Shadows 7 (26 page)

I remarked on it and felt free enough to lift the cover, curious to see what treasure was so carefully and lovingly preserved beneath the glass. The showcase was empty. When I looked curiously at Robert Clairthorpe, he said only that the showcase was an old thing and that he didn't use it. I assumed from the way he spoke that it must have had some sentimental meaning for him, perhaps something unpleasant or painful to recall, and I said nothing else about it.

I tried again the next evening, Thursday, to bring him out to a restaurant for the evening meal, but he would not. He was long past that, he said; he had lived so long in the world of fiction that he would be a stranger anywhere but in his own little shop. No amount of urging could convince him.

It was on that Thursday evening, I believe, as our visit drew to a close, that I first detected a change in his eyes when he looked at me, a subtle veiling of his expression, and an unwillingness to meet my gaze directly. At the same time, and this struck me as very odd, I thought I noticed him looking at me very closely, as if examining me intently, when he thought my attention was drawn elsewhere. It made me slightly uncomfortable, and later, back at Bedford Place, although we had agreed to meet again the next day as usual, I began to wonder if perhaps I had overstayed my welcome and was making a pest of myself, taking up too much of his time. Unschooled as I was in the ways of friendship, I worried about this all the rest of the evening and did not sleep well that night.

But I was quite wrong. It was not a lack of friendship that had made my new acquaintance act strangely. Rather, it was his own lack of familiarity with feelings of closeness to another person that made him hesitate and mistrust his own judgment, just as I was mistrusting mine.

When I arrived at the shop on Friday, my arms were filled with parcels from the local shops. I was determined that, if I could not treat my friend to dinner in a restaurant, I would repay the debt by providing all the ingredients of a pleasant dinner to be fixed at home. It was this gesture on my part that settled the doubt in both our minds and, in the course of our conversation that afternoon, made us both admit the slight awkwardness we'd been feeling, and admit further how glad we both were to have made such a congenial friend.

Perhaps if I had not thought to buy that piece of meat and those greens and potatoes, Robert Clairthorpe would not have taken me into his confidence. And in that case, he would not have lost his life and I would not have lost my only friend. Perhaps. Or perhaps some other set of irresistible circumstances would have brought us together anyway and, together, carried us off into the darkness that awaited. I am inclined to believe the latter. I would prefer to believe it, for it would make the long days and the longer nights easier for me now.

As it happened, no customers came into the shop that afternoon and our long, pleasant conversation was uninterrupted for hours. We were enjoying ourselves, freed of all doubt that each was imposing on the other's time, and looking forward to prolonging the visit through a nice dinner and well on into the evening. At about six o'clock we rose from our seats near the window at the front of the shop. Robert Clairthorpe locked the door and drew down the shades on the windows, and we retired together to the little room at the back to share the work of preparing our meal. It is a terrible thing to be alone in the world—I had known it for months before this and I know it again now—but, to such a person, the joy of a new friend's company is beyond all measure.

While we fixed the meal—it was nothing very special, to be certain, but I think we both looked forward to it as to a regal repast—I was thinking that I really must draw my friend out, convince him that he should come with me to restaurants and to see some West End shows. There were currently three plays, at least, that I knew would carry him away to the world of make-believe we both loved.

During dinner we talked about the novels of Thomas Hardy, recalling where and when we had first discovered his world. Robert asked which of the novels was my favorite and I replied that it was
Tess of the D'Urbervilles,
perhaps because that had been the first I'd read. He smiled gently and told me that had been his own experience. We spoke of Dickens in the same way, agreeing on
The Pickwick Papers
as our favorite. Then something in the conversation—I wish I could recall now what it was, but perhaps, as it seemed to me after, this was part of his plan—made him mention
The Monk
by Matthew Gregory Lewis. This was much more in line, of course, with our particular taste in fiction, and we talked about it for some while, recalling favorites from among its dark and dreadful scenes. And somewhere in this part of the conversation, as pleasant and relaxed as it was, I began to feel that Robert Clairthorpe was putting me to a test.

We had finished our meal and cleared the table, then returned to our chairs. When I seated myself and looked across at my friend, he was staring at me intently and biting his lower lip. I shall never forget his face at that moment, the last moment before he took me into his confidence. He was a man about to set out on an adventure, the outcome of which could not be predicted, because its direction and ending could not be settled by courage and determination alone, an adventure in which a man could only try his best against forces beyond his knowing and which would determine his fate for him. It was all in his face as he looked at me then.

"What is it, Robert?" I said. "What's wrong?"

He dropped his gaze to the table and would not look up at me for some minutes as he spoke, as if he feared that a doubtful or scornful look from me would sap his courage.

"I want to share something with you," he said, so softly that I could barely hear him. "The showcase," he added, even more quietly.

I glanced across the room at it. It stood as before and appeared not to have been touched since I had lifted its covering and looked inside a couple of days before.

"I don't understand," I said. "What do you mean?"

He was obviously nervous, even embarrassed, and I tried to make my voice as neutral as I could. Of course, I was intrigued by all the mystery in his manner. And it occurred to me that, if in fact I had been given a test, apparently I had passed.

"The showcase," he said again. "It's . . . It's quite special."

And then he told me what most people—perhaps every person in the world with the exception of the two of us—would consider a fantastic story. But Robert Clairthorpe was telling the truth. I know he was telling the truth. My friend had lived through the experiences he described, and I could hear the truth of it in his voice.

I know I must tell this part as simply as I can manage.

The showcase had belonged to the previous owner of the shop, the man for whom Robert had clerked when he first came up to London. Where the showcase had been before that, or what were its origins, Robert did not know. When, in his final illness, the old man had felt the approach of death, he had taken young Robert into his confidence.

The showcase had—I should say, has—the ability to transfer a person into the world of the book it contains.

That is what the old man told Robert, that is what Robert found to be true, that is what he told me, and what I myself can vouch for. The reader of these pages may choose not to believe it, but it is true, nevertheless.

"Tell me," I said. "Tell me about it. How does it work?"

My tone of voice, devoid of all mockery and filled with a desire to know more, made my friend look up at me then. His eyes were glistening with excitement and the pleasure of sharing his secret at last.

"I don't know how it works," he said. "But it does. Oh, it does. I know it."

He explained quickly that all one had to do was select a book, open it to the passage desired, place the open book in the showcase, and lower the glass cover into place. That was all. Instantly, one was transported to the scene described on the open pages of the book.

He was watching my face eagerly as he spoke, waiting for signs of doubt or a conviction that he was mad.

But of course I believed him. I had to believe him. I could hear the truth in every word he spoke. And there was another thing. Already I was beginning to long to share his knowledge.

"Have you done it?" I asked. "Gone somewhere?"

He nodded.

"Where?"

He mumbled something, stopped, swallowed, cleared his throat.
"The Pickwick Papers,"
he said.

I stared at him.

"I have," he said. "I swear to you, I have."

"Tell me."

He had owned the showcase for thirty years after the death of his benefactor before he had the nerve to put the showcase to the test. He had chosen
The Pickwick Papers
in part because it was a favorite and in part because its world seemed to pose fewer dangers than other books he might have chosen. He had selected a very innocent passage in which Mr. Pickwick and his companions were journeying by carriage along a country road. The book was opened to that scene and carefully placed into the showcase. Then he closed the top.

And instantly found himself standing, not in his living quarters but behind some bushes at the side of a lonely country road. And, just down the road to his right, a carriage was rattling toward him.

Could it be real? Could it all be real? The ground beneath his feet was solid. A breeze was cooling his brow and rustling the bushes in front of him. The carriage was moving ever closer, sending up a little cloud of dust behind it. And then the carriage was jouncing past. Robert was so frozen with wonder that he did not even duck out of sight, but he was glad of that afterward. He could not make out the faces of the men rushing past him, but he definitely caught sight of Sam, Mr. Pickwick's servant. In fact, their eyes even met for a second. Sam's gaze seemed to linger briefly and then, his face still impassive, he turned away and was carried off by the coach.

And a moment later, Robert Clairthorpe was back in his room behind the bookshop.

He stared at me a long while, his eyes pleading with me to believe him.

"Did you go again?" I asked.

He had gone again and, emboldened by his first successful trip, had chosen a different sort of world to enter, that of
The Monk.
He had studied the book with great care and finally selected a passage that was purely descriptive.

The result was the same. The instant he closed the top of the showcase, he was transported to the world described in the open pages. He found himself standing—and shivering—in a dank corridor that, he knew, was far underground. Feeble candlelight flickered in the distance, off to his left. Water dripped down the gleaming walls and startled rats scurried past his feet. The air was stale and unpleasant. Down the corridor to his left, he could hear singing but could not make out the words. Then suddenly, from his right, he heard a woman's high-pitched scream, its sound caroming off the wet, stone walls of the passageway. He jumped, his skin crawling at the back of his neck.

And found himself back in his warm and familiar room.

After that—and it was nearly twenty years ago now—he'd been afraid to venture off again.

My hands were trembling. I turned my head and looked over at the showcase where it stood against the wall.

"Where shall we go?" I said.

Robert Clairthorpe reached across the table and squeezed my hand.

"There is one book I've always longed to know better," he said. "Where I've always longed to go." He was breathing hard. "The best of them all."

I was sure I knew what he meant.

"Dracula,"
he breathed.

I was too excited to speak and could only nod my agreement.

Back in Bedford Place, I was awake most of the night.

My room was at the front of the building, a lovely Georgian townhouse, and had two immensely tall arched windows. After changing for bed, and with the lights turned out, I had pulled back the heavy draperies. In recent months, I had found myself more comfortable with a little light while I slept. The window was open six inches at the bottom, against the floor, and a bit at the top, and the breezes of the night stirred the white curtains continually. After a while, with sleep evading me, I rose up on one elbow and watched their languid, lacy movements. But my heart was racing and my thoughts were carrying me away.

Outside, I heard in the quiet street the occasional growling of a taxi, a sound so distinctive and characteristic of modern London. The houses of Bedford Place are now all bed-and-breakfast establishments, and several times I heard the slow footsteps of residents returning home, and laughter once or twice. Lorries passing nearby in Great Russell Street and, less often, the rumble of a bus making its way around Russell Square—all these sounds of ordinary London reached me in the silence of the night, as if floating on the soft
swish swish
of the curtains on the floor.

Could I really be going off, my friend and I, just tomorrow afternoon, to a world that had never been? Could we? Would we dare?

I listened to a distant bus, tried to picture where it was: coming up Southampton Row from Kingsway, barely slowing as it made its swaying left turn into Russell Square, halting for a moment at the request stop, then continuing on. The sound was so real, so very casually real. The lights would be on in the lobby of the Russell Hotel. The roses in the square would be swaying in the breeze. In the underground car park beneath Bloomsbury Square, couples returning late from the theater would be starting their cars. In Great Russell Street, late strollers might be looking in the shop windows at ancient coins and packets of stamps, books in the windows of Souvenir Press, Shetland wool sweaters in the windows of Westaway and Westaway. In Coptic Street, the Pizza Express was probably still open.

But Robert Clairthorpe and I were going away to a world that had never been. I felt—and I am not at all embarrassed to admit it, at least here, on paper, and now, when nothing in the world can cause me embarrassment—that I felt like a little boy who has been forced to settle in a new city, far from school and playmates, but who has just found a new best friend with marvelous toys to share.