The Archivist Page 2

  - 2 -

  The previous night had been a filthy one for driving and Sam Westbrook had left London later than she intended, which meant she hit the rush hour. The rain began as she was inching her way around the North Circular, and by the time she broke free of solid traffic and hit the M1 it was dark and the rain was coming down in stair rods. She had calculated the journey would take her about three and a half hours, but after four she had only reached the outskirts of Birmingham and was navigating her way with difficulty through and out on to the M6. Lorries rose up ahead of her like wraiths, a pall of mist billowing across from their wheels. At Wolverhampton she pulled off at the motorway services to fill up, went inside for a coffee and a sandwich, and rang the number she had been given for a Mr Pugh who was meeting her at Duntisbourne Hall to show her the flat.

  ‘Where are you now?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m near Wolverhampton.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ he said, and she heard him sigh before continuing, ‘well, you’ve broken the back of it. It’s less than an hour from there, I would say.’ There was a pause.

  ‘Can you leave a key for me?’ she asked.

  ‘You’ll never find it on your own. No, stick to the original plan. Come to Dolley Green Gate. I’ll wait up, and I can take you over and let you in. Don’t worry, I never turn in much before midnight.’

  ‘I hope I’ll be there before then.’

  His laugh had the crackle of a heavy smoker. ‘I’m sure you will. Drive safely. Remember, it’s better to be a bit late in this world than too early in the next.’ Nice man, Sam thought as she gathered up the box with the half-eaten egg sandwich and headed back out into the rain.

  She did make it before midnight, but not by very much because she got lost in the town and had to stop at an all-night garage to ask directions to the Hall. The girl behind the glass looked astonished that she didn’t know. Eventually her headlights panned across a gateway. Pugh must have been looking out for her because without her having to get out of her car, he appeared in a lighted doorway. She saw him pulling on a coat and patting the head of an overweight Labrador as if apologising to the dog that a walk was not in the offing. Then he came down the path of the gatehouse, hunched against the rain, raised a hand to beckon to her to follow, and climbed into a four-by-four which was parked on the verge.

  He drove slowly in front of her. It was so dark she could only see his red tail-lights ahead, her own lights picking up nothing on either side, until the car in front slowed and his headlights illuminated a deep stone archway into which they both drove. He stopped and got out of his car. She rolled down her window.

  ‘Mrs Westbrook? I’m Pugh. Nice to meet you. Shame it’s such a filthy evening. Why not leave your car here for tonight? Save getting wet when you unload,’ he said.

  ‘How will you get out?’ She seemed to be blocking him in.

  ‘I can get out in front of you. The road goes round and back through the park. But you’ll have to move it in the morning when you’ve unpacked. You can put it in the staff car park – it’s just through there.’ He pointed up ahead and into the blackness.

  She had just stepped out of the car, her footsteps echoing in the cavern of stone, when the scream of a human voice on the very edge of hysteria exploded out of the air a few yards from the tunnel making her shoot her hand out and grab hold of Pugh’s arm, shaking the torch beam vigorously up and down.

  ‘Who the hell ...?’ Sam breathed.

  Pugh patted her hand and chuckled. ‘Foxes, my dear. Just old Mr Fox. There’s a den out there, down through the woods this side of the lake. Not a country girl then?’

  ‘Absolutely not.’

  There was another screech, this time further away, and Sam tightened her grip on Pugh’s arm. ‘That’s another one, or else we frightened him off and he’s on his way home. Don’t worry, he won’t hurt you. Come on, better get you upstairs and inside.’

  Reluctantly releasing the waxed sleeve, she followed Pugh into a recess which she had not seen even though her car was parked next to it. He clicked a switch up and down a few times and cursed, then shone the torch beam up a flight of stone steps. ‘We’re up here,’ he said. ‘I’ll have a word with Maintenance and try and get that light fixed. Do you have a torch?’

  ‘A torch? No.’

  ‘Oh dear. You’ll need one. I’ll leave you with mine for tonight.’ He took a couple of steps up and Sam went to follow him, but he turned back to her and said, ‘On second thoughts, let me take some of your luggage up. Seems daft to make a wasted journey.’

  Carrying as much as they could manage, they began to ascend, Sam treading carefully. The steps were damp and green with moss near the wall and she thought they might be slippery. At the landing Pugh shone his light up another flight and they continued to the top. Eventually they reached a door which he opened and they entered the flat.

  ‘At least you’re all right for power up here,’ he said, flicking on the switch. The room was large and cold. ‘We laid the fire,’ he pointed over to an open grate, ‘but there’s probably no point lighting it this late. It takes a bit of time to warm the room, and I expect you’ll be turning in soon.’

  ‘I expect so,’ Sam said.

  Pugh carried her suitcase through a large opening to the right and put it on a blanket chest at the foot of a double bed. ‘This is the bedroom,’ he said, ‘as you may have guessed. Housekeeping should have put a hot-water bottle in for you,’ and he plunged his hand under the sheets and felt around. ‘Yes, it’s there. Not piping hot, but it will have taken a bit of damp out of the bed. Awful thing, damp. You should never get into a damp bed – leads to all sorts of problems. Through here,’ he opened the door on the left of the bed but didn’t go in, ‘is the bathroom. And over here,’ he came back past Sam and walked across the sitting room to another door and pointed, ‘is the kitchen. I asked Housekeeping to put a few essentials in there for you – milk, tea bags, that sort of thing. Let’s close these for you,’ and he drew a set of curtains across a large arched window that looked out into darkness. ‘You get a lovely view from this room in the daytime. I’ll put your keys on the dining table here, which you can use as a desk, I expect. And ...’ He cast his eyes around and finished, ‘I think that’s about it. So, how long are you here for?’

  ‘Just a few weeks, I expect – maybe a month.’

  ‘Here to give Mr Moreton a hand?’

  Sam smiled. ‘Yes, I suppose that’s one way of looking at it. Anyway, I mustn’t keep you. It’s late and ...’ she opened her bag to find a tip, ‘... thank you so much for all your help.’

  ‘Don’t bother about that,’ he said, raising a hand. ‘We’re not a hotel.’ He paused for a moment before adding, ‘I’d better get going then. Keep the torch. See you around tomorrow, I expect.’

  ‘Thank you so much,’ she said again as she closed the door behind him. She heard his first few footsteps recede down the stone steps – he was treading cautiously in the dark.

  Sam went into the bedroom to close the curtains, but before she did she looked out of the window. As she watched, a fast-moving light appeared out in the dark, and she guessed this was Pugh on his way back to the gatehouse. She drew the curtains. The fabric was heavy and ornate, the lining had yellowed and perished from years of sunlight. Turning back into the room she opened her case and began to unpack. There was a linen press against one wall and when she looked inside, she saw that the upper part had been converted into hanging space with an eclectic assortment of coat hangers pushed to one end of the rail. The drawers beneath were stiff, and the linen press rocked as she struggled to open them. She proceeded with more care, watching all the time to make sure it wasn’t starting to topple over.

  Next she went through to the kitchen. The strip light buzzed for a moment, then flashed a few times before filling the room with unforgiving brilliance. It reminded her of the kitchen in her parents’ house when she was a child – red formica worktops, a huge fridge from the fifties, so ancient the style was
making a comeback. The handle was large enough for a commercial meat safe and had a keyhole in the side to lock the food away from the staff. She opened the door and its cooling system came on with a shudder and a purr. There was no milk in there. She took the tops off a couple of storage jars near the electric kettle. She found a ginger biscuit in the base of one, soft with age; the other jar smelt of coffee but was empty. There were no tea bags.

  She went back into the sitting room and stared at the fireplace, suddenly feeling profoundly lonely. Balls of newspaper lay scrunched up at the bottom of the grate, a handful of kindling and a few lumps of coal piled on top. She toyed with the idea of lighting the fire to bring a bit of cheer to the room, but at that moment her stomach let out a long extended grumble of hunger and she realised she was ravenous. With a feeling of despair, she sank down on the sofa. It was covered with a fringed shawl, and she knew that if she looked underneath, it would be hiding sprouts of horsehair and stains. She thought about giving Claire a ring; it would be seven in the morning in New York, but when she looked at her phone, there was no signal.

  She wished she was in her flat in Chelsea. She had had a few lonely times there too, but she was always comfortable. She had bought it ten years earlier when the family home was sold after the divorce. The first night she slept there, an extraordinary thought struck her: it was the only time in her life she had lived entirely on her own – after she left home she had shared flats with girlfriends, then she had married, and when her husband left she had her daughter for company. Claire eventually left too and she was surprised to find solitude brought with it a sense of peace. She decorated her flat the way she pleased and filled it with the things she loved. She had compromised all her life, first for her parents, then her husband, then her child. This was the first time she had enjoyed true independence and freedom.

  A year later Claire moved back in. It was only going to be a temporary arrangement, and they enjoyed one another’s company, but as the months passed and Claire’s applications for work in the States failed one after the other, Sam began to wish she had her space back to herself. She couldn’t stop that old sense of maternal duty from splicing right back into place. She began to feel guilty if she wanted to stay on late at the museum; if she arranged a trip to the theatre with a friend, she felt she should ask Claire along. Within a few weeks she was picking up after Claire again, washing Claire’s clothes again, cooking Claire’s meals again, pulling a twenty-pound note out of her wallet and saying, ‘Take a taxi. On me.’ It wasn’t Claire’s fault, she knew that, but what daughter would fight against behaviour that was comforting and familiar? Her role of confidante and counsellor clicked right back into place too, and she paused her favourite television programmes whenever Claire wanted to dissect and reconstruct her husband’s motives for staying out in the States. She comforted her daughter: Jake had more opportunities in New York. But he can get work back here, Claire would counter. Not for the money they offer him on Broadway. Jake was a dancer. At first Sam had assumed he was a gay friend – that Claire was his beard, his cover, his hold on a conventional life, but Claire married him. A lavender marriage? Of course not, Claire responded, angrily. They had a great sex life ... and Sam had called a truce. She believed her. All Claire needed was the right job in a law firm in New York and everything would be fine.

  Eventually everything was fine. Claire found the right job and left for the States. Sam came home the evening she had gone and walked from room to room like a dog looking for a lost pup. She found a T-shirt under the bed which smelt of her daughter, and suddenly missed her with such an ache she fantasised about selling the flat in Chelsea and buying a run-down farm house where Claire and Jake and the children that were yet to come would live. She would have a barn converted just across the way where they couldn’t see one another’s front door, but would be close. New York seemed a long way away. Although Sam missed her daughter, she had her flat back. She ran the washing machine once a week again, washed the dishes by hand and watched what she wanted to on television in the evening, padding into the kitchen when she felt like it to fix herself a sandwich.

  Sandwich ... She had forgotten the half-eaten sandwich in the glove compartment of her car. Springing up and snatching the keys from the table, she opened the door and staggered back. Beyond the small pool of light thrown out from the room there was a wall of darkness so deep it was as if someone had flopped a blackout curtain of thick velvet around the stairwell. For a moment her resolve weakened and she wondered if she could make do with the flaccid ginger biscuit, but she remembered Pugh’s torch, and taking it from the table, she propped the door open to guide her back and stepped out into the darkness.

  The descent of the first flight of stairs wasn’t too bad. Her eyes began to adapt to the dark and the light from the open door above penetrated the gloom further now that she was surrounded by blackness, but when she turned and looked down the next flight, Pugh’s torch wasn’t strong enough to light it right to the bottom. She was amazed at the dark. She had never lived in an environment without artificial lighting before, and felt foolish at her own astonishment. She had never thought of herself as frightened of the dark, but now she teetered on the edge of the abyss with her heart in her mouth.

  ‘Get a grip,’ she said aloud. Her voice in this deathly quiet vitalised her, and she hurried down the steps, her heels echoing on the stone, and pressed the key fob. The car tweeted and turned on its internal light, and she dived into the passenger seat, scrabbled around in the glove compartment for the boxed sandwich, slammed the door and locked it, and was halfway up the stairs again when the car turned off its internal light and she paused, distracted for a split-second by the return of darkness at the foot of the stairs. The fox screamed out across the estate, a quavering start, a rising crescendo and again that edge of hysteria as if provoked by profound fear like a prisoner at the moment he realises his determination not to talk has been broken.

  Sam fled up the stairs, rounded the landing and pounded up the second flight and through the door, slamming it shut and locking it with shaking fingers. She looked down at the sandwich in the box, the crusts curled, the yolk darkened and solidified, and flinging it on to the table with her keys she went through to the bedroom.

  - 3 -

  ‘Well, Mr Black,’ the consultant said looking down at the notes, ‘there’s really very little more we can do for you.’

  ‘You mean I’m going to die?’

  Dr Usher raised his eyes above the rim of his spectacles and frowned at Max. ‘Of course I don’t mean that.’ He rapped the notes with his knuckles and went on. ‘But you are already on every drug we can find to lower your blood pressure, and unless you make some dramatic changes to your lifestyle, you won’t be making old bones.’

  Max didn’t warm to Dr Usher. When he had started to feel ill the previous autumn, he was seen by a younger doctor whom he much preferred.

  ‘Retired stockbroker, eh?’ he had said. ‘Got any hot tips?’

  ‘Never put your money in the stock market,’ Max had replied.

  The young doctor laughed heartily, but his smile began to fade as the cuff around Max’s biceps slackened and he read the dial. He pumped the cuff again, and a third time, then went to fetch Dr Usher. The consultant had peered over the top of his spectacles and watched the readings twice before turning to the young registrar and saying, ‘This man must not leave the hospital.’

  Now, whenever Dr Usher peered over his spectacles, Max felt control slipping away from underneath him as if he was about to lose the contents of his lower bowel. In his mind, Dr Usher had taken on the appearance of the grim reaper, the tattered black cape now a crisp white coat, the scythe replaced by a scalpel, the hourglass by a blood-pressure monitor. The night he checked out of hospital and arrived home with a carrier bag of drugs, Max knew with certainty that he would come and get him. It was too late to collect Monty from the neighbour, the house was empty and cold, and Max sat bolt upright in a chair in the sitting room
, staring into blackness. His hands felt as if tiny spaceships were buzzing around just under the surface of his skin, and he could see his own blood rushing in streams before his eyes. He wanted to get out of the chair and ring his daughter in Bristol to make sure she knew that he loved her before he died, but he was paralysed with fear.

  After about an hour he got bored waiting to die and went and traded online instead, which calmed him.

  Max gawped across the table at Dr Usher. ‘Make dramatic changes? Whatever can you mean?’

  ‘I want you to see the nutritionist again. We have discussed the detrimental effect of salt, but these results make me suspect that you haven’t cut down on your salt intake at all.’

  ‘I love salt.’

  The consultant glared at Max before returning to the notes. ‘And, as I tell you every single time I see you, you have got to give up smoking.’

  ‘I’ve cut down,’ Max lied. The pale eyes flicked up again.

  ‘And get yourself a job.’

  ‘It was the job that put me here in the first place.’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘The marriage then.’

  ‘You need structure back in your life, a routine.’

  ‘At fifty-four?’

  Dr Usher dropped the notes on to the desk with a thump which made Max start. ‘It’s up to you,’ he said. ‘I haven’t prescribed all these drugs so that you can continue with a lifestyle that put you in hospital in the first place. We have caught you just in time, you have a second chance, but if you decide to carry on exactly the way you have been, you’ll be on dialysis within the next couple of years. Do I make myself clear?’

  ‘Crystal,’ Max replied.

  Up until last autumn, Max had enjoyed excellent health. He smoked sixty cigarettes a day and never got a cough, he ate junk food and never put on weight, and he swallowed two packets of painkillers a day to stop himself getting headaches. Looking back now, he wasn’t sure why he took so many painkillers. It had started when he was still married, and he ascribed his headaches to the constant stress of having Sadie as a wife. She went off him the day after the wedding, or that was the way he remembered it, and it was only because of Charlotte that he stuck it out for ten dreadful years. Eventually he surprised his wife by giving her what she had been asking for for ten years – a divorce, and within a few months of sharing custody of Charlotte, the little girl said she wanted to live with her dad because her mum was always out. That was the year he effectively took early retirement, selling his share of Black and Hamilton to his partner Malcolm for a sum sufficiently large that he didn’t need to top it up for several years – at which point he was able to make an income with a bit of online trading. It meant he was at home for Charlotte most of the time, a place he loved to be now that his wife had gone.