"Why?" Stern but much more animated. "Why did you?"
"Because they were alive. They seemed urgent-I felt I had to do something. It was an impulse. Quick as a flash. I meant to put them back. I will. Next week. I just haven't, yet. I don't think they're mine, or anything. But they aren't Cropper's or Blackadder's or Lord Ash's, either. They seemed private. I'm not explaining very well."
"No. I suppose they might represent a considerable academic scoop. For you."
"Well, I wanted to be the one who does the work," Roland began innocently, and then saw how he had been insulted. "Wait a minute-it wasn't like that at all, not like that. It was something personal. You wouldn't know. I'm an old-fashioned textual critic, not a biographer-I don't go in for this sort of-it wasn't profit- I'll put them back next week-I wanted them to be a secret. Private. And to do the work."
She blushed. Red blood stained the ivory.
"I'm sorry. I don't know why I should be; it was quite a reasonable assumption and I can't begin to imagine how anyone would dare to whip two manuscripts like that out of sight-I'd never have the nerve. But I do see you weren't thinking in these terms. I do really."
"I just wanted to know what happened next."
"I can't let you Xerox Blanche's diary-the spine won't stand it-but you can copy it out. And go on hunting through those boxes. Who knows what you'll find. No one was hunting for Randolph Henry Ash, after all. Can I book you a guest room until tomorrow?"
Roland thought. A guest room seemed infinitely attractive; a quiet place where he could sleep without Val, and think about Ash, and take himself at his own pace. A guest room would cost money he hadn't got. Also there was the Day Return.
"I have a Day Return ticket."
"We could change that."
"I'd rather not. I am an unemployed postgraduate. I haven't got the money."
Now she was wine-red. "I hadn't thought. You'd better come back to my place. I've got a spare bed. It's still better than buying another ticket now you're here-I'll cook supper-and tomorrow you can look at the rest of the Archive. It would be no trouble."
He looked at the shiny black trace of the faded brown writing. He said, "All right."
Maud lived on the ground floor of a red-brick Georgian house on the outskirts of Lincoln. She had two large rooms, and a kitchen and bathroom constructed from what had been a warren of smaller domestic offices; her own front door had once been the tradesmen's entrance. The university owned the house; the upper floors were university flats. The kitchen, quarry-tiled, looked out onto a courtyard paved in red brick with various evergreen shrubs in tubs.
Maud's living room was not what might have been expected of a Victorian scholar. It was bright white, paint, lamps and dining-table; the carpet was a Berber ofT-white. The things in this room were brilliantly coloured in every colour, peacock, crimson, sunflower, deep rose, nothing pale or pastel. Alcoves beside the fireplace held a collection of spotlit glass, bottles, flasks, paperweights. Roland felt wakeful and misplaced, as though he was in an art gallery or a surgeon's waiting-room. Maud went away to make supper, refusing offers of help, and Roland called the Putney flat, where there was no reply. Maud came through with a drink and said, "Why don't you read Tales for Innocents? I've got a first edition."
The book was scuffed green leather, with faintly Gothic lettering. Roland sat on Maud's huge white sofa by the wood fire and turned the pages.
Now there was once a Queen, who might have been thought to have everything she could desire in the world, but had set her heart on a strange silent bird a traveller had told of, which lived in the snowy mountains, nested only once, raised its gold and silver chick, sang once only, and then faded like snow in the lowlands…
There was once a poor shoemaker who had three fine strong sons and two pretty daughters and a third who could do nothing well, who shivered plates and tangled her spinning, who curdled milk, could not get butter to come, nor set a fire so that smoke did not pour into the room, a useless, hopeless, dreaming daughter, to whom her mother would often say that she should try to fend for herself in the wild wood, and then she would know the value of listening to advice, and of doing things properly. And this filled the perverse daughter with a great desire to go even a little way into the wild wood, where there were no plates and no stitching, but might well be a need of such things as she knew she had it in herself to perform…
He looked at the woodcuts, which were described on the title page as "Illustrations by B.G." A female figure with a scarfed head, flying apron and great wooden shoes, standing in a clearing surrounded by dark pine trees full of white eyes among their crossing arms of needles. Another figure, wrapped in what appeared to be netting hung with little bells, beat netted fists against a cottage door whilst squashed, lumpen faces leered behind upper windows. A little house, surrounded by the same black trees, at the foot of which, his chops on the whited steps, his sinuous length curved around its corner in a dragon-clasp, the long wolf lay, whose hairs were cut in harmony with the incisive feathering of the trees.
Maud Bailey gave him potted shrimps, omelette and green salad, some Bleu de Bresse and a bowl of sharp apples. They talked about Talesfor Innocents, which, Maud said, were mostly rather frightening tales derived from Grimm and Tieck, with an emphasis on animals and insubordination. They looked together at the one about the woman who had said she would give anything for a child, of any kind, even a hedgehog, and had duly given birth to a monster, half-hedgehog, half-boy. Blanche had drawn the hedgehog-child in a Victorian high chair at a Victorian table; behind it were dark panes of cupboard glass, before it a huge intruding hand, pointing to its dish. Its face was blunt and furred and screwed up as though about to burst into tears. Its prickles were round its ugly head like spined rays of a halo, and descended its neckless shoulders, criss-crossing, to meet the incongruity of a starched, frilled collar. It had blunt little claws on its stubby hands. Roland asked Maud what the critics made of this. Maud said that Leonora Stern believed it represented Victorian women's fear, or any woman's fear, of giving birth to a monstrosity. It was related to Frankenstein, the product of Mary Shelley's labour pains and horror of birth.
"Do you think that?"
"It's an old story, it's in Grimm, the hedgehog sits on a black cock in a high tree and plays the bagpipes and tricks people. I think you can understand things about Christabel from the way she wrote her version. I think she simply disliked children-the way many maiden aunts must have done, in those days."
"Blanche is sorry for the hedgehog."
"Is she?" Maud examined the little picture. "Yes, you're right. Christabel isn't. It becomes a very resourceful swineherd-multiplies its pigs on forest acorns-and ends up with a lot of triumphant slaughter and roast pork and crackling. Hard for modern children to stomach who grieve for the Gadarene swine. Christabel makes it into a force of nature. It likes winning, against the odds. In the end it wins a King's daughter, who is expected to burn its hedgehog-skin at night, and does so, and finds herself clasping a beautiful Prince, all singed and soot-black. Christabel says, 'And if he regretted his armoury of spines and his quick wild wits, history does not relate, for we must go no further, having reached the happy end.' "
"I like that."