“I decided I could be.”
“I’ve been looking for you. I rang and rang. To see if you were all right.”
“It wasn’t necessary. I thought if you could vanish, I could. So I did.”
“I’m glad.”
“I’m going to marry Euan.”
“I’m glad.”
“I hope not altogether glad.”
“Of course not. But you look—”
“And you. Are you happy?”
“In some ways. In others, I’m in a mess.”
“The rent’s paid until the first week in October. This week, that is.”
“Not that sort of mess. At least—”
“Euan has had an idea about the real mess, about Randolph and Christabel.”
They sat at a corner-table with a pink cloth and stiff pink napkins, in a large dining-room, with glittering crystal chandeliers and panelled walls. There was an autumn posy on the table: dusty pink asters, mauve chrysanthemums, a few freesias. Euan ordered champagne and they settled down to smoked salmon, pheasant with trimmings, Stilton and lemon soufflé. Roland found his pheasant tough. The bread sauce reminded him of his mother’s Christmas cooking. They talked about the weather in an English way and little currents of sexual anxiety ran round the table, also in an English way. Roland could see Val summing up Maud as beautiful and cold; he could see Maud studying Val, and judging himself in relation to Val, but he had no idea what judgment she had formed. He could see that both women responded to Euan’s friendliness and enthusiasm. Euan made everyone laugh and Val gleamed with pride and happiness and Maud relaxed into a smile. They drank good burgundy, and laughed more freely. Maud and Toby Byng turned out to have childhood friends in common. Euan and Maud talked about hunting. Roland felt peripheral, a watcher. He asked Toby Byng how Joan Bailey was, and was told that she’d had a long spell in hospital but was now out.
“Mortimer Cropper has led Sir George to believe that the proceeds from the sale of the correspondence—at least if it’s sold to him—will rebuild Seal Court and provide Lady Bailey with the latest technology.”
“That’s good for someone,” said Roland, “at least.”
Euan leaned across the table.
“That was what we wanted to discuss. Good for whom?”
He turned to Maud.
“Who owns the copyright in Christabel LaMotte’s poems and stories?”
“We do. My family. We think. The papers have been deposited in the Women’s Studies Resource Centre at Lincoln, where I work. That is, the manuscripts of Melusina, the City of Is, the two books of fairy tales and a lot of scattered lyrics. We don’t have many letters at all—we bought Blanche Glover’s journal in a Sotheby’s sale—quite secretly, no one realised its importance. There isn’t that much money in women’s studies yet. Of course, once the works are in print they go out of copyright after fifty years as anything else does.”
“Has it occurred to you that you might be the owner of the copyright in Christabel’s half of the correspondence?”
“It has, but I don’t think so. I don’t think there was a Will or anything. What happened was—when Christabel died in 1890 her sister Sophia sent a whole package to her daughter, May, who was my great-great-grandmother—she would have been about thirty, my great-grandfather was born in 1880 and May was married in 1878. There was some unpleasantness—the then Sir George didn’t believe in the marriage of first cousins, which this was. And the families didn’t get on. So Sophia sent these papers with a covering letter—I don’t remember it exactly, but something like ‘My dearest May, I have to convey some very sad news to you, which is that my dearest sister, Christabel, died very suddenly last night. She has often expressed the wish that you should have her papers and poems—you are my only daughter, and she believed strongly in the importance of handing things on through the female line. So I have sent what I could find—I do not know how much value or lasting interest they may have—but hope you will keep them safely, as she at least believed and other authorities have said, that she was a better poet than has yet been generally acknowledged.’
“She said that if she felt she could travel for the funeral her presence would be a comfort—but she (Sophia) knew that my great-great-grandmother had had trouble with the birth of her last child and was much preoccupied. There’s no evidence that she went. She kept the things but there’s no evidence that she took any interest in them.”
“That has had to wait for you,” said Euan.
“I suppose so. Yes. But as to the ownership—it’s even possible that what I have got might turn out to belong to Sir George if Christabel died intestate.… I can’t see Cropper and Co acknowledging any moral right I may have.”
Euan said, “That’s more or less what I thought. I got Val to tell me what she knew—”
“Not much,” said Val.
“Enough, about Cropper and Co. So I got my good friend Toby to poke about in all the old deedboxes his firm holds. This worries him—he’s Sir George’s family solicitor. In fact, he can’t go any further in this matter. But he—we—found something we feel you should see—we shall—you will, but I hope you’ll consent to let me act for you—we shall have to think very carefully about how to proceed. But anyway, in my professional view, there is no doubt about whose the letters are. I’ve brought a Xerox. God bless the Xerox machine. I’ve verified the signature in your women’s studies place while you were away. What do you think?”
Maud took the single Xerox sheet.
Dictated to my sister, Sophia Bailey, May 1st 1890, I being too weak to write clearly. I wish Sophia to have my money, and my furniture and china. If Jane Summers from Richmond is alive she should have something to remember me by, and £60. All my books and papers, and my copyrights, to go to Maia Thomasine Bailey in the hope that in the fulness of time she may become interested in poetry. Signed Christabel LaMotte, in the presence of Lucy Tuck, lady’s maid, and William Marchmont, gardener.
Euan said, “It was folded up in a heap of Sophia’s accounts. It’s clear from these that she found Jane Summers and paid her the bequest. And kept the bit of paper. I imagine she felt she’d done all that was necessary—carried out her sister’s intentions—and simply put the bit of paper away.”
Maud said, “Does that make the letters mine?”
“The copyright in unpublished letters is the property of the writer of the letters. The physical letters themselves are the property of the recipient. Unless returned, as these were.”
“You mean, his letters from her were returned?”
“Exactly. I believe—well, Toby says—that they contain a letter from him saying that he returns the letters to her possession.”
“So—if you are right—all the letters are my property, and the copyright in her letters is mine.”
“Exactly. It isn’t cut and dried. It’s open to be disputed. Sir George could dispute it and probably should. That document isn’t a proper Will, it’s not registered at Somerset House, there are all sorts of loopholes and chinks for contesting it. But my own opinion is, that you should be able to prove your title to the whole collection, his and hers. What is the problem is how we should proceed whilst protecting the interests of Toby here, whose position is ethically very dicey. How may this document come to light without his agency?”
Toby said, “If Sir George disputes your claim you could spend the whole proceeds on legal fees—”
“Like Bleak House,” said Val.
“Exactly,” said Euan. “He might settle. What we need now is a way for this to come to light without Toby deliberately finding it—I think I’ll have to devise a story which makes him my victim—I could persuade him to show me some of the papers in a trumped-up search—and then spring a surprise on him—”
“Piratical,” said Val, adoring.
“If you would consider my acting for you—”
“You won’t make a lot of money,” said Maud. “If the papers are mine, they will go in the Women’s Resource Centre.
”
“Understood. I’m not in it for the money. For the drama, the curiosity, you know? Though I think you should consider that you may have to sell—not to Cropper but to the British Library or somewhere acceptable—to pay off Sir George.”
Roland said, “Lady Bailey was good to us. She could do with the wheelchair.”
Maud said, “The Women’s Resource Centre has been disgracefully underfunded since its inception—”
“If all those papers were in the British Library, you could have microfilms and funding and a wheelchair—”
Maud looked at him with a fighting look. “If those papers were in the Resource Centre they’d attract funding—”
“Maud—”
“George Bailey has been extremely unpleasant to me—and to Leonora—”
“He loves his wife,” said Roland. “And his woods.”
“So he does,” said Toby Byng.
“I don’t think,” said Val, “we should start fighting over what we—you, that is, haven’t got yet. I think we should take it step by step. I think we should drink to Euan, who thought up all this, and think of a next step.”
“I’ve got one or two more ideas,” said Euan. “But they need a bit of thought and research.”
“You think I’m being greedy,” said Maud, when they were at home.
“No, I don’t. How could I?”
“I can feel you disapproving of me.”
“You’re quite mistaken. What right have I to disapprove?”
“That means you do. Do you think I should tell Euan to go away?
“That’s up to you.”
“Roland.”
“It has very little to do with me.”
That was the problem. He felt marginal. Marginal to her family, her feminism, her ease with her social peers. There were a great many circles here, all of which he was outside. He had begun this—what should it be called—this investigation—and had lost everything—whilst handing to Maud the materials with which she could improve her own lot immeasurably—job, future, Christabel, money … he hated eating dinners he could not have paid for. He hated living off Maud.
Maud said, “We can’t quarrel now—after everything we’ve—”
He was about to say they were not quarrelling, when the telephone rang.
The voice was female, trembling, and very agitated.
“I wish to speak to Dr Bailey.”
“This is Maud Bailey, speaking.”
“Yes. Well. Yes. Oh dear. I have thought and thought about whether I should ring you—you may think I am mad, or you may think I am simply bad—or presumptuous—I don’t know—I could only think of you—and I have sat and thought about it all evening and I only see now how late it is to be ringing anyone, I must have lost all sense of time, I should perhaps ring back tomorrow, that might be better only it might be too late, well, not perhaps tomorrow, but very soon, if I’m right—it was only that you seemed concerned, you see, you did seem to care—”
“Please—who is that speaking?”
“Oh dear, yes. I never initiate telephone calls. I am terrified of the telephone. This is Beatrice Nest. On behalf of Ellen Ash. No, not exactly on behalf—except that I do feel—I do feel—that it is for her that I am—”
“What has happened, Dr Nest?”
“I’m sorry. Let me try to settle down and speak clearly. I did try to ring you earlier, Dr Bailey, but there was no answer. I didn’t really expect you to answer this call, either, that is why I am so flustered and taken off my guard. Yes.”
“I do understand.”
“It is about Mortimer Cropper. He has been here—well not here, I’m at home now of course, in Mortlake, but into my room in the Museum, he has been there several times, looking very particularly at certain sections of the journal—”
“About Blanche Glover’s visit?”
“No, no, about the funeral of Randolph Ash. And today he brought young Hildebrand Ash—well he isn’t so young, he’s quite old, and certainly fat, but younger than Lord Ash himself, of course—perhaps you don’t know that Hildebrand Ash will succeed Lord Ash if he dies, when he dies, and he isn’t well, James Blackadder says, he certainly doesn’t answer letters at all—not that I write often, there is no real need, but when I do he doesn’t answer—”
“Dr Nest—”
“I know. Are you sure you wouldn’t rather I rang back tomorrow?”
“No. I mean yes. I am sure. I am consumed with curiosity.”
“I overheard them talking to each other. They believed I had gone—well, out of the room. Dr Bailey, I am absolutely certain that Professor Cropper means to disturb—to dig up—the Ashes. The grave in Hodershall. He and Hildebrand Ash together. He wants to find out what is in the box.”
“What box?” said Maud.
Beatrice Nest, with much circumlocution and breathiness, explained what box.
“He has been saying for years it should be dug up. Lord Ash wouldn’t countenance it, and anyway you have to have a Faculty from the Bishop to disturb an interment, you know, and he could never get one, but he says Hildebrand Ash has a moral right to the box and he himself has a—a right—because he—he—has done so much for Randolph Ash—he says he—I heard him say—‘Why not behave like the thieves who took Impression at Sunrise, why not take it and think of a plausible way to account for whatever we find later?’—I heard him—”
“Have you spoken to Professor Blackadder?”
“No.”
“Don’t you think you should?”
“He dislikes me. He dislikes everyone, but he dislikes me more than most. He might say I was mad, or he might think it was my fault that Mortimer Cropper had formed this dreadful plan—he hates Cropper too—I don’t think he would listen. I am sick of small humiliations. You talked to me sensibly, you understood Ellen Ash, you will see how this must be stopped for her sake.” She continued: “I would have tried to tell Roland Michell, but he’s disappeared. What do you think I should do? What can be done?”
“Roland is here, Dr Nest. Perhaps we should come to London. We can’t really call the police—”
“What could we possibly say to them?”
“Exactly. Do you know the Vicar at the Church where the grave is?”
“Mr Drax. He doesn’t like scholars. Or students. Or Randolph Ash, I think.”
“Everybody concerned with this business seems to be very prickly.”
“And Ash himself was such a generous man,” said Dr Nest, not refuting this judgment.
“Let us hope he sees off Mortimer Cropper. Perhaps we should go and see him?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what to do.”
“Let me consult. I’ll call you back tomorrow.”
“Please—Dr Bailey—hurry.”
Maud was excited. She told Roland they must go to London, and suggested that they consult Euan MacIntyre about Cropper’s possible courses of action and how to foil them. Roland said that this was a good plan, which it was, in its way, though it increased his own sense of unreal isolation. He lay awake at night, alone in the white bed, and worried. Something that had been kept secret had gone. He and Maud had felt impelled to keep the “research” secret, and whilst it was secret they had silently shared it and each other. Now it was out in the light of common day he saw it somehow diminished by the excited curiosity of Euan and Toby as much as by the hot desire and rage of Cropper and Blackadder. Euan’s charm and enthusiasm had not only smoothed the resentment and sullenness out of Val’s face but had somehow brought a brightness and recklessness to Maud herself. He fancied she spoke more freely to Euan and Toby than she had done to him. He fancied Val took pleasure in taking over the pursuit. He remembered his earliest impression of Maud—managerial, arrogant, critical. She had once belonged to Fergus. Their own strange silent games were the product of chance, of a brief artificial solitude, of secrecy. They could not survive in the open. He did not even know if he wanted them to. He looked for his own primary thought, and said to hi
mself that before Maud came he had had Randolph Ash and his words, and now even that, that above all, had been changed and taken from him.
He said nothing of all this to Maud, who appeared to notice nothing.
Euan, consulted the next day, was also excited. They would all go to London, he said, and talk to Miss Nest, and have a council of war. Perhaps they could follow Cropper around and catch him in flagrante delicto. The law was subtly different as to the disturbance of interments in burial grounds and alternatively cemeteries. Hodershall sounded like an Anglican graveyard that would qualify as a burial ground. He and Val would go in the Porsche and meet up with Roland and Maud. Why didn’t they come to his pad and telephone Dr Nest from there? He had a flat in the Barbican, very comfortable. Toby must stay and mind his deedboxes and Sir George’s interests.
Maud said, “I might stay with my aunt Lettice. She’s an old lady in Cadogan Square. Would you like to come?”
“I think I shall stay in the Putney flat.”
“Shall I come with you?”
“No.”
It was not the sort of place for her, with its dingy chintz and feline smell. And it was overlaid with memories of his life with Val, with his thesis. He didn’t want Maud there. “I need to think a few things out. About the future. What I am going to do. About the flat, how to pay the rent, or perhaps not to. I could do with a night on my own.”
Maud said, “Is anything wrong?”
“I have to think my life out.”
“I’m sorry. You could come to my aunt’s—”
“Don’t worry. I’d like to stay alone, that one night.”
25
ELLEN ASH’S JOURNAL