The British Museum is Falling Down

by David Lodge

  Iron-shod feet rang on the iron grating. He felt the vibrations rise through the thin soles of his shoes, and through his bones and arteries, to knock at his heart. The hunt was on again.

  He crept further along the shelving, past Bede and Bernard, Calvin and Chrysostom. A bundle of old tracts caught his eye. Repent! the cover of one admonished, for the Day of Judgment is at Hand. Another book bore the device of the Jansenist Christ, arms raised above the bowed head in a grim reminder of the exclusiveness of mercy.

  Still the feet came on. A low moan broke from his lips as he turned to face his pursuer. Was this how the affair would end, then—trapped like an animal between walls of mouldering theology?

  His hand groped instinctively for a weapon, but lighted only upon books: A Quiverful of Arrows against Popery, Plucked from the Holy Scriptures and The Sin Against the Holy Ghost Finally Revealed. Holding the two dusty volumes limply in his hands, he remembered the oozing wall of the urinal in the school playground, the tough Middle English paper in Finals, the fly-specked oleograph of the Sacred Heart in the Catholic doctor’s waiting room, and Barbara crying on the unmade bed; and the will to resist any longer ebbed out of him like water out of a sink, leaving behind only a sour scum of defeat. The footsteps paused, then came nearer. Twisting his head from side to side in the last throes of panic, he seemed to make out a few paces away the shape of a door, etched in thin cracks of light. He lunged towards it.

  Adam realised his mistake as soon as he opened the door, but he had no choice but to proceed. He stepped across the threshold and closed the door behind him.

  He had struggled through the entrails of the British Museum, only to come back to the womb again; but in an unfamiliar position. He was standing on the uppermost of the book-lined galleries that ran round the circular wall of the reading room beneath the dome. He had often idly watched, from his desk on the floors below, assistants fetching books from these shelves, and had admired the cunning design of the doors, whose inner surfaces were lined with false book spines so that when closed their presence could not be detected.

  As a fugitive, he could scarcely have picked a more exposed and conspicuous refuge. Anyone who happened to glance up from the floor below would be sure to see him. Adam took a piece of paper from his pocket and shuffled along the shelves, pretending to be an assistant looking for books. He was painfully conscious of not wearing the regular overall, but it seemed as if there was sufficient commotion on the floor below to render him safe from observation. At length, lulled into a sense of security, and fascinated by the unfamiliar perspective in which he now viewed his place of work, Adam abandoned his pose and leaned on the gallery rail to look down.

  Never before had he been so struck by the symmetry of the Reading Room’s design. The disposition of the furniture, which at ground level created the effect of an irritating maze, now took on the beauty of an abstract geometrical relief—balanced, but just complicated enough to please and interest the eye. Two long counters extended from the North Library entrance to the centre of the perfectly circular room. These two lines inclined towards each other, but just as they were about to converge they swelled out to form a small circle, the hub of the Reading Room. Around this hub curved the concentric circles of the catalogue shelves, and from these circles the radii of the long desks extended almost to the perimeter of the huge space. A rectangular table was placed in each of the segments. It was like a diagram of something—a brain or a nervous system, and the foreshortened people moving about in irregular clusters were like blood corpuscles or molecules. This huge domed Reading Room was the cortex of the English-speaking races, he thought, with a certain awe. The memory of everything they had thought or imagined was stored here.

  It seemed that the fire-alarm had been called off at last. The firemen were rolling up their hoses, or drifting out with wistful glances at the heavy furniture, fingering the hafts of their choppers. Disappointed journalists were being ushered firmly to the exit. A self-conscious group of readers was being interviewed by the BBC. At the counter for returned books there were long queues of people who had decided to call it a day. It was time he moved on, Adam felt.

  He looked up, blinked and rubbed his eyes. Diametrically opposite him, and on the same level, the fat American was leaning on the rail of the gallery in the same attitude as himself, contemplating the animated scene below. Was he authorised to be there, Adam wondered; and, if so, was it safe for him to deliver his message? At that moment the American looked up, and seemed to see him. They stared at each other for several moments. Then Adam essayed a timid wave. The American responded with a nervous glance over his shoulder. It looked as though he had no more right to be there than Adam himself.

  Adam began to walk round the circumference of the Reading Room anti-clockwise. The American responded by walking in the same direction. Adam halted and turned about. The American followed suit, keeping the same distance between himself and Adam. Adam wondered whether he could risk shouting his message across the intervening space, and decided he couldn’t. Perhaps the gallery was a whispering one, he thought, with a certain pride in his resourcefulness; and pressing his cheek to Volumes IV and V of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, he breathed the words, ‘Colorado phoned.’

  When he looked up to see if his message had carried, the American had disappeared. Adam hastened round the gallery to the point where he had last seen him. and explored the bookshelves with his fingertips, searching for the concealed door. He discovered it when it suddenly opened in his face, lightly grazing his nose and bringing tears to his eyes. An overalled assistant stood on the threshold.

  ‘Excuse me,’ Adam said, holding his nose to assuage the pain and mask his countenance. The man retired a couple of paces to let him pass, but eyed him suspiciously.

  ‘What department are you in?’ he demanded, adding hesitantly—‘sir.’ The ‘sir’ gave Adam courage.

  ‘Book-counting,’ he said quickly. ‘It’s a new department.’

  ‘Book-counting?’ the man repeated, with a puzzled frown.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Adam. ‘We’re counting the books.’ He stepped briskly to the nearest shelf, and commenced running his index finger along the rows of books, muttering under his breath, ‘Two million, three hundred thousand, four hundred and sixty-one, two million, three hundred thousand, four hundred and sixty-two, two million, three hundred thousand, four hundred and sixty-three . . .’

  ‘You’ve got a job there,’ said the man.

  ‘Yes,’ said Adam. ‘And if you make me lose count, I’ll have to start all over again from the beginning. Two million, three hundred thousand, four hundred . . .’

  ‘Sorry,’ said the man, humbly, and shuffled off towards the open door of the gallery. Adam poised himself to run; but the man hesitated at the door and returned.

  ‘Sorry to disturb you again,’ he said. ‘But if you happen to find a sausage roll behind one of them books, you might let us know.’

  ‘I found a cheese sandwich just now,’ Adam offered. The man clapped a hand to his brow.

  ‘’Lord!’ he exclaimed. ‘I’d forgotten all about that cheese sandwich.’

  When the man finally left him, Adam tiptoed away and scuttled down a narrow flight of stairs. He weaved his way through a labyrinth of bookshelves, hoping to stumble upon some way out. When he met anyone, he halted, and started counting books until they passed. At last he came upon a door from behind which he thought he could hear the sounds of ordinary human life. He slowly opened the door, and breathed a sigh of relief. He was at the North Entrance.

  Fortunately for Adam, the North Entrance was thronged with a party of schoolgirls, and his furtive exit from the door marked ‘Private’ escaped the attention of the Museum attendants. On the other hand, when he had pulled the door shut behind him, he found he couldn’t easily move. He began pushing his way through the scrum. Satchels poked him in the groin and hair got in his mouth. The girls giggled, or gave cries of indignation. Adam saw a mistress
was observing him suspiciously, and his efforts to escape became frantic. All he needed now was to be arrested for indecent assault.

  At last he was in the open air. He filled his lungs, and coughed. The fog was coming back. The end of Malet Street was invisible, and so were the top storeys of the Senate House tower. He turned to his right and began to circumnavigate the Museum. The trees of Russell Square loomed to his left like the vague shapes of drowned ships. He shivered and turned up the collar of his suit in a futile gesture of self-protection against the raw, damp air. His duffle coat was in the Reading Room, and he dared not return to recover it.

  He had a vivid mental image of the duffle coat draped over the back of his padded chair, its hood drooping forward like the head of a scholar bowed over his books; and he not only coveted it but, in a strange way, almost envied it. It seemed like a ghost of his former self, or, rather, the external shell of the Adam Appleby who had, only a few days ago, been a reasonably contented man, but who now, haunted with the fear of an unwanted addition to his family, divided and distracted about his academic work, and guilty of a hoax he had had no intention of committing, wandered like an outcast through the foggy streets of Bloomsbury.

  He turned into Great Russell Street, slippery with the last wet leaves of fall. A convoy of fire-engines roared through the gates of the Museum, and he shrank back against the railings as they passed. The Museum itself was shrouded in fog. Its windows were dim patches of light which shed no illumination on the bleak forecourt, deserted now except for a solitary taxi. Adam grasped the railings with both hands and pressed his cheeks against the chill, damp bars. Was it the fog or self-pity that made his eyes smart? He rubbed them with his knuckles, and immediately, as if the gesture had some magic property, he saw his wife and three children ascending the steps of the Museum. The atmosphere blurred the figures, but he could not mistake Barbara’s baggy red coat, or Dominic’s slack-limbed refusal to proceed, or the tilt of Clare’s head, lifted to her mother in interrogation. As in a dream he watched Barbara, encumbered by the weight of Edward in her arms, stoop to plead with Dominic for cooperation. And it was a dream, of course. Although the Museum was notoriously a place where eventually you met everyone you knew, this law did not include dependents. Scholarship and domesticity were opposed worlds, whose common frontier was marked by the Museum railings. This reversal of the natural order, with himself outside the railings, and his family inside, was a vision, pregnant with symbolic significance if only he could penetrate it. He felt moved but helpless, like Scrooge watching the tableaux unfolded by the spirits of Christmas. He longed to run forward and help his wife, but knew that if he stirred a muscle the vision would dissolve. Sure enough, as he released his grasp on the railings and moved towards the gates, a puff of wind stirred the fog, and threw an impenetrable screen between himself and the steps. When it cleared partially, the steps were deserted again.

  Still puzzled by the vividness and particularity of the apparition, Adam hurried through the gates and up the steps. He peered through the glass doors, but could see no sign of Barbara. Further he dared not go—the man at the entrance to the Reading Room was on the watch. He was distracted by the sound of children chasing pigeons somewhere to his left. The whoops and cries echoing faintly in the colonnade, mingled with the indignant commotion of wings, could be Dominic’s. Adam hurried to investigate, but the children were not his own.

  He drank some water at the stone fount near the doors of the Museum, pursing his lips and sucking noisily to avoid touching the lip of the battered metal cup. Then he paced up and down the colonnade, wondering what to do. The Reading Room would be open late that evening, he reminded himself. If he sneaked in towards closing time the fire alarm might have been forgotten, and he might be able to retrieve his belongings without notice. But what could he do in the meantime? There was the sherry party at six—that would take care of the early evening—but it was only three-thirty now.

  Adam toyed with the idea of going to a cinema. He had a keen premonition of the guilt he would feel at adding a further act of idleness to a day already characterised by total non-achievement. But, on the other hand, was it any use fighting destiny? He rooted in his pockets to see how much money he had, and pulled out Mrs Rottingdean’s letter. That was a thought. Suppose he took a chance—there would be no more telephoning—and went straight to her house? He might yet snatch something useful out of the day . . .

  As he prepared to push-start his scooter, Adam quailed inwardly at the prospect before him. He was not experienced in negotiating for unpublished literary remains, but he knew that the relatives of deceased authors were liable to be touchy and obstructive in such matters. In any case he anticipated all new human contacts with fear and reluctance. He glanced wistfully at the Museum, but its dim, forbidding shape only reminded him how irretrievably he was committed to a career of risk. With stoic resolution he turned back to his scooter, and began to push it with increasing momentum between the lines of parked cars. He was going to need both courage and subtlety to succeed in his enterprise.

  CHAPTER VII

  During the autumn and winter the delivery of a book is not infrequently hindered by darkness or fog.

  A Guide to the Use of the Reading Room (1924)

  IN THE LATE afternoon the Museum was still there, but he was not going to it any more. It was foggy in London that afternoon and the dark came very early. Then the shops turned their lights on, and it was all right riding down Oxford Street looking in the windows, though you couldn’t see much because of the fog. There was much traffic on the roads and the drivers couldn’t see where they were going. The traffic lights changed from red to amber to green and back to red again and the traffic didn’t move. Then the drivers sounded their horns and got out of their cars to swear at each other. It was foggy in London that afternoon and the dark came very early.

  The house in Bayswater looked on to a square. There was a playground in the square and some big trees. The swings in the playground squeaked but you couldn’t see the children who were swinging because of the trees and the fog. It was a tall narrow house and it hadn’t been painted for a long time. The old paint had flaked off in places and underneath you could see the raw brickwork. There were six steps leading up to the front door and more steps leading down to a basement area.

  Adam knocked on the front door but it was the basement door which opened. A man wearing a dirty vest and with a lot of thick black hair on his arms and chest looked up.

  ‘Mrs Rottingdean?’ Adam said.

  ‘Out,’ the man said.

  ‘Do you know when she’ll be back?’

  ‘No,’ the man said, and shut the door.

  Adam stood on the top step for a while, listening to the squeak of the swings in the square. Then he went down the area steps and knocked on the door of the basement.

  ‘Come in,’ the man said. He held the door open with his left hand and Adam saw that two fingers were missing from it.

  ‘I just wanted to leave a message.’

  ‘I said, “Come in”.’

  Adam went in. It was a large bare kitchen. There were some wooden chairs and a table and a lot of empty beer bottles in one corner. On the walls were some bull-fighting posters. The bulls were painted to look very fierce and the bullfighters to look very handsome. Two men sat at the table drinking beer and talking to each other in a foreign language. They were not very handsome and when they saw Adam they stopped talking. Adam looked at the bull-fighting posters.

  ‘You are aficionado?’ the hairy man said.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘You follow the bulls?’

  ‘I’ve never been to a bull-fight.’

  ‘Who is he?’ one of the men at the table said. The thumb was missing from his left hand.

  ‘Who are you?’ the hairy man said to Adam.

  ‘He’s from the café,’ the third man said. This man’s left hand was in a sling.

  ‘There must be some mistake,’ Adam said.

>   ‘I’ll say there is,’ the man with the sling said. ‘We just called the café.’

  ‘I haven’t come from any café,’ Adam said. ‘I’ve come from the British Museum.’

  ‘They have a café there?’

  ‘They call it a cafeteria,’ Adam said.

  ‘Same thing,’ the man with the sling said.

  ‘That is not so,’ the man with one thumb missing said. ‘A café is a place where a man may drink with his friends and the drinks are brought to him on a tray by a waiter. A cafeteria is a place for people who should have been waiters themselves, for there you carry your own tray. Also in a café you may drink beer or maybe wine. In a cafeteria only coffee or tea.’

  ‘In this country you can drink only tea, wherever you go,’ said the man with his arm in a sling. He put the neck of a beer bottle between his teeth and pulled off the metal cap. He spat out the cap and it rolled across the floor to Adam’s feet. Adam picked up the cap and placed it on the table.

  ‘Keep it,’ the man with the sling said.

  ‘Pay no attention to him,’ the man with one thumb said. ‘His hand hurts and he has no aspirins. You have some aspirins?’

  ‘No,’ Adam said.

  ‘It is of no importance. It is only a small pain.’

  ‘What you do in this Museum, then?’ the hairy man said.

  ‘He goes to the cafeteria to drink the tea,’ the man with the sling said.