The Bookman's Tale

by Charlie Lovett

  So there was a reason Liz had not answered her phone. Peter leaned against the door in relief, but was surprised when it swung open and he stumbled into the dim offices. As soon as his eyes adjusted to the light, his relief evaporated. Papers were strewn everywhere, chairs were overturned, and desk drawers lay haphazardly on the floor. The office had been ransacked. Peter ventured farther and found a door with Liz’s name on it. Inside, her office was chaos. It was eerily reminiscent of the scene he had left in Graham Sykes’s studio a few hours earlier.

  Peter knew they had been looking for her copy of Sykes’s manuscript. What he didn’t know was whether they had found it. If so, then any hope of finding out the truth about B.B. through Sykes was probably gone; if not, then Liz was still in danger. He flicked on the light and surveyed the damage for any clues, but the office was in such disarray he could spend hours searching through its scattered papers, and he didn’t have hours. On the floor by the window he found a large desk calendar. On February 21, Liz had written, “Work at home, Bob & S. to IPG seminar.” Work at home. But Liz had not answered her phone at home. Peter felt the nausea and dizziness returning. He riffled through the papers on the floor, looking for anything that had Liz’s home address. He had just picked up an envelope addressed to her at a flat in Hampstead when he heard police sirens outside. He dashed back into the reception area and saw a small red light high in a corner, steadily flashing. A silent alarm, he thought. That meant two things: Thomas and Julia couldn’t be more than ten minutes ahead of him, and the police would be here any second.

  He ran into the hall and was just about to head down the stairs when he heard voices below. In desperation he hit the button for the elevator and was stunned when it slid open immediately. He fell into the elevator, pushed the button for the basement, and held his breath. The doors closed and the lift slowly descended. Peter could hear footsteps clattering up the stairs as he and the police passed one another, separated only by the doors of the elevator. When he was disgorged in the basement, he stood at the bottom of the steps and listened for a moment. Hearing nothing, he slipped quickly up the steps and out the door, past two police cars. As soon as he reached the end of the block and was out of sight around the corner, he broke into a run down New Oxford Street toward Tottenham Court Road. There he could catch the Northern Line for Hampstead.

  Ridgefield, 1986

  Peter had been at Amanda’s bedside for nearly two days, holding her hand and sleeping for only a few minutes at a time, when Sarah and Charlie Ridgefield finally arrived from France. The doctors had kept Amanda unconscious, “So she can use all her energy to get better,” they had said. But this was all they would say about her condition to either Peter or Cynthia. Even Peter’s claim to be Amanda’s fiancé hadn’t helped. Medical information could be released only to family members. Peter was lucky, they told him, that they were letting him stay in Amanda’s room beyond normal visiting hours. Since arriving at the hospital, sleep and food had been incidental, and, in this intensity of focus, even his anxiety had abandoned him. He refused to imagine anything for Amanda other than a full recovery from whatever it was the doctors weren’t telling him.

  —

  “We removed a burst appendix from the patient,” said Dr. Harris.

  “Her name is Amanda,” said Peter. “The patient has a name—Amanda.” Harris had been stern and often downright rude over the past two days; Peter refused to meet his now cheerful demeanor with anything approaching forgiveness. He sat on a sofa in the waiting area, his hand clasped tightly by Sarah Ridgefield; Charlie stood by his wife. Only the promise of finally hearing Amanda’s prognosis had lured Peter from her side. Harris had said it was best to discuss these things away from the patient, even though she was still, as he put it, “sleeping.”

  “Of course,” said Harris, looking at his chart. “Amanda. We took out a burst appendix and there was already an extensive infection.”

  “How can that happen?” said Peter. “How can her appendix just burst?”

  “She did have some symptoms,” said Harris, “according to the young woman who brought her in.”

  “Cynthia,” prompted Peter.

  “Yes, Cynthia. According to her, the patient . . . I mean, Amanda had been ill for two days and was experiencing what she thought was menstrual pain.”

  “And how is she now?” said Charlie.

  “She’s battling a major infection,” said Dr. Harris, adding quickly, “and she’s battling it well. We’ve been keeping her on massive doses of antibiotics and we have every reason to believe that we can wake her up in another day or two. If everything goes well, we’ll still need her here for another week or so, but her white cell count is already much lower. She’s strong.”

  “What is it you’re not telling us?” asked Peter, gripping Sarah’s hand a little more tightly. Harris had been fidgeting with the chart and had not made eye contact with either of Amanda’s parents.

  “It was a massive infection, Mr. . . .”

  “Byerly,” said Sarah gently. “His name is Peter Byerly.”

  “Well, Mr. Byerly,” said Dr. Harris. “As I said, it was a massive infection. It’s not unheard of in cases like this for PID to develop.”

  “PID?” said Charlie.

  “Pelvic inflammatory disease,” said Dr. Harris. “Basically it means that the infection spreads to the pelvic region where it can affect the fallopian tubes and the ovaries.”

  “And did it affect the fallopian tubes and the ovaries?” asked Charlie.

  “We think so,” said Dr. Harris. “It’s hard to be one hundred percent sure at this stage, but I’m afraid it’s very likely . . . extremely likely that the patient . . . that Amanda will be sterile.”

  Peter saw tears slipping down Sarah’s cheeks, and he pulled her to his shoulder, where she wept quietly.

  —

  An hour later, Peter left the hospital for the first time in nearly three days. He had insisted that he be the one to give Amanda her prognosis, and that he would do it when he felt she was ready. The Ridgefields had agreed.

  On the floor of his apartment, under the mail slot, a pile of mail had accumulated in his absence. Peter sat on the floor and sifted through the coupons and sale advertisements, looking for what he knew must be there. He was surprised to find a postcard reproduction of Amanda Devereaux’s portrait on the back of which was written, “Welcome home, Sweetheart. I missed you. All my love, Amanda. P.S. Grandmother missed you too!” Peter’s mind flashed to an image of himself and Amanda, lying naked beneath Amanda Devereaux’s portrait and fumbling with a condom, laughing as they rushed to get the thing in place. That precautions would no longer be necessary suddenly seemed an immeasurable loss to Peter, and, for the first time since arriving at Amanda’s bedside, he was overwhelmed by tears.

  He slumped back against the door, sobbing as he continued to look through the mail until he found what he needed. Clutching the envelope to his chest, he cried copiously for another ten minutes. Amanda had told Peter about needing a good cry now and then, what a cleansing feeling it could bring, but he had never experienced it himself. He still felt a deep sense of loss, but no longer the hopelessness that had been building in him since Dr. Harris gave his prognosis.

  He tore open the envelope and read: “You have been preapproved for a $5,000 line of credit.” That ought to be enough, he thought.

  It felt strange to borrow money from the Ridgefields, but Peter told himself that Ridgefield Bank and Trust was, after all, a publicly traded company. It wasn’t as if he were asking for a personal loan from Sarah Ridgefield. Besides, he felt confident that within a few weeks he could turn the contents of the boxes in the back of the Volvo into more than enough cash to repay the loan. He left the bank, made one stop on the way to the hospital, and was back at Amanda’s bedside less than three hours after he had left her.

  The next day he awoke when Amanda’s hand began to
twitch gently in his own. She opened her eyes, slowly focused on him, smiled, and whispered, in a tone of great contentment, “Peter.”

  Kingham, 1876

  Phillip and Isabel had an agreement: if she needed to contact him outside the parameters of their regular Thursday meetings, she would send a message through Phillip’s bookseller, Benjamin Mayhew. Phillip knew Mayhew would be discreet about passing along messages, and a letter or telegram from the bookseller would arouse no suspicion at Evenlode House, where Mrs. Gardner was usually first to sort through the morning post.

  Phillip was lucky, therefore, that the letter from Isabel arrived in the afternoon post, when his wife was napping, and that he happened to recognize, in the pile of letters that sat on the silver tray in the morning room, the gentle looping handwriting he had glimpsed once on the writing table in Isabel’s sitting room. He snatched up the letter and rushed to his studio where Mrs. Gardner, more scornful of his artistic efforts than even the Royal Academy, rarely ventured.

  Darling Phillip,

  I must speak with you at once. Please meet me at the tearooms, Fortnum & Mason, Piccadilly tomorrow afternoon at three o’clock.

  Your Isabel

  Phillip wadded up the letter and hurled it into the grate, where the fire quickly consumed it. How could she have taken such a risk, when they had made a perfectly good plan? Had she become, suddenly, a fool? Or was she hoping Mrs. Gardner would catch him out, hoping to force his hand? He had told her in the clearest possible terms that there was no hope for a long-term relationship. Though he did not love Mrs. Gardner, he would never consider ending his marriage. He owed it to his family to keep her money invested in Evenlode House.

  He grabbed his topcoat and asked the housekeeper, as he met her on the stairs, to inform Mrs. Gardner that he had been called into London by his solicitor and would be spending the night at his club. When he arrived in London two hours later, he went straight to Covent Garden where he spent a night of debauchery with two women he suspected were mother and daughter. He was determined that when he met Isabel, he would have not a drop of sexual energy left. This, he thought, would remove the one weapon she had against him, and he could properly rebuke her for her actions without being tempted into her bed.

  —

  She was sitting prim and upright at a table near the back of the room, blissfully unaware, so it seemed, of the disaster she could have caused had her letter arrived a few hours earlier. He was further irritated by her demand that they meet in public. When their relationship had been innocent, he had been more than happy to be seen with her in Hyde Park or Kensington Gardens. But once he had something to hide, he became sensitive to the need to constantly hide it. Yet now she insisted on meeting him not just in public but in a tearoom frequented by the social acquaintances of Mrs. Gardner.

  Isabel had her back to the entrance, so he was able to walk up behind her and slam his newspaper onto the table in an attempt to startle her. That she did not even flinch or turn to look at him he took as a bad sign.

  “Good afternoon, Phillip,” she said.

  “Do you have any idea how much trouble you could have caused me?” he spat at her in a whisper as he took his seat. “You’re a fool to send a letter to the house like that.”

  “I don’t care,” she said flatly, gazing toward the window.

  “No, clearly you don’t,” said Phillip. “Nor, I suppose, do you care whose money it is that bought you that diamond brooch you wear all over London.”

  “We have a problem greater than money or diamonds,” she said, still not rising to his venom. It annoyed him that she could remain so placid while he railed at her. He had taken great satisfaction in the imagined fight they would have—his anger prodding her to return fire, the battle waging long and hard, her ultimate capitulation and begging for forgiveness, his leaving her to contemplate her sins before finally returning to her arms a couple of weeks hence. But she seemed unwilling to play her part.

  “Nothing is more important than money,” he said. “You seem to forget that the future of the Gardner family rests on my shoulders.”

  “The future of the Gardner family rests someplace else altogether,” she said, finally turning to meet his eyes.

  “You’ve no idea what you’re talking about,” said Phillip.

  “On the contrary, Mr. Gardner,” she said. “I know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s been two months.” She had not called him Mr. Gardner since shortly after they met, and it unnerved him.

  “Two months since what?”

  “Since I began to carry your child.”

  For a moment, Phillip couldn’t breathe. He was unable to focus on Isabel, on either her face or her figure, even the tea things that arrived at that very moment seemed a blur. All his bluster had been ripped away and he was left with . . . with what? With a child out of wedlock? With the ruination of his marriage, his estate, his family?

  “Are you certain?” he whispered.

  “Quite certain,” said Isabel. “A woman knows these things, as I now discover.”

  “Does Miss Prickett know?”

  “Not yet,” said Isabel coldly. “But she soon must. I will take my confinement here in London.”

  “And what will you tell your parents?”

  “That I have enrolled in an art school.”

  “That seems a bit unconventional.”

  “Don’t you think, Mr. Gardner, that we have previously established my unconventionality?”

  “You seem to have thought of everything,” said Phillip.

  “Not everything, Mr. Gardner. I’ve no idea what the relationship will be between the child and its father.”

  So blindsided had Phillip been by her revelation that it took him a moment to absorb the fact that father referred to him. It was a word he had long ago dissociated from himself. Mrs. Gardner had made plain shortly after their marriage that she would not bear him an heir. His brother’s children would inherit Evenlode House along with Mrs. Gardner’s wealth, and Phillip would have restored the family fortune at the sacrifice only of his own happiness. After all he had given up, nothing could be allowed to interfere with that plan.

  “And how do I know that I am the father?” said Phillip.

  Had the tearoom been more crowded, perhaps she would not have done it; yet she seemed to react instinctively. She slapped him hard across the face, and even though her hand was gloved, he felt a sting of pain in his cheek. He had raised his own hand to return the blow when he heard a shrill voice from beside him.

  “Why, Mr. Gardner, is that you? It is you. I thought it was. I told Mr. Thompson that is Mr. Gardner, you mark my words, I know it is.” The voice belonged to an oversized acquaintance of Mrs. Gardner’s, whose name Phillip had forgotten, if indeed he had ever known it. “I do hope we shall see you and Mrs. Gardner at the Royal Ascot this season. I do so love the Royal Ascot, don’t you, Mr. Gardner? I was just saying to Mr. Thompson how much I enjoy the Royal Ascot. And who is this lovely young lady?”

  The apparent Mrs. Thompson finally stopped for breath and to assess Isabel and await an explanation for her presence at tea with a married man. Almost without thinking, Phillip said, “A young woman from America. My brother has asked me to interview her as a possible governess for his children.”

  “An American governess, how unusual,” said Mrs. Thompson.

  “Yes, well now, if you will excuse me, Mrs. Thompson, I really must get on with the interview.”

  “Of course, Mr. Gardner, of course. I quite understand. Give my regards to Mrs. Gardner, will you, and tell her we shall see her at the Royal Ascot.” Mrs. Thompson headed back across the tearoom, not pausing in her monologue but only increasing her volume. “It was Mr. Gardner. I told you it was Mr. Gardner. He says we shall see them at the Royal Ascot.”

  “So, Mr. Gardner,” said Isabel, when Mrs. Thompson had finally disappeared. “Am I to
remain your brother’s governess, or are we to make other arrangements?”

  London, Tuesday, February 21, 1995

  Since his first visit to London, Peter had loved riding the tube. Amanda always preferred taxis—she said you could see the architecture of the city that way, but Peter claimed the tube was cheaper and, often, quicker. What he liked most, though, was the anonymity. He didn’t have to tell anyone where he was going or make small talk with a driver. And he loved the map. Aboveground, London was utterly confusing, but belowground, in the hands of the exquisite tube map, Peter understood the city.

  As he rattled toward Hampstead on the Northern Line, the adrenaline that had been driving Peter seemed to have worn off, and he slumped in his seat, settling into a dull dread. The train was just pulling out of the third stop when Liz Sutcliffe appeared beside him once again, still twirling her pasta. She spoke not from Peter’s imagination but from his memory. At some point during their Italian lunch, Peter had asked Liz what sooner or later he asked every Londoner that he met: “What’s your tube stop?” He had found this a great conversation starter, and though he often caught Amanda giggling when he asked it, she would later tell him what a good job he had done of initiating conversation. “Tube rescues American from social anxiety,” she would say.

  “Belsize Park,” Liz Sutcliffe said, before popping a forkful of pasta into her mouth and disappearing. Her address was Hampstead, but the closest tube station was one stop closer to central London. If Thomas Gardner and Julia Alderson were only a few minutes ahead of him and going all the way to Hampstead, he might still have a chance to reach Liz first.

  Peter leapt off the train at Belsize Park and found Liz’s street on the tube station’s local area map. He sprinted out of the station and up the hill, realizing that although Thomas and Julia might have farther to go from the Hampstead station, they would be going downhill. He turned into a quiet residential street that led to Liz’s flat and peeked back around the corner and up the hill to see if he could spot Thomas and Julia. He didn’t even notice the parka-clad figure that strode past him, then suddenly reversed and stopped beside him.