The Archivist Read online

  He began to feel ill shortly after Charlotte left for university. It coincided with him reading the information sheet that came with the painkillers and seeing that one of the side effects was headaches, so he stopped taking them that night. Then he started to feel ill, then he lost his appetite, then he started throwing up in the evenings, and sometimes in the mornings too. He told all this to Dr Usher, suggesting to the consultant that all his problems stemmed from giving up the painkillers, but he also mentioned that his daughter had recently left to go to university, that he finally had the house to himself, but felt rudderless. Dr Usher insisted he see a counsellor after he was discharged from hospital, and this irritating woman had some crazy notion that Charlotte leaving home had triggered his illness.

  ‘Women do not find the empty nest syndrome easy,’ she had said.

  ‘I’m not a woman,’ Max had pointed out.

  ‘I was merely making the point that it is not an unusual reaction – particularly as you have had sole responsibility for your daughter for many years – to feel a crippling sense of loss now that she has left, even panic at the thought of being on your own again, without the company or need to care for someone else.’

  Max wanted the session to end, so didn’t give her the satisfaction of telling her that she was right, that he was panicking, that he woke up each morning with a sense of impending catastrophe hanging over him. For the first time in his life he experienced a horrible feeling that he wasn’t going to get out of this alive. Like Woody Allen, he wasn’t afraid of death, he just didn’t want to be there when it happened, and the experience of handing control over to a band of white-coated doctors and well-meaning nurses was terrifying. If there was something really wrong with him he didn’t want to know, but everywhere he looked he found portents of doom. He stopped buying a daily paper because every article seemed to be about ‘High Blood Pressure – the Silent Killer’ or ‘Heavy Smokers More Likely to Die of Bladder Cancer than Lung Cancer’ or ‘Living Alone Shortens Life by Ten Years’.

  One evening early in March, a few weeks after his appointment with Dr Usher, Max was outside the Chinese takeaway having a cigarette while he waited for his order. Monty was sniffing the dirt at the base of the outside step before raising his leg and peeing on it, and as he watched the dog Max thought, Monty never worries about the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything. He never lies awake in his basket wondering if the ache in his side is sinister. Max was not a religious man, but a thought struck him. Was that what had happened in the Garden of Eden? The fruit from the tree of knowledge was a bad idea because it gave humans insight? Monty had immortality, at least as far as he was concerned. At some point in his later years he might think to himself, I feel really rotten, but the moment he slipped off the plate, he wouldn’t be able to think any more, so he wouldn’t know he had died. Max however ... and then he spotted a poster held in place against the window with soiled blu-tack, advertising the start of the new season at Duntisbourne Hall.

  Max was fond of Duntisbourne Hall. Before he went to boarding school in Hampshire he had spent many happy summers exploring the estate and fishing on the lake with his friend Roger Everett, and the thought of those carefree summers blew away his morbid thoughts. He should go back and have a look around the estate again. It was only fifteen minutes up the road from his house, but since his return to the area, he hadn’t driven in through the gates once in nearly fifteen years. He didn’t imagine much would have changed.

  ‘I should take you for a walk there, Monty,’ he said. ‘That would be a change in lifestyle for us.’

  Monty looked up at him and tilted his head to one side, certain he had caught the word ‘walk’. Max bent down and rubbed the little dog’s rough coat, and from this new lower level, he spotted a line at the bottom of the poster: ‘Staff wanted for the start of the new season. Vacancies in all aspects of Visitor Services at Duntisbourne Hall.’ Max was particularly encouraged to see the words ‘No previous experience required.’

  - 4 -

  BS Moreton raised his eyebrows and released the watchmaker’s eyeglass which he had pressed into his eye socket minutes before. It fell to the floor with a click and rolled a few inches before coming to rest against his shoe. This provided him with the diversion he needed, and after bending down to pick it up, he turned his back to Sam and took the opportunity of closing the inventory on the desk and pulling the notepad over the top of it before dropping the gold glans helmet into the drawer along with the eyeglass. When he turned towards her again, he pressed the drawer shut with his buttock and leant back on the desk hoping to achieve a relaxed posture. He wanted her out of here – he needed her out of the sealed chamber, and he had no intention whatsoever of showing her any of the collection.

  ‘My goodness me,’ he said, ‘you certainly gave me a turn. I wasn’t expecting you today at all, in fact. I got the memo about you only this morning from the CEO.’

  ‘Really? We had our final meeting with the trustees just after the New Year.’

  A rich chuckle rose from deep in his frame and he looked towards her with an inclusive expression of exasperation. ‘That’s Duntisbourne for you,’ he said. He pushed himself away from the edge of the desk and looked around for his stick. ‘You know what,’ he went on, ‘I was about to set off and find myself a bit of bait. My wife has me on short commons at the moment,’ patting his belly and nodding at her, ‘and I would love an excuse to abandon that wrinkled apple and pot of cottage cheese she tucked into my rucksack this morning.’

  ‘That does sound grim,’ Sam said.

  ‘And it’s a cold, damp day outside. And the canteen isn’t open at this time of year. What say you we take a trip into town for lunch? The Blue Acorn does a serviceable pie and mash, a different pie for each day of the week.’

  Sam scanned the room and the shelves of boxes, then turned a brilliant smile on him. ‘So what’s Thursday’s?’ she said.

  ‘Thursday’s? Oh, I see.’ BS puzzled for a moment then said, ‘Beef and ale, I fancy.’

  ‘Sounds terrific,’ she replied and he followed her out of the door of the chamber, pausing to lock up again behind him as she made her way carefully back down the spiral staircase.

  Once he had moved her away from the chamber, his spirits began to lift. He accepted Sam’s offer to drive because he very much felt like having a glass of red wine with his meal, and he was doubly pleased with this decision when, as they walked across the gravel towards a sporty green Mazda soft-top, the back lights blinked a welcome to them as the central locking released.

  ‘My!’ BS said. ‘This is very nice,’ and he was rewarded with another glowing smile from Sam.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I gave up estate cars once my daughter left home. I know it may be a bit ludicrous at my age ...’

  ‘Not at all,’ BS said. ‘What a shame the weather’s so poor. It must be fun driving with the top down.’ BS was well known in the village and liked the idea of being spotted in the passenger seat of a sporty green car driven by a blonde. Within a few moment, however, he had another reason to wish he was climbing into the car with the top down.

  Sam had sprung into the driver’s seat, pitched her handbag on to the shelf behind, and started the engine to give the windscreen a blow-over while BS organised himself. He posted his stick into the footwell first and, holding on to the edge of the roof for support, placed his right leg in the car, hopping on the other leg as he tried to find an equilibrium before folding himself in. Unfortunately, he wasn’t flexible enough to bend his head below the level of the roof and almost lost his balance. With a great deal of huffing and puffing he repositioned himself for a different trajectory. He started to back towards the car, folding his body as far as he could as he pushed himself deeper in, clinging on to the edge of the door frame like grim death. He was concerned that he was presenting Sam with an unflattering view of his posterior when, with a final groan, he dropped precipitously on to the seat, knocking his head on
the roof before manhandling his legs in, one after the other. Puffed and panting he smiled triumphantly over at Sam and said, ‘My, this is smart. Oh blow, I can’t quite reach far enough to close the ...’ but Sam was out of her seat and round to his side to save him any more effort.

  As they spun through the country lanes, BS glanced across at his companion. Her careful grooming and style of dress had fooled him into thinking she was a young woman, but glancing down at the hand that reached periodically for the gear lever and back to the steering wheel, he guessed that she was probably somewhere in her forties, although he was notoriously poor at guessing people’s ages.

  ‘So you have a daughter?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, she lives in New York now. She’s a lawyer.’

  ‘Goodness,’ he said. ‘You don’t look old enough.’

  Momentarily he wondered if he had produced this compliment a little early in their relationship, but Sam answered graciously, ‘You’re very kind.’

  Buoyed by this success he said, ‘I have to tell you something rather amusing.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘I assumed you were a man.’

  ‘From the way I dress?’ A wave of anxiety gripped BS. Had he offended her? He looked sharply across at her and was relieved to see she was teasing him.

  ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘I read the memo from the CEO and imagined that Sam was a man’s name. It never crossed my mind that you were going to be a Samantha.’

  ‘Do you have a problem with that?’

  ‘Not at all. In fact, it may surprise you to know that I have spent most of my working life in the company of women. That is, working with women. First of all when I was teaching in Manchester, and then here. No, I’m extremely comfortable in the company of women. Actually, if I’m completely honest, I prefer the company of women to the company of men.’

  Once they had parked in the village, BS co-opted the help of a doughty passing tourist to extricate himself from the car and they made their way across the road to The Blue Acorn. BS liked The Blue Acorn. It had an old-world quality he admired and it smelt of woodsmoke and cooking, which reassured him that the food was home-made, not heated up in a microwave. It was good, honest food and there was plenty of it. He had been right about the day too – it was a beef and ale pie day, and he had a bowl of chips on the side which he dusted liberally with salt. This was a great deal better than an apple and cottage cheese for lunch. He resolved to compensate that evening by eating very little. Raising his glass of Shiraz to Sam, he took a sip.

  ‘Yum,’ he said. ‘That certainly spanks the palate.’ He scanned the pub, taking in the other diners. An elderly gentleman lunching with his wife had been appraising Sam but looked away when he caught BS’s eye, and BS turned back to Sam feeling a swell of pride that he was lunching with an attractive companion and that it had been noticed.

  ‘So, Sam Westbrook,’ he said as they ate, ‘what brings you out to our neck of the woods?’

  ‘Probably the success of the Warren Cup exhibition at the British Museum,’ she said.

  ‘The Warren Cup eh? Fascinating piece of ...’ He hesitated for a moment, then added ‘heritage,’ and as he rattled on about the artefacts found at Sutton Hoo (which was about all he could remember at the British Museum) he wondered what on earth the Warren Cup was, what it had to do with Duntisbourne Hall, and what Sam Westbrook had to do with the British Museum. He couldn’t remember any mention of it in the memo from the CEO, and he worried that if he asked her to explain, it would show his ignorance and might suggest to her that he was out of touch or didn’t have the ear of the trustees – which, of course, he didn’t. He was the earl’s man, and the earl distrusted the CEO. The earl disliked change every bit as much as BS.

  ‘Did you see the exhibition at the British Museum?’ Sam said.

  ‘I haven’t been up to London for a long time,’ he replied, ‘but I love the British Museum.’

  Recognising that Sam was leading him away from a light lunchtime conversation and back on to the subject of that wretched memo, he used her earlier reference to having a daughter in New York to steer the conversation away by relating an amusing tale of the time he had to accompany a valuable tapestry all the way over to America for an exhibition at the Met and the hilarious stopover he had to make in Amsterdam much to the consternation of Patricia, his wife.

  ‘Anyway,’ Sam said, ‘the Warren Cup exhibition turned out to be blockbuster of a success. I worked closely with Aled Lewis, and as the British Museum successfully explored attitudes to sexuality’ – BS swallowed down heavily on his final chip – ‘your trustees thought we could present the Dywenydd Collection from a similar point of view and show your artefacts in the context of the times they were created, as opposed to when they were banned in Victorian times with the rise of the concept of pornography.’

  BS creaked back into the leather banquette and mopped around his mouth and nostrils with his napkin. ‘Pudding?’ he said brightly, but seeing mild surprise in his companion’s face, he frowned and added, ’Perhaps not. Let’s have a couple of coffees – they come with truffles. I’ll order it at the bar on my way to the little boys’ room,’ and he struggled to his feet.

  He took as long as was decent in the gents to allow a natural change of conversation on his return. As he washed his hands in the sink, he looked up at himself in the mirror to check that none of his lunch was stuck in his beard. Without his reading glasses on, he thought he was ageing rather well. His hair and beard had gone white years before their time so he never associated this with old age, and by keeping his beard neatly trimmed in a style not dissimilar to that of George V, he thought it made him look younger. A few years ago he had been persuaded by one of his sons to shave it off before they went on holiday, and to his horror its removal revealed deep wrinkles running between his nose and mouth, and a large volume of spare skin under his chin. Where could that have come from? he mused. Had it been gathered up under his hairline all these years ready to work its way down and pool under his chin? His beard had grown back to a smoothing stubble before his return to work, and he vowed never to repeat the exercise. He was also lucky to have retained a good head of hair, so much so that he was able to cultivate a decent flop of white fringe across his forehead which obscured two other deep wrinkles which similarly baffled him. They ran from his temples down to the middle of his eyebrows, and however many different faces he pulled in the mirror, he could not work out how they could possibly have developed.

  Smoothing his hair to one side with a damp hand, he unhooked his stick from his arm and ambled out into the pub again. He could see Sam in the far corner with her back to him. She was bent forward, probably clicking away at one of those wretched telephones they all have.

  ‘My son has been urging me to get one of those,’ he said, lowering himself on to the banquette once more, ‘but I say to him, ‘Technology reached its peak with the quill pen.’’ Sam looked up at him and frowned. ‘Anyway, have you worked for the British Museum for a long time?’

  Sam put her iPhone away in her bag and said, ‘I don’t work for them. I’ve been a freelance curator for ... oh, over ten years now.’

  ‘A free lance.’ BS separated the two words. ‘I love that concept. A knight riding through the countryside ready to fight any cause he chooses, free to use his lance against any foe he likes. It’s interesting how many of those heraldic sayings have fallen into common parlance. Like the coat of arms, for example. You see,’ he continued, sprinkling a tube of demerara sugar into his coffee and stirring it in, ‘armour was exceptionally hot to wear, particularly in the sun, and so they covered the metal with a coat – a coat of arms, and if this coat was slashed and cut, it showed they had seen combat. If you look at the earl’s coat of arms (‘accomplishment’ is the correct word, of course, but you probably know that) you will see the swirling cuts and slashes in the mantling around the helm which shows that in the past the earl’s ancestors have seen real combat.’ He popped the spoon into his mouth
and dried it between his tongue and upper lip before dropping it on to the saucer.

  ‘This is all very interesting,’ Sam said, ‘but I think it’s diverting us from the job in hand.’

  BS looked up at her with a benign smile of interest but the gaze she returned had an intensity that left him in no doubt that her patience was running out. He leant forward and rested his elbows on the table with an expression of deep attention and said, ‘Of course, my dear. Where would you like to start?’ Before Sam could reply he continued, ‘I was thinking this afternoon I could take you for a whistle-stop tour of the Hall which will give you a good grounding in background material, vital for understanding the collection itself. I am, as you know, completely at your disposal.’

  - 5 -

  As he approached the final roundabout before the main gate into Duntisbourne Hall, Max Black resolved he would drive three hundred and sixty degrees around it and make his way back home. What on earth was he doing squeezed into a suit which fifteen years ago looked sharp, on the way to his first interview in a quarter of a century? It was madness. He was perfectly happy with his lot, apart from this wretched health business.