The Archivist Read online

  He did, however, need to move the inventory. At the moment it was still sitting up in the sealed chamber, throbbing underneath the foolscap notepad like a piece of deadly kryptonite. He couldn’t risk putting it back on the shelf if Noel and Sam were going to be poking around there without him. He must put it somewhere safe, and where safer than the muniments room down in the undercroft? He checked his watch – it was a quarter to five. If he waited another fifteen minutes most of the staff would have left and he could fetch it and stow it before he went home for the evening.

  - 9 -

  Maureen was getting ready for the day. The mirror over the desk she used as a dressing table had been picked up at an antiques fair and was heavily foxed. She liked the foxing – it gave the mirror charm and she preferred the image of herself blurred by the misted silvering on the ancient glass. She saw the image of her husband in reverse coming out of the bathroom. He was holding something white in his hand. She couldn’t see it clearly unless she turned round, and she was afraid to turn round.

  ‘How did this happen?’ Michael was holding one of Maureen’s blouses in his hand, he must have taken it out of the laundry basket.

  ‘What are you doing with my washing?’ she said. He never did her washing.

  ‘I hadn’t got enough for a full load of whites so I thought I’d put some of yours in.’

  She laid her lipstick down on the dressing table and turned to face him. He came over towards her thrusting the stain on the sleeve up and pushing it near her face. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘There’s blood.’

  ‘It’s ... you know ...’ she looked away from him and down, implying that this was a woman’s private business. She knew he wouldn’t believe her. She heard him sigh, heard him fling the blouse on to the floor, heard him walking over to the window. She knew he was getting himself under control. Perhaps he was even saying a prayer, asking God to help him overcome his feelings of disgust. Within a few minutes she heard him pulling a bedroom chair over and setting it near her. He sat down on it, reached out into her lap and pulled her folded hands over towards him.

  ‘Look at me, Maureen,’ he said. She couldn’t. Her insides were writhing and coiling and pulling her chin further and further down towards her chest. ‘Look at me,’ he said again, and when she didn’t, he turned one of her hands as if he was about to read her palm and moved the sleeve of her dressing gown up her arm, and she heard him inhale. ‘Oh Maureen,’ he said. ‘What have you done to yourself?’

  She snatched her arm away and stood up, pulling her sleeve back down and pushing past him. She went around the other side of the bed before looking back at him. He was still sitting on the bedroom chair, slumped forward, his elbows resting on his knees. He was watching her with an expression of contrived sympathy, but his eyes were filled with abhorrence and she knew her behaviour was repugnant to him. He got to his feet and came towards her again but the bed was between them. ‘Please,’ he said, ‘please come and sit down again. I’m here to help.’

  ‘I disgust you,’ she said.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I just have ... ’ he paused and looked away, casting around to find the right words. ‘I have trouble understanding how doing this to yourself can possibly help. It must be so painful.’ He gave an involuntary shudder. ‘Why do you do it?’ He ran his hand over the skin of his head. ‘I thought all this had stopped. Are you still writing down your thoughts? Where’s that diary you used to keep?’

  ‘I stopped doing that.’

  ‘Why? It helped, didn’t it?’

  ‘Everything I wrote sounded so stupid, so weak, so needy.’

  Michael shook his head again. She could see how hard he was trying and that made it all much worse.

  ‘Who are you angry with this time?’ he said, betraying his frustration.

  ‘Myself. Only ever myself.’

  He walked around the room, one hand on his hip, the other taking a slow route from his scalp, back down over the white tonsure of hair above the nape of his neck and round to his clavicle where he gently massaged the muscles at the base of his throat. ‘Finish dressing,’ he said, his voice now warm with compassion. ‘Let’s pray together.’

  When Maureen came out of the bathroom Michael was already on his knees. He held a hand up, she took it, and he guided her down until she was kneeling beside him. He released her hand, folded his together in front of him and closed his eyes. ‘Jesus, help my beloved Maureen to know that You shed Your blood in her place. Show her that every reason for cutting herself that she has held on to, was every reason that You bled and died. Help her to understand that she is justified, by the blood of a pure and perfect sacrifice. Show her that no cut she makes on herself will ever be deep enough or ever bleed enough. Show her that she would have to keep coming back, like the priests of the Old Testament, to offer a sacrifice that would never be sufficient to atone for her sin. Which is why, dear Lord Jesus, You came to us. To offer the perfect sacrifice. To stand in our place, and suffer our shame, and die for our sins. Let her clothe herself in righteousness, and never bleed again. Amen.’

  He opened his eyes and turned to look at her, his own filling with tears. She knew they weren’t tears of compassion for her – they were tears of pride for his own goodness, his own ability to understand her, his neurotic, difficult charge. Satisfied he got to his feet, helped her up and said: ‘All right now?’ She nodded. ‘You feel better?’ She nodded again. ‘You’ll be OK today, won’t you?’ He lifted her chin up with his forefinger and scanned her face. ‘You weren’t the one in the wrong,’ he said. ‘Do you remember when we talked through anger, and I explained that it’s all right to turn your anger outwards, to blame someone else, to feel angry with someone else?’

  ‘I remember.’

  ‘I want you to think about that today. We’ll pray again tonight,’ and he kissed her on her cheek, his lips dry and chapped, and to her relief, he left.

  Michael’s conviction that she was sinned against and not the sinner was wrong, so wrong Maureen felt embarrassed for him. She had robbed herself of the opportunity of blaming BS Moreton because she had done something far worse, something shameful, and because of it she was trapped by a secret she could never share. If you really want to keep a secret, her mother had told her, tell no one.

  She made her way downstairs to the kitchen. She toasted several slices of bread, spread butter and syrup on each slice while they were still warm, and piled them one on top of each other until rivulets of gold dripped and pooled on the plate beneath. Taking the stack with her, she went into the office she shared with Michael. After laying a newspaper on the desk to stop it getting sticky, she put the plate of toast down and drew out a file from the cabinet beside the desk – a file she had not opened for two years. She had written ‘The Indigo Library’ on the front of the folder using a calligraphy pen which one of her sons had given her many years ago, and as she looked at the careful lettering she recalled the pride she had felt when BS Moreton agreed that her idea was a good one and that she should follow it through.

  It was an idea that had developed over several seasons as a result of questions the visitors asked her when she was on security in the library. Most of them wanted to know how many books there were and whether they were ever read, but others asked more interesting questions. What was the oldest book in the library? The most valuable? Had the books been catalogued? Could they view the catalogue online? Were the books all in English? She sat on security in the other rooms as well, but the visitors there didn’t ask questions in the same way.

  ‘Have you ever thought,’ she said to BS a few days before that Christmas two years ago, ‘of writing a booklet about the indigo library?’

  Apparently delighted to have an opportunity to lay down his pen, lean back in his chair and chat, BS mulled her suggestion over and said, ‘It’s all in the guidebook, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not really,’ Maureen replied, and she brought the guidebook over to his desk and stood behind him looking over his shoulder as he scanned the pa
ge she had opened for him. She loved the way he smelt – clean, soapy, no hint of that musty denture smell she associated with being close to her husband. She went to point at the paragraph about the library and her index finger brushed across the top of his hand. He didn’t seem to notice, but she felt the burn of physical contact run up her arm and flush her cheeks.

  ‘It is brief,’ he said, ‘I’ll grant you that.’

  ‘You know so much about the library,’ she said. ‘You could write a brilliant little booklet – it could be sold as a companion to the guidebook, like they do at Wilton House for the art collection. I’m sure it would be successful.’

  BS had chuckled at her compliment then shook his head. ‘If only I had time,’ he said.

  Christmas was approaching and Maureen saw stretching ahead the prospect of almost two weeks of unending boredom, trapped in her home skivvying for Michael’s elderly parents with only the occasional church service as respite. Instead she explained to the family that her new boss could spare her for only two days over the break, and volunteered to come in on the days before New Year’s Eve to deal with any messages that might have been left because BS said he wouldn’t be coming in until the first week of January. But when she started to climb the spiral staircase up to his office she heard him moving around above her, and she took it to be a good sign that he also preferred to be here rather than at home over Christmas.

  ‘I’ve put a great deal of thought into your idea, Mo,’ he said, ‘and I think you should be the person to carry it forward. Ask for as much help as you like. Look,’ and he struggled with the keys at his hip. ‘Take the key to the library cabinets – keep it. I won’t need it over the next week. I’ve dug out the catalogue for you,’ he went on, pushing a plastic ring binder across his desk towards her. ‘Start with a plan – different headings to categorise interesting aspects of the library. Break those down further, then hunt through and see if you can find an example or two of each. I’ll ask Laurence to bring his camera in – he can take pictures to go in the guide. You might want to do it chronologically or by themes – you know, maybe sport, architecture, botany. All sorts of ways you could cut the cake. It’s up to you. I will ...’ he paused as if he was recalling a word, ‘... mentor you. That’s what I will do – mentor you.’

  Maureen was so happy. She could talk of nothing else. She told anyone she saw at the church that she had been commissioned to write a book, albeit a short one, but her name would be on the front cover, BS Moreton had said that to her. She would be a published author. When midnight came on New Year’s Eve she raised a glass of champagne ostensibly to the members of the family clustered around the table but in actual fact she was toasting her own success at the start of this new exciting year.

  Despite BS’s assertion that he had no time to work on the project, he spent a great deal of time down in the library with her. A number of the books were in the wrong place, on the wrong shelves, but BS had an uncanny memory and would abandon whatever work he was doing and hobble down with Maureen, holding the library steps for her and pointing with his stick to where he was sure he had seen a particular tome. At the end of each day he liked her to print up the text she had written for him to read, and she sat watching his expression as he checked it through, monitoring his reaction, hoping his frown was one of concentration, not disapproval. He corrected the pieces as if he was still a schoolmaster and she was his pupil, and this casting fuelled other fantasies in her mind – fantasies of him sweeping down corridors with his gown boiling around him, his cane whippy in his hand.

  By the middle of February she had completed almost twenty thousand words of copy. Laurence Cooke, the guide who liked to think of himself as a resting actor but was also a rather accomplished amateur photographer, had taken the pictures, but still BS hadn’t spoken to the CEO or the shop manager. She didn’t understand his delay but he assured her he would speak to them when she was away on holiday, and he thought the book could be out in time for the August celebrations. She bought herself a smart new file from Smiths and wrote ‘The Indigo Library’ on it using the calligraphy pen, and printed out a set of pages to take away with her to Scotland. She never tired of reading through them and she hoped that Michael would take a look too.

  When the book finally came out, she was no longer speaking to BS and besides, she already knew his name was going to be on the cover. Michael was furious on her behalf and speculated about putting the matter into the hands of a local solicitor. Maureen said she couldn’t prove she had written it – it was all done on the computer in BS’s office, and all in Duntisbourne Hall’s time.

  She never told him what had happened a week after BS had humiliated her in the library, when she had seen him leaving with Donna for – she assumed – one of his intimate lunches. Instead of taking a break after her tour, she had slipped through the door and up the stairs to BS’s office. She hadn’t been sure what she hoped to find – maybe a memo from BS to the CEO perjuring himself. The hot file was full to bursting again, and she flipped through the pages, every now and then glancing up at the window overlooking the courtyard to make sure he was not on his way back. She found nothing. And then she saw his rucksack leaning against the side of the chair behind his desk. She stared at it for a full minute and gave an involuntary glance over her shoulder. She could feel her heart beating rapidly at the base of her throat. She knew it was wrong to look through someone else’s things and she struggled with her conscience.

  She lifted the rucksack up and put it on the desk. She looked in the main compartment. Inside were the proofs of The Guide to the Indigo Library. For a moment her heart lifted – it was a thrill to see the double-page spreads laid out, the pictures in position, the captions she had written beneath. BS had made a number of small corrections on the proofs and when she came to the proof of the front cover, she saw that he had put a line through her name as author and written instead ‘by BS Moreton, Archivist to The Right Honourable The Earl of Duntisbourne’.

  Maureen slumped down in BS’s chair. The rucksack flopped forward, the mouth open towards her. What was she to do with this information? But there was a part of her that was thrilled, delighted she had real evidence that he was a mendacious old goat, and this feeling of heady victory made her want to search further, find more. She tore open the side pocket of the rucksack and recoiled. There was an apple core, oxidised and flecked with mould, shoved into the pocket, beneath it a black banana skin and behind that a sandwich in a packet. She drew them out on to the desk one after the other and tilted her head to read the expiry date on the sandwich. It was a week old. She grimaced with disgust and posted each piece of detritus back into its original position.

  Then she opened the small pocket on the other side of the rucksack. A wad of paper towels had been thrust into this pocket and she drew it out and began to fold back the layers. She expected to find another apple core, the stone of a plum perhaps, but the first thing she saw was a square of foil, a packet with the top torn off, and it looked familiar – it looked like the packets Michael used to keep in the drawer of the bedside table when they were first married. She could hardly bear to carry on, but she was drawn by the horror of her discovery. Picking up a pencil from the desk, she used it as she had seen police doing in television dramas, turning back the next fold, and sure enough, there it lay like a piece of sausage skin, damp and spent and behind it another opened packet. However many were in here?

  Her stomach gave a great heave and saliva poured into her mouth. She had thought she was going to vomit all over the desk and ruin everything, but she hadn’t. She panted and swallowed several times in quick succession until the retching died down, but she hadn’t been able to look at the execrable parcel again. She remembered fixing her gaze at a point somewhere above it as she refolded it, using the pencil to poke it back down into the rucksack, and then she had tottered down the spiral staircase and gone straight away to wash her hands.

  She finished her toast, its sweetness comforting, then took the
file marked ‘The Indigo Library’ outside and pushed it down the edge of the recycling bin. There was no point in keeping it, and there was no point in trying to explain to Michael why she couldn’t turn her anger outwards. Another mantra her mother used to repeat was ‘Eavesdroppers seldom hear any good about themselves’, and although it wasn’t completely apt, it did have parallels. Two years ago she had made a pact with the devil. She had pried, hoping to find something useful to use against BS, and had fallen foul of her own Faustian pact. She could speculate as much as she liked in her own head, but she could never discuss it with another living soul. What was a man of that age doing with used condoms hidden in his rucksack?

  - 10 -

  Max had forgotten he was doing the last tour until Laurence reminded him. Now he was hanging around the front door watching the mist rise in the courtyard through the chilly gloaming, willing it to remain empty. He had put his outdoor coat on because it was bitterly cold, a few wisps of dry snowflakes had curled down during the afternoon and the smell of the air had changed. The tips of the Black Mountains in the distance were pale against a black and seething sky.

  Five minutes before he and Noel were due to shut and lock the front door, he saw a father holding his seven-year-old son by the hand sprinting towards them. Behind him an earth mother lumbered, her landing-craft sandals slapping the gravel, the child tied to her hip with a large Indian scarf, lolling and screaming.

  ‘Shut the door, Noel, for God’s sake. I’m on last tour.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think I can do that, old chap,’ Noel replied gleefully. ‘They look ever so keen.’

  ‘Bull shit,’ muttered Max, turning away.

  ‘Ah, better and better,’ called Noel as he looked out of the door. ‘The whole family seems to be joining them. That must be the aunt, a couple of teenage children (they look a bit rough) and – oh and that’s the grandmother in the wheelchair.’