The Vault

two

A MAN IN A cream-coloured linen suit and panama hat stood mystified in the flagged open space in front of Bath Abbey. The West Front with Christ in Majesty above the Heavenly Host and the ascending angels was lost on Professor Joe Dougan. For the past ten minutes he had paced the perimeter of the square staring at the shopfronts, oblivious of the people at the cafe tables, the crocodile-files of children waiting to tour the Abbey and the crowds cheering the buskers juggling with flaming torches. Shaking his head, he went over to one of the benches in the centre, where a woman was cooling off with an ice-cream.

"These people, Donna."

"What do you expect in the middle of August?" said his wife, pencil-thin and with a faint blue tinge cast by her great kingfisher-coloured straw hat from Selfridges. "You're going to get tourists any place this time of year."

"Not the tourists." The professor took off his polaroids and gave them a wipe. "I was making a point about the entire British nation."

"So what's the problem?"

"The crazy way they use numbers. You walk into a store and ask for something and they point upstairs and tell you it's on the first floor."

"The first floor is the ground floor in this country," his wife said. "The second floor is the first floor. I don't have any problem with that."

"I know, I know. I'm just remarking on the logic, or absence of it. This place is the Abbey Churchyard, am I right? Am I reading the map right, Donna?"

"It says so on the sign over there, Joe."

"Okay, we agree on that. The Abbey Churchyard. I can overlook the fact that it doesn't look one bit like a churchyard."

"There must have been tombs here one time," said Donna.

"Uhuh?"

"We could be right over someone's grave."

"Maybe."

Now that it had been drawn to Donna's attention she didn t like it. "I'm eating an ice-cream and there could be a dead person under here."

Joe carried on as if he had not heard. "I don't understand the way they number the houses, when they number them at all. That's number six over there." He was pointing to the optician's under the Georgian colonnade at the entrance to the yard. "It has no number that I can see, but the lady inside told me it's definitely six. And the restaurant next door is seven. Terrific-they actually have a number over the entrance. The English Teddy Bear Company must be eight. Abbey Galleries is nine. We have rising numbers, right?"

Donna indulged him with a nod.

Joe came to the crux. "So what did they do with number five, Abbey Churchyard? Do you see it?"

Donna turned her head through the limit of its movement. "Honey, I don't believe number five is here."

Joe said with all the authority of Dodge Professor of English at Columbus University, "It has to be here someplace. They wouldn't start with number six if they don't have one through five, would they?"

Donna gave a shrug. "This is England. Maybe they would."

Joe sighed. "Is it possible they lost some buildings?"

"Lost them? How would they do that?"

"The war."

"That was half a century ago. Don't you think after fifty years they'd change the numbers if some shops were taken out in the war?"

"Want a bet?"

Joe seemed to be accepting defeat. Donna took another look around. Behind her, the eighteenth century Pump Room and the entrance to the Roman Baths extended along the entire south side, a grand design of columns, pediments and balustrades. "All these places look old to me."

Joe slumped onto the seat beside Donna and was silent for some time. The activity around them continued. Appreciative screams rewarded an exceptional feat of juggling. A woman holding aloft a walking-stick with a blue scarf tied to it was addressing a group of tourists, pointing out the features of the Abbey front.

Donna said, "You could ask the guide over there."

"I already did."

"And…?"

"She doesn't know-or doesn't want me to know. This is not information they like to give out. Don't ask me why. They don't list it in the guidebooks. It isn't in any of the histories we bought in the book town."

The book town. Remembering, Donna took a solid bite of ice-cream that made her eyes water. Five days before, Joe had insisted they visit Hay-on-Wye, on the border of England and Wales, where he had heard there are more used books on sale than any place else in the world. While her culture-vulture spouse had gone from shop to shop picking up treasures, Donna had ruined her shoes in the rain looking for a hairdresser who would fit her in without an appointment. No chance in Hay. She had passed the rest of that afternoon drinking lukewarm tea in a succession of dark teashops smelling of damp retriever dogs.

Joe was still fretting. "This is something British I don't understand, like they're ashamed of what happened here. If we had number five, Abbey Churchyard back home in Columbus, you can bet we'd have a board outside and a souvenir shop in the hallway."

Donna said with a slow smile, "And a theme park out the back."

"All I want is the satisfaction of knowing which building it is."

"Like a little round plaque on the front?"

"That would be asking too much."

"I guess so many famous people lived in this city that they don't trouble with plaques."

"That isn't so. They put them up for the names they want to honour. Jane Austen, Lord Nelson."

Donna shrugged. "Seems to me they don't want anyone to know what happened in number five."