The Bookman's Tale

by Charlie Lovett

  “You’ll have to tell me all about it,” said Liz, grabbing Peter’s bare hand in the softness of her suede glove and pulling him past Museum Street. “I know a fab little Italian place just around the corner.” Peter resigned himself to the hand-holding, reasoning that it was necessary to avoid separation in the crowds that surged along the pavement. In another moment they had turned a corner into the comparative calm of Coptic Street—its bookshops and art galleries of little interest to the bulk of the tourists that teemed along Great Russell Street. Yet Peter did not drop Liz’s hand; it would be impolite, he thought.

  He followed her around another corner and through the door of a tiny Italian bistro, but neither of them spoke again until they were seated at a table by the front window.

  “I have something for you,” she said, reaching into her voluminous bag and pulling out a stiff buff envelope. “Your watercolor. Thanks for the loan.”

  Peter took the envelope from her. In all the excitement of Pandosto, it seemed somehow less weighty than it had when he had handed it to her three days earlier. “You’re welcome,” said Peter, slipping the envelope into his satchel.

  “You don’t want to look at it?” Liz asked.

  “I trust you,” said Peter.

  “It’s not that,” said Liz. “It’s just . . . it seemed to me you sort of, I don’t know, needed to look at it every so often.”

  Though the watercolor, and what Liz knew about it, was his reason for wanting to see her today, Peter’s obsession with the image had faded considerably since his discovery of the Pandosto. The painting was a worthless artifact of interest only to him because of its coincidental resemblance to Amanda; the book was quite possibly one of the great discoveries in the history of English literature.

  The waiter set two glasses of red wine on the table and Liz raised hers to Peter. He responded to the toast, clinking his glass against hers slightly too hard, the wine almost sloshing onto the crisp, white tablecloth. He took a gulp and set the glass on the table.

  “Easy does it there, cowboy,” said Liz. “So what is it that’s happened since Friday?” Her voice seemed tinged with insecurity, and Peter felt suddenly ashamed that he should be thinking only of trying to get information from her, not of how she might legitimately feel about going out for two meals with the same man in three days. He felt a surge of tenderness for her, such as he had not felt for anyone since he lost Amanda. It was a feeling as frightening as it was unexpected.

  “I have a problem,” he said. “Maybe two problems.”

  “I’m listening,” said Liz, crossing her arms over her chest and leaning back in her chair.

  Peter wasn’t sure how to start. He desperately wanted the name and address of the mysterious scholar from Cornwall who seemed to be the only person in the world who knew anything about the identity of B.B., and now he had some leverage in trying to pry this information out of Liz. On the other hand, he couldn’t help thinking, as he looked at her defensive posture across the table, that the air was rife with unspoken feelings, and if he didn’t address those first, she would never tell him anything.

  “I’m having a hard time dealing with this,” said Peter finally, making a limp gesture with his hand meant to encompass the two of them but looking more like a request for the waiter to clear the table.

  “This?” said Liz.

  “You and me, I mean.”

  “What about us?” Liz seemed to draw her arms more tightly across her chest.

  “Well, I think it’s possible, I mean, I think maybe I might . . . I might like you.”

  “Wow, you sure know how to sweep a girl off her feet,” said Liz.

  “You see, this is my problem. I’m absolutely no good at this,” said Peter. “I’ve only ever been out with one woman in my entire life and I’m not . . . I don’t think I’m over her, and I don’t want you to get the wrong idea.”

  “What idea would that be?” said Liz coldly.

  “That I like you. I mean that I like you . . . you know, that way.”

  “Well, you’re honest. When you said you’re no good at this, you knew what you were talking about.”

  “Look,” said Peter, feeling the sweat bead on his forehead and his appetite drain away. “I don’t really know how to explain this, but there’s a big part of me that doesn’t want you to think this is a date. But then there’s this other part, this part I didn’t even realize was there until I saw you on the steps, that does want you to think it’s a date. Does that make any sense?”

  “First of all,” said Liz, “you can relax, because this is not a date; it’s just two friends meeting for lunch. And secondly, that’s all we are, Peter, two friends. I know you come with a lot of baggage, and apparently being friends is not one of your great talents, but trust me here—it’s not that hard. Besides, to be friends all you have to do is sort of think that you might like me.” She finally smiled and uncrossed her arms, reaching for her wineglass and holding it up toward Peter again.

  “Now, gently this time,” she said. “To friendship.”

  Peter tapped his glass lightly against hers and took a long drink of wine. As he set down his glass, Liz picked up his napkin and wiped the sweat off his forehead. Peter shivered from the intimacy of the gesture, but before he could think of what to say, Liz settled back in her chair and went on.

  “You still want to know about B.B., don’t you?”

  “But it’s not for selfish reasons anymore.”

  “Not for selfish reasons?”

  “Well, it’s for reasons that are less selfish than the original reasons.”

  “That’s reassuring.”

  “Listen,” said Peter, struggling to explain. “I found something else signed by B.B., not a painting but more of a . . . a document. It was in a house that I’m pretty sure your mysterious Cornish scholar visited, only I don’t think he saw this item.”

  Liz leaned forward, a glint in her eye. “What sort of document?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “I thought you trusted me,” said Liz.

  “I do,” said Peter. “It’s just that I need to find out more about this . . . this document before I tell anyone. This may sound crazy, but there’s a chance it could be dangerous to know about.” Peter thought of the cold eyes of Julia Alderson and the cold steel of Thomas Gardner’s shotgun. If the Pandosto was a forgery, he could imagine those two doing a lot to keep that fact a secret.

  “It sounds less crazy than you think,” said Liz. “I had a call this morning from my Cornish scholar. I can’t call him because he doesn’t have a phone, but every now and then he goes into town and rings me from the phone box. He said he sent the final manuscript to me by overnight post, but I’ve never heard him sound so . . . well, so jittery. He told me he was afraid.”

  “Of what?” asked Peter, the image of Thomas Gardner, prowling the wilds of Cornwall with a shotgun slung over his shoulder, springing to mind.

  “He wouldn’t say. He just said he kept hearing strange noises and he was worried. I told him he was being paranoid. He lives on the edge of Bodmin Moor, for Christ’s sake, of course he hears strange noises. I mean as big a deal as the manuscript about B.B. is to him and me, most of the world will never even notice it. And as jealous as they’ll be, no one in the Historical Watercolour Society has the imagination or the balls for academic espionage. Still, I’m worried that he should be so scared.”

  “You mean Graham?” said Peter.

  “How did you know his name?” said Liz.

  “Like I said, a lot has happened since Friday,” said Peter, smiling over the rim of his wineglass.

  “There’s more than one Graham in Cornwall,” said Liz, returning Peter’s smile.

  Graham’s manuscript may not be a big deal to the world at large, thought Peter, but a book filled with Shakespearean marginalia would be front-page news. And if the
book Liz was about to publish somehow threatened that news, it might be worth . . . well, making strange noises over. “Look,” he said. “I’ll make a deal with you. If you’ll tell me how to find this Graham, I’ll go and check on him. I’ll ask him what I have to ask him, but I’ll also do my best to be sure he’s not in any danger. And I promise you, as soon as I think it’s safe, I’ll tell you about what I found. You’ll be the first to know, and I guarantee it’s a really good story.”

  “You’ll go to Cornwall today?”

  “My car’s at Heathrow—it’ll be evening by the time I get down there, but yes, I’ll leave as soon as we finish lunch.”

  “And if you think he’s in danger, you’ll get him to come up to London?”

  “Of course,” said Peter.

  “It won’t be easy. He’s a stubborn son of a bitch.”

  “Just tell me his surname and how to get there and leave the rest to me,” said Peter, confident that one look at the Pandosto together with hearing the account of Thomas Gardner’s temper would convince anyone to move someplace safer than rural Cornwall.

  “After lunch,” said Liz, as the waiter set two bowls of pasta in front of them. “I’ll tell you after lunch.”

  “Really?” said Peter, who had expected more resistance.

  “Let’s get back to your other problem, shall we, Peter?” she said.

  “My other problem?”

  “You know, the fact that you . . . how did you put it, that you might like me.”

  “Oh, that,” said Peter, twirling pasta on his fork as his appetite evaporated once more.

  “You obviously haven’t gotten over Amanda.” Peter nodded his head. “And since this is a lunch between friends, you can talk to me about her. So tell me something about the late Mrs. Byerly.”

  Peter saw Amanda standing across the restaurant smiling at him. She wore a full-length black dress with a tight-fitting sequined bodice. Peter had forgotten that dress. He supposed the Italian opera music playing in the background must have resurrected it. “Tell her about the opera,” Amanda mouthed to him, before fading away.

  “I’d never been to the theater before I met Amanda,” Peter began, still looking over Liz’s shoulder at the spot where Amanda had appeared. “My junior year she took me to a student production of The Mikado—she loved her Victorians. And it was fun. About halfway through the second act, I actually noticed I was having a good time, which is unusual for me in a roomful of people. So we started going to the theater. First it was just student shows at Ridgefield, then once in a while a trip into Raleigh to see a professional touring production. I remember our first Shakespeare. I was already infatuated with the plays, but I’d never seen one on the stage. It was A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I’d never laughed so hard in my life. It just put me in even greater awe of Shakespeare that he could write jokes that would make me laugh four hundred years later.

  “Anyway, we were planning a summer visit to London about three years after we were married, and Amanda read that the English National Opera was performing The Marriage of Figaro. Now Amanda had always loved Mozart and Figaro, but she’d never been to the opera. When she found out that they were doing her favorite opera in London, she called up and got tickets, and then she went to her mom’s and borrowed her grandmother’s old records of Figaro with the libretto, which she must have listened to every night for a month. She wanted to learn all the Italian, she said, so she could enjoy the performance the way the composer intended.

  “So we get to London, and Amanda can’t wait to go to the opera. She’s bought this beautiful full-length gown and she’s rented me a white-tie outfit. We’re way overdressed, but Amanda doesn’t care. We’re sitting in a box and she’s so excited and the lights go down and the overture plays and Amanda is gripping my hand with anticipation. Then the curtain opens and there they are—Figaro and Suzanna—and Figaro is measuring the room for his marriage bed and he sings. ‘Five, ten, twenty, thirty . . .’

  “Well, Amanda’s hand just goes slack. I glance over and there’s this look of horror on her face. She’s been learning Italian for the past month and they’re singing the opera in English. Now I’m trying hard not to laugh because I love her so much, but there’s also something genuinely hilarious about this moment. And then I start to watch the opera—which I have to say I was more or less dragged to. And I can understand what’s going on because it’s in English. And I start to get into it and pretty soon I’m laughing at the jokes and having a really good time.

  “When it’s over, before I even know it I’m on my feet clapping, and I feel Amanda sort of reluctantly standing up giving a perfunctory ovation, but I just can’t help myself. I shout ‘Bravo’ with everybody else and I’m feeling great in my white tie—like I was born to be a gentleman in an opera box. When the curtain calls are over, I look and Amanda is sitting down again and she’s crying. So I sit down and take her hand, and I tell her I’m so sorry they ruined her favorite opera and maybe we can go to Milan sometime and see a proper production. And she looks at me and she says—and I’ll never forget this—she says, ‘It’s not that at all. I’m just so happy that you had a good time.’ She had spent hundreds of hours getting ready for this night and from her point of view Mozart had been butchered, but what she felt when it was all over was happiness that her reluctant husband had actually enjoyed himself. That’s love.” Peter swept away a tear with the back of his hand as he looked at Amanda’s glistening cheeks across the room. As she faded away again, he realized he had never told anyone that story—not even Dr. Strayer.

  “God dammit,” said Liz, yanking Peter back to the present. “You made me cry. That wasn’t supposed to happen.” She wiped her eyes with her napkin. “It must be hard without her,” she said.

  “Yes,” said Peter. “It is.” It felt good to admit—not to pretend that everything was okay. He reached across the table and grasped Liz’s hand. “Thanks for listening,” he said.

  Peter’s pasta remained uneaten in his bowl when he signaled for the bill. Liz wrote out elaborate directions and drew a map to help him navigate his way to the home of Graham Sykes on the fringes of Bodmin Moor.

  As they walked toward Russell Square, Peter suddenly remembered that in his haste to leave the British Museum, he had forgotten to look up William H. Smith.

  “Do you know anything about W. H. Smith?” he asked Liz.

  “Well, they don’t carry the sort of books we publish, I know that much,” said Liz.

  It took Peter a moment to realize that she was talking about the chain of newsagents. Funny that he should have posed the question that way instead of saying William H. Smith.

  “Actually I was talking about a person,” said Peter. “William H. Smith. I think he may have been a Victorian.”

  “The monarch of the sea,” said Liz.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I think his father started the family business—selling newspapers in train stations. But it was the son who made W H Smith a household name. He was a member of Parliament and became First Lord of the Admiralty, I think under Disraeli. I guess he was generally seen as a wealthy landlubber who didn’t deserve the appointment, so Gilbert and Sullivan made him into Sir Joseph Porter in H.M.S. Pinafore. You know, ‘I am the monarch of the sea, the ruler of the Queen’s Navee,’” Liz sang. “We had a talk about him at the Victorian Theatre Society a few months ago.”

  “How many societies do you belong to?” said Peter.

  “Several,” said Liz, laughing.

  “I wonder if it’s the same William H. Smith. The one I’m looking for was probably interested in Shakespeare.”

  “I’ll ask Lawrence for you,” said Liz. “Lawrence Smith—he’s the one who gave the talk. I think he’s a great-nephew or something.” They were now standing outside the Russell Square tube station, and Liz went over the directions to Graham Sykes’s house once more.

 
“He’s a night owl,” she told Peter, “so go see him when you arrive no matter how late it is.”

  “I will,” said Peter. Without realizing it had happened or knowing who had initiated it, he found himself in a hug with Liz.

  “And call me,” she whispered in his ear. Then she turned and disappeared around the corner, leaving Peter to descend into the windy depths of the tube alone.

  London, 1875

  In a sumptuously appointed office above his retail premises just around the corner from St. Paul’s, Benjamin Mayhew sat at a wide desk composing correspondence. He had expected a visit from Phillip Gardner, his most profitable client, but one o’clock had come and gone and there had been no sign of the collector. Perhaps, thought Benjamin, his train had been delayed.

  Benjamin had worked in the book business for over twenty years now, and had built a wealthy clientele who made him a very good living. He well remembered his first encounter with his favorite client, William Henry Smith—the businessman who now served as secretary to the treasury under Benjamin Disraeli. Smith had indeed been intrigued by the book on Ireland’s Shakespeare forgeries and had, over the years, been a steady customer. Though he was by no means a collector, Smith was an intelligent and ambitious man with a level of intellectual curiosity that made good books an essential part of his life. He had become more than a client to Benjamin; he had become a friend and a man for whom the bookseller bore the utmost respect. Benjamin had provided several volumes of source material for Smith’s 1857 book, Bacon and Shakespeare, an expansion of the ideas set forth in the pamphlet that Benjamin had read all those years ago on the train to Oxford. Benjamin had a copy of this book, presented to him by the author, on an honored shelf in his office. The two men had enjoyed a good laugh together when, at Smith’s club, the author had read aloud the second chapter of the book, titled “A Brief History of Shakespeare.”

  William Shakespeare’s is indeed a negative history.