Cannonbridge

by Jonathan Barnes

  Washing-up lies unattended and forlorn. Grime has been ground into carpets and rugs. Remnants are to be seen of old meals, baked bean stains and squashed tomato. Stigmata of battered fish and ketchup. Soap scum tide-marks in the bathroom sink. Take-away cartons sprawl on work surfaces, on sofa and floor. Staleness. Trapped, lethargic air. Everywhere decay.

  The occupant, however, is not at present in residence. Rather, he is in transit, clambering off his third train of the day, en route to the University. So let us leave, for now, this scene of fractured domesticity and turn our attention instead towards the bijou railway station, served so poorly and infrequently by actual trains, which is situated at the outermost edge of the London suburb of Draye.

  And here he is, Dr Judd, emerging from the lip of the station, having shuttled from one suburban hinterland to another, out of the south and into the east. He walks in the company of a couple of dozen other travellers, all of them jostling for egress.

  Draye is a large, ancillary town, swollen in recent years far beyond its sensible Victorian beginnings into another amorphous satellite of the city, filled with chain outlets. Almost three miles away, fringed by heat haze and smog, can be seen the skyline of Canary Wharf, once docklands, now the city’s financial district, its towers and minarets gazing down upon suburbia with an indifference that is inflected, just a little, by a kind of lordly malevolence.

  Like Ashbury, the town is unremarkable and tame. It is only the University, formerly a polytechnic, which sets the place apart, a slab of grey concrete which lies at its heart—an institution that seems to have become (to widespread surprise and to nobody’s more than Toby Judd’s) a national centre of what certain of the broadsheets are calling the New Intellectualism.

  Dressed as smartly as he knows how, in a dark blue suit and a dark brown tie, in shoes in need of polishing, with hair in need of a cut and with his face too lately shaved (still bearing nicks and tears from that savage appointment with the razor) Toby hangs back, allowing the other travellers to go first. Eventually, once the herd has trotted on, he walks forward, negotiates the turnstiles and escapes into the warm summer afternoon. As he leaves the station and steps onto the road—the far end of the high street, and a twenty-minute walk from the university—he sees to his surprise (and elation and fury and quixotic shame) the familiar shape of his wife. In contrast to his own, unintentional dishevelment, Caroline has attired herself with skilful elegance—tailored, sleek and proper but with something in her appearance that is suggestive also of a new sensual escalation.

  Toby steps forward, double-takes, turns back.

  “Toby?” she says.

  “Hi.”

  “Hi there.”

  Of all the many things he wants to say to her, of all the lines and scenarios that he has rehearsed in the last four weeks, the following phrase has, somehow, never ranked amongst them: “What are you doing here?”

  “I wanted to catch you.”

  “Why?”

  “I wanted to make sure you’re OK.”

  Nothing from Toby at this.

  “Going to the university?”

  “Yes.”

  “Me too. Will you let me walk with you?”

  “Of course. How could I not?”

  “I’m coming to your lecture,” Caroline says as they walk, with the same kind of amiable enthusiasm that one might deploy when speaking to the child of a new acquaintance. She pauses to nibble briefly on her lower lip, an action which, long ago, had once made Toby short of breath and caused his heart rate to surge. “You don’t mind, do you?”

  Why did you leave me? Toby thinks. How had I failed you? What has Salazar got that I have not? Yet all that he says, with grisly, dishonest bonhomie, is: “Of course not. The more the merrier.”

  “J J’s going to be there.”

  “Of course he bloody is.” Beat. “Is that what you call him?”

  “Yes.” She bristles, very slightly. “Because that’s his name.” No, it’s not, Toby thinks, it’s an irritating affectation. But he says nothing and they walk on silently for a minute or two, along a high street little different to any other in Britain, with its Starbucks and its Sainsburys, its Barclays, WHSmiths and its barn-like Wetherspoons as well, increasingly, Toby notes with the unease of an old man in autumn, its pawnbrokers and loan shops and premises which trade in desperation.

  Caroline interrupts. “What’s the title?”

  “Title?”

  “Of your lecture, silly.” The playfulness, naturally, is just a little forced.

  “Oh… Secrets of the Nineteenth Century.”

  “A bit vague, isn’t it?”

  “Chose it months ago, when I had no idea what I was going to

  talk about. You want something vague, don’t you, at that point? To give you maximum wriggle room.” “So? What’s it really going to be about? Go on. You can tell me.”

  “Hmph. You’ll have to wait and see.”

  “Will I enjoy it?”

  “You might. J J won’t.”

  “Seriously? Oh. Oh, but, Toby, there’s nothing to scare the horses, though?”

  “Depends on the skittishness of the horses.”

  Wisely, perhaps, Caroline does not pursue this line of enquiry. “Expecting a good audience?”

  “Summer schoolers. Staff. A few undergraduates if they’re extra keen.”

  “It’s open to the public too?”

  “Yeah. None of them ever come. Still, you never know, perhaps today will be the day…”

  “Toby…”

  “Yes?”

  “Have you got time for a coffee?”

  Toby makes, perhaps, rather too much of checking his watch. “Sorry, but I don’t think I have. I’ve got to set up before the lecture. PowerPoint, you see.”

  “Of course. Of course.”

  They walk much faster after that, not speaking, as awkward together as strangers. It’s with palpable relief that the concrete fortress of the University soon hoves into view. They pause before the entrance, beside its big glass sliding doors, Toby to go the lecture hall, Caroline to some unspecified place where (selfevidently, though neither of them have spelt out the truth) she is to meet her lover, no doubt to embrace and murmur private things to one another and giggle in erotic conspiracy.

  It is Toby who asks the first honest question. “Are you happy?”

  Caroline seems pleased. Or, perhaps, simply relieved. “Yes. Yes, I am.” She tries to smile. “And one day you will be too.”

  She starts to reach out her left hand as if to squeeze a shoulder or pat comfortingly an upper arm. Toby flinches and draws away.

  “Good luck,” she says, drawing back as well. “The lecture will be great. And if you get a chance beforehand…”

  “Yes?”

  “Try to clean yourself up a bit. You’ve cut yourself shaving. And your hair could use a comb.”

  Toby feels a spasm of embarrassment. He does not say goodbye but hurries quickly away so that his wife does not see him blush.

  THE LECTURE HALL is filling up nicely. Able to accommodate a little over one hundred people, half the seats are taken. Toby’s been here for almost an hour, doing battle with the computer and his memory stick. He sits now on one corner of the stage, hands folded calmly on his lap. Behind him are projected, in bold black type, these five words: Secrets of the Nineteenth Century.

  Some of the audience he knows, either personally or by sight— colleagues and students. Salazar and Caroline sit on the very back row like teenagers at the pictures. At the front there is a skinny, unshaven man. He is dressed in an ancient pinstripe suit which looks as though it has come from one of the less discriminating jumble sales. He must, Toby thinks, wonderingly, be a member of the public—that fabled, rarely sighted breed. This particular specimen seems distinctly nervous. His eyes dart around the room and he constantly interlaces his fingers and pulls them apart again, anxious in the manner of a smoker going cold turkey. The rest of the crowd talk amongst themselves. There is not
a hubbub (not exactly) but there is certainly a murmur of polite expectation.

  After a while, once it becomes clear that no-one else is likely to arrive, a handsome, imperious woman of fifty-two whom Toby, historically, has liked and feared in equal measure steps onto the stage and walks towards its centre.

  She pauses, just for a moment, before she speaks. The time in which she does this is all that it takes for the auditorium to fall entirely silent.

  “Good afternoon,” she says in a voice of silk wired with steel, “and welcome to the first in our summer lecture series here at Draye. My name is Professor Thomasina McGovern and I have the honour of being Head of the Faculty of the Arts and Social Sciences. For those of you for whom today is your first visit, I hope you will return and return often.” Smiles and nods amongst the audience. “For the rest of you—current students, alumni and staff—welcome, welcome back. Before I introduce our speaker I’d like to share some thrilling news with you. These are exciting times for us here at the university. Now, I cannot imagine in a lecture entitled…” She glances behind her to read the title “... Secrets of the Nineteenth Century, that Dr Judd will not be touching in some detail on the remarkable life of Matthew Cannonbridge.” Toby grins, waggles his eyebrows.

  “Nor can it have escaped your attention that this year is the

  Cannonbridge bicentenary—two hundred years since the writer’s first recorded appearance.” Polite, scholarly laughter ensues, presumably at the very notion that so monumental an anniversary might ever have gone unnoticed by any member of this convocation.

  “I imagine too that you will be aware of the terrific success of the new book Cannonbridge: A Celebration of English Genius, written by one of our most esteemed colleagues. It’s been hard to miss given how it’s been positively leaping up the charts since its release two months ago. It’s already been called definitive, based as it is on previously unpublished material from the Cannonbridge archive in Edinburgh. So it gives me great pleasure, then, to be able to announce to you today that Draye’s own Dr Salazar will be speaking at the forthcoming Cannonbridge Gala to be held in three weeks’ time in Central London. The gala, sponsored by one of our leading investment banks, will be attended by a host of luminaries, dignitaries and stars and promises to be a very lavish affair indeed.” A wide, proud, troublingly maternal smile. “J J? Stand up and take a bow.”

  With mock-reluctance, Salazar gets to his feet. Caroline gazes puppyishly after him.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, a round of applause if you please for the university’s blazing star… Dr J J Salazar!”

  Clapping, loud and heartfelt. Toby’s own applause, meanwhile, is entirely sardonic. He believes, incorrectly, that nobody notices this but him.

  Eventually, after soaking up the attention for as long as possible, the Salazar posterior returns to its chair and McGovern gestures for silence.

  “Thanks, J J.” A mock salute from the scholar. A knowing gaze. “Oh, and he’s asked me to remind you that you can now follow him on Twitter. It’s… @cannonbridgedon. Is that right, J J?”

  Salazar smirks and, absurdly, raises his thumbs aloft. Toby barely resists rolling his eyes.

  Thomasina nods again towards her resident celebrity, then continues.

  “So from the highest in the land to something just a little more down to earth. I’d like to present Dr Judd, one of our most enthusiastic and reliable lecturers. He’s well known amongst our students, I’m told, for his ingenious and entertaining literary deductions. And he’ll be speaking to us today on…” She turns once again to remind herself of the subject under discussion “… Secrets of the Nineteenth Century. Dr Judd?”

  Toby gets to his feet and strolls over to where Thomasina has been standing. The lady steps down from the stage and takes up a position on the front row. She is a few seats along from the man in the pinstripe suit who, Toby notices, has now brought out a chunky grey mobile phone. This he holds before his right eye, like a talisman, like a charm.

  Applause for Toby is sporadic, the crowd exhausted, presumably, from the raucous reception that they have already accorded Salazar. Toby, unfazed, begins.

  “As you can see, I have entitled this lecture Secrets of the Nineteenth Century. A pretty bland, vanilla title, I’m sure you’ll agree. Over the course of its composition in the last month, however, I have come to understand that it might much more accurately have been called something like this.” Out of his pocket Toby pulls a black remote control. He touches one of the buttons and the screen behind him changes. One set of words is replaced by another. Toby reads them aloud: “Matthew Cannonbridge: Fraud.”

  Is there, at this, a gasp from the audience? A murmur of unease? Even a nervous titter? Toby cannot be sure.

  He goes on. “And it might just as well have been called this…” Another click, another shift of words. “Matthew Cannonbridge: The Invented Man.” Click. “Or this: The Cannonbridge Delusion.”

  Toby steps forward. Caroline’s face is turned away, her expression obscure.

  “The contention of my lecture, then, is this: quite simply, that Matthew Cannonbridge never existed. That his life and work and biography are all the invention of some modern hand. That the Cannonbridge story, ladies and gentlemen, is an elaborate deception perpetrated on us all for some baffling reason. That everything from The English Golem to National Virtue to The Mystery of the Whispering Pontiff has been faked. That all of it represents a highly sophisticated confidence trick which has been played on the international community and on the reading public for more than fifty years.”

  At the back of the auditorium a man walks out. Professor McGovern, uniquely, in Toby’s experience of her, seems completely frozen, uncertain as to what to do next. J J is trying to appear amused as if in the hope that this will yet prove to be a jest, some pawky piece of academic humour.

  “J’accuse,” says Toby with a flourish, starting to enjoy himself now, “this man.”

  Another click and the picture changes again, now to show a lean, serious-looking bearded man of around thirty. “The late Professor Anthony Blessborough, author of Forgotten Genius, which, as most of you will know, was the very first critical study of Cannonbridge, published shortly after the Second World War. Now, whether Blessborough invented Cannonbridge knowingly or whether he actually believed in what he was writing I cannot be certain. Nonetheless, I feel sure that it was then, with this book, that the Cannonbridge conspiracy began. But what still eludes me is the question of motive. I do not yet know why this colossal and outrageous fraud has been perpetrated upon the world.”

  Some of the audience are talking now, some outraged, some concerned, some entertained. Only the man in the pinstripe suit still seems to be listening with real intensity. As before, his talismanic mobile phone is held up steadily before him.

  At the back, another person leaves. And then another. One of them shouts, before the door slams shut, “Nutter!”

  Now, Toby really begins to warm to his theme. He improvises. He freestyles, he plays to the crowd, he loses control of his emotion. He allows himself to be swept up and gives himself over to the moment. It will be some time before he realises quite what a show it is that he puts on.

  In the end, Toby is allowed to speak for a little under eleven minutes— the novels and short stories and plays that he believes to have been faked, the widespread tampering with the archives, the expert falsification of records, the long-term bribery and blackmail of the academic world. Each claim is more scandalous than the last, each more dementedly complex and frothingly baroque. More of the audience leave, while others stay and laugh openly. Thomasina looks ashen. Salazar tries hard to seem sorrowfully noble. Caroline might be in tears. The man in the pinstripe suit, however, drinks all of it in, that phone held out before him the whole time, as if warding away something evil.

  Toby has just begun to explain how he believes Cannonbridge’s epic verse cycle The Lamentation of Eliphar, Mununzar’s Son to be a twentieth-century forgery when Prof
essor McGovern takes action. She climbs on stage, stops in front of him and says, with soft, pitying authority: “And there, I’m afraid, we must leave it. We’re out of time, Dr Judd.”

  Toby stops, in mid-flow. “So soon?”

  “I’m afraid so.” A tight smile. “And no time for questions either.” She is addressing only the audience now. “Thank you for your attention.”

  Back to Toby, she hisses in his ear. “Come to my office. Please. I mean, straightaway.”

  Toby does not seem to react. He only touches a button. Behind him, the screen goes black. He turns and stares towards it, swallowed for an instant by the void.

  When he looks back, the audience are filing out. None seem willing to meet his eye. Caroline and J J have already gone.

  He waits until the room is empty before he stirs.

  In the corridor, on his way to Thomasina’s office, Toby is ambushed by the man in the pinstripe suit. The stranger, Toby sees, has put away his phone now.

  “Good lecture,” the man says. “Good lecture.” He seems agitated and ill at ease and perhaps (Toby considers, not unkindly) in need of medication.

  “Thank you,” says Toby and tries to get past.

  “You’re not alone, you know.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I’ve seen the truth of it. I’ve glimpsed the Cannonbridge Conspiracy.”

  “Oh? Oh, really?”

  “Yes. And there are more of us, you know. We’re underground. Off the grid, mostly. But you’ll need to be careful now. You’ll have attracted attention.” He mutters the next sentence. “From rich and powerful people.”

  Toby stops, looks the man in the eye. “What do you mean?”

  “There’s more I can tell you. About how it’s been done. About why it’s been done. The scale of it, the scope… The hideous implication. But not here. Not now.”

  “Why not?”

  “Too public. Too exposed. Walls with ears. Listen, I’ll give you my number. Yeah? And then you’ll call me?”

  Toby hesitates but only for a moment. “Yes. Yes, I suppose I might at that.”