The Bookman's Tale

by Charlie Lovett

  Somehow communing with Cotton always made Peter feel better. Cotton’s accomplishments made Peter believe that anything was possible, not just in book collecting but in life. Amanda had understood that. She would wait for him on the street in front of Fortnum’s and when he would come striding confidently down the pavement, she would say, “Been visiting Robert, I see.”

  Peter thought he could use a little of that Cotton-induced swagger as he sat in a sandwich shop on Great Russell Street at ten past six, knowing he would be late for the meeting, but in no hurry to finish his ham-and-cheese toastie. It was nearly six-thirty when he finally ventured out into the night and began the short walk to University College.

  The meeting of the Historical Watercolour Society was well under way when Peter slipped into the Haldane Room. The room was unpleasantly overheated and as dim as the side streets of London through which he had just walked. At the front a voice droned away while a series of slides was projected on the bare wall. In several rows of chairs, which may once have furnished an elegant dining room but were now what Amanda would have called “not fit for the yard sale,” sat perhaps thirty people. Some took notes, some watched motionless, some squirmed, at least two appeared to be asleep. Along the walls were a few overstuffed sofas and armchairs, but these attracted only two people.

  On a sofa across the room from where Peter sat tentatively in an armchair lounged a woman who struck Peter as the precise opposite of Amanda. Whereas Amanda would have sat up straight in the front row, a notebook perched on her knees, her right hand racing across the page recording nearly every word the speaker uttered, this woman relaxed back in the corner of the sofa, her legs propped on an ottoman. A mélange of books and papers was scattered next to her, along with a wool scarf and a rumpled sweater. Like the sofa on which she reclined, her body curved invitingly. Her pale brown hair was streaked with blond and unkempt enough that Peter guessed she had not combed it since standing on a tube platform where arriving trains swept the wind down the tunnel and across the waiting masses. What he could see of her face in the dimness seemed pleasant: it was rounder and softer than Amanda’s, but no less attractive. She stared at the wall at a spot someplace above Peter’s head, and the light from the slide projector occasionally glinted off her elaborate earrings. Amanda had only ever worn the simple diamond studs her father had given her on her sixteenth birthday. The woman did not seem to notice Peter, and although she looked at neither the speaker nor the slides, he sensed she was paying closer attention to the presentation than anyone else in the room. In this one detail only she was like Amanda.

  Somehow the idea of meeting just one person, especially a person so utterly different from Amanda, was less intimidating than the thought of playing the role of American guest to an entire roomful of eccentric British watercolor enthusiasts, so when the lecture ended and the speaker began to take questions, Peter followed the woman, who had gathered up her belongings as soon as the slide projector had been shut off, into the spacious lobby outside the Haldane Room. She had pulled on her sweater and was winding the scarf around her neck when he caught up to her. Her bag, overflowing with papers, sat on the floor by a folding table laden with tea, coffee, and biscuits.

  “Excuse me,” said Peter.

  “You too?” said the woman, not looking at him but still adjusting her scarf. “I always get claustrophobic in there, especially when it’s a slide lecture, and with the Watercolour Society it’s always a slide lecture. What did you think of Richard?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Professor Richard Campbell—our speaker this evening.”

  “To be honest, I didn’t really listen. I don’t know much about watercolors.”

  “He knows his stuff, but he has all the personality of a jacket potato,” she said. Peter pictured an upright baked potato in a bowler hat lecturing to a group of sleeping students. It looked like a Magritte painting; Amanda hated Magritte. She said that painting died with the Armory Show.

  “I’m Peter Byerly,” he said, holding out his hand.

  The woman shook it firmly. “Byerly,” she said slowly, rolling the word around in her mouth as if she were tasting a fine wine. “There was an Amanda Byerly who wrote an article for our journal once. American woman. Bloody good scholar.” Amanda had a way of doing this, of cropping up unexpectedly and surprising him with some previously unknown accomplishment. He remembered suddenly a night in London three years ago when she had said she was “off to a meeting of art enthusiasts.” Peter had stayed in the hotel room and watched a bad American movie. Perhaps Amanda had gone off to the Haldane Room. He had never asked her.

  “My wife,” Peter mumbled, and then, almost reflexively as he noticed the bare fingers of the woman’s left hand, he added, “my late wife.”

  “Well, Peter Byerly, mysterious American widower who comes to a meeting of the Historical Watercolour Society despite not knowing or apparently caring much about watercolors, how do you feel about getting something to eat?”

  Peter was taken aback by the casual, almost flippant, nature of the invitation, but he was intrigued by something else. When he had said, “my late wife,” she hadn’t said, I’m sorry. People always said “I’m sorry,” and Peter had found that sympathy was wearing a little thin these days. It had a way of intruding on conversations and setting tight boundaries for relationships. Even though his only relationships right now were with the postman and the gardener, he was still tired of being handled like some delicate glass sculpture.

  “You see,” said the woman, “in a minute, they’re all going to come pouring out that door and they’ll spend about ten minutes making sure they eat every biscuit and drink every drop of tea and then they’ll toddle off to the Spaghetti House, where they’ll spend more time arguing over who should put in an extra fifty pence because he had a bread stick from the second basket than they will actually eating dinner. So I like to slip out early, but that means I nearly always eat alone. You’re a man of mystery and you don’t look much like a serial killer, so I ask again—how about some dinner? There’s an Indian place not far from here.”

  Peter was torn. If this Richard person “knew his stuff,” as she said, perhaps Peter should wait and waylay him while the others drank their tea and ate their biscuits. On the other hand, if this woman read the society’s journal carefully enough to remember Amanda, maybe she could help him, or at least point him in the right direction.

  “Do they have curry houses in America?” She seemed oblivious to his hesitation. “They do a great vindaloo. Americans like spicy food, right? If not you can get it mild.”

  Why not, thought Peter. Why the hell not. Here he was talking, or at least listening, to this perfectly nice woman and for whatever reason his palms weren’t sweating and his stomach was calm. In fact, he was hungry. He’d had precious little to eat the past two days. Besides, eating spicy food while trying to talk to one person seemed a much more pleasant prospect than being lost in a crowd of thirty arguing over bread sticks.

  “That sounds nice,” said Peter.

  “Brilliant,” she said. “I’m Liz, by the way. Liz Sutcliffe. And no, I’m no relation.”

  “No relation to whom?” asked Peter.

  “Stu Sutcliffe,” said Liz, adding when Peter only stared at her blankly, “the fifth Beatle.”

  “I thought there were only four,” said Peter, opening the door and letting Liz pass out into the cold.

  “An American who knows nothing about watercolors or the Beatles,” said Liz with a laugh. “What will we talk about?”

  It occurred to Peter as he followed her down the empty street, coat pulled tightly against the wind, that he had not reacted in any unusual way when he felt the soft flesh of her hand. He could not recall touching a woman in the months since he left North Carolina, but shaking hands with Liz Sutcliffe had not been momentous. It was a nice hand, he thought now, comforting. But at the time he had onl
y thought, How do you do.

  In the restaurant, Peter decided he liked Liz. He was not attracted to her, but he felt comfortable with her. He wondered if he might be learning to make a friend. Dr. Strayer would be thrilled. What he liked most was that she got straight to the point as soon as they sat down. Peter was therefore not required to make small talk.

  “So,” she said. “You don’t give a toss about watercolors; you didn’t listen to the speaker. Why did you come tonight?”

  Peter reached into his coat and withdrew the watercolor, which he had placed in an acid-free envelope. Carefully drawing it out he laid it on the table in front of her.

  “Pretty lady,” said Liz, without touching the picture or even leaning over it. “Exquisite work. She looks familiar.”

  “Indeed,” said Peter.

  Liz picked up the watercolor and examined it more closely. “Jesus, I met her, didn’t I? I met your wife. It was two . . . no, three years ago. She came to a meeting and sat in the front row and took notes the whole time and asked about six questions afterward—cracking good ones, too. She was nothing like you, was she?”

  “Not a bit,” agreed Peter.

  “This is her, isn’t it? This is your wife.”

  “Yes,” said Peter, “except that it’s a hundred-year-old watercolor.”

  “She aged well,” said Liz, deadpan, as she laid the painting on the table. Peter felt as if she’d slapped him in the face, and then, unable to stop himself, he began to laugh. He laughed long and hard enough that he attracted the attention of several nearby diners. He hadn’t laughed so freely since . . . well, since the last time Amanda had said something funny.

  When he finally caught his breath, Liz, looking slightly abashed, said, “Sorry. I can be a bit insensitive sometimes.”

  “It was funny,” said Peter. “Thank you for that.”

  “So you came to the meeting because you want an expert to tell you how your late wife ended up in a hundred-year-old painting?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Why does it matter?”

  Peter pondered the question for a moment. It was one he had been careful not to ask himself so far—it was easier to simply be swept along by the mystery—but he knew Liz had gotten right to the heart of the matter. “I think it’s because I’ve been trying to say good-bye for so long,” he said, picking his words carefully, “that I need this not to be her. I need to find out who it is so it won’t be her anymore. And then maybe she really will be gone.”

  Liz picked up the watercolor again and looked at it in silence. Peter took a long pull on his beer. He had never had Indian beer before. It was cold and tasted of home.

  “Is that a signature?” asked Liz.

  “Yes,” said Peter. “It’s B.B.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “B.B. Not much to go on, I know.”

  “Jesus fuck,” said Liz, suddenly flustered. Her head disappeared below the table and when she popped back up, she was holding her large canvas tote bag, one arm shoved into its depths. She withdrew a pair of reading glasses and fumbled them on. Peter watched as the color drained from her face.

  “What is it?” he said, strangely afraid of what she might answer.

  “You’re really Peter Byerly?” she asked, leaning back in her chair and crossing her arms across her chest. “And your wife is really dead?” Her voice had the slightest edge of accusation.

  “Yes,” said Peter coldly. “I can show you my passport if you like; I left the death certificate at home, silly me.”

  “And you really know fuck all about watercolors, Victorian painters, and B.B.?”

  “I wouldn’t say I know ‘fuck all,’ as you so delicately put it,” said Peter. “Amanda was passionate about Victorian art, and some of her knowledge rubbed off. But I’ve certainly no idea who B.B. was.”

  “Well, it’s a damn good thing you didn’t pull this out of your pocket at the meeting.”

  “Why?”

  “Mr. Byerly, can I trust you?”

  “You can call me Peter.” He crossed his arms on the table and leaned toward her. “And yes, you can trust me.”

  Ridgefield, 1984

  Peter stood inside the door to the snack bar at the Ridgefield Student Center, lurking in the shadow of the Coke machine. In a booth against the far wall, he saw the familiar figure of the girl he now knew to be Amanda. Her back was to him, and as always she sat straight up, but now instead of propping a book on the table in front of her, she merely stared at her neatly folded hands.

  Peter’s palms were sweating. He watched her as the clock on the wall ticked past 10:35. He followed the second hand around another slow, agonizing minute. His stomach somersaulted and his body seemed to lurch to one side. He leaned against the wall and chanced another peek at Amanda. Two girls walked in, laughing, and Peter quickly turned his attention to the Coke machine.

  “You gonna buy anything?” asked one of the girls.

  “Uhm . . . n-no,” stammered Peter. He turned and took a step toward Amanda, then pivoted and ducked out the door into the cool night air. He loitered in the courtyard until his pulse slowed slightly. When he reentered the snack bar, the clock read 10:40. Amanda had not moved. It’s like pulling off a Band-Aid, he thought. I just have to do it. Without further thought, he took a dozen rapid steps and was standing next to Amanda’s booth.

  She turned to look at him and for the first time he saw her eyes—deep and green and flecked with gold, filled with both confidence and fear. For a moment he could do nothing but return her gaze. She finally broke the silence by holding out a hand toward him and saying, “I’m Amanda.”

  Peter knew he was meant to shake her hand, but his palms were sweating again, and besides, he felt like he might fall over any minute and he needed his hands to steady himself. Glancing down, he planted his feet firmly apart, drew a deep breath, wiped his hand on his jeans, and held it out toward her. His vision was starting to blur when he felt her cool, delicate fingers slip around his and squeeze gently.

  “Don’t worry,” she said softly, “I’m nervous, too.” Peter tried to answer her, but found he could not speak. It was as if every atom of his being was focused on that place where her flesh made contact with his. All else disappeared, including his roiling stomach, his spinning head, and his unsteady feet. “Why don’t you sit down?” she said. She slipped her hand out of his and Peter returned to reality.

  He managed to mumble, “Okay,” and slid into the booth opposite her. He sat for an eternal minute staring at her hands on the table. “I’m a little nervous,” he managed to say at last, mentally cursing himself for stating what she already knew.

  “It’s funny,” said Amanda. “I didn’t expect to be.”

  “I’m Peter, by the way. Peter Byerly.”

  “Hello, Peter,” she said. He looked up to find her smiling and suddenly felt as if a great burden had been lifted from him. Amanda’s smile simply dissolved his anxiety.

  “You’re not a freshman,” said Amanda. “I would have remembered you from orientation.”

  “Sophomore,” said Peter. “I’m sorry I’m late.”

  “I was a little worried,” said Amanda. “You didn’t watch me today. You know, in the library.”

  “I had an interview. I have a new job.”

  Amanda remained perfectly still, smiling at him. He looked into her eyes again and he felt himself relax further. He leaned back in the booth and finally looked down with a shiver from the intimacy of her stare. Amanda bit her lip ever so slightly and looked at his hands, folded like hers on the table.

  “Tell me about your new job, Peter Byerly,” she said. And so Peter told her everything about his afternoon in the rare-books room. He told her how Francis had pulled volume after volume from the shelf, showing him just a few gems of the collection. He did his best to explain how it felt to hold Shakesp
eare’s First Folio, or the original monthly installments of David Copperfield. He confessed his dream of finding and preserving a great literary artifact, of having scholars and students know something wonderful that they wouldn’t have known without him. Above all, he tried to convey to her his unexpected emotional reaction to the bad quarto of Hamlet.

  “It was like when I saw you for the first time,” he said. “Not just the discovery of something beautiful and precious, but the opening up of a whole new world.”

  “Is that what it was like when you first saw me?” asked Amanda, beaming.

  “Well,” said Peter, “yeah. I can’t explain it. I just knew right away there was something special about you. To be honest, I’ve never really been interested in a girl before.”

  “I’m glad you’re breaking that habit,” said Amanda.

  “Me too,” said Peter.

  —

  “Now,” said Amanda, when their plates had long been cleared and their glasses stood empty, “tell me about something that has nothing to do with books. Tell me about your brothers and sisters.”

  “Haven’t got any,” said Peter.

  “Okay, about your best friends, then.”

  “Haven’t got any of those either.”

  “So are you lonely, or just a loner?”

  Peter had never considered this before, but without thinking answered, “A little of both, I guess.”

  Amanda reached across the table and took his hand in hers. Her soft skin enveloping his felt just as electric as it had before. “Why are you so alone, Peter?” she said.

  For the first time since he sat down, Peter felt uncomfortable. She had found the question he didn’t want to answer, didn’t even want to ask himself, and he could see in her face that she must sense his discomfort.