She had come further towards me now and stood at the end of the 990s: history of New Zealand to extraterrestrial worlds.
‘I don’t mind,’ she said.
‘It’s out of your way,’ I replied.
‘It doesn’t have to be.’
I looked back at the book on the desk.
‘I’ve too much to do to go home,’ I said. ‘Haven’t you?’
She looked at me, gave me that frown smile again and zipped up her coat.
‘I’ll see you on Monday,’ she said and went back towards the door and the basement became silent again apart from the steady tick of the central heating.
I returned to the book and gently removed the stitching from the spine of McKay’s Prevention of Galliforme Diseases with a pair of tweezers before dropping the brittle strands of thread into the bin. No, it was better that I stayed here. It wasn’t fair to ask Helen to drive a mile out of her way in this weather. And they would only start gossiping again if they saw us together in her car.
***
I didn’t stop working until hours later. It was three in the afternoon. I hadn’t eaten any lunch, but I wasn’t hungry, and I often lose track of time down there in the basement anyway, separated as I am from the world of scurrying feet above. A day could sometimes easily pass without me once looking up from what I was doing.
I switched on the kettle to make tea and as it boiled I looked up at the glass panel. It glowed with a buttery light and I wondered if it had stopped snowing at last and the sun had come out. Whatever, it would be going dark before long.
I sat back down at the desk but hadn’t taken a sip before there was someone knocking at the door. It wasn’t Helen come back to rescue me, I knew that. She had keys. Most likely it was Jim, the caretaker, who I’d fought tooth and nail to keep out of the basement with his anti-bacterial sprays and his polish and his propensity for throwing things away. He’d always been a little abrupt with me since I’d had his key off him and rattled the ones he had left in a plaintive way, it seemed, as though without the full set he felt somehow emasculated.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t dislike him. I’d just rather it was me who kept the place clean and tidy. Jim doesn’t really get the idea of an archive, keeping things. I quite admire him in many ways and had half expected him to have stuck around that afternoon. He’s a stubborn old sod like me and wouldn’t have gone home just because it was snowing.
I put the cup down and went to open the door. Jim stood there — brown overcoat and navy tattoos — his mace-head of keys hanging from his belt.
‘Yes?’
‘Visitor for you,’ he said, stepping aside.
‘Hanny?’ I tried to sound surprised, but I knew with all this business at Coldbarrow that he would come to see me sooner or later.
‘Hello, brother,’ he said as he sidled past Jim and shook my hand.
‘I’m locking up at four,’ said Jim pointedly and wandered off up the stairs, jangling his keys.
‘What are you doing here?’ I said and gestured for Hanny to go down to my desk as I closed the door. He was damp with snow and his scarf was caked in ice.
‘I rang the flat, but there was no answer,’ he said. ‘I must admit I thought you’d be at home today.’
‘I’ve too much to do,’ I replied.
‘You work too hard.’
‘Pot. Kettle.’
‘Well, you do.’
‘Is there any other way to work?’
He laughed. ‘No, I suppose not, brother.’
‘Tea?’
‘If you’re having one.’
I made Hanny a cup as he draped his wet things over the radiator.
‘Don’t you get lonely down here, brother,’ he said, looking up at the glass panel.
‘Not at all.’
‘But you do work alone?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘You said that with some conviction.’
‘Well, there was someone else once.’
‘What happened to them?’
‘She wasn’t quite suited.’
‘To what?’
‘To detail.’
‘I see.’
‘It’s important, Hanny.’
‘It must be.’
‘It’s not easy staying focused all day,’ I said. ‘It takes a particular type of mind.’
‘Like yours.’
‘Evidently.’
Hanny took the cup of tea off me and pressed the back of his thighs against the radiator. He looked up at me, went to say something, but stopped short and changed tack.
‘How are things going with Doctor Baxter?’ he asked.
‘Baxter? Alright I suppose.’
‘He said you were making progress last time I spoke to him.’
‘I thought our sessions were meant to be confidential.’
‘They are, you fool,’ said Hanny dismissively. ‘He didn’t give me any details. He just said you’d turned a corner.’
‘That’s what he seems to think.’
‘And have you?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You seem happier.’
‘Do I?’
‘Less anxious.’
‘You can tell that about me in just a few minutes?’
‘I do know you, brother. I can see it, even if you can’t.’
‘Am I that transparent?’
‘I didn’t mean that. I meant that it’s hard to perceive things about yourself sometimes.’
‘Such as?’
‘Well, I can see that Baxter’s making a difference. And that our prayers are too.’
‘Oh yes, how are things at the church?’ I said.
‘Couldn’t be better,’ he replied.
‘Still packing them in every Sunday?’
‘Sunday, Monday, Tuesday … We’ve been very blessed, brother. We light a candle for you every day.’
‘That’s good of you.’
Hanny laughed quietly. ‘God loves you, brother,’ he said. ‘Even if you don’t believe in Him, He believes in you. It will end. This sickness will leave you. He will take it away.’
Perhaps it was the light down there, but he looked old suddenly. His black hair was still thick enough to have been tousled into a nest by his woollen hat, but his eyes were starting to sink into the soft cushions of the sockets and there were liver spots on the backs of his hands. My brother was slowly slipping towards pension age and I was following like his shadow.
He embraced me and I felt his hand on my back. We sat down at the desk and finished the tea in silence.
Having circled around what concerned him and run dry of small talk, he looked troubled now, frightened even.
‘What is it, Hanny?’ I said. ‘I’m sure you didn’t come all this way to ask me about Doctor Baxter.’
He breathed out slowly and ran his hand over his face.
‘No, brother, I didn’t.’
‘What then?’
‘You’ve heard the news about Coldbarrow, I take it?’ he said.
‘I could hardly have missed it, could I?’
‘But have you heard what they’re saying now?’
‘What’s that?’
‘That this poor child was shot.’
‘It was on the news this morning, yes.’
‘And they reckon it was some time ago. Thirty or forty years. Back in the 1970s.’
‘Yes?’
‘When we were there.’
‘So?’
His hands were trembling slightly as he brought them to his face again.
‘I’ve been having this memory,’ he said. ‘They sometimes come back to me out of the blue but I don’t always know what they mean.’
‘Memories about the pilgrimage?’
‘I suppose they must be.’
‘Like what?’
‘A beach. A girl. An old house with ravens.’
‘Rooks. That was Moorings.’
‘Moorings, yes that’s right. And I vaguely recall going to the shrine, but that might just have been Mummer putting things into my head. She was always talking about it, wasn’t she?’