The library at Upleigh was remarkably similar. There was the same dominant wall of books that looked as though they had never been read. There were the same small white or black busts — as if from a central warehouse — of men with heavy brows and beards and toga-draped shoulders. There was a desk and, instead of the leather sofa, two dumpy red-brick-coloured armchairs. There was a rack of newspapers and magazines, strange objects of modernity in what might have been a museum. Sunlight came from the window between half-drawn curtains and stretched itself in a bright rectangle over the soft-brown carpet.
On the desk was a small stack of what she recognised as law books. But it was the only sign — it even looked rather arranged — of his supposed intentions while the house was empty and at peace. On a morning like this? Mugging up. She imagined anyway that his diligent studying would have consisted of putting his feet up on the desk and smoking several cigarettes.
She seemed to see him actually doing this, like a ghost in the room. That made two ghosts then. But her ghost was — had been — palpably and unadornedly there. Though no one would ever know.
It was only March, but such was the warmth that a fly was buzzing and knocking obstinately against the window. And then she saw it, on the other side of the desk: a little enclave of books very similar to the one she knew and had recourse to at Beechwood. She even recognised familiar titles, books she had actually read. So she was not a stranger or trespasser here. In some way she even belonged.
But if Paul Sheringham had ever gone near any of these books, he never said. He gave the impression that he thought there were many things at Upleigh that ought by now to have been chucked away. After all, the bloody horses had all gone. And when she’d told him about her own reading at Beechwood (she wished she hadn’t) he’d scoffed, as he scoffed at so many things, and said, ‘All that tommyrot, Jay? You read all that stuff?’ And reminded her at once that their relationship was essentially bodily, physical and here-and-now, it wasn’t for droning on about books.
A lawyer? Hardly.
The only difference at Upleigh was that the ‘boys’ books’ were not in a separate bookcase, revolving or otherwise, but in a little section (perhaps once cleared of weightier matter) of the main big case, convenient for access.
And the other difference of course was that she was standing naked in the library at Upleigh, something she had never done at Beechwood.
She took one of the books from the shelf in front of her and opened it, and then, for reasons she couldn’t have explained, pressed it nursingly to her naked breasts. It was a copy of Kidnapped. She knew it. She had read the copy from the bookcase at Beechwood. There was the map of ‘The Wanderings of David Balfour’. There were the words, ‘I will begin the story of my adventures. .’
She pressed the book to her, then replaced it. No one would know. No one would know about that book’s little wandering and adventure. No one would know about the ‘map’ on the sheet upstairs.
She left the library. The house’s scattered retinue of clocks ticked and whirred. It was the only sound. Outside, the world shone and sang. Here everything was muted, suspended, immured.
She turned into a passage that she instinctively knew would take her to the stairs to the kitchen. This one, after she descended the stairs, was so still and quiet it might as well have been a library. She felt its unnerving calm. Any kitchen normally has a residual warmth, but this one, beneath the sunny upper floors and left inert all morning, was distinctly cool. But that was her fault perhaps, for wearing no clothes.
Goose bumps emerged on her skin. So too did a vulgar gurgle from her stomach.
The pie, with a knife for cutting it, was on the table, beneath a blue-and-white tea towel. Beside it was a tray with cutlery, napkin, condiments, a bottle of beer and a glass, a bottle opener. The whole collation was presented so that Mister Paul might carry it up to any part of the house if he cared to — the library, for example, so as not to interrupt his studies. That is, if he did not wish to savour the novel experience of eating by himself in the kitchen — and assuming, of course, that he didn’t have other plans for passing his time and taking his luncheon.
Who anyway, on a day like this, would really want to bury their nose in a book?
It was a half-pie, a leftover, but, even so, too much for one. But she attacked it with a sudden ravenous unmannerly hunger. There was no one to watch. He might have done this, she supposed, if the day had turned out differently, if it had followed the course of the pretence he’d invented for it. He might have come down to the kitchen and, suddenly relishing the perverse pleasure of it, wolfed the pie right there at the table. He might have ceased to be the aloof and splendid Paul Sheringham and, with no one to see, become, cheeks bulging, like some guzzling schoolboy or starving tramp.
And she, in her ladylike liberty — and with two and six in her pocket — might have stopped at some village tea shop for egg-and-cress sandwiches and cake.
He must by now be sitting down in his impeccable get-up, with her, at the Swan. Though how might he have accomplished that? By magic? By sheer gall and bravado? ‘Well, I’m here now. .’ Or readiness to stake everything? ‘Well, if you want to call it off. .’
Had that even been his brutal, polished plan? It gave her a brief tingle of hope. To call it off — first clearing his path by causing serious displeasure.
She tried anyway to imagine the scene, even as she chewed on the pie, as he himself, sitting here, might have chewed on it: cheeks crammed, pieces spilling. She wanted to eat this pie, which he hadn’t eaten, for him. As if she were him.
It was a very good pie. She opened the bottle of beer and drank, if only to wash down the food. It tasted as beer had always tasted the few times she’d drunk it, like brown autumn leaves. She attacked the pie again. Then she felt suddenly like the most miserable and desperate of creatures: no clothes to her back, no roof of her own, and eating someone else’s pie.
She shivered. She got to her feet. The pie was too much anyway. She burped loudly. She left everything as it was. She left it, she thought, only as he would have left it — as he had left his discarded clothes. She even turned at the door to see it as if it were all his heedless doing. Ethel would clear it up, of course, later. Ethel or Iris. And it was strange, either of them might think, that he’d eaten the pie, or most of it, if he’d gone to have lunch with Miss Hobday. And if he’d gone to have lunch with Miss Hobday then it was strange that there was also that patch on the sheet.
But Ethel, if it was for her to note both pie and patch, might piece together a story, not unlike one she herself, the Beechwood maid, had fleetingly envisaged. That Miss Hobday, on such a beautiful morning, had taken it upon herself to drive all the way to Upleigh and ‘surprise’ Mister Paul. Meanwhile Mister Paul, toiling at his law books, had got bored and hungry and remembered the veal-and-ham pie. The marauded but unfinished remnants and the barely broached bottle of beer might indeed suggest he had been surprised in his mid-morning raid of the kitchen. And after Miss Hobday’s arrival one thing had, unexpectedly or not, led to another, accounting for the stain on the sheet.
And then Mister Paul and Miss Hobday, having taken advantage of the empty house, had left for their lunch, each driving their own car, to preserve the appearance that they had met at their rendezvous. Ethel might even have remembered Mister Paul’s saying, on that strange little drive to the station, that he dared say he’d be meeting Miss Hobday for lunch, and then Iris saying that she’d put out a bit of veal-and-ham pie for him anyway, just in case. He wasn’t obliged of course to discuss his plans with the servants, and it was peculiar if he did. But then his personally taking them to the station was rather peculiar too.