitement and enthusiasm were quite dissipated. He thought Barbara was probably pregnant after all.
CHAPTER VI
Free or open access can hardly be practised in so large a library as this. As it was once put, the danger would be not merely of losing the books, but also of losing readers.
ARUNDELL ESDAILE (former secretary to the British Museum)
WHEN ADAM OPENED the door of the telephone booth, an unfamiliar and sacrilegious hubbub assaulted his ears. After he had taken a few paces it was the turn of his eyesight to be astonished. The main entrance hall was thronged with people chatting and gesticulating with an animation quite untypical of visitors to the Museum. They were held back on each side by a cordon of policemen, leaving open a narrow corridor extending from the revolving doors at the entrance to the Reading Room. Was it the Beatles again? Adam wondered. He pushed his way towards the entrance to the Reading Room, and showed his pass.
‘Sorry, sir,’ said the man. ‘No one allowed in.’
‘What’s the matter?’ said Adam.
The crowd raised an ironical cheer, and looking round Adam saw that the revolving doors were now fanning into the hall a steady stream of booted and helmeted firemen, who trotted sheepishly along the human corridor and into the Reading Room. Hosepipes snaked across the floor behind them.
‘They say there’s a fire,’ said the doorman, with relish.
‘Not in the Library?’ exclaimed Adam, aghast.
‘It’s like the war all over again,’ said the man, rubbing his hands together. ‘Of course, most of the books are irreplaceable, you know.’
It wasn’t, however, (Adam had ashamedly to admit to himself later) the fate of the Museum’s priceless collection which preoccupied him at that moment, but the fate of his own notes and files. Only a short while ago he had been filled with disgust for that tatty collection of paper; but now that it was in danger of extinction he realised how closely his sense of personal identity, uncertain as this was, was involved in those fragile, vulnerable sheets, cards and notebooks, which even now might be crinkling and turning brown at the edges under the hot breath of destructive flame. Almost everything he had thought and read for the past two years was recorded there. It wasn’t much, but it was all he had.
‘Mind your back, sir,’ said the doorman, as a fireman lumbered past. The hosepipe he was dragging by its nozzle caught under the door, and Adam sprang forward to disengage it. Clinging to the hosepipe, he trotted after the fireman.
‘Hey!’ called the doorman.
Adam ducked his head and kept trotting. It was only when he was inside the Reading Room and to his surprise and relief saw no evidence of conflagration, that he connected the presence of the firemen with his recent triangular conversation on the telephone. Then he wished he hadn’t been in such a hurry to get into the Reading Room. He backed towards the door, but another official, more determined-looking than the first, told him sternly: ‘Nobody allowed out yet, sir. There’s no immediate danger.’
Adam believed him. But the other readers were not so confident. Clasping their notebooks to their breasts, as if the former were precious jewels snatched from the cabins of a foundering ship, they milled about the door begging to be let out. One lady tottered forward to the official and pressed a huge pile of typewritten sheets into his unwilling arms. ‘I don’t care about myself,’ she said, weeping, ‘but save my doctoral dissertation.’
Beyond the doorway, similar disorder prevailed. Some readers stood on their desks, and gazed about hopefully for rescue. Pushing his way through the crowd, Adam nearly tripped over a prostrate nun, saying her rosary. Nearby, a negro priest, hurriedly collecting his notes on St Thomas Aquinas, was being urged to hear someone’s confession. A few courageous and stoical souls continued working calmly at their books, dedicated scholars to the last. One of them betrayed his inner tension by lighting a cigarette, evidently reasoning that normal fire precautions were now redundant. He was immediately drenched with chemical foam by an over-enthusiastic fireman. Shouts and cries violated the hallowed air which had hitherto been disturbed by nothing louder than the murmur of subdued conversation, or the occasional thump of dropped books. The dome seemed to look down with deep disapproval at the anarchic spectacle. Already ugly signs of looting were in evidence. Adam caught sight of a distinguished historian furtively filling the pockets of his raincoat from the open shelves.
Camel was sitting on his desk and surveying the scene with obvious enjoyment.
‘Hallo, Appleby. I say, this is entertaining, isn’t it?’
‘Aren’t you alarmed?’
‘No, it’s only some hoax.’
‘A hoax, you think?’
‘Bound to be. Shouldn’t like to be the hoaxer when they catch him.’
Adam racked his brains to try and remember if he had given his name to that idiot operator. He rather feared that he had, but surely she wouldn’t have got it right? He glanced guiltily over his shoulder, and looked straight into the eyes of a member of the Library staff who was standing near the catalogue shelves, supervising the loading of the huge volumes on to trolleys, by which means they were carted off to safety. The man’s face registered recognition, and he began pushing his way towards Adam, waving a piece of paper.
‘See you later,’ said Adam to Camel.
As he shouldered his way through the panic-stricken crowd, tripping over trailing hosepipes, and stumbling over the backs of firemen who, on hands and knees, were searching under the desks for signs of fire, Adam cast fleeting glances over his shoulder. The assistant was talking to Camel, who was pointing in Adam’s direction. Camel’s idea of entertainment, he thought bitterly, as he reached the short passage which connected the Reading Room and the North Library.
He knew of no other way out of the North Library:
if he went in, he would be trapped. He leaned against the wall at his back and pressed the palms of his hands against its surface. A soft, almost human warmth surprised his sense of touch. It wasn’t a wall at all, but a door—a green baize door. His fingers found the handle and softly turned it. The door opened. He slipped through, and closed it behind him.
He was in another country: dark, musty, infernal. A maze of iron galleries, lined with books and connected by tortuous iron staircases, webbed his confused vision. He was in the stacks—he knew that—but it was difficult to connect this cramped and gloomy warren with the civilised spaciousness of the Reading Room. It was as if he had dropped suddenly from the even pavement of a quiet residential street into the city’s sewers. He had crossed a frontier—there was no doubt of that; and already he felt himself entering into the invisible community of outcasts and malefactors—all those who were hunted through dark ways shunned by the innocent and the respectable. A few steps had brought him here, but it was a long way back. Never again would he be able to take his place beside the scholars in the Reading Room with a conscience as untroubled as theirs. They worked with a quiet confidence that wisdom was at their fingertips—that they had only to scribble on a form and knowledge was delivered promptly to their desks. But what did they know of this dark underworld, heavy with the odour of decaying paper, in which that knowledge was stored? Show me the happy scholar, he thought, and I will show you the bliss of ignorance.
Voices, sharp and authoritative, were raised on the other side of the door. He had a sudden vision of the capture, the indictment and the punishment, and stumbled blindly towards a flight of stairs. He grasped the bannister like salvation. If only I wasn’t limping, he thought; but it was the treachery of Camel which stabbed more keenly than the pain in his leg.
The staircase spiralled up into darkness, like a fire escape in hell, fixed there to delude the damned. He dragged himself up four flights, and limped along a narrow gangway between tall shelves of books. He was in Theology. Abelard, Alcuin, Aquinas, Augustine. Augustine, the saint who knew sin from experience. He took down a volume in some vague hope of finding counsel in it, but was distracted by the sight of a cheese sandwich at the back of the shelf. It looked dry, and a little mouldy: the corners were turned up like the feet of a corpse. He thought he heard the scuttle of a mouse somewhere behind the books. It gave him a strange feeling of consolation to think that another human being—perhaps another fugitive—had passed through this cemetery of old controversies, and had left this mark of his passage.