The Archivist

by L P Fergusson

  He heard a noise behind him and turned. It was Sam.

  ‘I would still value your opinion,’ she said.

  ‘I’m astonished.’ He continued on through the exhibition, aware that she was walking a few paces behind him, monitoring his reaction. When they returned to the gentleman’s club she took a seat on one of the sofas. He sat down opposite her and gestured towards the table. ‘I see retail are using it as an opportunity to sell.’

  ‘Seemed churlish not to let them.’

  ‘You’ll be off soon?’

  ‘I’m packing up the flat now.’

  ‘I do like this room.’

  ‘It could do with some more pictures.’

  He looked back sharply and saw that she was not teasing him.

  ‘Have you spoken to the earl?’ he said.

  ‘No. But he now has the list.’

  ‘I see.’ BS felt a great wave of ennui sweep through him. He was tired, so tired he had an almost irresistible urge to sink back on that comfortable sofa and sleep. The fury he had felt towards Sam seemed to have melted away leaving him feeling bruised, or perhaps he was too exhausted to summon it up again. He didn’t have the energy to discuss it any further with her, and he pulled himself forward and rose stiffly to his feet, taking his weight on the arm of the sofa and the stick in his other hand. He started to make his way towards the door when she spoke again.

  ‘I don’t suppose you found anything? At home?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Or did anything about reinstating Maureen Hindle?’

  Without turning he waved a dismissive hand in her direction and began to make his way painfully down the spiral stairs.

  His office was empty and he was glad. The lights and the computer were switched off and he left them that way. The confidence he had experienced walking around the village the day before had waned and he was feeling decidedly dejected. If an audience with the earl or the trustees was imminent, he wanted to get it over with. He wondered if he would lose his job and the thought worried him. This post had defined him for so many years, he couldn’t imagine a life without it. He consoled himself with the thought that the same emotion had beset him when he was squeezed out of the Cathedral School, and he had survived that humiliation. What had that girl’s mother said outside the court? Yesterday the cockerel, today the feather duster. He proved them wrong – he had proved everyone wrong, rising like a phoenix from the ashes and becoming archivist to The Right Honourable the Earl of Duntisbourne, the dependable public face of the Hall, the man who had the ear of the earl. He would survive this. He was the earl’s man.

  He stared out of the circular window that looked over the courtyard. He couldn’t settle to any work and he didn’t know how to fill his time – it all seemed so pointless now. He watched the visitors begin to return, sweeping out from the café in two and threes, then in groups to the left of the Hall. A large group of Chinese tourists came into the courtyard from the opposite end, their guide in front holding a bobbing yellow bird on the end of a stick. He could see the flashes of a dozen cameras firing off from the group. What did these orientals do with all the photographs they took, and why did they point up to the sky when they posed in front of a building? He sat and stared out of the window until the dropping sun tinged the base of the clouds over the lake a soft pink, and then he sat bolt upright as the ringing phone clamoured through the tiny office.

  ‘Moreton? Get over here.’

  - 26 -

  Sam was also looking out from her window over the estate. The sun was sinking down behind the Black Mountains and she thought how wild it must be on those lonely escarpments as darkness fell. She had never been a country girl, but she had been a steamy adolescent and had feasted on the writings of the Brontë sisters and Thomas Hardy, and the concept of untamed countryside thrilled her. How lonely she had felt when she first looked out over this landscape all those weeks ago, but how sad she was to be leaving.

  Packing had made her hot and she had pushed the sash window up to let in some of the evening air. The sweet voice of a blackbird echoed across the estate, pure and clear, and from the trees on the other side of the Red Lake she heard the echo of another warbling a reply. She thought about the blackbird who sang each spring from the top of a plane tree which was almost level with the window of her flat in London, and she associated the sound with lightening evenings and the coming of summer. How beautiful the estate must be, she thought, when summer comes.

  With a sigh she turned back to the room and stared at the boxes and newspapers spread across the table in the dining room. She gathered up her photographs and wrapped each one separately. The daffodils she had bought earlier in the week as tight buds had opened, and with regret she pushed them into the bin in the kitchen, emptied her vase, and wrapped that too. She wanted to be on the road early in the morning – she had no desire to witness the downfall of the archivist of Duntisbourne Hall. She had found BS irritating, pompous, obstructive and difficult, and yet she liked the old boy. He had great charm, he had tremendous brio, and his knowledge of the history of the Hall and the family was astonishing. She hoped that the answer to the mystery of the missing objects was nothing more than inefficiency and sloppiness and not the more sinister theory postulated by Max. Either way, the time had come for BS to move on and let younger blood take up the baton, but she regretted her part in his downfall.

  Then she thought about Max. She was leaving in the morning and she hadn’t told him. She had thought it would be easier, less complicated, but now she regretted her decision and the most irritating part of it was that even though she had promised to call him, she didn’t have his phone number. She assumed she would see him in the Hall, but hadn’t – then she had meant to ask Rosemary for it before she departed, but she had left it too late this evening, her mind distracted by the problems with BS. She probably couldn’t even find her way to his cottage if she wanted to and besides, that would show a kind of desperation which wasn’t the case at all.

  She might not feel crazy about him, but she knew she liked him a lot and when they were together, she had that comfortable feeling that he thoroughly liked her too. This was a new experience for her. Historically she had always been attracted to the wrong kind of men, dangerous men, probably – if she were honest with herself – men who needed her help, men she could save, but by definition these were flawed men, insecure men who came to resent their dependence on her and rebel – competitive men who begrudged her success and tried to diminish her achievements. She was a little intimidated by Max – he didn’t need her, he seemed happy with his life, secure and confident. She felt no vacuum in Max that needed filling and yet clearly he wanted to start a relationship with her. Someone had once asked her, ‘What is the greatest turn-on? A man who says “I need you” or a man who says “I love you”?’ Historically for her it had been the former. She found it hard to imagine being with a man who didn’t need her but simply wanted to be with her.

  There was another deeply attractive quality to Max which she had felt but not defined until the evening she took the call from her daughter when he was here, in the flat, and that was the fact that he was a committed father. No man could ever take the place of her daughter. The men she had dated who had children had all been absentee fathers and they interpreted her commitment to Claire as a criticism of their own parenting; while the ones who had no children found Claire’s intervention unacceptable. Max’s attitude to that difficult phone call was one of complete understanding – no need to comment, that’s just the way children behave. How wonderful it would be to have a man in her life who could listen to her problems with Claire without judging her, knowing that she loved her daughter more than any living soul, but at the same time was occasionally driven mad by her.

  And finally he had sent her a powerful but unspoken message – he had quit smoking. She suspected it the last evening he came to the flat and ploughed his way through several bowls of nuts and crisps, but knew it for certain when he came up t
o the exhibition and stood close to her. She didn’t want to ask him, she didn’t want to embarrass him, but she found it hard not to be flattered by it.

  This was all academic now – she was on her way back to London. The exhibition had been officially handed over to the trustees and she must move on to her next project, move back to her flat, to her well-meaning friends who would ask her to dinner whenever a man in their circle was newly dumped and available. It was all so predictable. Duntisbourne Hall had never been like that. She heard a pheasant clatter out a warning in the distance and went to close the window. It was getting chilly.

  It was a beautiful evening as Max made his way along the river walk with Monty who was weaving in and out of the trees to the left-hand side of the path. Since the clocks changed, Max had got into the habit of these evening walks around the estate. It helped to fill in the times when he was in danger of reaching for a cigarette, and it also made him feel closer to Sam. He could see the Jacobean balustrade along the north side of the Hall above the trees to his right and as dusk fell, he liked to imagine that the lighted window he could see glowing yellow against the darkening countryside belonged to her. A song his mother used to sing kept playing in his mind because he was feeling ‘starry-eyed and vaguely discontented’. Spring was here, the evenings were lightening, all his senses seemed heightened, he felt fit and well and happy, but he was also melancholy and wistful. He had felt like this before, but not for many years, and as he could never have been described as a romantic, he resolved to enjoy the evening and the walk and not think about it too much.

  Monty put up a pheasant which stumbled across the path in front of Max and with a raucous cry flapped up into the air and flew low up the bank, gliding down in a shrubbery at the top. Monty gave chase, ignoring Max’s shouts for him to come back, and rushed up the sharp incline on the right towards the Hall. Max struck off the metalled path after him. Monty disappeared into a thicket of dogwood and he could see him spinning around the canes with his nose to the ground. By the time Max reached the thicket he was a bit puffed, but he didn’t have that heaving, desperate feeling he usually had after a short sprint. Perhaps his lungs really were recovering from all those years of abuse.

  ‘Monty! Come here,’ he said, but Monty pressed deeper into the bushes and the pheasant fired up above his head and flew off towards the Hall. Max saw Monty’s spectral shape bomb out of the other side of the shrubbery and he hurried round the bushes and followed after him, enjoying the sense of running without distress. He caught up with Monty in the staff car park because Monty had found Sam.

  Sam had just balanced a box on top of the car while she searched her pocket for her car keys, when out of the darkness on the other side of the car park burst the pale shape of a small dog, panting as it ran towards her. Momentarily she leant back against the car, worried it was going to attack her, but as it neared it looked familiar and it rushed up to her wagging and pleased to see her.

  ‘Hello, Monty,’ she said. ‘Where have you come from?’

  She knelt down, caught him by the collar and looked around in the darkness. She thought she could hear someone running and hoped it would be Max. She had never managed to get used to the Cimmerian gloom of the estate after the sun had set: she didn’t like being out after dark, she heard noises she couldn’t explain, saw shapes shift in the shadows which made her heart miss a beat, felt as if someone was watching her when she locked her car at night and hurried to the foot of the staircase up to her flat.

  And there he was, as familiar to her now as if she had known him for years, and yet different from the way he looked the first time she saw him, when they had stood side by side in the saloon looking up at the Golden Hand of Jerusalem. Her earlier doubts about her feelings were overridden by the deep pleasure she felt to see him standing in front of her.

  ‘Stupid dog. He’s about as obedient as my daughter,’ he said, still panting slightly. ‘Goodness, you’re packing. When are you off?’

  ‘Tomorrow morning. Early.’

  ‘So soon? Weren’t you going to say goodbye?’

  ‘I was, of course I was, but I didn’t have your number.’ Max gave her a disbelieving look. ‘I honestly didn’t. I was going to drop you a line when I got back to London, send it to the Hall.’

  A fox screamed, out on the estate, a screech on the edge of hysteria. Instinctively Sam released Monty and moved closer to Max. She spun round, staring out into the dark, and pressed herself to him for safety. Turning towards him, she caught his scent, fresh from the outdoor air – that hint of citrus she had smelt on his robe but without the reak of cigarettes to overwhelm it.

  ‘You’ve given up smoking?’ she said quietly.

  ‘Ages ago.’

  ‘Was that for me?’

  ‘Of course.’

  The fox shrieked out again and she folded herself into Max’s arms. He lifted her chin and kissed her and he smelt wonderful. For several minutes they were lost to one another, but then she felt Max’s concentration slipping. He pulled away and looked around him to left and right.

  ‘Bull shit!’ he said. ‘Where the hell’s Monty?’ He held her away from him at arm’s length, calling over her shoulder, ‘Where are you? Here, boy!’ Releasing her, he turned and began to walk in a circle, calling. He was now several feet away and he broke into a run in the direction the fox had called. ‘Oh Jesus, Sam, I’m so sorry,’ he called back to her and she watched him disappear back into the night.

  - 27 -

  When Dean showed BS into the smoking room, the earl was standing in front of the fire puffing on a Dunhill International, but he was not alone. At the desk to the side of the fireplace sat Simon Keane, the chief executive, and in front of him lay a file identical to the one Sam had given to BS. Things did not look promising.

  Keane was the first to speak. ‘We seem to have run up against a problem,’ he said. BS didn’t like Keane. He was a cold fish, a tall, gangling sort of man with a dark, saturnine complexion and deep-set eyes. ‘I understand you have seen this list?’ BS nodded his assent. He was aware of the earl watching him. ‘Can you shed any light on the whereabouts of anything here?’

  ‘Not at present, but I have spent the weekend gathering up a number of other items that I have been working on – studying, of course. I must confess that this business has caught me rather by surprise as I was unaware, before I had the conversation with Mrs Westbrook before the weekend, that policy at the Hall had changed.’

  ‘Policy?’ said Keane.

  ‘Well, I have always been given carte blanche to carry on with my study and research in the best way I see fit, and have enjoyed the privilege of full freedom which, over the years, I can assure you I have never abused. I am sure His Lordship will vouch for this,’ BS glanced across at the earl, who did not catch his eye but stared at the tip of his cigarette. ‘However, if this policy of trust is now redundant, and the trustees and yourselves feel – probably quite correctly – that an old-style gentleman’s agreement in the modern world is not sufficient security, I will of course honour that, but it will take me more than a weekend to track down everything on that list. I will need to check down in the muniments room, up in my office, a few locations around the Hall, and all this will take a considerable amount of time. Oh yes, and I will also need to speak to Laurence Cooke.’

  ‘Laurence Cooke?’

  ‘One of our guides. He takes all the photographs for me.’

  ‘Are you telling me,’ Keane said, ‘that there are valuable items on this list that are scattered all around the Hall, as well as some of them in your home and some of them in Laurence Cooke’s home?’

  BS didn’t like the tone of his voice. ‘They’re perfectly safe,’ he said, ‘I can assure you.’

  ‘And what sort of system do you have in place to keep track of things?’

  ‘System?’

  ‘Yes. Where do you log things out? How do you know who has what?’

  ‘All up here,’ BS said and tapped his middle finger on
his forehead.

  Keane frowned at his playful mime. ‘I would have thought, if you know where it all is, a weekend is plenty of time to gather it together. It strikes me as strange that you didn’t bring it into the Hall with you this morning, particularly as Sam Westbrook told you she was handing this list to us today.’

  ‘I’ve had a very busy weekend.’

  Keane sniffed, then turned back to the list and appeared to be rereading it. He moved on to the second page, running his finger down as he read, then looked up at BS. He was still frowning. ‘You are confident that you know the whereabouts of everything on this list? Twenty-five books, eight of which are first editions? Fifteen engravings? A profane painting by Luke Sullivan in the style of Hogarth? A bronze of Leda and the swan?’

  ‘That’s definitely down in the muniments room.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’ve been researching its provenance.’

  ‘A Meissen figurine?’

  ‘Also in the muniments room.’

  Keane removed his reading glasses. ‘I understand from Dean that this figurine used to be in the cabinet in the undercroft along with the other pieces of Meissen, but that it disappeared a number of years ago.’