Possession (53 page)

Maud’s mind whirled. A cowboy in a Merc, why not the National Health, what would become of the letters, where was blissfully ignorant Leonora, wandering between the market stalls selecting saucers?

“I’m sorry. I had no idea of their value. I knew they must have some, of course. I thought they should stay where they were. Where Christabel left them—”

“My Joan is alive.
She’s
dead.”

“Of course. I see that.”

“Of course, I see that,” mimicking. “No, you don’t. My solicitor thinks you’ve got some idea of benefiting
yourself
—in your career, that is, or even selling them on. Relying on my ignorance, d’you see?”

“You’ve got it wrong.”

“I don’t think so.”

Leonora emerged from between banked flowers darkly smelling and a rack of leather jackets embellished with death’s-heads.

“Are you being harassed, darling?” she enquired. And then cried, “Oh, it’s the savage woodsman with the gun.”

“You,”
said Sir George, purply. He was kneading and twisting
Maud’s sleeve. “There are Americans cropping up everywhere. You’re all in it together.”

“In what?” enquired Leonora. “Is it a war? Is it an international incident? Are you being threatened, Maud?”

She advanced on Sir George, towering above him, flowing with generous indignation.

Maud, who prided herself on her rationality under stress, was trying to decide whether she most feared Sir George’s rage or Leonora’s inopportune discovery of the concealment of the letters. She decided Sir George was a lost cause, whereas Leonora, if hurt, or feeling betrayed, might be terrible. This did not help her to think what to say. Leonora took hold of Sir George’s wiry little fist with her own long strong hands.

“Leave hold of my friend or I’ll call the police.”

“It won’t be you needing their services, it’ll be me. Trespassers. Thieves. Nasty vultures.”

“He means harpies, but he’s not educated.”

“Leonora,
please.”

“I’m waiting for an explanation, Miss Bailey.”

“Not here, not now, Oh please.”

“What does he want explaining, Maud?”

“Nothing important. Oh, surely you can see this isn’t the moment, Sir George?”

“I can indeed. Take your hands off me, you vulgar woman,
go away
. I hope I never see either of you again.”

Sir George turned smartly, parted the small crowd that had gathered, and hurried away.

Leonora said, “What does he want explaining, Maud?”

“I’ll tell you later.”

“You certainly will. I’m intrigued.”

Maud felt near to complete despair. She wished she was anywhere but here and now. She thought of Yorkshire, the white light on the Thomasine Foss, the sulphurous stones and glimpsed ammonites at the Boggle Hole.

A jingling warder, her black face severe, gestured at pale Paola.

“Phone,” she said. “For Ash editors.”

Paola followed the sound of keys and the solid jacketed hips down carpeted tunnels to a telephone at a security point which the Ash Factory was allowed, as a great favour, to use in emergency.

“Paola Fonseca.”

“Are you the editor of
The Collected Poems of Randolph Henry Ash?”

“His assistant.”

“I have been told I should speak to a Professor Blackadder. My name is Byng. I am a solicitor. I am speaking on behalf of a client, who would like to enquire about the—well—the market price of certain—certain—possible manuscripts.”

“Possible
, Mr Byng?”

“My client is very unclear. Are you sure I can’t speak directly to Professor Blackadder?”

“I’ll fetch him. It’s a long walk. You must be patient.”

Blackadder spoke to Mr Byng. He came back to the Ash Factory white and sharp and in a state of highly irritated excitement.

“Some fool wants a valuation of an unspecified number of letters from Ash to an unspecified woman. I said, are there five or fifteen, or twenty. Byng said he didn’t know, but was instructed to say in the region of fifty or so. Long ones, he said, not dentist’s appointments and thank yous. Wouldn’t name his client. I said how could I set a price on something potentially so important, sight unseen. I’ve always hated that phrase, haven’t you, Paola, sight unseen, it’s a tautology or something near, it simply means
unseen
, doesn’t it? So Mr Byng says he believes there is already an offer in the region of six large figures. An English offer, I asked, and Byng said no, not necessarily. That sod Cropper has been there, wherever it is. I said, may I know where you’re talking from, and he said Tuck Lane Chambers, Lincoln. I said, can I see the damn things, and Byng said his client was very opposed to being disturbed, very irascible. Now what do you make of that? I get the impression if I made a guesstimate of a generous kind, I might just be allowed a look. But if I do that, we’ll never get the funds to back the guess, not if that
sod Cropper’s involved with his bottomless cheque book and Mr Byng’s client is already asking questions about money and not about scholarly value.

“I tell you what, Paola, all this has something to do with the funny behaviour of Roland Michell and his visits to that Dr Bailey in Lincoln. Now what has young Roland been up to? Where, for that matter, is he? Wait till I get a word with him.…”

“Roland?”

“No. Who is that. Is that Maud Bailey?”

“This is Paola Fonseca. I don’t sound remotely like Maud Bailey. Val, I have to speak to Roland, it’s urgent.”

“I’m not surprised, he doesn’t go into the library any more, he sits here writing.…”

“Is he there now?”

“Always so urgent, you and Maud Bailey.”

“What
is
this about Maud Bailey?”

“She’s a telephone heavy breather.”

“Val, is he there? I’m in an open corridor, I can’t hang on long, you know about these silly phones—”

“I’ll get him.”

“Roland, this is Paola. You’re in big trouble. Blackadder’s in a fearful rage. He’s looking for you.”

“He can’t have looked far. I’m here. Getting on with my article.”

“You don’t understand. Listen—I don’t know if this means anything to you. He had a call from someone called Byng, wanting to price a collection of about fifty letters from Ash to a woman.”

“What woman?”

“Byng didn’t say. Blackadder thinks he knows. He thinks you know too. He thinks you’re up to things behind his back. He says you’re treacherous—Roland, are you there?”

“Yes. I’m thinking. It’s terribly nice of you to phone, Paola. I don’t know why you bothered, but it’s nice.”

“I hate noise, that’s why.”

“Noise?”

“Uh-huh. If you come in he’ll roar. And roar and roar. It makes me sick to the stomach. I hate shouting. Also, I’m quite fond of you.

“That’s nice of you. I hate shouting too. I hate Cropper. I hate the Ash Factory. I wish I was anywhere but here, I wish I could disappear off the face of the earth.”

“A fellowship in Auckland or Yerevan.”

“A hole in the ground, more like. Tell him you don’t know where I am. And thanks.”

“Val seems cross.”

“That’s endemic. That’s one reason I hate shouting. It’s mostly my fault.”

“Guard’s coming back. I’m going. Look after yourself.”

“Thanks for everything.”

Roland went out. He felt wholly helpless and desperate. Telling himself that any intelligent man in his position should have foreseen these possible developments made things worse, not better. He had been emotionally wholly convinced that the letters would remain his private secret, until he chose to reveal it, until he knew the end of the story, until—until he knew what Randolph Ash would have wanted done. Val asked him where he was going, and he didn’t answer. He went along Putney High Street in search of an unvandalised telephone box. He went into an Indian grocery and provided himself with a telephone card and a stack of change. He walked over Putney Bridge and into Fulham, where he found a cardphone box that had to be functioning because it had a long queue. He waited. Two people, a black man and a white woman, exhausted their cards. Another white woman played some complicated trick on the phone box with her car keys and talked interminably. Roland and his co-queuers looked at each other and began to circle the box like hyenas, threatening eye-contact and then occasionally slapping the glass with casual palms. When, finally, looking neither to right nor left, the woman flounced out, Roland’s predecessors were courteously
brief. He was not unhappy in the queue. No one knew where he was.

He got through.

“Maud?”

“She isn’t available right now. Can I take a message?”

“No. It doesn’t matter. I’m in a call-box. When will she be back?”

“She isn’t exactly away. She’s bathing.”

“It’s kind of urgent. There’s a queue behind me.”

“Maud
. I was just calling her. Will you hang on, please, until I see what she—
Maud.”

When would they tap on the glass?

“She’s just coming. Who shall I say?”

“It doesn’t matter. If she’s coming.”

He imagined Maud, wet, in a white towel. Who was the American? Must be Leonora. Had Maud said anything to Leonora. Could she say anything to him, in front of Leonora …?

“Hullo? Maud Bailey speaking.”

“Maud. At last. Maud. This is Roland. I’m in a call-box. There are disasters—”

“Indeed there are. We’ve got to talk. Leonora, do you mind if I just take the phone to the bedroom? This call is sort of private.” A gap. A reconnection. “Roland, Mortimer Cropper came.”

“A solicitor telephoned Blackadder.”

“Sir George made a horrid scene at me in Lincoln. About electric wheelchairs. He needs money.”

“It was his solicitor. Is he very cross?”

“Furious. It didn’t help him seeing Leonora.”

“Have you told her?”

“No. But I can’t go on without her guessing. Every day makes it worse.”

“They will see us in a bad light. Cropper, Blackadder, Leonora.”

“Listen—speaking of Leonora—she’s found out the next stage. Christabel went to the family in Brittany. There was a cousin who wrote poems. A French scholar has them, she wrote to Leonora. She
stayed some time. It might cover the suicide. No one knew where she was.”

“I wish no one knew where I was. I’ve actually run away from being sent for by Blackadder.”

“I tried to phone you. I don’t know if she told you. It didn’t sound as if she would. I don’t even know what we are or were trying to do. How did we ever hope to keep it from C and B?”

“And Leonora. We didn’t—after we knew all we could find out. We just needed time. It is our Quest.”

“I do know. That isn’t how they’re going to see it.”

“I wish I could disappear.”

“You keep saying that. So do I. Living with Leonora’s bad enough, without Sir George and all that—”

“Is it really?” He found himself voluptuously discarding a vision of Leonora, whom he had never seen, unwrapping the imagined white towel. Maud lowered her voice.

“I keep thinking of what we said to each other, about empty beds, at the Foss.”

“So do I. And about the white light on the stone. And the sun at the Boggle Hole.”

“We knew where we were, there. We should just disappear. Like Christabel.”

“You mean, go to Brittany?”

“Not precisely. At least. After all. Why
not?”

“I’ve got no money.”

“I
have. And a car. And good French.”

“So is mine.”

“They wouldn’t know where we were.”

“Not even Leonora?”

“Not if I lied to her. She thinks I’ve got a secret lover. She’s got a romantic soul. It would be an awful lie, to go off with her information and betray her.”

“Does she know Cropper and Blackadder?”

“Not to speak to. Nor who you are. Not even your name.”

“Val might tell her.”

“I’ll get her out of this flat. I’ll get her invited away. Then if Val phones, no answer.”

“I am not a natural conspirator, Maud.”

“Nor am I.”

“I can’t face going home. In case Blackadder … In case Val …”

“You must. You must go home and have a row, and get your passport secretly, and all the papers, and just move out. Into one of those little hotels in Bloomsbury.”

“Too near the BM.”

“Victoria, then. I’ll deal with Leonora and come there. I know one I used to stay in.…”