The college was on the Woodstock Road, one of the two main thoroughfares leading northwards out of the city. Finding it was simple, thanks to Google Maps—which gave River pause; a spooks’ nursery should surely be, what, cloaked?—but parking was a challenge. Welcome to Oxford. After circling his target a while, he wound up on a side street five minutes’ walk away, then, as long as he had the app open, he checked on Slough House, and Jesus: That was there too! He looked forward to mentioning this to Lamb. He’d have to explain what Google Maps was, and possibly also the existence of social media, but some punchlines take longer to drop than others. He was whistling as he headed for the college, crossed the main road and called at the porters’ lodge. There, waiting for Erin Grey to be summoned, he gazed at buildings old and new, and reflected that this route he’d never taken had its charms, even if those who emerged at the other end frequently lacked them. Or maybe he was exaggerating. Sid, after all, was an Oxford graduate, and look at her. Not that she’d attended the Spooks’ College.
“Mr. Cartwright.”
Erin Grey had arrived while he’d been gathering wool.
Until now, their conversations had taken place on the phone, and this was his first chance to see what she looked like, or would have been, if Sid hadn’t cyberstalked her. “I’m not sending you on a blind date without knowing what the enemy looks like,” she’d said.
“This is not a blind date. And not with an enemy.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
To be fair, she had a point.
Grey was a redhead, somewhere around thirty, somewhere around five eight, and there were doubtless other numbers he could have called upon had he been inclined. The hair, evidently abundant when unleashed, was held in check by a cream-coloured Tilley hat, a brand River’s grandmother, Rose, had favoured for protection from the sun. Erin also had pale blue eyes and wore jeans and a white blouse, which as far as it went was pretty much a match for what he was wearing himself. In other circumstances this might have been a starting pistol for entry-level flirtation, but River still had that conversation with Sid replaying in his mind.
“Not my type,” he’d said, carefully not looking at the picture she’d unearthed. Did you “unearth” things online? Probably not the moment to set that hare running.
“You don’t have a type,” she told him. “Up till now, you’ve barely had a look-in.”
“Well, all I’m going to look at in Oxford is the old man’s book collection. And find out about this non-existent volume Ms. Grey has identified.”
“Ms. Grey!” This delighted Sid, for some reason.
It could still be, after all these months, utterly discombobulating how quickly a conversation could metastasize. It was like trying to catch soap in a jacuzzi while drunk, and also maybe handcuffed to something.
“Sid? I don’t care what she looks like, which incidentally isn’t as hot as you seem to think. I have no interest in her other than as the, what, the curator of Grandad’s library. Okay?”
“Said the spy.”
“Well what’s that got to do with—?”
“Spies lie. They betray. It’s what they do.”
He knew that. He just wouldn’t have set it out quite so uncompromisingly, in this particular context.
Meanwhile, Erin was waiting for him to respond, so he said, “River, please.”
They shook hands and she spoke some more, introductory stuff about the college, and had he been here before, and the library was this way. He had already told her this would be his first visit, but sometimes you had to say things twice—it was normal human interaction. They walked round a corner into a small courtyard, if that wasn’t too grand a word, bustling with summer foliage.
“We’re a centre for Russian studies,” she was saying. “A lot of analysts, a lot of historians, a lot of experts. And yes, before you ask, that includes Moscow watchers.” The phrase they used at the Park, back in the O.B.’s day. “But if you were expecting a basement where they test exploding sandwiches and invisible cars, you’re in for a disappointment.”
“Shame. I’ve often wondered what an exploding sandwich tastes like.”
“It’s the last thing I’d eat.” She delivered this so deadpan, he wasn’t sure a joke was intended.
She led him into a vestibule equipped with coat hooks and notice boards and a set of pigeonholes. A poster for an evening of Ukrainian folk music, and another for a lecture series, also on a Ukrainian theme. A corridor stretched ahead; the floor tiled in a soft brown colour, the various doors on either side new looking. It was cool, bordering on chill, and there was no obvious noise until he moved, to discover his shoes percussive on the tiles.
“You’re not the actual librarian, are you?” he asked.
“God, no. I’m doing a master’s, but I was roped in to help with your grandfather’s collection. Maybe because I was at the Park not long ago.”
“Yeah, you said. I remember. Sorry.”
“No, I’ve enjoyed it. It felt like a huge jigsaw puzzle. Also, there are free meals involved.”
He’d been apologising for forgetting her backstory, but it didn’t seem worth picking up on. Too often, lately, he’d found himself on the wrong side of a social miscue. Hard to tell if this was a symptom of his brush with a destabilising nerve agent or just who he was, his occasional gaucherie writ larger post-pandemic, in common with most everyone else.
“We’re in here.”
They’d come to the end of the corridor, having passed a set of doors into what looked like the main library: a tall room, book lined, with carrels round the edge, though none of this as leather-bound or oak-lined as his imagination had expected. Instead, it was all glass and blond wood, with high windows through which the upper limbs of trees could be seen, lazily weaving patterns out of sunshine. He hadn’t noticed any readers, though it had been a quick glance. Calm, though. Peaceful. That behind him, he was shown through another door into a room that was smaller but nevertheless punched him when he entered. He had to hide an intake of breath and hope Erin hadn’t noticed.
It wasn’t the O.B.’s study—no Night Watch, no armchairs, no fireplace—but the books on the shelves, arranged as he’d always known them, triggered something he hadn’t realised was there. Like entering a strange room to find the view from his childhood window. It wasn’t as if he’d memorised the shelves’ contents, more that they’d imprinted themselves; it was the wallpaper he’d grown up with, and long stopped noticing. Now, something between grief and undirected longing welled inside him. Here were the shelves no one was allowed to dust. Here were the patterns that had always been there. The feeling crawled up his spine, not for the first time, that there was a cipher lurking beneath the surface of these texts, its meaning all but ready to surrender, if you held the key.
He pulled himself back. “Blimey . . . I mean, I knew what you’d done. I just hadn’t thought it’d be so . . .”
He hadn’t thought it would be so like time travel.
The room, yes, was smaller than the O.B.’s study, the rows of shelves packed more closely together. Not the exact configuration, then, but unnervingly similar, and as he stepped towards the books, he found himself remembering their titles, or at least, finding the touchstones when he looked for them—there was Churchill, there was Beevor; there, among newer volumes, were Macintyre, Andrew and Aldrich. Biographies and histories and analytical studies, with the occasional frivolity thrown in, in the shape of a smattering of paperbacks kept low down, where the casual gaze wouldn’t encounter them—not an embarrassment, but a private pleasure: Deighton, Ambler, Price, Littell. The le Carrés in hardback on a shelf above, next to Dickens.