The Archivist Read online

  She smiled at the thought, it reminded her of something which last year had been incredibly painful, but now struck her as comical. She had begun to suspect her boyfriend’s infidelity when she realised he had been for a pedicure. Was her awareness of her own toenails a sign that her restless companion was stirring again? It had settled prior to her divorce, but when she met Paul, the thrill of a younger lover projected it on to a higher plain. Here was a man who had not witnessed the compromise of her sexuality through childbirth. He met her when she was no longer responsible for Claire’s daily care or happiness, when she no longer felt frustrated with herself or with life, and when, after a series of serendipitous house sales, she was comfortably financed, but the relationship was accompanied by such nervous energy and suspicion that the price eventually became too high and she handed back to him the burden of his delicate psyche. Although highly sexed men undeniably liked a lot of sex, they usually liked it with a lot of different woman.

  ‘When did you start to dislike Paul?’ she had asked her daughter when she had finally been strong enough to end the affair.

  Claire had looked surprised then rolled her eyes at her mother’s stupidity. ‘When he started to be horrid to you, of course.’ Claire was right – it had been a stupid question.

  Sam dressed quickly to retain the heat of her bath. She fastened a long necklace round her neck, wrapped and arranged a scarf above it and then slung her glasses chain over both. She had enjoyed excellent eyesight for the first forty years of her life before it started to deteriorate. When she could no longer hold the menu far enough away to render it legible, she found a pair of tiny reading glasses in a shop in Paris which were so chic they invariably provoked comment, but within the next few years she found it increasingly difficult to do her job without spectacles. Finally she could look back and understand her father’s hysteria about his ageing eyesight. It was dawning on her late in life that elderly people were not a race apart, and she calculated that when her father was obsessing about the inadequacies of spectacles he must have been the age she herself now was. He had been dead for nearly thirty years, but she vividly remembered him soaping his spectacles with washing up liquid and rinsing them under scalding water before buffing them with a clean handkerchief, and, as she followed a similar routine herself, she wished she had appreciated the gift of being able to read ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ on the top of a tap without first finding her spectacles.

  Bunty intercepted Sam on her way to BS’s office. ‘Not looking for BS, I hope,’ she said.

  ‘I was.’

  ‘He had a bit of a do last night.’

  ‘What sort of a do?’

  ‘Poor chap collapsed in the undercroft, had to be rushed to hospital. Terrible business. The ambulance took an age to get through the snow.’

  ‘Oh dear, I’m sorry to hear that. Is he at home again?’

  ‘Heavens no! He’s still in hospital. We’ve no idea when he’s going to be fit enough to come back, but as luck would have it, we were talking only yesterday, and he was saying that because of his heavy workload he thought Noel could deputise for him and give you any help you may need. Noel doesn’t usually come in today, but I’ve called him and he should be in shortly, and Maureen has handed BS’s keys into the office.’

  ‘Maureen?’

  ‘Didn’t I say? She found him, and a good job she did. She was on security for the last tour and noticed that the door down to the undercroft was open, went down to investigate, and there he was, the poor old fellow, lying in a heap outside the muniments room.’

  ‘Coronary?’

  ‘Too early to say, but Maureen thought he looked very unwell.’

  ‘We are going to push through this wall here,’ Sam explained, patting the plaster with her hand, ‘and extend the exhibition room out into the void above the dining room, effectively increasing the room’s size by two-thirds.’

  ‘Excellent,’ Noel said. ‘Nice views out across the park to the west then?’

  ‘No,’ said Sam. ‘We want to retain the integrity of the sealed chamber, and according to the planners, the lintels you can see above the west terrace were not being used as windows when the Hall got its Grade I listing, so they have to stay bricked up.’

  ‘Potty planning policy working in our favour. That’s a first.’

  ‘Certainly is. Now, I want to retain these original drawers and plan chests and put the smaller items in the drawers for the visitors to pull out and have a look at. It’ll add to the clandestine feel of the place, and also underline this theme I’m building on of the Victorians pushing normal human drives underground which, of course, spawned the rise in pornography.’

  ‘Capital,’ Noel said. ‘Really clever. I had no idea how you were going to make an exhibition out of all this stuff. But isn’t it a bit risky having the things in drawers? People could just help themselves.’

  ‘Oh no – you’ll pull the drawer out, but the pieces and the description will be under glass, maybe acrylic, rather like a boxed picture frame. There’ll be no chance of anyone helping themselves. Also, the exhibits are protected from light and dust and all those other things we curators hate.’

  ‘Like the general public.’

  Sam smiled her assent. ‘Then, once past this sort of Victorian scientist’s-cum-gentleman’s-club entrance, visitors will make their way down to the left and round the exhibition in a roughly clockwise direction. I intend to arrange the cabinet exhibits in chronological order, but as well as the continuous displays running around the walls, the space will be broken up by several large island cabinets of pieces. I can’t really plan much further than that until I’ve gone through the inventory with you.’

  ‘There’s no inventory,’ Noel said.

  ‘No inventory?’

  ‘No, never has been.’

  ‘There must have been an inventory. The earl who created this room, and these cabinets, would surely have catalogued everything as it was stowed.’

  ‘Maybe, but I’ve never seen one or heard of one. It’s all in BS’s head. He’s an encyclopaedia of knowledge.’

  ‘Unfortunately, that particular encyclopaedia has fallen off the shelf now.’ Sam sighed heavily, put her hands on her hips and surveyed the piles of boxes. ‘Blast! That really complicates things. This is going to be a monumental task.’

  ‘I know quite a lot about it,’ Noel said consolingly. ‘And BS had obviously started making a list for you here.’ He picked up a foolscap notepad divided into two columns. ‘This must be a list of things he knows are up here, and these must be things he thinks are down in the muniments room.’

  ‘It’s not all up here?’ Sam was worried.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Noel said cautiously.

  Sam peered down at the spidery writing. ‘He didn’t make much of a start, did he?’

  ‘No.’ Noel stared at the pad, then added, ‘If BS was here, he’d probably be able to dig out some of the lists that visiting scholars made of the things they studied – I think the St Andrews lot made a pretty extensive list.’

  ‘I hope we’ve got more here than the Beggar’s Benison.’

  ‘I’m sure we have – I’m just not sure how much more.’

  Sam scanned the room. ‘What to do, what to do ...’ she wasn’t asking Noel a question. ‘OK, here’s the plan. Until the building work starts, we’re pushed for space. Apparently I can have the music room temporarily while the builders are up here, and removals are booked for the beginning of next week. There’s no point in us unpacking and cataloguing the boxes just yet – they can just go over to the music room as they are. We need to get stuck into the stuff in the drawers, make a note of it, and repack it securely before next week.’

  ‘I thought the drawers were staying.’

  ‘The room needs to be completely gutted first. The underfloor heating’s got to go in, wiring for the lighting, all of that, and the drawers need taking out, restoring ...’

  ‘Thought we were only allowed to ‘conserve’ these days,�
�� Noel said with a cheeky wag of his head.

  ‘These aren’t special enough – they’re much later than the Hall. I’ll make sure they don’t look brand spanking new.’

  ‘Perhaps they should, for this exhibition.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Sam said. She took her laptop out of her case and set it up on the table. ‘Let’s start with this,’ and she held up the Fabergé plate which BS had left lying next to his notepad. ‘Do you know what this is?’

  ‘Pudenda display tray of Peter the Great,’ said Noel.

  ‘Which works how?’

  Noel held the dish at crotch level. ‘BS thinks the Emperor held it in this position and placed his pudenda on it before entering the room, possibly with the royal member covered with a piece of silk until the moment of reveal.’

  ‘BS has quite an imagination.’

  ‘He’s very knowledgeable.’

  ‘So you say. What about this?’

  ‘Pudenda display tray of Catherine the Great.’

  Sam studied the glass platter and conceded to herself that the applied decoration at the centre of the plate could possibly be interpreted as labial. ‘Are you sure?’ she said.

  ‘I’m fairly confident. Have a look at this one,’ and Noel opened a deep drawer and pulled out another plate, simple in design and made of a comparatively cheap material. ‘BS always said that this particular tray belonged to Captain Cook and accompanied him on all his voyages. It is believed to have played an unfortunate part in his demise in 1779, when the natives of Hawaii were grossly offended by the display he offered and promptly killed him.’

  Sam laughed. ‘That can’t be true.’

  ‘BS swears it is.’

  She leaned back in her chair. ‘It’s all very subjective isn’t it? These could just be large serving plates. It’s not like the pewter test platter up in St Andrews. They’ve got the Beggar’s Benison club minutes from 1737 – “Twenty-four met ... all frigged.’’’

  Noel began to chuckle. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, really. But that’s provenance. There’s no provenance here.’

  ‘I’m sure there are papers about the Thomas Lawrence painting over there of the ninth earl.’

  ‘Fair enough. But show me some other pieces. Prove to me that this isn’t some colossal eighteenth-century dirty joke. Because if it is, fine, that’s how we create the exhibition. But we can’t present artefacts on hearsay.’

  Noel opened several drawers in succession, finally picking up a piece of lace work pinned on a velvet cushion.

  ‘What does our archivist say that is?’ Sam said.

  ‘A perineal polisher apparently. The spiel goes that due to the frail nature of the fabrics of which these were made, very few examples have survived.’

  ‘You don’t say.’

  ‘The ninth earl was only able to secure one authentic example – a particularly fine one in Belgian lace thought to have belonged originally to Rabelais and dating back to the sixteenth century. The ninth earl paid the colossal sum of £400 for this particular artefact.’

  ‘Bollocks.’

  ‘Shiny bollocks?’

  ‘Very shiny bollocks. But bollocks all the same. It’s a piece of Belgian lace, Noel, and a badly conserved one at that. Those pins holding it in the cushion are rusty.’

  Noel shrugged in a ‘fair enough’ way and returned it to the drawer. ‘Aha! You won’t be able to argue with this one,’ he said, placing before her a carved framework of scrimshaw, small enough to sit on the palm of a hand. There was an cranked handle made of ivory on one side and the central column was filled with sheets of soft suede on a spindle. It looked like a miniature Rollodex. ‘Clitoral palpator. Turn the handle here and look – the little suede paddles beat away. You can’t argue with that. What else could it have been used for?’

  ‘It is rather charming,’ Sam said, leaning forward for a closer inspection, ‘but without any provenance ...’

  Noel returned to the drawers. ‘Penile stiffener with pearls round the top there.’ He held the object aloft for Sam to see. ‘Lift and girth, all in one.’

  Sam shrugged. ‘Maybe.’

  Noel struck the heel of his hand against his forehead. ‘Of course!’ he said. ‘Come over here – come on,’ and he led Sam to the back of the room, pushed aside a screen of faded baize and whipped a dust sheet from the top of a cabinet with the flourish of a matador.

  The sheet had concealed an ornate box standing on stout conical legs. It was about waist-high, and Sam recognised the intricate marquetry pattern of brass inlaid with turtle shell. It was definitely Boulle work. In the centre, on a raised and ornate piece of gilded woodwork, a deep dark hole disappeared into the depths of the box. Rising above it was a sweep of Boulle work decorated with a small mirror.

  ‘And this is?’

  ‘The brass-bound buggery box.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The brass-bound buggery box, circa 1725.’

  ‘Noel! This could be anything. It could be a writing slope.’

  ‘With that hole? There are remnants of silk and damask around the edge which probably flopped down into the box which BS thinks was filled with sawdust, maybe sand, or even goose down. And these handles,’ he grabbed them and pivoted the box towards his crotch, ‘give you the grip and the mirror in front of your face,’ and he grimaced into it.

  ‘Great imagination. But it could easily be a sewing box, the hole somewhere to push offcuts, or even a campaign shaving table. It could be a dozen possible things.’

  ‘No it couldn’t.’ Noel let the box rock back into an upright position. ‘It was commissioned at the beginning of the 1700s by Peter the Great as a gift to the Danish sailor, Vitus Bering, the chap who found a way through the Bering Straights proving that Siberia and America were not joined by land. Bering took it with him on all his voyages. But later it was acquired by the Scottish pirate, Angus MacDirk, who uttered the immortal word:

  Take these boys away, they split -

  Bring me my Brass-Bound Buggery Box!’

  Sam experienced a combination of frustration and a feeling that she was watching a warm-up act for an end of the pier show. ‘Those are lines from a version of “The Ballad of Eskimo Nell”, Noel,’ she said.

  ‘Based on this.’

  ‘Not a shred of evidence. Pure speculation.’ She took off her glasses and let them swing down on the end of their chain. Running a hand up her face and through her hair, she frowned with irritation – not at Noel, but at the situation. ‘The problem for me is that I can’t curate an exhibition around speculation.’

  ‘It’s only for the general public,’ Noel said. ‘How accurate do you have to be?’

  Sam flung her hands up towards him. ‘You only have to put the wrong medal on a uniform in a television costume drama to bring an avalanche of complaints down on your head. Never underestimate the general public. If I make a single error – a date, the spelling of a name, anything – in an exhibition board, at some point someone will see it and write to the British Museum. Apart from the cost implications of having to redo information boards, the reputation of the museum is paramount. If I create a stunning, compulsive exhibition based on nothing but canards and scandal, Duntisbourne will be a laughing stock, and I probably won’t get to curate another exhibition ever again.’ Noel looked back at her with a dazed expression. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s not your fault.’

  ‘What do you want to do?’ he asked. ‘Carry on, or wait until BS gets well again?’

  ‘I suppose we’ll have to carry on.’

  ‘Then perhaps this will cheer you up,’ and Noel dived into a box and drew out a peniform vase, a gloriously harmonious shape of male external genitalia. Sam smiled. ‘This,’ Noel said, ‘is a bronze copy of a Greek terracotta vase which is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and this,’ he snapped open a letter which had been stowed with the bronze, ‘is a letter to BS from the museum’s curator confirming its accuracy.’

  ‘OK,’ conceded Sam. ‘No
w we’ve got something to put in the exhibition.’

  - 13 -

  Patricia’s voice was the first thing BS heard in hospital, and he opened his eyes to see his wife’s concerned and comfortable old face looking down on his from above. He was in the coronary care unit, his naked chest wired up to a number of monitors. The ward was clean and bright and smelt of male sweat, but he was comfortable and content. He found the drama surrounding his collapse stimulating as opposed to frightening, and was intrigued to recollect that as he swooned he had had a strong conviction that he was dying but felt an incredible calmness sweep over him, a reassuring knowledge that death was the most natural thing in the world, and here he was facing it with no fear whatsoever. And his hearing had been the last thing he lost. He remembered a voice radioing out an urgent request for help. He had slipped into a deep and dreamless sleep from which he stirred when he heard the metallic clatter of the wheels of a gurney trolley coming nearer and the comforting voice of Pugh saying it wasn’t as bad as it looked before he slipped away completely. But after Patricia left the hospital at three o’clock in the morning and the drapes were drawn around to enclose his bed so that he could sleep, he began to remember other things. He remembered a woman’s voice talking to him, but he couldn’t remember what she had said. And he remembered someone struggling with his waistband and the clatter of his bunch of keys. He raised his head, opened a lizard eye and peered over at his bedside table. He was too tired to stir any further and check that he still had his keys with him. He hoped Pugh had locked up the muniments room after he had been taken into hospital. The thought of the inventory sitting on the table made his heart begin to beat hard and fast again, and he sank back on to his pillows. He needed to rest. Little wonder this had happened. He pushed himself too hard.

  The following day he was surprised to be moved on to an ordinary public ward for observations. Patricia arrived with some books and a bottle of squash.

  ‘I don’t know why they’ve put me here, my love,’ he said to his wife. ‘I’m really rather ill.’