As far as he knew, once he had gone down Xan had never revisited the museum, but to Theo it had become a place of refuge over the years. In those dreadful months following Natalie’s death and his move to St. John Street, it had provided a convenient escape from his wife’s grief and resentment. He could sit on one of the hard utilitarian chairs, reading or thinking in this silent air, seldom disturbed by a human voice. From time to time small groups of school children or individual students would come into the museum and then he would close his book and leave.
The special atmosphere which the place held for him depended on his being alone.
Before doing what he had come to do, he walked round the museum, partly from a half-superstitious feeling that, even in this silence and emptiness, he should act like a casual visitor, partly from the need to revisit old delights and see if they could still touch him: the Attic gravestone of the young mother from the fourth century B.C., the servant holding the swaddled baby, the tombstone of a little girl with doves, grief speaking across nearly three thousand years. He looked and thought and remembered.
When he came up again to the ground floor he saw that the attendant was still asleep. The head of the Diadoumenos was still in its place in the ground floor gallery but he looked at it with less emotion than when he had first seen it thirty-two years ago. Now the pleasure was detached, intellectual; then he had run his finger over the forehead, had traced the line from nose to throat, shaken with that mixture of awe, reverence and excitement which, in those heady days, great art could always produce in him.
Taking the folded postcard from his pocket, he inserted it between the base of the marble and the shelf, its edge just visible to a keen and searching eye. Whoever Rolf sent to retrieve it should be able to dislodge it with the tip of a fingernail, a coin, a pencil. He had no fear of anyone else finding it and, even if they did, the message could tell them nothing. Checking that the edge of the card could be seen, he felt again the mixture of irritation and embarrassment which he had first felt in the church at Binsey. But now the conviction that he was becoming unwillingly involved in an enterprise as ridiculous as it was futile was less powerful. The image of Hilda’s half-naked body rolling in the surf, of that thin, wailing procession, the crack of a gun on bone; these imposed dignity and seriousness on even the most childish games. He had only to shut his eyes to hear again the crash of the falling wave, its long withdrawing sigh.
There was some dignity and much safety in the self-selected role of spectator, but, faced with some abominations, a man had no option but to step onto the stage. He would see Xan. But was he motivated less by outrage at the horror of the Quietus than by the memory of his own humiliation, the carefully judged blow, his body hauled up the beach and dumped as if it were an unwanted carcase?
As he was passing the table on his way to the door the aged custodian stirred and sat up. Perhaps the footfall had penetrated his half-sleeping mind with a warning of duty neglected. His first gaze at Theo was one of fear almost amounting to terror. And then Theo recognized him. He was Digby Yule, a retired classics don from Merton.
Theo introduced himself. “It’s good to see you, sir. How are you?”
The question seemed to increase Yule’s nervousness. His right hand began an apparently uncontrolled drumming of the table-top. He said: “Oh, very well, yes, very well, thank you, Faron. I’m managing all right. I do for myself, you know. I live in lodgings off the Iffley Road but I manage very well. I do everything for myself. The landlady isn’t an easy woman—well, she has her own problems—but I’m no trouble to her. I’m no trouble to anyone.”
What was he afraid of, Theo wondered. The whispered call to the SSP that here was another citizen who had become a burden on others? His senses seemed to have become preternaturally sharp. He could smell the faint tang of disinfectant, see the flakes of soapy foam on stubble and chin, note that the half-inch of shirt-cuff protruding from the shabby jacket sleeves was clean but unironed. Then it occurred to him that it was in his power to say: “If you’re not comfortable where you are there’s plenty of room with me in St. John Street. I’m on my own now. It would be pleasant for me to have some company.”
But he told himself firmly that it wouldn’t be pleasant, that the offer would be seen as both presumptuous and condescending, that the old man wouldn’t be able to cope with the stairs, those convenient stairs which excused him from the obligations of benevolence. Hilda wouldn’t have been able to cope with the stairs either. But Hilda was dead.
Yule was saying: “I just come here twice a week. Monday and Friday, you know. I’m standing in for a colleague. It’s good to have something useful to do and I like the quality of the silence. It’s different from the silence in any other Oxford building.”
Theo thought: Perhaps he will die here quietly, sitting at this table. What better place to go? And then he had an image of the old man left there, still at the table, of the last custodian locking and bolting the door, of the endless, unbroken silent years, of the frail body mummified or rotting at last under the marble gaze of those blank unseeing eyes.
Tuesday 9 February
Today I saw Xan for the first time in three years. There was no difficulty in getting an appointment, although it wasn’t his face that appeared on the televiewer, but one of his aides, a Grenadier with sergeant’s stripes. Xan is guarded, cooked for, driven, serviced by a small company of his private army; even from the beginning no women secretaries or personal assistants, no women housekeepers or cooks were employed at the court of the Warden. I used to wonder whether this was to avoid even the hint of sexual scandal or whether the loyalty Xan demanded was essentially masculine: hierarchical, unquestioning, unemotional.
He sent a car for me. I told the Grenadier that I would prefer to drive to London myself, but he merely said with unemphatic finality: “The Warden will send a car and driver, sir. He will be at the door at nine-thirty.”
Somehow I had expected that it would still be George, who was my regular driver when I was Xan’s adviser. I liked George. He had a cheerful, engaging face with protruding ears, a wide mouth and a rather broad, retroussé nose. He seldom spoke, and never unless I began the conversation. I suspected that all drivers worked under that prohibition. But there emanated from him—or so I liked to believe—a spirit of general goodwill, perhaps even of approval, which made our drives together a restful and anxiety-free interlude between the frustrations of Council meetings and the unhappiness of home. This driver was leaner, aggressively smart in his apparently new uniform, and the eyes which met mine gave nothing away, not even dislike.
I said: “Is George no longer driving?”
“George is dead, sir. An accident on the A4. My name is Hedges. I shall be your driver on both journeys.”
It was difficult to think of George, that skilled and meticulously careful driver, being involved in a fatal accident, but I asked no more questions. Something told me that curiosity would be unsatisfied and further inquiry unwise.
There was no point in attempting to rehearse the interview to come or in speculating how Xan would receive me after three years’ silence. We hadn’t parted in anger or bitterness but I knew that what I had done had in his eyes been inexcusable. I wondered whether it was also unforgivable. He was used to getting what he wanted. He had wanted me at his side, and I had defected. But now he had agreed to see me. In less than an hour I should know whether he wanted the breach to be permanent. I wondered whether he had told any other members of the Council that I’d asked for an interview. I neither expected nor wished to see them, that part of my life is over, but I thought of them as the car sped smoothly, almost silently, towards London.