Long Sonata of the Dead (3 page)

It was possible he wouldn’t notice the discrepancy in the title. It was possible, even, that he wasn’t doing anything significant on Youlgreave. That was what I really needed to find out.

I thought of Mary right away. She would know—she was credited as a researcher on the documentaries and in the books. And it would give me an excuse to see her, which was what I wanted to do anyway.

But did I want to see her? The very thought terrified me. Since Adam had walked into the London Library, all the comfortable certainties that shored up my life had crumbled away. Would she even talk to me after all these years? What would happen if I showed her the message on Adam’s phone and proved to her that her husband was having an affair?

I had a practical problem to solve first of all. I didn’t even know where to find her. Adam hadn’t included his private address in his
Who’s Who
entry. The library would know it but members’ addresses were confidential.

That was when I remembered the crumpled envelope I had found in the Burberry. I took it out again. It was a circular addressed to Adam. There was the address:
23 Rowan Avenue.

I glanced over my shoulder. No one was looking at me. I slipped the phone into my trouser pocket.

The library kept a
London A-Z.
Rowan Avenue was out towards Richmond, not far from Kew Gardens.

I gave myself no time to think. I took my coat and left the library. I cut across Pall Mall and the Mall and went into St. James’s Park. Hardly anyone was there because of the rain. My hair and my shoulders were soaked by the time I reached Queen Anne’s Gate. A moment later I was at the Underground station. I was trembling with cold and, I think, excitement.

Proust was right about his madeleine.

Once something unlocks the memories they come pouring out. I was drowning in mine just because I’d seen a man standing in the rain outside the London Library.

Adam had always been a bastard, I thought. People don’t change, not really. As time passes, they just become more like themselves.

I didn’t have to wait more than a couple of minutes for a Richmond train on the District Line. Kew Gardens was the last stop before Richmond. It was now late afternoon. The carriage was at the end of the train and nearly empty.

I sat down and stared at my reflection in the black glass opposite me. I saw an untidy middle-aged stranger where I half-expected to find a slim, sharp-featured student with shaggy hair.

It was still raining when I left the train and took my bearings. Kew was a nice place, just right for nice people like Adam and Mary. You couldn’t imagine poor people living there. But it wasn’t not for the very rich, either, for people who flaunted their money and slapped it in your face. In a perfect world I might have lived there myself.

Rowan Avenue was a gently curving road about five minutes’ walk from the station. The houses were terraced or semi-detached-solid Edwardian homes, well-kept and probably unobtrusively spacious. The cars outside were Mercedes, BMWs and the better sort of people carriers designed for shipping around large quantities of nice children.

Number 23 had a little glazed porch with a tiled floor, a green front door and a small stained glass window into the hall beyond. I rang the bell. Adam and Mary had no children—I knew that from
Who’s Who
—but there might be a cleaner or a secretary or something. Mary might be out. The longer I waited, the more I hoped she would be.

There were footsteps in the hall. The stained glass rippled as the colors and shapes behind it shifted. My stomach fluttered. I knew it was her.

With a rattle, the door opened a few inches and then stopped. It was on the chain. I felt unexpectedly pleased—London is a dangerous city, growing worse every year; and I was relieved that Mary was taking precautions.

“Hello,” she said, giving the word a slight interrogative lift on the second syllable.

“You probably won’t remember me.” I cleared my throat. “It’s been a long time.”

I could see only part of her face. She seemed a little smaller than in memory. The hair was carefully styled and much shorter.

She was frowning. “I’m afraid I don’t …”

“Mary, it’s me—Tony.” Despair nibbled at me. “Don’t you remember?”

“Tony?” Her voice was the same. Slightly breathless and husky. I used to find it unbearably sexy. I still did. “Tony?” she repeated, frowning. “From university?”

“Yes,” I said, more loudly than I intended. I touched the beard. “Imagine me without this.”

“Tony,” she said. I watched recognition creep over her face. “Tony, yes, of course. Come in.”

She unhooked the chain and opened the door. She was still Mary, my Mary. She was wearing jeans and a green shirt with a jersey over it. Cashmere, I thought. She was looking at me and I was acutely aware of my own appearance, something I rarely thought about.

For the first time I saw her face properly. “What have you done?” I said. “Are you OK?”

Her upper lip was swollen on the right hand side as if a bee had stung it. Or as if someone had hit her.

“I’m fine. I walked into the bathroom door last night. So stupid.”

The hall was large and long, with rugs on stripped boards. Mary took me through to a sitting room dominated by an enormous TV screen. The furniture was modern. There were hardback books lying about—new ones, recently reviewed—and a vase of flowers on the coffee table.

“This is … nice,” I said, for want of something to say.

She switched on a couple of lamps. “Do you want some tea?”

“No, thanks.”

I thought she looked disappointed.

“Do sit down. It’s good to see you after all this time.”

That’s what she said: what she meant was:
Why are you here?

I sat down on a sofa. There was another sofa at right-angles to mine. She chose that one.

“It’s been ages, hasn’t it?” she said. “How’ve you been?”

“Fine. I—”

“What have you been doing?”

“This and that,” I said. “I review—I do odds and ends for publishers—reading for them, sub-editing, blurb-writing. I’ve ghosted some memoirs. That sort of thing. I’m working on the biography of a poet at present.”

“Which one?” she asked.

“Francis Youlgreave.”

“Really.” Her eyes widened as the memory caught up with her. “You always had a thing about him. Funnily enough, Adam’s thinking of doing something about him too.”

“There’s an anniversary coming up,” I said.

She nodded. “It’s part of a series for him. Another documentary.”

“What’s it about?”

“Literary culture in the 1890s—
The Naughty Nineties
, I think that’s the working title. There’s going to be a book, too.”

“Of course,” I said.

“It’s going to be revisionist,” she went on. “In the sense that they’re arguing the really influential figures aren’t the obvious ones like Wilde and Henry James.”

“Hence Youlgreave?”

“I suppose. I don’t really know. Tony—it’s awfully nice to see you, of course, but is there a particular reason for you coming? Like this, I mean, out of the blue.”

“This is a bit difficult,” I said. I wanted so much to be honest with her. “I saw Adam today—at the London Library. I didn’t even know he was a member.”

“So he knows you’re here?”

“No—I don’t think he saw me. But I … I happened to see his phone—he’d left it lying around. There was a text.”

She sat up sharply, her cheeks coloring with a stain of blood. “A text—what do you mean? You’re telling me you’ve been reading Adam’s texts?”

“I didn’t mean to, not exactly.” I knew I was coloring too. “But, Mary, I think you should see it. That’s why I’m here.”

I took the iPhone from my pocket and handed it to her. She stared at the screen. I couldn’t see her face.

I miss you more and more every moment we’re apart. J xxxx.

“He’s having an affair, isn’t he?” I said. “Did you know?”

She didn’t look up. She shrugged.

“Did he hit you, too?”

“If you must know, yes.” Mary put down the phone on the arm of the sofa. She stared at me. “We’re getting a divorce. We—we can’t agree about who gets what. The old story.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said.

Her expression softened. “I really think you are. Bless you.”

“I know what it’s like. I was married for a while but it didn’t take. Who’s ‘J’? Do you know?”

“She’s called Janine—she used to be his PA. About ten years younger than me.” She swallowed. “Nice woman.”

“Not that nice.”

She stood up suddenly. “I’m going to make some tea. Will you have some now?”

“Is it OK me being here? What if Adam comes back?”

“He’s meeting his agent for dinner at Wilton’s at nine o’clock. That’s what his diary says, anyway. He was going to work in the library until then.”

I followed her into the kitchen. She put on the kettle and then stood, arms folded, looking out of the window at the back garden.

“This is going to be so bloody awful,” she said. “He’s got most of our assets tied up in a couple of companies. One of them is offshore, which makes it even more complicated. And he controls the companies; that’s the real problem. I was so naive, you wouldn’t believe. I just signed where he told me when he set them up.”I thought of the Post-it note I had found in Adam’s library book.
You’re such a complete shit. You won’t get away with it.
But it looked as if he would get away with it.

“You’ve talked to a solicitor?”

“Yes. For what it’s worth. If I fight Adam for my share, it’ll cost a fortune. But I haven’t got a fortune. I’ve hardly got anything. I shouldn’t be telling you this—it’s not your problem.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Anyway, the odds are I’ll lose if we go to court.”

“What will you do?” I said.

“God knows.”

She turned to face me. I couldn’t see her face clearly; the window was behind her and the winter afternoon was fading into dusk. Neither of us spoke for a while. The kettle began to hiss quietly at first and then with steadily rising urgency. At last there was a click as it turned itself off.

“I normally have green tea in the afternoon,” she said, as if this was a normal conversation on a normal day. “But there’s ordinary tea if you prefer, or herbal—”

“Green tea’s fine,” I said.

She picked up a packet of tea and a spoon. Then she stopped moving and the conversation wasn’t normal any more. “I made a mistake, Tony, didn’t I?” she said. “I wish …”

“What do you wish?” My voice was little more a whisper.

“I wish I could put time back,” Mary said. “To when it was just you and me in the garden. Do you remember? At that stupid party? It all seemed so simple then.”

On Tuesdays, the London Library stays open until nine p.m. When I got back it was nearly six o’clock. The Burberry was still hanging in the cupboard. I hung my own coat beside it.

I had asked Mary if I should take the phone back and leave it where I had found it. She told me not to bother. Adam often left his phone at home or mislaid it—he wouldn’t be surprised if he couldn’t find it in his coat. He was careless about his possessions, she said, just as he was careless about people.

The library was much emptier than it had been. I liked the place especially on a winter evening, when the only people there seemed to be a few librarians and a handful of members like me. In the stacks—and most of the place consists of the stacks—each run of shelves has its own set of lights. Members are encouraged to turn off any lights that are not in use. So, on a February evening like this, most of the library consists of pools of light marooned in the surrounding gloom. Sounds are muted. The spines of the books stretch away into an infinity of learning.

Adam wasn’t in any of the reading rooms. I guessed that he was either searching for books or working at one of the little tables scattered around the stacks. It didn’t matter because I didn’t want to find him. I didn’t want to see him ever again or hear his voice. I didn’t want to think of him.

I sat down and tried to work, which was how I had always intended to spend this evening. But my mind was full of Mary and I couldn’t concentrate. I had a pencil in my hand and I wrote the words
the long sonata of the dead
on the inside cover of my notebook. I looked at them for a long time and wondered whether even Francis Youlgreave or Samuel Beckett had known what they meant.

A little after eight-fifteen, I decided I’d had enough. I packed up my work and went downstairs. As I reached the issue hall I nearly bumped into Adam. He had come out of the catalogue room.

We both pulled back at the last moment before a collision became inevitable. We muttered reciprocal apologies. But his words were no more than a polite reflex. He looked through me. I didn’t exist for him.

He went over to the enquiries desk. I turned aside and pretended to study a plan of the library on the wall.

“I found a book in the old printed catalogue but I can’t see it on the shelves,” he said to the librarian. “Can you check if it’s out?”

“What is it?” the librarian asked.

“It’s by Francis Youlgreave.” Adam spelt the surname. “It’s called
The Voice of Angels
.”

A
moment later the librarian said, “I’m afraid it’s out. Due back on March the sixth. Would you like to reserve it?”

“Yes, please.”

Afterwards Adam went upstairs, glancing at his watch. After a moment I followed him. I was wearing trainers and I made very little noise. He turned into one of the older stacks and walked steadily towards the back. I couldn’t see him because the lines of bookcases were in the way. But I heard his footsteps ringing on the iron gratings of the floor. You can look down at the floor below and up at the floor above. I suppose they had to make the floors of iron in order to bear the weight of all the books.

There was a further stack beyond this one, part of the History section. Very few lights were on. I waited near the archway leading into the rear stack. I stood in the shelter of a bookcase containing books on gardening.

The levels on the older stacks are connected internally with steep, narrow iron staircases in a sort of bibliographic snakes and ladders. Some of the staircases still have their original signs—an elegant silhouette of a hand with a pointing finger accompanied by a legend saying something like “Up History” or “Down Society.” One of these was nearby, which gave me the reassuring sense that I could slip away if someone else came up behind me.