by Peter James
‘We’ve just been to an air museum and the zoo,’ the boy said.
‘Have you?’ Frannie said politely.
‘Whipsnade Zoo, in Bedfordshire. I had a ride on an elephant and on a camel. The camel sat down first so I could get on. They always do that. Did you know?’
‘I didn’t realize they were so polite. Which did you like best – the camel or the elephant?’
The boy thought for a moment. ‘I think the camel – because if you have one you don’t have to remember to give it water every day. But they can kill you.’
‘Can they?’ she said, amused by the boy’s reasoning.
‘Oh yes,’ he said solemnly.
‘How about here?’ said the man.
‘Perfect. That’s very kind – just leave them here.’
The man lugged the double bass on to the train and wedged it into the luggage space at the end of the compartment. Frannie picked up her bag, but he took it insistently from her, carried that on to the train too and put it beside the double bass. ‘Beautiful city, York,’ he said.
‘Eboracum,’ Frannie replied, then immediately wondered why she had said that.
He gave her an intense look, as if he was examining an exhibit in a glass case. His eyes were a brilliant, cornflower blue, beneath thick eyebrows that were well apart. ‘Ah,’ he said with a warm grin. ‘A Latin scholar.’
Frannie smiled back. ‘No, I’m not a scholar, I’m afraid.’
‘I’m having piano lessons,’ the boy said.
‘Are you?’
‘Yes. My teacher’s not very nice, though. I’d like to learn the guitar when I’m older.’
Frannie caught his father’s eye. Caught the frisson of interest that flickered in it. He hesitated, as if about to say something, then he blushed and glanced at the boy.
‘Well – er –’ the man patted his pockets. His jacket was crumpled and his shoes were old brown brogues, well polished but battered. The boy was by far the neater of the two, in a white open-necked, button-down shirt, grey shorts with turn-ups, white socks and laced rubber-soled shoes. ‘Better not – er – get stranded on the train,’ he smiled at Frannie, hesitating again, as if trying to summon the courage to say something else.
‘Thank you,’ Frannie said as they parted. ‘Thank you very much.’ She wished she could have kept the conversation going, but found herself watching him walk towards the exit, the boy at his side.
She went into the compartment, which was beginning to fill, and managed to claim a seat by the window. The image of the man’s face stayed in her mind. Excitement burned inside her. The fleeting look of recognition of something in his eyes; of the mutual attraction. She wanted suddenly to get up and run down the platform after him. To prevent the parting that had just taken place.
Except, she might just have been imagining his interest. And at least she hadn’t made a fool of herself. She smiled, feeling good suddenly. Good to have found herself attracted again to a man after so many months. She sat back, opened her bag and took out two magazines, Antiquity and the Antiquaries Journal. And she also took out the novel she was reading, Take No Farewell by Robert Goddard, which seemed oddly appropriate, she thought.
As the train jolted, then jolted again and began, silently, to roll forward, she flipped open one of the magazines at the last page, where she always started. But it was an hour before she was able to settle down and concentrate on her reading.
CHAPTER THREE
The traffic was snarled. Engines blattered and rattled and horns blared. The air above the bonnets of cars was corrugated by the heat and the gold spikes of the railings across the road bent and shimmered like reflections in a disturbed pond. Beyond them the British Museum sat, serious and graceful in the block it occupied in Bloomsbury, bounded by four roads like an island to which time was anchored.
In the rooms and galleries beyond the graceful portals, fragments of the past were laid out and neatly labelled, tens of thousands of years of chaos put into semblances of order: Ancient Iran; Coptic Art; Italy Before the Roman Empire. Visitors could stare through polished glass at the corpse of a man preserved in a peatbog; at jewelled crowns from the heads of dead emperors; at clay tablets and carved gods and Ming vases and fragments of neolithic artisan soup mugs; at pages of manuscripts left open as though waiting for their long-dead authors to return for final amendments.
Few people left the building unimpressed, untouched by something, by a memory or a thought, by a sense both of man’s insignificance and of his resources, by an awe of being in a place the sum of whose parts was greater than any single human being could ever be.
Behind the quiet order of the galleries lay a labyrinth of corridors, book-lined offices and basements where many of the thousand-strong staff worked, and where some of the priceless exhibits had been stored during the war. Frannie’s office was cramped and one of the few without a window, but she did not mind. She loved this museum and still, some mornings, after nearly three years, got a kick just out of walking in through its majestic front, unable to believe that this was really where she worked. And sometimes, when the monotony of her current assignment got her down, she reminded herself that it was early days in her career and there were more exciting landmarks ahead.
She had been working for twelve months on checking and recataloguing the countless basement treasures not on view to the public because of lack of space. It was tedious work, but she was learning all the time, broadening her knowledge both in her own subject, oriental antiquities, and beyond. After Christmas she was going for the first time to the Himalayas, for six weeks, on a dig. She was looking forward to that, and her mercurial boss, Declan O’Hare, the head of her department, had been hinting about a new and more exciting project at the Museum to follow.
In truth, the hope and excitement she had felt after leaving university had been dulled just a little by the tantalizing enormity of reality. By the knowledge that one human being with a trowel could unearth at the most a few square feet a day. Maybe a dozen square yards in a fortnight. That he or she could dig on the same small site for a lifetime and still examine only one tiny part of it, and find only fragments within that. There was far more still buried than had ever been discovered. Earth did not yield its secrets easily. It seemed at times as if there was some superior force at work, toying with them all, letting them build up theories then fragmenting those theories. As if the rules did not permit that you could ever piece together the whole.
Part of the excitement of archaeology for Frannie was to look at artefacts, to hold them and try to let the past come back to life in her imagination. It was something she had found herself doing ever since she had first read a book on Roman history at school. Caesar’s world had come vividly alive through those pages, and the hundreds of historical books she had devoured since then. It had come alive through tiny fragments – the spoon handles, brooches, beads, rims of pots, pieces of tessera – that she had unearthed on the digs she had done.
On fine days Frannie spent her lunch-breaks outside, usually taking a sandwich to a bench in a nearby square. Sometimes one of her friends working in the West End managed to bus over and join her, or else she might be accompanied by some of the younger crowd from the Museum, but today was an exception. She felt a sense of dread as she left the massive front hall, negotiating the stream of visitors, and went out through the gateway between the black-and-gold railings into the solid, fumy jam of Great Russell Street.
She had been scared of dentists all her life. Her stomach felt like a hollow metal bowl as she walked down Charing Cross Road and turned into the narrow alley where she stopped beneath the small plastic DENTIST sign that needed a wipe. Once inside and upstairs, she announced herself to the blonde receptionist.
‘Francesca Monsanto. I have an appointment with Mr Gebbie,’ she said.
The girl checked her name off a list. ‘Go through – first door on the right.’
Frannie went into a tiny waiting-room with half a dozen plastic chairs. A messy-looking woman w
ith a bag of groceries spilling on to the floor beside her chair eyed Frannie hopefully, as if willing her to jump the queue.
She sat down, opened her handbag and took out her diary, determined to distract herself while she waited. Ignoring the National Health booklets scattered on a small coffee-table, she opened the diary by pulling the ribbon marker and checked the weekend and the week ahead. Clive Bracewell’s party on Saturday night. It would be a crush in his tiny flat just behind the Portobello Road, but he knew a lot of people and there was always a chance of a decent spare man being there.
Clive was a research assistant at the Museum like herself. Life at the Museum wasn’t that different from college, she reflected. Similar social functions, similar cliques. The same air of studiousness. It was more serious, and there was an underlying good feeling of purpose and shared aims. She had a good circle of friends there, but tried not to make it the whole focus of her life, and she particularly treasured get-away-from-it-all occasions, like the recent weekend in York with Meredith Minns, that were completely away from this community.
A breezy voice broke her train of thought, ‘Mrs Lowe?’
The grocery bag rustled as its owner walked heavily through the door. Frannie put the diary back into her handbag and noticed that there were some magazines among the booklets on the coffee-table. She spotted New Woman lying beneath a copy of Private Eye, and tugged it out. As she did so, Private Eye fell on to the floor and lay up-ended, its covers spread open. Frannie leaned over and picked it up. It was open at the personal ads page. ‘Eye Love’ was the headline of one column. She glanced at it out of curiosity.
‘BALDING 50-SOMETHING not fat if stomach held in. Own London house plus inadequate income. Separated. Chain-smoker not interested in star signs. Any offers?’
‘NICE BOTTOM washes quite regularly, clever 28 and tailormade for the beautiful young London career woman. One only remaining. A giveaway at 24p …’
‘FEMALE SEEKS eccentric to delight in. Midlands. Box …’
She wondered what sort of people put these ads in. Whether they were like herself. Or whether they were desperate. Maybe it was all in code. She glanced across the page and read down the ‘Eye Need’ column.
‘DESPAIRING STUDENT urgently needs funds to continue education. Genuine. Thanks. Box …’
Then a headline in another column caught her attention: ‘GIRL WITH DOUBLE BASS! Are you the girl who was struggling down the platform of King’s Cross Station carrying a double bass, on Friday, 10th August, catching a train to Eboracum? I am the man who helped you. I’d like to see you again.’
Frannie looked at the advertisement in disbelief, thinking for a moment she must have imagined it. Eboracum. The Roman name for York. She had mentioned it to the man and he had understood it.
She read through the ad again, feeling strangely disconcerted. Yet a tiny pulse of excitement beat deep inside her. There might have been other girls struggling with other double basses down that platform. But not going to Eboracum.
‘Jesus!’ she blurted out in excitement, and then felt slightly foolish. A brake of caution suddenly applied itself in her mind and she wondered for a moment if she was the butt of some elaborate joke. She bit her lip and looked up at the ceiling, and then around her.
Then she read the ad once more. It had to be her! Had to be. A grin spread across her face as if she was sharing the joke with the man she had met. Of all the tens of thousands of people reading this ad, it was for her, her alone. And she had seen it.
She tried to recall the man’s face, but it was hazy. The intense stare of his blue eyes, the resemblance to Harrison Ford. The warmth in his face, in his voice. The strange way the boy had looked at her. The ginger curls, the freckles; the serious, tear-stained face.
She remembered the humour in the man’s face as he had spoken to her. The pulse of excitement beat again, more strongly. Crazy; she could remember that sudden thrill of attraction, could feel it now. It was like that sometimes; you met a total stranger and you immediately clicked, as if you were soul mates.
Frannie dug her pen out of her bag, took her diary out again and wrote down the box number of the advertisement, then the address of the magazine.
It was only as she closed her diary that the doubts began. As if there was something not quite right, that she had not yet spotted. The big snag. She shrugged them off, read the ad again, and grinned again. She was still smiling ten minutes later as she walked through into the dentist’s surgery.
When she got back to the Museum, complete with two new fillings, Penrose Spode was seated at his desk with the quiet demeanour of a statue of Buddha. And the same aura of benign domination. He was her colleague and they shared an office.
Like most of the offices in the building, it was taller than it was wide, the walls on all four sides lined floor to ceiling with books and catalogues. The word-processor terminals and digital telephones on each of their ancient wooden desks looked incongruous, as if they were stage props that had been put on the wrong set.
Their desks faced each other: Spode’s, like himself, immaculate; the stacks of paper laid out in careful geometric asymmetry in contrast to the post-nuclear-holocaust appearance of her own desk. Spode sat very erect, his chest indented, the knot of his lichen-coloured tie protruding the same distance as his Adam’s apple; his black hair drawn smooth and flat like sealskin; his eyes small and myopic behind lenses like magnifying glasses and frames the size of protective goggles; his closed mouth, small and tight, formed a perfect circle like a rubber bung.
He was a man of twenty-eight with a dry, anarchic humour and an obsession with routine, punctuality and consistency, which he maintained were essential for a harmonious life. He did everything at the same steady pace, as if aware that energy was a commodity not to be squandered, and went about his work and his life with an air of constipated inertness. Archaeology was his world; he had no outside interests and he exercised by cycling to work on an old-fashioned upright bicycle. His clips hung on a hook on the back of the door, along with his crash-helmet, smog mask and fluorescent sash.
Frannie’s hurried late arrival from lunch seemed to throw the rhythm of his concentration and, between entering the room and settling at her desk, she noticed him type and erase the same line three times on his word processor.
He stopped, clearly irritated. ‘I didn’t know you would be up here this afternoon,’ he said. ‘Thought you were down in the basement.’
‘Dentist,’ she mumbled through her frozen mouth.
He sighed as Frannie noisily opened and shut a drawer in her desk, looking for plain paper.
‘Oh – there was a call I took for you,’ he said. ‘A Mr Jupp from the Bodleian. He says he’s found the reference you wanted.’
‘Thanks,’ she said, distractedly.
‘He said he thought you’d be extremely pleased.’ There was a slightly pained note in Spode’s voice as she continued to rummage, cleared a space on her desk, laid down a sheet of paper and started to write.
‘He asked if you could call back before three,’ Spode said, looking at his watch pointedly.
Frannie did not notice. She was concentrating on her handwriting, trying to make it legible for once. She wondered whether it was sensible to give her home address and phone number just in case, then realized how embarrassed she might be if he rang her at the office. Penrose Spode always listened to her calls with one ear. She decided to include her home number but not her address. Even so, her surname was not common and he could get the address by matching her name and number but she felt it at least afforded her some protection if he turned out to be a nutter.
She tore up five attempts before she was satisfied that she had got the tone right:
‘I am the girl who was carrying a double bass down the platform of King’s Cross Station on Friday, 10th August. Were you the very kind man with the young boy who had just been to the zoo? I would be delighted to see you again. Francesca Monsanto.’
She called at a post o
ffice on the way home, stuck a first-class stamp carefully on the envelope, then held the letter for a long time before letting it drop, with a strange feeling of finality, through the slit of the post box into the darkness.
As she walked on towards the tube station, there was a light spring in her step.
CHAPTER FOUR
Frannie’s misgivings began a couple of hours after she had posted the letter. It was nothing she could put her finger on, more the feeling that what she had done was rash and she needed to be careful. There was something about the chance of having seen the advertisement that nagged her.
She wondered where else he had advertised, and whether he had done it of his own volition, or had been goaded into it for a bet by friends. And she wondered, more darkly, whether he did this as a regular way of picking up women.
She had posted the letter on Friday and it would have reached Private Eye on Monday. Depending how quickly they forwarded it, she knew that the earliest he could receive it would be Tuesday. Even so, every time the phone had rung over the weekend she had stiffened and answered it with a mixture of trepidation and excitement.
At the party on Saturday night she had confided in Carol Bolton, who was her closest friend at the Museum. Carol had surprised and worried her by being alarmist. She told Frannie that if he contacted her she should make sure they met in a public place, and offered to go along and lurk in the background as her minder. Frannie promised she would meet him in a public place, but said she would not be able to relax if she knew Carol was lurking, watching her.
On Monday she had lunch in a café round the corner from the Museum with Debbie Johnson, an old friend, with whom she had been at school from the age of thirteen. Debbie had a rough-and-tumble impishness about her; she was short, but prettier than she normally allowed herself to look, with large doe-like eyes and fair hair that sprouted like wild grass around a badly tied bandanna.
‘Hm,’ said Debbie, ‘he sounds very dishy. Nothing like that ever happens to me.’