Possession. A Romance

Chapter 18

Gloves lie together

Limp and calm

Finger to finger

Palm to palm

With whitest tissue

To embalm

In these quiet cases

White hands creep

With supple stretchings

Out of sleep

Fingers clasp fingers

Troth to keep

-C. LAMOTTE

Maud sat in the Women's Studies Resource Centre, on an apple-green chair, at an orange table. She was going through the box-file that contained what little they possessed on the suicide of Blanche Glover. A newspaper report, a transcript of the inquest, a copy of the note that had been found, weighed down by a granite stone, on the table at Bethany in Mount Ararat Road. There were also a few letters to an old pupil, daughter of an MP not unsympathetic to the cause of women. Maud inspected these meagre remains in the hope of finding some clue as to how Christabel LaMotte had spent the time between the Yorkshire journey and the inquest. So little remained of Blanche.

To whom it may concern:

What I do, I do in sound mind, whatever may be decided upon me, and after long and careful reflection. My reasons are simple and can be simply stated. First, poverty. I can afford no more paint and have sold so little work in the last months. I have left four truly pretty flower-pieces, wrapped, in the drawing room, of just the kind that Mr Cressy, upon Richmond Hill, has liked in the past, and hope he may offer enough for them to pay for my funeral, should that turn out to bepracticable.I particularly wish that this matter be not put to MISS LAMOTTE'S charge, and so hope that Mr Cressy may oblige, otherwise I am at my wits' end.

Second, and maybe more reprehensibly, pride. I cannot again demean myself to enter anyone's home as a governess. Such a life is hell on earth, even when families are kind, and I would rather not live than be a slave. Nor will I throw myself upon the Charity of MISS LAMOTTE, who has her own obligations.

Third, failure of ideals. I have tried, initially with MISS LAMOTTE, and also alone in this little house, to live according to certain beliefs about the possibility, for independent single women, of living useful andfully human lives, in each other's company, and without recourse to help from the outside world, or men. We believed it was possible to live frugally, charitably, philosophically, artistically, and in harmony with each other and Nature. Regrettably, it was not. Either the world was too fiercely inimical to our experiment (which I believe it was) or we ourselves were insufficiently resourceful and strong-minded (which I believe was also so, in both cases, and from time to time). It is to be hoped that our first headydays ofeconomic independence, and the work we leave behind us, may induce other stronger spirits to take up the task and try the experiment and notfail. Independent women must expect more of themselves, since neither men nor other more conventionally domesticated women will hope for anything, or expect any result other than utterfailure.

I have little to leave, and would like my few possessions to be disposed of asfollows. This is not, because of the circumstances, a legally enforceable document, but I would hope that its reader or readers will treat it with as much respect as though it was.

My wardrobe I leave to ourservant, Jane Summers, to take whatever she will and distributethe rest as she sees fit. I take this opportunity ofasking her toforgive me a little deception. I could only prevail upon her to leave me - despite my complete inability to pay her - by assuminga dissatisfaction I was very far from feeling. I had already taken the resolution I now carry out, and wanted her to have no directresponsibilityfor its consequences. That was my only reason^êr acting as I did. I am not skilled at dissimulation. The house is not in effect mine. It belongs to MISS LAMOTTE. These chattels andfurnishings inside it which we boughttogether with our savings belong more to her than to me, as the richer partner, and I wish her to do with them what she will.

I should like my Shakespeare, my Poems of Keats, and Poetical Works of Lord Tennyson to go to Miss Eliza Daunton, if she has a use for such battered and well-read volumes. We often read them together. I have little jewellery, and that of no value, excepting my cross with the seed-pearls, which I shall wear tonight. My other trinkets may go to fane, if she likes any of them, excepting the jet brooch of two hands clasped in Friendship, which was given to me by MISS LAMOTTE and which I wish her to take back again.

That is all I have of my own, except my work, which I firmly believe has value, though it is not atpresent wanted by many. There are twenty-seven paintings in the house at the present time, which are finished work, besides many sketches and drawings. Of these large works, two are the property of MISS LAMOTTE. These are "Christabel before Sir Leoline" and "Merlin and Vivien. " I should like her to keep these works and hope she may wish to hang them in the room where she works, as she has done in the past, and that they may recall to her happy times. If she finds this too painful, I charge her not to dispose of these paintings, either by gift or by sale, during her lifetime, and to make such provision for them in after time as I myself would have made. They are the best of me, as she well knows. Nothing endures for certain,butgood artenduresfor a time, and I havewanted to be understood by those not yet born. By whom else, after all? The fate of my other works I leave equally in the hands of MISS LAMOTTE who has an artistic con science. I should like them to stay together, if possible, until a taste may be created and a spirit of judgment may prevail where their true worth may be assessed. But I shall, in a little time, have forfeited my right to watch over them, and they must make their own dumb and fragile way.

In a very little time I shall have left this house, where we have been so happy, never to return. I intend to emulate theauthor ofthe Vindication of the Rights of Women, but, profiting by her example, I shall have sewn into the pockets of my mantle those large volcanic stones which MISS LAMOTTE had ranged upon herwriting desk, hoping by that means toensure that it is quick and certain.

I do not believe that Death is theend. We have heard many marvels at the spiritual meetings of Mrs Lees and had ocular testimony of the painless survival ofthe departed,in a fairer world, on theother side. Because of this faith, I feel strong in the trust that my Maker will see andforgive all, and will make better use hereafter of my capacities - great and here unwanted and unused-for love andfor creative Work. It has indeed been borne inupon me that here I am asuperfluouscreature. There I shall know and be known. In these later days where we peer in a darkling light through the dim Veil that dividesus from those departed and gone before, I trust perhaps tospeak, to forgive and be forgiven. Now may the Lord have mercy upon my poor soul andupon all our souls.

Blanche Glover, spinster.

Maud shivered, as she always shivered, on reading this document. What had Christabel thought, when she read it? Where had Christabel been, and why had she gone, and where had Randolph Ash been, between July 1859 and the summer of 1860? There was no record, Roland said, of Ash not being at home. He had published nothing during 1860 and had written few letters-those there were, were dated from Bloomsbury, as usual. LaMotte scholars had never found any satisfactory explanation for Christabel's apparent absence at the time of Blanche's death, and had worked on the supposition of a quarrel between the two women. This quarrel now looked quite different, Maud thought, without becoming clearer. She took up the newspaper cutting.

On the night of June 26th, in driving wind and rain, another unfortunate young woman plunged to a terrible death in the swollen waters of the Thames. The body was not recovered until June 28th, cast up a little below Putney Bridge at low tide, upon a gravel bank. Foul play is not suspected. Several large round stones were carefully sewn into the pockets of the unfortunate creature's clothing, which was genteel but not opulent. The deceased has been identified as a Miss Blanche Glover. She lived alone, in a house once shared with the Poetess Miss Christabel LaMotte, whose whereabouts are not at present known, and have not been known for some time, according to the recently dismissed house-parlourmaid, Jane Summers. Police are seeking to find out Miss LaMotte's current place of residence. A message was left in Mount Ararat Road, sufficiently establishing the unfortunate Miss Glover's intention of doing away with herself.

The police had found Christabel for the inquest. Where? Steps sounded in a rush behind the partitions. A voice boomed. "Surprise, surprise." Maud, half risen from her chair, was enveloped in large warm arms, in musky perfume, in soft spreading breasts.

"Darling, darling Maud. I thought, where will she be, and told myself, she'll be at work, when is she ever anywhere else for God's sake, so I came right in and here you are, just as I pictured you. Are you surprised? Are you real surprised?"

"Leonora, put me down, I can't breathe. Of course I'm surprised. I sort of felt you coming, across the Atlantic, like a warm front-"

"What a figure of speech. I love the way you talk."

"But I didn't think you'd have swept in here. Not today, anyway. I'm so happy."

"Can you put me up for a night or two? Can I have a carrell in your archives? I always forget how pitifully tiny your space is here. It indicates a disrespect for Women's Studies, I guess, or is it just English university meanness? Can you read French, my darling? I've got things to show you."

Maud, who was always afraid of the arrival of Leonora, was then always extraordinarily pleased, at least at first, to see her. Her friend's expansive presence more than filled the small Resource Centre. Leonora was a majestically large woman, in all directions. She dressed up to her size, and was clothed in a full skirt and long shirt-like loose jacket, all covered with orange and gold sunbursts or flowers. She had an olive skin, with a polished sheen on it, an imposing nose, a full mouth, with a hint of Africa in the lips, and a mass of thick black, waving hair, worn shoulder-length and alive with natural oils-the sort of hair that would clump and gather in the hands, not fly apart. She wore several barbaric, but obviously costly, necklaces of amber lumps and varied egg-shapes. Round her head was a yellow silk bandeau, a half-tribute to the Indian bands of her hippy days at the end of the Sixties. She originated in Baton Rouge and claimed both Creole and native Indian ancestry. Her maiden name had been Champion, which she said was French Creole. Stern was the name of her first husband, Nathaniel Stern, who was an assistant professor at Princeton who had been a happily meticulous New Critic, and had totally failed to survive Leonora and the cut-throat ideological battles of structuralism, post-structuralism, Marxism, deconstruction and feminism. His little book on harmony and discord in TheBostonians had come at just the wrong time. Leonora had joined in the feminist attack on its approval of James's anxiety about the "sentiment of sex" in Boston in i860, and had gone off with a hippy poet, Saul Drucker, to live in a commune in New Mexico. Nathaniel Stern, an anxious, white, pointed little man, whom Maud had met at a conference in Ottawa, had tried to placate the feminists by embarking on a biography of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. Twenty years later he was still working on it, disapproved of by everyone, particularly the feminists. Leonora always referred to Nathaniel as the "poor sap" but had kept his name, as it appeared on the cover of her first major opus, No Place Like Home, a study of the imagery of home-making in nineteenth-century women's fiction, written before Leonora's militant middle and later Lacanian phases. Saul Drucker was the father of Leonora's son, Danny, now seventeen. He had, Leonora said, a curly ginger beard and a positive pelt of ginger fur all over his torso and right down below his belly button to his pubes. This was all Maud knew about the appearance of Saul Drucker, whose poetry was full of fuck and crap and shit and come, and who had apparently been big enough to beat up Leonora from time to time, which could not have been easy. His most famous poem, Millenarial Crawling, described a kind of resurrection of men and serpents in Death Valley, with debts to Blake, Whitman and Ezekiel, and, Leonora said, far too much bad acid. "Shouldn't it be 'millennial'?" Maud had enquired, and Leonora had said, "Not if it could be drawn out any longer, you do miss the point in a delightful way, you precise creature." She referred to Drucker as "meaty-man." She had left him for an Indian woman professor of anthropology, who had taught her yoga, vegetarianism, how to make multiple orgasms to the point of swooning, literally, and had filled her with sympathetic rage about suttee and the worship of the lingam. Saul Drucker now worked on a ranch in Montana-"he doesn't beat up horses," said Leonora-and had Danny with him. He had married again and his new wife was, Leonora said, devoted to Danny. After the professor there had been Marge, Brigitta, Pocahontas and Martina. "I love 'em dearly," Leonora would say, moving on, "but I'm paranoid about home-making, I can't bear the feeling of sinking into cushions and sticking there, the world's too full of other marvellous creatures…"

"What are you doing?" she said now to Maud.

"Reading Blanche Glover's suicide note."

"Why?"

"I do wonder where Christabel was, when she jumped."

"If you can read French, I might be able to help. I've got this letter, from Ariane Le Minier, in Nantes. I'll show you." She took up the note. "Poor old Blanche, what rage, what dignity, what a mess. Did any of the pictures ever turn up? They'd be fascinating. Documented lesbian feminist works."

"None have ever been found. I suppose Christabel may have kept them all. Or burned them up in distress, we simply don't know."

"Perhaps she took them all to that mock-castle with that nasty old man with the gun. I felt like stabbing him with the shears, the pig. They're probably mouldering in a glory-hole up there."

Maud did not feel like pursuing the idea of Sir George, though Leonora's idea was a good, indeed a probable, one. She said, "How do you imagine the paintings, Leonora? Do you think they were any good?"

"I dreadfully want them to have been. She had the dedication. She was sure they were good. I imagine them all pale and tense, don't you, voluptuous but pale, lovely willowy creatures with heaving breasts and great masses of pre-Raphaelite hair. But if they were really original, we aren't going to be able to imagine them, until we find them, in the nature of the case."

"She did one called 'A Spirit-Wreath and Fair Spirit-Hands at a Seance of Hella Lees.' "

"That doesn't sound very hopeful. But maybe the hands were as good as Diirer's, maybe the wreath looked like Fantin-Latour. Only in their own way, of course. Not derivative."

"Do you think so?"

"No, but we should give her the benefit of the doubt. She was a sister." She was.

That night, they sat in Maud's flat and Maud translated Dr Le Minier's letter for Leonora, who said, "I got the generalgist of it OK but my French is primitive. What it is to have an English education."

Maud had unthinkingly sat down in her usual place in the corner of her white sofa under the tall lamp, and Leonora had plumped down next to her, one arm along the sofa behind Maud's back, one buttock bumping Maud's when she bounced. Maud felt threatened and tense, and almost got up, once or twice, but was restrained by an exigent and unhelpful English sense of good manners. She was aware that Leonora knew exactly how she felt, and was amused.

The letter was possibly treasure-trove. Maud, by now slightly more skilled at dissimulation than Blanche Glover with Jane, read it out flatly as if it were a routine scholarly enquiry.

"Dear Professor Stern,

I am a French student of women's writings, here in the University of Nantes. I have much admired your work on the structuresof signification of certain women poets, above all Christabel LaMotte, who is interesting to me also, as half-Breton, and drawing very much on her Breton heritage ofmyth and legend to create a female world. May I say in particular how very just and inspiring I found your remarks on the sexualisation of the landscape elements in The Fairy Melusina.

I am told you are researching materialsfor a feminist life of LaMotteand have come across something I think may perhaps be of interest to you. I am currently working on an almost unpublished writer, Sabine de Kercoz, who published a few poems in the 1860s including several sonnets in praise of George Sand, whom she never met, but for whose ideals and way of lifeshe had conceived a passionate admiration. There are also four unpublished novels, Oriane, Aurélia, Les Tourments de Geneviève, and La Deuxième Dahud, which I am hoping to edit and bring out in the nearfuture. It draws on the same legendof the Drowned City of Is as LaMotte's beautiful poem of that title.

As you may already know, Mille de Kercoz was a relation, through her paternal grandmother, of Christabel LaMotte. What you may not know is that in the autumn of 185c LaMotte appears to have visited her family in Fouesnant. My source is a letter from Sabine de Kercoz to her cousin, Solange, which is amongst the papers - unedited and I believe unexamined since they were deposited here in the University by a descendant of Sabine (who became Mme de Kergarouet in Pornic, and died in childbed in 1870). I enclose a transcript of the letter, and if you find it of interest, I shall of course be delighted to share with you anyfurther informations I may obtain. Mes Hommages.*'

"Sorry about the clumsy translation, Leonora. Now for Sabine de Kercoz.

"Ma chère petite cousine,

Our long and tediousdays here have been enlivened by theunexpected - at least unexpected by me- arrival of a distant cousin, a Miss LaMotte, residing in England, the daughter of Isidore LaMotte, who collected all the French Mythology and also the Breton tales and folk beliefs. Imagine my excitement - it turns out thatthis new cousin is apoetess, who has published many works, unfortunately in English, and is highly thought of in that country. She is unwell atpresent, and keeps her bed, having had a terrible journey from England in the recent storm, andhaving beenforced to remain for almost twenty-four hours outside the harbour walls at St Malo because of a howling gale. And then the roads were almost impassable for flooding water and high winds all the time. She has afire in herroom, and is probably unaware how singular an honour this is, in this austere household.

I liked what I saw of her well enough. She is little and slender, with a very white face (maybe becauseof the sea) and rather large white teeth. She sat up to dinner on the first evening andsaid only afew words. I sat by her side and whispered to her that I had hopes of being a poet. She said, 'It is not the way to happiness, ma fille.' I said on thecontrary, it was only when writing that I felt wholly living. She said, 'If that is so,fortunately or unfortunately, nothing I can say will dissuade you.'

The wind howled and howled that night, all on one wailing note, without remission, so that one ached, body and soul, for just a moment ofsilence, which did not ensue until the early hours ofthe morning, when I waswoken from the -tohu-bohu- hurly-burly - by a sudden dropping of the wind, rather than the more usual way, of waking becauseof sounds. My new cousin did not appear to have slept, in themorning, and myfather insisted she should retire to her room with a tisane of raspberry leaves.

I forgot to say that she has brought with her a large wolf-hound, who is called, if I heard correctly, 'theDog Tray. ' The poor animal has also suffered terribly in thestorm, andwill notcome outfrom under the little table in Miss LaMotte's bedroom where he lies with his ears between his paws. My cousin says that when the weather is better, he can run in theforest ofBrocéliande, which is his natural habitat…"

"That sounds worth investigation," said Leonora, when Maud had finished. "That's more or less what I guessed it said. I might go over to Nantes-where is Nantes exactly?-and take a look at what Dr Le Minier has got there. Except that I don't read old French. You'll have to come with me, my darling. We could have a fun time. LaMotte and sea food and Brocéliande, what do you say?"

"That at some future date that will be lovely, but just now I've got a paper to finish for the York Conference on Metaphor and I've got into a horrible knot with it."

"Tell. Two minds are better than one. What metaphor?"

Maud was at a loss. She had distracted Leonora from Christabel temporarily, only to find herself jounced into discussing a paper which was hardly forming in her mind and which was in fact better left another month to grow in the dark on its own.

"It's vague yet. It's to do with Melusina and Medusa and Freud's idea that the Medusa-head was a castration-fantasy, female sexuality, feared, not desired."

"Ah," said Leonora, "I must tell you about a letter I had from a German about Goethe's Faust, where the chopped-off heads of the Hydra creep about the stage and think they are still something or other-I've been paying attention to Goethe recently-the ewig weibliche, the Mothers, all that, the witches, the sphinxes…"

Leonora talked on. She was never dull, if always breathless. Maud began to feel safe as the conversation moved from Brittany to Goethe, from Goethe to sexuality in general, and from the general to the particular and the peculiar habits of Leonora's two husbands which she was given to deploring, and very occasionally celebrating, in a kind of vehement recitative. Maud always thought that there was no more to be known than she herself knew, about the quirks and foibles, the secret lusts and inconsiderate failures, the smells and funny noises and ejaculations verbal and seminal emitted by the poor sap and the meaty-man. She was always proved wrong. Leonora was a kind of verbal Cleopatra, creating appetite where most she satisfied, making an endless pillow-book out of the new oratory of the couch.

"As for you," Leonora suddenly said. "What's the state of your own love-life? You haven't contributed much, this evening."

"How could I have?"

"Touché. I do go on. But that suits you fine, you're all uptight about your own sexuality. You were hurt by that bastard, Fergus Wolff, but you shouldn't have gotten so annihilated, it's letting the side down. You should branch out. Try other sweet things."

"You mean women. Just at the moment, I'm trying celibacy. I like it. Its only hazard is people who will proselytise for their own way of doing things. You should try it."

"Oh, I did, for a month, back in the Fall. It was great at first. I got to be quite in love with myself, and then I thought I was unhealthily attached to me, and should give myself up. So I found Mary-Lou. It's much more thrilling bringing someone else off- more generous, Maud."

"You see what I mean about proselytising. Give up, Leonora. I'm happy the way I am."

"It's your choice," said Leonora, equably. She added, "I tried calling you before I flew out. No one knew where you were. Gone off in a car with a man, I was told by the Department."

"Who? Who said that?"

"That would be telling. I hope you had a good time."

Maud became like her namesake, icily regular, splendidly null. She said frostily, "Yes, thank you," and stared tightlipped and white into space.

"Point taken," said Leonora. "No trespassers. I'm glad there is someone." There isn't. "OK. There isn't."

Leonora splashed a long time in Maud's bathroom and left it covered with little puddles of water, lidless bottles and several different spicy smells of unknown unguents. Maud put the lids back, mopped up the puddles, had a shower between curtains redolent of Opium or Poison, and had just climbed into her cool bed when Leonora appeared in the doorway, largely naked except for an exiguous and unbelted crimson silk dressing-gown.

"A good-night kiss," Leonora said.

I can't.

You can. It s easy.

Leonora came to the bed and folded Maud into her bosom. Maud fought to get her nose free. Loose hands met Leonora's majestic belly and heavy breasts. She couldn't push, that was as bad as submitting. To her shame, she began to cry.

"What is it with you, Maud?"

"I told you. I'm off the whole thing. Right off. I did tell you."

"I can relax you."

"You must be able to see you have exactly the opposite effect. Go back to bed, Leonora. Please."

Leonora made various rrr-ooof noises like a large dog or bear, and finally rolled away, laughing. "Tomorrow is another day," said Leonora. "Sweet dreams, Princess."

A kind of desperation overcame Maud. The bulk of Leonora lay on her sofa in her living-room, between her and her books. She noticed a kind of rigorous aching of her limbs, from tense confinement, which was reminiscent of the last terrible days of Fergus Wolff. She wanted to hear her own voice, saying something simple and to the point. She tried to think whom she wanted to speak to, and came up with Roland Michell, that other devotee of white and solitary beds. She did not look at her watch-it was late, but not so very late, not for scholars. She would let it ring, just a few times, and then, if he didn't answer, ring off quickly, so that if seriously disturbed he would never know by whom. She picked up the telephone by her bed and dialled the London number. She would tell him what? Not about Sabine de Kercoz, but just that there was something to tell. That she was not alone.

Two rings, three, four. The phone was lifted. A listening silence at the other end.

"Roland?"

"He's asleep. Have you any idea what time it is?"

"I'm sorry. I'm ringing from abroad."

"That is Maud Bailey, isn't it?"

Maud was silent.

"Isn't it, isn't it, Maud Bailey? Why don't you leave us alone?"

Maud held the phone silently, listening to the angry voice. She looked up and saw Leonora in the doorway, gleaming black curls and red silk. "I came to say I'm sorry and have you got anything for a headache?"

Maud put the phone down."Don't let me interrupt you."There was nothing to interrupt.'

The next day, Maud telephoned Blackadder, which was a tactical error. "Professor Blackadder?" Yes. "This is Maud Bailey, from the Lincoln Resource Centre for Women's Studies." On yes. "I am trying to get in touch with Roland Michell, rather urgently."

"I don't know why you should apply to me, Dr Bailey. I never see him these days."

"I thought he-"

"He's been away recently. He's been in poor health since he came back. Or so I assume, since I don't see him."

"I'm sorry."

"I don't see why you should be. I take it you are not responsible for his-ailing state?"

"Perhaps, if you see him, you would tell him I called."

"If I do, I will. Is there any other message?"

"Could you ask him to call me."

"About what, Dr Bailey?"

"Tell him Professor Stern is here, from Tallahassee."

"If I remember, if I see him, Til tell him that."

"Thank you."

Maud and Leonora, coming out of a shop in Lincoln, were almost killed by a large car, reversing at great and silent speed. They were carrying hobby-horses, with velvet heads on solid broomsticks, beautifully made with flowing silken manes and wicked embroidered eyes. Leonora wanted them for various godchildren and said they looked English and magical. The driver of the reversing car, seeing the two women through smoke-blue glass, thought they looked bizarrely cultish, in flowing skirts and scarfed heads, brandishing their totemic beasts. He made an economical contemptuous gesture at the gutter. Leonora raised her hobby-horse and addressed him, jingling its bells, as slob, prick and maniac. Insulated from her imprecations, he completed his manoeuvre, distressinga push-chair, a grandmother, two cyclists, an errand-boy and a Cortina, which had to reverse behind him the length of the street. Leonora copied down his number plate which was ANK 666. Neither Maud nor Leonora had met Mortimer Cropper. Their power-circle was different-different conferences, different libraries. Maud therefore felt no shadow of threat or apprehension as the Mercedes slid away through the narrow old streets for which it had not been designed.

If Cropper had known one of his cult-figures was Maud Bailey, he would not have stopped; he had registered Leonora's American voice without much interest. He was on another quest. In a short time the Mercedes was having difficulty with a hay-wain in the twisting little wold roads near Bag-Enderby. He faced out the haywagon, making it pull precariously into a hedge. He kept his window closed and his aseptic leather interior air-conditioned.

The entrance to the drive to Seal Court was festooned with notices-old and greenish, new and red on white, PRIVATE PROPERTY KEEP OUT. NO TRESPASSERS. DANGEROUS DOG. PROTECTED PROPERTY. ANY ACCIDENTS YOUR OWNRISK. Cropper drove in. In his experience signboard verbosity was a substitute for, not an indicator of, mantraps. He drove along the beech drive and into the courtyard, where he stopped, engine humming, and considered his next move.

Sir George, with his shotgun, was seen to peer from the kitchen window and then to emerge from the door. Cropper sat in his car.

"Lost your way?"

Cropper wound down his grey window, and saw crumbling stones instead of steely film set. He looked about with a practised eye. Battlements eroded. Doors hung askew. Weeds in the stable-yard.

"Sir George Bailey?"

"Uh-huh. Can I help you?"

Cropper emerged from his car and turned off the engine. "May I give you my card? Professor Mortimer Cropper, of the Stant Collection, in Robert Dale Owen University, in Harmony City, New Mexico."

"Some mistake."

"Oh, I don't think so. I've come a long way, just to ask for a few moments of your time."

"I'm a busy man. My wife's ill. What do you want?"

Cropper moved towards him and thought of asking if he could come in; Sir George raised his gun a little. Cropper stopped in the yard. He wore a loose and elegant black silk and wool jacket over charcoal grey flannels and a cream silk shirt. He was thin, he was sinewy; he bore a faint resemblance to the film Virginians, poised like cats in corrals, ready to jump this way or that, or to draw.

"I am, I think I may safely say, the leading expert in the world on Randolph Henry Ash. Sources have led me to believe that you may be in possession of some documentation by him-say a letter, say a draft of something-"

"Sources?"

"Roundabout sources. These things always become known, sooner or later. Now, Sir George, I represent-I curate-the largest collection of the manuscript writings of R. H. Ash in the world-"

"Look, Professor, I'm not interested. I don't know anything about this Ash and I don't propose to start-"

My sources- "And I don't like English things being bought up by foreigners."

"A document to do, perhaps, with your illustrious ancestress,

Christabel LaMotte?"

"Not illustrious. Not my ancestress. Inaccurate on both counts. Go away."

"If I could just come in for a moment or two and discuss the matter-simply to know for scholarly purposes what you might or might not have-"

"I don't want any more scholars in this house. I don't want any interference. I have work to do."

"You don't deny that you have something-"

"I don't say anything. It's none of your business. Get off my land. Poor little fairy poet. Leave her alone."

Sir George took a stolid step or two forwards. Cropper elegantly raised his elegant hands; his crocodile-skin belt shifted a little like a gun-belt on his lean hips.

"Don't shoot. I'll go. I never trouble the truly reluctant. Let me say this to you, though. Have you any idea of how much such a piece of writing-if it existed-would be worth?"

"Worth?"

"In money. In money, Sir George."

A blank.

"For instance one letter from Ash-simply fixing a sitting with a portrait-painter-recently went for £500 at Sotheby's. Went to me, of course. It is our rather too frank boast that we don't have a library precept from the university budget, Sir George, we simply have a cheque book. Now if you had more than one letter-or a poem-"

"Go on then-"

"Say twelve long letters-or twenty little ones with not much in-you'd be handsomely into six figures and maybe more. Six figures in pounds sterling. I observe your splendid home needs a lot of upkeep."

"Letters by the fairy poet?"

"By Randolph Henry Ash."

Sir George's red brow creased with thought.

"And if you had these letters you'd take 'em off-"

"And preserve them in Harmony City and make them accessible to all scholars of all nations. They would join their fellows in perfect conditions-air pressure, humidity, light-our conditions of keeping and viewing are the best in the world."

"English things should stay in England in my view."

"Understandable. An admirable sentiment. But in these days of microfilm and photocopying-how relevant is sentiment?"

Sir George made one or two convulsive movements with the shotgun, perhaps a product of thought. Cropper, his keen eyes on Sir George's, kept his hands rather absurdly in the air, and smiled, a darkly vulpine smile, not anxious, but watchful.

"If you tell me, Sir George, that I am wholly mistaken in supposing you have discovered any significant new manuscripts- any manuscripts at all-you must simply say so and I shall leave instantly. Though I hope you will take my card-it may be that a closer look at any old letters of Christabel LaMotte's-any old diaries, any old account books-may turn up something by Ash. If you are in any doubt about the nature of any manuscript at all, I should be only too happy to give an opinion-an unprejudiced opinion-as to its provenance and worth. And worth."

"I don't know." Sir George retreated into bull-faced squireish idiocy; Cropper could see his eyes calculating, and in that moment knew for certain that there was something, and that Sir George could lay his hands on it.

"May I hand you my card without being blasted?"

"I suppose so. I suppose you can. Mind you, I don't say it's any use, I don't say…"

"You say nothing. You are unprejudiced. I understand perfectly."

The Mercedes slipped back through Lincoln faster than it had come out. Cropper considered, and rejected, the idea of calling on Maud Bailey at this point. He thought about Christabel LaMotte. Somewhere in the Stant Collection-for which he had a loving and near-photographic recall, once activated-was something about Christabel LaMotte. What was it?

Maud was crossing Lincoln Market Square between the stalls. She was bumped into, with a heavy thud, by Sir George, in an unexpected suit, tight and greenish-brown. He put out a hand and seized her sleeve.

"Do you know," he cried loudly, "young woman, do you know how much an electric wheelchair might cost? Or a stairlift, perhaps you can price that?"

"No," said Maud.

"Perhaps you should find out. I've just been to see my solicitor, who has a low opinion of you, Maud Bailey, a low opinion."

"I'm not sure what-"

"Don't look so mimsy and mild. Six figures or more, that's what he said, that sly cowboy in his Merc. And you said never a word of that, oh no, butter wouldn't melt in your cold little mouth, would it?"

"You mean, the letters…"

"Norfolk Baileys have never given a damn about Seal Court. The old Sir George built it to spite them and in my opinion they'd be pleased to see it crack up as it will do pretty soon. But an electric wheelchair, young woman, you should have thought of that."

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 any thing 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 Ameri can? 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…"