Tom sensed that he was listening to a well-worn explanation. Felix Slater had produced it before, not for the benefit of another human being perhaps but inside the privacy of his own head. He was justifying his decision not to destroy something which he plainly found disturbing, even dangerous. He was also putting a great deal of faith and trust in his nephew, Walter.
Tom said, ‘Can I ask you, Canon Slater, whether your nephew is aware of this. . this book? Has he actually seen it?’
‘He knows of it. He may have glimpsed it, yes. He has heard that it is written by his grandfather. But more than that, no.’
‘Then are you sure that I should be looking at it?’
‘It is only for this moment, Mr Ansell. After all, since you are going to take it back to London, you should have some idea of what you are carrying with you. However, you will be able to look inside it only this once. You can see that there is a hasp here and a small lock on one side. My father wished to keep his words literally under lock and key. A wise man, in that respect at least. Now, I intend to retain the key once I have surrendered the book to Scott, Lye amp; Mackenzie. It wouldn’t be difficult to force the hasp, but of course such a thing would never occur in a respectable law firm.’
There was a twitch of the thin mouth. Canon Slater was making another joke. Tom took the book from him and rested it on his lap. He felt the weight of it on his knees. There was brass hasp, heavy and intricate. On one side was a raised plate into which was set a small keyhole and its apparatus. Felix Slater took up his pen and the sheet of paper which he’d been working on when Tom arrived. The signal was clear: Tom Ansell had been given a few moments to glance through the memoirs of the early life of the late George Slater, for probably as long a time as it would take his son to reach the end of the page he was writing.
Tom was baffled. He could not see why Felix Slater was permitting him to look at these memoirs, however briefly. Slater would be more than entitled to ask him to take the book to London unexamined. Nevertheless he opened it. The pages had the look and feel of a sketch pad although the paper was too thin. There were no lines or margins but only blank spaces waiting to be filled. Tom wondered whether George Slater had had the book specially made up, with the brass hasp and lock. There was a frontispiece of sorts even if it said nothing more than: I certify the account which this volume contains to be a true and faifthful record of the years noted and dated within. It was signed George Henry Slater and below the signature the date was given as the twelfth of June, 1843. The writing was neat and precise, close but easy to read, almost feminine. No sign of debauchery here. Below this, in a different hand, was a note saying: Received from my brother Percy among other effects of my father. This was signed by Felix Slater, followed by the address of Venn House, Salisbury and dated the fifteenth of July, 1873. Evidently, it had taken Felix a few months to decide he didn’t want the book in his house.
Tom turned to a page at random. He scanned it. He was used to reading quickly, skimming through documents with their thickets of legal phraseology. But what he read now was a story, an anecdote. George Henry Slater had certainly moved in elevated circles because the story concerned that well-known and atheistical poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley. If Tom was looking for scandal, however, he was to be disappointed.
George Slater recounted how he had been walking with Shelley and another friend called Hogg by the Serpentine in Kensington Gardens. Shelley was suddenly seized with the desire to make and float a paper boat, an activity to which he was apparently addicted. He had no scrap of paper on him (and neither did his two friends) except for a bank-post bill to the tune of fifty pounds.
Tom read: Shelley dithered for a long time but at last gave way to his obsession; with a few swift and practised movements he twisted the bank-bill into the likeness of a boat and committed it to the water, watching its progress with even more anxiety than usual. Those who throw themselves on fortune lock, stock and barrel are sometimes rewarded and so it was in this case. A breeze blowing from the north-east gently conveyed the costly craft to the south bank where, during the last part of its journey, Shelley waited for its arrival in a spirit of patience. By this exercise he gained nothing and might have lost a great deal but I saw how, mixed with his anxiety, he took pleasure not so much in the risk to his property as in the dexterity needed to build the little boat.
This was dated June, 1811. Underneath was written another paragraph: Everyone knows that Percy Shelley’s attraction to water at last proved fatal. He, who could scarcely be dragged away from a pond or a puddle when out walking, was lost in a storm at sea off La Spezia in Leghorn in July, 1822. The boat which he and Williams embarked in would have been adequate on the Serpentine but it was ill fitted for the rigours of the open sea. I cannot help thinking that Shelley courted his end and took poor Williams with him. My acquaintance the poet never learned to swim.
This section was dated May, 1843. Tom thought that George Slater had most likely transcribed his youthful diaries into this book, perhaps tidying them up and editing them. At the same time he added an extra note or commentary, reflecting his later thoughts. The first part of this entry, about the fifty-pound note, made for a charming story, if it was true. Charming if it wasn’t true, come to that. And if it was typical of what was in Slater’s memoirs then Tom couldn’t see where the problem lay.
On the other side of the desk Felix Slater’s hand moved unceasingly across the sheet of paper. The top of his head was as smooth as a billiard ball. The Canon did not once look up at Tom, who opened the father’s volume at another random page. This one seemed to describe the activities of a supper club, drinking, bawdy conversation and more drinking. Towards the end he read: Hewitt, J and I paid Jane Wilson 2 shillings. She danced nude and then lay down and posed for us. We might have had her but, in truth, she was a bad model and altogether not agreeable.
This, like the Shelley entry, was dated (to the summer of 1812) and Slater had added an 1843 note to the effect that it was unlikely a single one of them could have had Jane Wilson, not because she was disagreeable but because they had drunk so much. They were all in a useless ‘droop-like state’. Curiously, as the writer said himself, although he could remember all this he could not remember who ‘J’ was. As to the provenance of Jane Wilson he gave no clue. Presumably she was a servant of some kind, perhaps one waiting at table, and so beneath notice. Or perhaps a prostitute, and so even more beneath notice.
Quickly, Tom shuffled a few pages further on. Again he hit gold and he felt the blood come into his face. It was a brief description by George Slater of how he’d had a woman up against a wall in Shepherd Market. It hadn’t been a very enjoyable encounter: too quick and he’d spent much time afterwards wondering whether he’d caught a ‘dose’. He hadn’t contracted anything, a later footnote revealed. Tom was amazed, not so much at the encounter as at the run-of-the-mill manner in which it was recounted and the fact that he’d written about it at all.