Hester asked her rather sharply if she wanted to see the rest of the house, and headed for the stairs.
The County Archivist, Charles Benson, was acquainted with Hester Benson’s keen young woman visitor. She was a frequent user of the archives at the County Record Office, with a favorite seat at the end of the long table in the public searchroom, where he would see her staring worriedly at some hearth tax assessments, adjusting her glasses with one finger. He knew that she had trouble deciphering early script, and had given her a hand from time to time. Charles Benson was a scholar; he was a highly competent paleographer, he had a good working knowledge of Anglo-Saxon, his Latin was excellent, and his dog Latin, his low Latin, and his medieval Latin were superb. He moved with ease amid Hundred Rolls and poll tax assessments, manorial surveys, enclosure awards, chantry certificates, and parish registers. This woman wanted to write a history of Hawkford, and good luck to her, but Charles Benson wondered if perhaps she had rather overstretched herself. However, it was not for him to comment; amateur she might be, but enthusiasm should always be encouraged. He had made various tactful suggestions. She was currently accumulating information on the town’s earlier houses. He had helped her with a search for the deeds that he held, and understood that she was engaged on a house-by-house inventory.
And so it was that the books at number twelve Sheep Street reached out once more, signaled their presence, asserted their power, spoke out. Charles Benson found himself buttonholed one morning by this woman, who had an excited account of a house in which there was this amazing collection of books, among which were rare and important topographical works. He listened. He knew Hawkford well, of course—the County Record Office was situated elsewhere, in the county town—and remembered Sheep Street as architecturally rather fine. This image of a somewhat curmudgeonly old lady holed up in a historic building (“marvelous staircase . . . this carved stone fireplace”) that was apparently falling to pieces around her did not surprise him: small ancient English towns seem to breed such people. But this book collection was an unusual feature. Some of the titles mentioned were ones that would sit very nicely in the Record Office library, which was not that richly equipped. Still, he did not see any way in which he could come by them, short of theft, and there the matter might have rested, if the books had not signaled once more, exerted their curious power.
Hester was now intensely aware of them. She had never before thought of them as a commodity. They were part of the fabric of the house, so far as she was concerned, the backdrop to her life for as long as she could remember. They had never interested her, though she granted them a certain respect as the legacy of her father’s passion. She was no reader. She could not be doing with fiction—all that made-up business, what was the point? The heavy stuff was not for her—history and biography. Poetry made her think of the posturings of the drama teacher during her school-days. Her own library consisted solely of books on gardening; her regular reading matter was the Journal of the Royal Horticultural Society, alongside a quick daily skim of The Times.
And now the books had achieved this startling potency. She found herself staring at the familiar spines—tall, short, calf, cloth, gilt-lettered, insect-nibbled—and saw that she had underestimated them. She felt quite detached about this; evidently others found value and significance here, while she did not. That was their concern, not hers; she did not need to pursue the matter further. Nor did she propose to devote time and energy to learning just what it was about certain of the books that generated such attention. Apparently there were books, and there were rarities—a distinction that she could appreciate, as a plantswoman.
She stared at the books as she moved about the house, and saw money. At least, she saw not money so much as the solution to a problem. She could cock a snook at the bank manager; she did not need banks—she had her own. She had not the slightest interest in acquisition, unless it was the pursuit of some choice plant. She seldom bought clothes, and, if forced to do so, usually found that the local Oxfam shop could meet her needs. She had inherited a fully stocked house; all that was required was to keep it functioning. The house’s own gradual disintegration she barely noticed. The roof leaks were a bother, but could be contained by strategically placed buckets. There had been cracks and flaking paint in her parents’ day; if these were now rather more pronounced—well, time takes its toll, doesn’t it?
After a few days of reflection, Hester paid a call on George Bain. George received her with an excitement that he was careful to keep tamped down. He had not been able to get those books out of his mind since that glimpse a few days before. He had felt their smoldering presence, just a few hundred yards away, and now, apparently, they were being offered up: “. . . might be prepared to part with a few more . . . don’t mind if you come in and have a look.” An arrangement was made.
When George set about his close inspection of the books, he realized that this lot was in a class of its own. He had met many book-stocked houses, but never anything like this. The collection was disheveled, to put it politely. If ever there had been any sort of order, any smack of firm librarianship, that had long been abandoned. Among the bound back numbers of Punch he found a fine copy of Plot’s Natural History of Oxfordshire, and the 1720 edition of Ogilby’s Britannia Depicta. The works of Mary Webb—that thirties edition with the speckled binding that had clogged his shelves for years—sheltered a couple of T. S. Eliot first editions. A second edition of John Locke’s Treatise of Civil Government lurked in the midst of a nineteenth-century set of Dickens. It seemed that from time to time Hester had found books handy for various domestic contingencies—as props for unstable pieces of furniture, as doorstops. The two volumes of an early nineteenth-century edition of Johnson’s dictionary had for a long while been doing duty as a flower press, in the service of Hester’s collection of botanical specimens.
And the old girl hadn’t a clue, that was clear enough. She didn’t know her arse from her elbow, where books were concerned. This put George in a spot. He was not an innately dishonest man, but he was running a business, not a counseling service.
After making copious notes, he sought out Hester, and made a proposal, only to find that she had her own agenda. No immediate bulk selective purchase; individual sales, at regular intervals, according to her dictation. He saw exactly what she had in mind—a revenue stream; he tried to point out the advantages of a capital sum, but she was inflexible. And when he touched on the delicate issue of pricing, he found that here again she had done some thinking; she told him coolly that she would probably be taking a second opinion.
George left, purposeful, but with a feeling of having been to some degree outflanked. He had regular customers who would be interested in various items that he had listed, but he was disturbed at the thought of the involvement of any of his rivals, some of whom he knew to be distinctly unscrupulous. Apart from that, he felt a particular obligation, given the nature of one particular element of the collection.
The County Archivist and George Bain had a working relationship. Whenever George came across something that might interest Charles Benson, he would let him know. He would tell Charles what this item might be expected to fetch; Charles would consider his budget, and George would then undertake the negotiation on his behalf, or put in a bid at an auction, charging a small commission. This arrangement suited both parties, for various reasons; Charles Benson was made aware of things he might have missed; George saw it as a piece of diplomatic public relations. From time to time they would meet up for a drink, to keep the relationship oiled. George saw that it was the moment to suggest such a meeting.
It was one short step from the County Archivist to the Conservation Officer. Hester had been confused about Charles Benson and let him in because she was under the impression that he was an antiquarian bookseller whose name she had found in the yellow pages (her threat to George Bain was not an empty one). Charles Benson was as struck by the house as he had been by the books. The Camden was the abridged eighteent
h-century edition, of course, not an original, and the Leland the 1906 publication, but both would still be handsome assets for the Record Office library. However, he was aware of what the market values were likely to be, and knew that they were well beyond his current means. There were other things that he would like to get, also—the Plot, several early travel books of local relevance. He decided that this was an occasion when the expedient move was to appeal to a person’s conscience and sense of social obligation. He said to Hester that he understood that she was prepared to dispose of some elements of her collection. As a lifetime citizen of Hawkford and of the county, would she not like to make a generous gesture and donate some appropriate works—here he handed her a list that he had compiled—to the Record Office? Mistaking Hester’s stare of incredulity for one of interest, he gave her his card and said that he would look forward to hearing from her.
After he had left, the County Archivist found that he was as much concerned about the house and its condition as he was about the books. He could not get it out of his head, and when, fortuitously, he ran into the county Conservation Officer in the Town Hall a few days later he began at once to talk about it: interesting building, in rather desperate need of attention, imagine you know it . . .
The Conservation Officer paid attention. As it so happened, he did not know the place, with any intimacy, and so was wrong-footed. He had walked past number twelve Sheep Street on various occasions, had noted its facade and that it was not in great shape. Now he realized with some guilt that here was a listed building which he had ignored. Time to put that right.
Hester stared mutinously at the figure on the doorstep. Another jack-in-office. Another of these men in suits who wrote intrusive letters and then turned up, carrying a briefcase. Well, go on then, she told him silently—come and pester me if you want to, but a fat lot of good will it do you.
The Conservation Officer toured the house. Hester followed him, breathing heavily. He noted the superb carved fireplace in the drawing room. He peered at the interesting little cupboard set into the paneling alongside, and asked if he might open it. Hester shrugged. He did so, and saw a pile of old magazines and a great many mouse droppings. The paneling itself was intrinsically very fine, but chewed up by woodworm, pockmarked by drawing-pin holes and currently serving as a pin-board for various bills. The floorboards creaked ominously, and there was a funny smell; the Conservation Officer became concerned about dry rot.
As they climbed to the first floor, he admired the staircase with fluted banisters and carved handrail. He ventured to suggest to Hester that this was probably eighteenth-century, inserted during the makeover of the building at that time. The earlier origins of the house were apparent in the mullioned windows that he had already spotted at the rear and the small lancet windows high up at one side. Warming to the theme, he pointed out that this was a process very typical of the period—a prosperous family using architectural display to demonstrate position and resources. This is an early eighteenth-century house, he said, within which lurks its ancestry of the sixteenth century and quite possibly earlier. That window. Those beams.
Hester observed that her father had always said it was quite an old place. They were standing at one of the rear windows (mullioned, with four lights) that overlooked the garden—which the Conservation Officer did not appear to notice, despite its midsummer glory. There was staking to be done in the big border—the delphiniums reeling—and Hester was itching to get out there. The Conservation Officer had just spotted a ceiling beam painted with ball-flower and crosses, and was getting excited about this. The attics, he was saying, may have some interesting clues.
It was clouding over. Hester could stand this no longer. She must get into the garden before the rain started. She decided to leave this fellow to his own devices—he didn’t look the type to start nicking the silver.
Somewhat relieved, the Conservation Officer continued on his tour alone. Up in the back attic, he was thrilled to see fragments of what looked to him like late sixteenth-century wall paintings—a bit of scroll patterning, a medallion, and even the suggestion of an inscription. But he was appalled by the pervasive damp, and the buckets and basins whose purpose was only too apparent. The roof must be in an appalling condition. He came downstairs and inspected the kitchen area. He found a stone archway in the passage which looked to him fifteenth-century, but the rear elevation had him really worried. An alarming crack, and a bulge that suggested even more serious instability. He was busily making notes on his clipboard. This was a much more significant building than he had realized; he had checked out the entry in Pevsner, of course, but that now looked somewhat cursory. The place was in a very bad way; there should be extensive repairs and renovations forthwith. He was going to have to have a word with the old lady and remind her of her statutory requirements, as the owner of a Grade II listed building. You are obliged to keep the things standing up.
Hester received his comments with a basilisk stare. She was thinking about botrytis and black spot. She followed his pointing finger, as he indicated the crack running up the back of the house, and that bulge, and made a mental note to give the old climbing rose a really good pruning in the autumn. The Conservation Officer was talking about house repairs, which were none of his business, frankly. What a nerve. When he mentioned that he would be writing to her about this, just to clarify matters, she told him under her breath that he could do what he bally well liked, gave him a wintry smile, and began to herd him through the house to the front door, where they parted. Hester returned to the garden; a tussle with some bindweed soon put the tiresome fellow out of her mind. The Conservation Officer found that his car had collected a ticket, for being six inches over a yellow line; his notes about number twelve Sheep Street became a degree more excitable in consequence.
A few days later Hester glanced at the Conservation Officer’s letter with distaste, and dropped it into the wastepaper basket. The letter was three pages long and had numbered paragraphs, a style she found offensive. There was stuff about features of historical and architectural interest, and other stuff about essential restoration, which she did not wish to hear. She had the same sense of being got at by officious meddlers as when she received one of those missives from the bank manager. She was far too robust in character to feel persecuted; rather, she was put on her mettle. There were these importunate people closing in; it was up to her to fend them off, them and their blustering titles—Conservation Officer, County Archivist. Her father would have done the same. She had binned sackfuls of petulant documents after his death.
The Conservation Officer’s fears about number twelve Sheep Street were entirely justified. Like the carcass of an animal, it was experiencing a process of corruption; it was being gnawed and bored, it was crumbling, it was festering. There were woodworm and death-watch beetle, damp rot, dry rot, fungal invasions, and the rear elevation was slowly falling apart. Left to itself, it would disintegrate, over time, with all that was therein—the books, the bric-a-brac, the furnishings. It was under attack; nature and the laws of nature were closing in, just as society was closing in on Hester Lampson.
She had kept society at arm’s length, hitherto. She took no part in the town’s activities. She had not seen the need for friends; she had dealings with only a handful of acquaintances. Relatives were tolerated but had to make all the running. As for the social operation itself, she had steered well clear; she ignored political discussion, she did not vote, she availed herself of the various freedoms and safeguards of democracy without any sense of obligation. She was lucky to live in the twentieth century; it would have been less easy to get away with this level of detachment at any other time.
But the world had caught up with her, in the form of the County Archivist, who was appealing to her conscience and her sense of responsibility, and the Conservation Officer, who became insistent, in further letters. He was courteous, if cool, and reminded her that he had certain powers, which he would be reluctant to enforce, but . . . And th
en there was George Bain, who spoke for the world of Mammon, with which she had never before been concerned.
Far away, Max Binns, who began it all, was most satisfactorily installed with a group of new friends in a decaying mansion in Hove, where indulgence of every kind was a condition of residence. Eventually, this exercise in freedom of choice and defiance of the law would be terminated by a very public police eviction of all concerned; Max’s parents would find a photograph of their son, cheerily brandishing a banner of defiance from the windows of the invaded building, spread across their morning paper. As for the aspiring author of the history of Hawkford, who had also had a hand in the exposure of number twelve Sheep Street and its contents, she continued to beaver away, frowning over the indecipherable handwriting of the past, and occasionally wishing that you could make things up when the surviving evidence is either too thin or too dull. Number twelve Sheep Street would merit a passing mention in her book, which was published by a small press and was to enjoy a small but steady sale in the Museum and the Country Bookshop.
Thus are we all fingered by the actions of strangers. Hester Lampson, who had spent a lifetime trying to avoid involvement with other people, was now locked into a cycle of exchanges with the County Archivist, the conservation people, and George Bain, a process that she would succeed in prolonging without giving any satisfaction to either of the first two, until a fatal bout of pneumonia one winter put paid to any further negotiations.
The books rode it out, of course, having done what books do—changed people’s lives. Though perhaps not in the more usual sense. Unread, they still managed to manipulate, to have an effect. And so it would go on; eventually they would be dispersed, would float free of their temporary mooring at number twelve Sheep Street, and continue upon their way, primed with their insidious power.
A History of Hawkford by Penelope Lively. Followed up perhaps with a few articles in not especially learned journals, and the occasional piece in Country Life. Books could well have shunted me in that direction, and the great and good W. G. Hoskins was indeed a formative influence, though not in a scholarly way; rather, his interpretations of English landscape came to seem a metaphor for the interlacing of past and present.