“Last time, one of those jackasses tried to play the drums and punched a hole in it before I could get to him,” he told me darkly. “Want a ride to your car?”
“Oh, geez, the car,” I said to Jeremy. We hopped into the passenger side of Colin’s truck. The upholstery on the seat was so worn that I could feel the springs under my rump. He quickly drove us around the corner to our car, and Jeremy and I hopped out.
But just before Jeremy started the engine, the front door of the bar was flung open. A few of the posh young men were literally chucked out on their butts, but several of them came out walking. They paused in the light-spill of the open front door, dug into their pockets and suddenly began to fling paper money and coins onto the floor of the pub. There was quite a pile of cash when they were done.
“For any inconvenience we may have caused!” shouted one of them contemptuously as they staggered off into the night. A few of them paused by a street lamp to vomit. As we drove off they waved and yelled something incomprehensible.
“I suppose, because of your car, they think we’re ‘their kind’,” I said disgustedly. “Who the hell are these creeps?”
“Tomorrow’s leading politicians and businessmen,” Jeremy muttered.
“Where are the cops?” I demanded.
“Oh, they’ll show up, but people here undoubtedly settle their own scores,” he replied somewhat ominously. “One way or the other, these kids will surely be gone before the night is done.”
And indeed there was a general screech of cars roaring off. As we pulled up to the hotel, Jeremy said gently to me, “I suggest we head back to London tomorrow. I want to see what I can do about getting some kind of injunction to put a temporary stop to the sale of Beryl’s house and the land that Harriet bought.”
“I could check out Trevor’s Shakespeare scholar,” I agreed. “Maybe we can finally get somewhere with this Elizabethan lodger who calls himself Will!”
Part Three
Chapter Thirteen
Trevor’s Shakespeare expert was from Cambridge University, but he arranged to meet me at the famed British Library in Bloomsbury. His name was George Blendale, and apparently he had enough “pull” to have secured a private conference room so that he could show me some of the library’s collections, and, of course, the original fragment that Trevor found at Grandmother Beryl’s house.
From the outside, the library surprised me, for I had expected a venerable, old-fashioned landmark building. Instead, it was a “modern” structure designed in the 1970s by an architect who basically went bust before the job was done. It took about twenty years and hundreds of millions of pounds to complete. Even so, it is said that Prince Charles described the architecture as, “A collection of brick sheds groping for significance.”
Furthermore, when I crossed the courtyard I was confronted with a strange, gigantic bronze sculpture of poor Isaac Newton all crouched and hunched over a compass, just like some depressed geometry student. I would have much preferred to see Newton sitting back, relaxed and contemplative, under a tree with an inspiring apple plopped in his lap.
However, once inside the library, I was delighted. For here were zillions of books in old-fashioned bookshelves; but instead of being crammed into dusty, dark archives, these shelves stood grandly in big open rooms made with white travertine marble, where wonderful windows and glass domes let in plentiful streams of light.
“Penny Nichols?” said the man sitting all alone in a quiet conference room that I peered into. “I’m George Blendale,” he added, awkwardly rising from the table behind which he’d been sitting. Instantly a sheaf of papers slipped off his lap and out of their folder, scattering to the floor.
When I stooped to help him recover his lost pages, he seemed embarrassed and quickly said, “These are just my notes. The archival material is on the table.”
George Blendale was a tall man who appeared to be both athletic and gawky at the same time. He had thinning brown hair, a beaky nose like an intelligent bird, and small, wire-rimmed eyeglasses. He wore a brown suit with a vest, and I noticed that his shoelaces were a bit askew. His manner was perpetually nervous, but as we conversed I realized that this was just his normal way of being and had nothing to do with me or the subject at hand.
“Now then, shall we get right down to it?” George asked, and then, as an afterthought, added, “We can’t bring coffee into this room. Do you want to stop in the cafeteria before we begin?”
I told him I was fine, and he seemed relieved. Then he said, “Trevor of course told me about your interest in the fragment that he gave me. I thought I’d begin with a brief overview for you. You see, there is really very little that we know for sure about Shakespeare. Actually, you can pretty much say it in a sentence: he was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, journeyed to London where he became an actor and playwright, went back to Stratford, wrote his will and died.”
“And married Anne Hathaway,” I reminded him. I’ve noticed that for some reason, scholars are a trifle unkind about Shakespeare’s wife, usually pointing out that she was a bit older than he was.
“Hem, yes,” George said, opening a few large folders and tall bound books, and passing them to me to illustrate his speech. “Well, although we believe we have handwriting samples of his signature, we do not as yet have a single page of play manuscript in Shakespeare’s handwriting. We have other documents to compare it to, some legal, for instance.”
“The fragment Trevor gave you has a signature,” I pointed out. “Does it match?”
“Ah!” George said, and now he opened up another folio and took out a single sheet. I instantly recognized it from the copy that Trevor had shown Jeremy and me.
“I didn’t realize how different the original paper is,” I marvelled, gazing at it.
“Indeed,” George said. “In a way, we are fortunate that this fragment was not written on the sheepskin of his day, where the ink is more easily rubbed off. What we have here is definitely authentic sixteenth-century paper made of rags. It has no acid in it, which accounts for its durability.”
“So, the paper is the real McCoy. Is our signature a match?” I asked curiously.
“Hem, well, you must understand that Elizabethans were not as consistent with their handwriting and spelling, which makes it much harder to definitively say yes or no,” George explained. “Actually, even among the documents that we are fairly sure of, Shakespeare seems to have spelled his name differently on various occasions. So, I would be willing to entertain the possibility that the signature on yours could be real.”
This was hopeful, but hardly a ringing endorsement. I don’t know if it was simply George’s droning voice, or his abashed manner, or just the way he kept hedging his bets, but I found myself feeling uncharacteristically impatient. “Has anyone examined the signature besides you?” I asked bluntly.
George had been gazing meditatively at the fragment, and now he seemed to be jolted awake, as if he’d been giving a lecture on a somnolent afternoon and the recess bell had suddenly rung.
“Oh, dear me, yes,” he said. “I have, at Trevor’s behest, called upon a panel of experts to examine this, and they are still in progress. We have consulted a handwriting analyst, various esteemed senior archivists and Shakespeare scholars who I assure you are the very best in the field. We have called upon the most renowned museum curators and language experts.”
“So,” I prodded, “what does everybody think? Does this seem like Shakespeare’s verse?” I asked, pushing beyond the whole signature question.
“To be honest, the verse is a bit rough,” George admitted, “but then, that is the very meaning of a first draft, is it not?”
He seemed to find this funny, but I didn’t. He saw that I was a bit annoyed, and he quickly went on, “I could not definitely say if this was or wasn’t written by Shakespeare. I do agree with Trevor that it is of interest, for it does seem to hark back to Cardenio and Don Quixote. Particularly the line about the lady fair loved tales of knights. Also, the
line A hazard of new fortunes is a phrase that Shakespeare used in the play King John. So, there may be some validity to it . . . or else it is a cunning forgery.”
For one wild moment I envisioned Trevor in his lair, devilishly and laboriously writing out the verse himself. But then I dismissed this picture.
“And there is the aspect of The Earl’s Players,” George was saying, “which I find intriguing. It could perhaps lend credibility to the story.”
“When do you think we’ll have some kind of conclusion about this?” I asked eagerly.
“Oh, ho, you must understand, there are so many people involved who hopefully will come to a consensus, which is not easy to achieve in the world of Shakespeare scholarship in particular, and academia in general. They will doubtless end up framing their answer in terms of ‘probability’.” At my blank look he patiently explained, “That is, they will probably express their conclusions by saying: Is it more likely or less likely to be authentic?”
Now I was getting the gist of what he was trying, or perhaps not trying, to tell me.
“You don’t really know, do you?” I asked.
“No,” he admitted. “But in time, perhaps in a few years or decades, we may at last find out the truth.”
Chapter Fourteen
“ I think Mother Nature is going to be our best ally,” Jeremy informed me on the telephone.
I had been walking to the Tube station when he rang me on my mobile. Now I was standing right outside the University of London at Bloomsbury. Jeremy had been working all morning with his law associate, Rupert, on getting an injunction against the sale of Grandmother Beryl’s house and the town property around it.
“If we can find some endangered species or a vernal spring or something that would be affected by development, we might possibly hold up the sale while our environmentalists do an impact study,” Jeremy explained. “At the very least, that will stall things for a time.”
“Thanks,” I said. “You’re my knight in shining armor.”
“Of course, milady,” he replied. “So how did you make out with your Shakespeare expert?”
“The good news is, he was impressed with the manuscript fragment and what Trevor told him, enough to start assembling a panel of experts to look into it,” I reported. “The bad news is, he says that many egos are involved, and it could take—and these were his parting words—‘years or decades’ to come to any definite conclusion.”
“I imagine that’s true,” Jeremy answered.
“But we haven’t got years,” I said passionately. “You and I are just going to have to come up with more evidence to clinch this thing.”
“That won’t be easy,” Jeremy warned. “So let’s not get Harriet’s hopes raised too high. Whoops, Rupert is signalling me now. I gotta go. I have a meeting with a judge and I’ll have to turn off my phone for awhile. Just wanted to give you an update.”
“Thanks. Bye,” I said quickly.
I put my phone away and continued walking down the street. It was a soft, pretty day and I felt like getting some air. When I turned the corner I came upon a little square that looked suddenly familiar.
“Of course! This is where Simon Thorne lives,” I muttered to myself.
It was here that I’d first met Aunt Pen’s music-hall partner. The kindly old gentleman had helped me to literally connect the dots in my family tree. He’d patiently explained my Aunt Pen’s life to me, in a way that no family album or genealogy research ever could. That was how I figured out the whole story behind not only my inheritance, but Jeremy’s family secrets.
Now, as I approached the charming green park, I smiled in recognition at the pretty gnarled sycamore trees whose arms reached out to one other overhead, like old-fashioned dancers doing a minuet. The park was ringed on all four sides by neat old houses with brightly painted front doors. Simon had told me that the homeowners rented bedrooms to dignified but cash-strapped lodgers, mainly students and, in Simon’s case, working actors. It was a magical little square, one of the last quirky holdouts of bygone times, a cozy storybook place from another century, quiet and elegant.
I went up the short flight of steps to Simon’s front door and rang the bell, tentatively at first; then, when no one answered, I rang a second time. I frowned. The last time I was here, the door was painted a bright purple. Now it was a mild-mannered beige.
I heard rapid, forceful steps, as if someone were rushing down a flight of indoor stairs. A moment later, the door burst open and a man in his twenties, dressed in navy-blue sweatpants and matching jacket, came barrelling out. He looked as surprised to see me as I was to see him.
“Hallo,” he said briskly as he locked the front door behind him while still jogging in place. “Looking for someone?”
“Simon Thorne,” I answered, forced to follow as he jogged down the stairs. “Doesn’t he live here?”
“Sorry, no,” the man said definitively, and he bounced away.
I stood uncertainly on the sidewalk, for I did not have Simon’s telephone number on my phone’s address book. I would have to go home to dig it up and find out where he’d gone. I’d hoped that Simon, with his knowledge of the theatre and his endless Rolodex, might be able to help me in search of Shakespeare. Now I found myself pushing away the dreadful thought that he might have died.
Just then I had an odd feeling that I was being watched, and I glanced around in time to catch sight of a woman staring at me from the house across the square. There was an aspidistra plant in the window, which the woman hastily retreated behind. This, of course, was absurd, for I could still see her behind it.
A moment later, her front door opened, and she came out with a leashed miniature bulldog. The dog was dressed in a plaid sweater that matched her own, and he had such little legs that he had to walk very, very fast to catch up with his curious mistress.
“Can I help you?” she called out in the sort of tone that always has so little to do with being helpful and everything to do with being a busybody.
“I’m looking for Simon Thorne,” I said. “I’m a friend of his. Do you know where he is?”
“Simon? Oh, he’s gone,” she said with a certain smug satisfaction. “Took ill and collapsed right here on the sidewalk. They carted him off to the hospital and he hasn’t been back since. His nephew came and took him to a care home, and sold the house. My daughter visits me every week,” she boasted, and at first I didn’t get the connection, until she added, “Sorry to think of Simon all alone now. It’s what comes of never marrying nor having children of his own.” This, I suspected, was her way of criticizing Simon not only for being gay, but for being an actor and, worst of all, just being different.
“Do you know the name of the nursing home?” I asked quickly, not wishing to encourage her to volunteer anything more of her esteemed opinion. Without hesitation she gave me the name, and I used my phone to locate it. The home wasn’t very far from here; if I took the Tube it would be only a few stops away.
The nursing home was on a street of several depressing grey concrete buildings that had been erected decades ago as public housing and designed by an architect who clearly never expected anyone he loved to occupy any of his creations. It was a utilitarian series of identical, dreary structures, which would serve only to remind you how hopeless your prospects for happiness were. The care home took up the three biggest of these buildings.
Some of the other buildings were apparently still residential units, for they displayed a few halfhearted attempts to make them bearable; one even had a series of concrete balconies, which sported folding chairs and a couple of barbecues. There were signs on the corner indicating that a hospital was just around the block, so I imagined that this was why the nursing home was located here. The ground floors of the buildings across the street housed the offices of a radiologist and an osteopath; and it also did not escape my notice that there were two competing funeral parlors there as well.
“I suppose it could be worse,” I thought to myself. “The
home could overlook a graveyard.”
Things did not improve inside. It began with the smell, which reminded me of my high-school biology lab that reeked of things pickled in formaldehyde. The walls were painted a peculiar shade of institutional green, which makes you think of the worst pea soup you ever tasted. The lighting overhead was both glaring and yet cast a limited brownish-yellow glow that left parts of the corridors quite shadowy. I had to walk past two metal counters that looked as if they were meant to be reception desks, yet no one was there to greet me or stop me.
Finally, halfway down the long hallway, I came to another reception desk, this one occupied by a security guard in a grey uniform. He was on the telephone and did not put it aside when he saw me. I took this as permission to walk right past him. That roused him.
“Sign in, Miss!” he shouted, gesturing toward yet another steel-grey desk where two nurses’ aides were having an animated discussion over a lunch take-out menu. When I approached and gave them Simon’s name, they shoved a grubby guest book at me, where I had to sign my name and note the time of my arrival. They told me Simon’s room was number 302.
As I stepped into the elevator, I was joined by an aide pushing a wheelchair containing an elderly woman swaddled in blankets who was moaning incoherently and non-stop for the rest of the ride. I was glad to escape at the third floor, but now the corridor stank so strongly of antiseptic that I felt myself choking on it. I wondered how on earth anyone could bear to be here for an hour, let alone an entire workday or for life. As I hurried onward, I passed a janitor with his cart of dirty mops and buckets; and beyond him were several laundry trolleys loaded with soiled towels and bedding.
I turned the corner to another corridor, which was lined with various elderly people struggling to make their way with the assistance of metal walkers. One or two patients were accompanied by a nurse, and a few were attached to various feeding tubes and bags. There were some residents in wheelchairs that had been parked into corners, and as I passed, the poor souls looked up at me hopefully and then became visibly disappointed upon realizing that I had not come to see them.
A Rather Remarkable Homecoming Page 11