Although we know and must know, they're all one,
Finis, The End, the one consummate shock
That ends all shocks and us. Do we desire
We prancing, cogitating, nervous lives
Movement's cessation or a maw crammed full
Of sweetest certainty, though with that bliss
We cease as in his thrilling bridal dance
The male wasp finds the bliss and swift surcease
Of his small time i' the air.
-RANDOLPH HENRY ASH
The Mortlake conference was held in an unlikely atmosphere of gaiety and conspiracy. It was held in Beatrice Nest's house, at her invitation. (Mortlake was agreed, conspiratorially, to be beyond the beam of Mortimer Cropper's attention.) Beatrice made onion and cream tart, green salad and chocolate mousse, as she had once done for her graduate students. The tarts and mousse looked delicious, and Beatrice was happy. Concentrating on the matter in hand, the threat from Mortimer Cropper, she ignored the currents of tension between her guests, the things not being said, the things substituted for what was not being said.
Maud arrived first, looking severe and preoccupied, her green silk scarf again wound round her head and pinned with the jet mermaid. She stood in one corner, considering the silver-framed photograph of Randolph Henry Ash that stood, where those of father or lover might have stood, on Beatrice's little secretaire. It was not a photograph of the late silvered sage, but an early one, with a mass of dark hair and an almost piratical look. Maud automatically began to analyse it semiotically; the solid silver arabesques of the frame, the choice of image, the fact that the sitter apparently met the onlooker's eye, the still nineteenth-century pre-snapshot stare. The fact that the photograph was of the poet, not of his wife.
Maud was followed by Val and Euan Maclntyre. Beatrice did not quite understand this grouping. She had met Val from time to time, sullenly staring from the edge of the working group in the Ash Factory. She noted Val's new, slightly defiant radiance, but with scholarly single-mindedness did not attempt to account for it. Euan complimented her on her presence of mind in overhearing and reporting Mortimer Cropper's intentions, and pronounced the whole business to be very exciting, which, combined with the success of the tart and mousse, further changed Beatrice's mood, which had initially been alarm and a sense of oppression.
Val and Euan were followed by Roland, who said nothing to Maud and began a long conversation with Val about the arrangements for feeding a horde of savage cats and the making of telephone calls to the Animal Welfare. Beatrice did not hear the silence between Roland and Maud, and was of course not aware that Roland was not telling anyone at all about Hong Kong, Barcelona and Amsterdam.
Beatrice herself had telephoned Blackadder, saying in a matter-of-fact way that she had made contact with Dr Bailey and Roland Michell and that they wanted to meet to discuss the Ash-LaMotte correspondence and something she had overheard Professor Cropper saying. When she opened the door to this final member of the group, he presented her, with a look of mingled embarrassment and amusement, to Professor Leonora Stern. Leonora was resplendent in a purple hooded woollen cape, fringed with black silk braid, which covered a kind of scarlet Russian tunic, in heavy silk, over wide black Chinese trousers. Leonora said to Beatrice, "I hope you don't mind me coming. I promise not to harass anyone, but I have my own scholarly interest in all this." Beatrice could feel her own round face failing to achieve a welcoming smile. Leonora said, "Oh, please. I'll keep as quiet as a mouse. I can swear in advance I'm not out to snatch any manuscript, covertly or openly. I only want toread the damn things."
Blackadder said, "I think Professor Stern may be of material help to us."
Beatrice held open the door and they climbed the narrow stairs to the little first-floor drawing-room. Beatrice naturally noticed a certain complicated silence surrounding Blackadder's nod of recognition directed at Roland, but she failed altogether to read the omissions of information or accusation in the long dramatic embrace between Leonora and Maud.
They sat around the edges of the room in armchairs and kitchen chairs with plates on their knees. Euan Maclntyre opened the discussion by saying that he thought he should explain his own presence, which was that of a kind of legal adviser to Maud, who was in his opinion certainly the heir to the ownership of the LaMotte letters, and almost certainly of the manuscripts of the Ash letters, though not of the copyright in these, which was vested in the heirs of Randolph Ash.
"Letters are the property of the recipient-as physical entities- but the copyright remains with the sender. In the case of these letters, it is clear that Christabel LaMotte requested the return of her letters to her possession, and that Randolph Ash willingly complied. Roland and Maud, who have seen the whole correspondence, are quite clear on this. I have legal proof-a Will, signed and witnessed, of Christabel LaMotte, leavingall her manuscripts to Maia Thomasine Bailey, who was Maud's great-great-great-grandmother. The true heir would, I suppose, be Maud's father, who is still living, but he has already made a gift of what manuscripts came to his ancestress, at the time of this bequest, to Maud, who has deposited them in the Women's Resource Centre at Lincoln. Maud has not told him yet of my discovery, and does not think he has taken any interest in the press reports of Professor Cropper's large offers of money to Sir George Bailey, who believes himself to be the owner of the letters. Maud thinks, however, that there is almost no likelihood that her father would want to sell to the Stant Foundation, given her interest in the retention of the documents in this country.
"I should perhaps add, in case any of you are thinking about the copyright law, that the ownership of copyright is protected from the momentofpublication for the author's lifetime plus fifty years, or in the case of posthumous publication, for fifty years from the date of publication. This correspondence is unpublished, and therefore the copyright remains the property of the heirs of the original writers of the letters. As I have said, manuscripts belong to recipients, copyright to the senders of letters. It is not clear what Lord Ash would wish to happen, but from what Dr Nest has to tell us, it appears that Cropper has induced Hildebrand Ash to promise him both letters and copyright."
Blackadder said, "He is an infuriating person and an unscrupulous operator, but his edition is thorough and scrupulously researched, and it would be churlish in my view not to permit publication of these letters in the standard edition. I suppose if the letters remained in this country it would be theoretically possible to refuse him access to them, and theoretically possible for Hildebrand Ash to refuse anyone else permission to edit them, thus producing an impasse. There is, of course, Lord Ash himself. He might allow an early British edition which would protect the copyright, before allowing access to Cropper. Do you foresee protracted legal disputes with Sir George Bailey, Mr Maclntyre?"
"Given his pugnacity, and his actual, de facto possession of the letters, yes, I do."
"Lord Ash is very ill."
"So I understand."
"May I ask, Dr Bailey-if you do find yourself in possession of the manuscripts of the whole correspondence-what you would intend doing with them?"
"I think it's premature to say where they should be, and I also feel a kind of superstitious fear of it-the letters aren't mine, and may never be. If they were-if they are-I should want them to stay in this country. I should naturally like LaMotte's letters to be in the Women's Resource Centre-which isn't very secure, but the rest of her things-that came from my family-are already there. On the other hand I don't want-I feel, having read them-the letters should stay together. They belong together. It's not only that they need to be read consecutively to make any sense-they-they are part of each other."