Golden Deeds Read online

  ‘Do you have a recent photograph of your daughter, Mrs Pearse?’ the policeman asked. And so Ruth rummaged through the boxes of photos that were yet to make it into an album, flicking through piles of Malcolm’s landscapes, pictures of Laura’s labrador, pictures of their cat at four weeks, six weeks, pictures of Malcolm drinking beer with Phil, his colleague, whom Ruth had never liked, pictures of their antique sideboard taken for insurance purposes, and when she found a good one of Laura and showed it to the officers it was as if they were just having a chat, as if they were interested in hearing what Laura liked and didn’t like to eat, about how she’d once won a prize for a drawing of their house, how she’d just started baby-sitting for the neighbours. She held the photograph by the edges so she wouldn’t damage it.

  ‘Malcolm took this one,’ she said. ‘We were on a bush walk. We had to turn back early, though. It started to pour. He’s quite a good photographer, he does a lot of landscapes,’

  ‘Everything is usually fine in these cases, Mrs Pearse,’ they said, again refusing a cup of coffee. They told her they’d ring if they had any information at all, and asked Ruth and Malcolm to contact them if Laura arrived home. In her airy voice Ruth assured them they would, and that she too was sure everything would be fine.

  ‘We’ll need to take this with us,’ the policeman said as they were leaving, and it was then, as the photograph of Laura was slipped into a notebook and the notebook into the pocket of a blue jacket, that Ruth realised nothing was fine.

  It was after dark again by the time Malcolm returned from searching. Ruth heard two sets of footsteps coming up the stairs, but when she rushed to the door it was only Phil who accompanied her husband.

  ‘Well?’ she said, and Malcolm shook his head.

  ‘Me either.’

  ‘Is there anything else I can help you with?’ said Phil. ‘Anywhere else you want to look?’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Malcolm, ‘I think we’ll leave it for today’

  ‘Ruth? Anything I can do for you?’

  ‘No thank you.’

  ‘Just give us a shout, won’t you?’

  Malcolm cleared his throat. ‘I don’t think I’ll make it to the office again tomorrow—’

  ‘I’ll let them know,’ said Phil.

  It wasn’t until later that Malcolm said it, not until after they’d tried to eat some dinner and had fed Laura’s labrador and watched the news and answered the phone over and over again. ‘You didn’t tell them the truth,’ he said. ‘She did pick up a hitch-hiker. You lied.’

  Ruth looked at him. He’d hardly spoken for three days.

  ‘Right after she got the Mini. The Danish boy. He rang here that time, and left a message to contact him at the youth hostel.’

  ‘Yes, but he was only in the country for two weeks,’ said Ruth, ‘and we told her—you told her—how silly she’d been. Besides, he was perfectly nice. You drove him to the airport, for God’s sake.’

  ‘You still should have mentioned it,’ said Malcolm. ‘They asked you, and you said no.’

  Ruth knew that this small piece of information, this detail from summer, was of no use at all. It would only give a false impression of their daughter, and already she was wondering what sort of picture of Laura had been constructed from the jottings in the policeman’s notebook. Later, in bed, it occurred to her that Malcolm hadn’t offered the information either. She nestled into her husband’s back. He was awake, she knew, but neither of them spoke. Through a crack in the curtains the moon slipped a long white arm into their bedroom. Ruth watched it for what seemed like hours.

  Eleven years after the eclipse, at the end of the century, Patrick Mercer hardly thought about his ex-wife. She crossed his mind at his mother ‘s funeral, and he scanned the pews for her, but she’d either missed the short death notice in the paper or decided to stay away. He certainly wasn’t thinking about her as he drove to the university; he wasn’t thinking about anything but his carefully rehearsed lecture. Patrick was no public speaker. At the museum he had little contact with anyone other than staff, and even when school groups visited they were always more interested in dinosaur bones or mummies than old books. The woman from the university, however, had been very persistent.

  ‘The students would really benefit from your expertise,’ she’d said. ‘There’s nobody in the art history department with your specialised knowledge.’

  ‘I’m not sure I could relate,’ said Patrick. ‘I’m close to retirement, you realise.’

  The woman was delighted. ‘Wonderful, yes, passing the torch and so forth,’ she said. ‘Thanks so much. Bye now.’

  Some of the students had positioned small tape recorders to catch his voice. Patrick tried to ignore them. He cleared his throat, tapped his notes into a neat pile. Before him was a tier of faces, rows and rows of them, pens poised.

  ‘Light,’ he began, ‘is the enemy’ He’d spent weeks planning his opening statement, had imagined the students sitting up and looking at him with interest. Now, though, in the cavernous lecture theatre, his voice sounded thin, unsteady, quite different from how it had in his bathroom. He swallowed. ‘Medieval manuscripts, by and large, were made for dark places: churches, monasteries, libraries. Even those in private collections were obviously never exposed to electric light, and little sun entered the medieval window. Indeed, one of the reasons for the rich illumination on so many manuscripts was to make the pages sparkle in the dark.’

  The side door swung open and a spotty young student slipped into the lecture theatre. He made his way to a seat, crouching and scuttling, trying to avoid the beam of the overhead projector. It caught him anyway, threw his hunched shadow at the screen.

  ‘Sorry, excuse me, sorry,’ he whispered. The door sighed itself shut.

  ‘One of the museum’s most recent acquisitions,’ Patrick continued, ‘is a beautiful but damaged thirteenth-century manuscript. It contains the only known copy of the life of one Saint Hilla of Regensburg, and following extensive restoration is now being translated from the Latin.’ He paused. He didn’t know why he’d mentioned Hilla; she wasn’t in his notes, and ordinarily he avoided discussing his translations while they were still incomplete. ‘Incorrect storage,’ he said, scanning his notes. ‘Incorrect storage can lead to damage by light, mould, fire, water, silverfish, worms, rodents and moths.’ He displayed the first transparency: an Italian book of hours which had suffered in the sun. ‘Manuscripts are most often bound in leather. The pages are also made of animal skin. Think about how easily our own skin is damaged, and you’ll realise why proper handling of these artefacts is so important.’

  Pens were racing across paper. Patrick paused to allow the students to catch up with his voice. His notes said smile now. He smiled. ‘My point is: a book can provide a link to other lives, a window to another time. It can illuminate the past—’ he waited for a laugh, which was not forthcoming ‘—and it’s up to us to preserve that past.’ He smiled again.

  When his mother had died, Patrick had telephoned the university.

  ‘It’s not that I don’t want to do the lectures,’ he said.

  ‘It’s up to you, of course,’ said the woman, ‘but I know our students have been looking forward to hearing your insights. There’s nobody in the art history department with your expertise.’

  So, for the next fortnight, Patrick had rehearsed in front of the bathroom mirror. ‘The illuminated manuscript,’ he’d told his foggy reflection that morning, ‘is a window. It offers us a glimpse back in time in a way no other artefact can. When we open a text written by a medieval hand—’ here he’d opened his flannel at himself ‘—we open a window to the past.’ He’d splashed his razor in the basin, cut the surface of the steaming water and, as he ran the blade across his skin, tried to hold his hand steady.

  He hadn’t slept well at all. Projected into his dreams were the transparencies he’d chosen for the lectures: hugely amplified details from illuminated bibles and psalters and books of hours and saints’ lives. A monke
y played the bagpipes for him, dogs bit their own tails, angels picked lilies. Then things became unpleasant. Ornate initial letters writhed and sucked; a zoomorphic S curled around him, squeezing his ribs so the air rushed from his mouth; an ivy-leaf border wrapped tight tendrils about his fingers. As he ran from the mass of leaves a G pulled him into its maw, bending his body to match its lizard curves, and just as he was working himself free of the pages, just as he was shaking his gilded limbs to return to the real world, someone closed tight the cover.

  A student in the front row put her hand in the air. Patrick hadn’t been expecting questions, but she was staring right at him, waiting.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Is it true,’ she said, ‘that the museum sold one of its most valuable bibles in order to pay for the multimedia wing?’

  ‘Ah,’ said Patrick, yes. No. A bible was sold, but it’s not unusual for an institution like the museum to, to, rotate its collection. The manuscript containing Hilla’s life, for example, is a new purchase—’

  ‘But the bible money is funding the multimedia wing, isn’t it?’ said the girl.

  ‘The multimedia wing,’ said Patrick, ‘is an exciting new concept in museum design.’

  ‘Do you like it?’

  ‘Pardon me?’

  ‘Do you like the multimedia wing?’

  ‘Actually’ said Patrick, ‘I haven’t had a chance to explore yet.’

  ‘I think it’s an eyesore.’

  Patrick thought of the sold bible. It had been one of his favourites: a rare ninth-century manuscript with a jewelled binding, tinted pages scattered with gold and silver. He had made his feelings known, of course. He had written a letter, collected some signatures. He was close to retirement, though. The bible was sold.

  ‘As I mentioned, most manuscripts are made of animal skin,’ he said. ‘Strictly speaking, parchment is obtained from sheep or goats, while vellum comes from calfskin. Although much less common, the skins of deer and pigs, and even hares and squirrels, were sometimes used.’ On the overhead projector he placed a border detail showing squirrels. ‘While very durable, this natural material does present some problems when it comes to storage, display or restoration.’ He glanced at his watch. He had no desire to discuss manuscript care, to outline the tedious facts of dust, mould, temperature control. What he wanted to describe was the joy he felt when examining a border strewn with dragonflies, strawberries, cornflowers, moths, when trying to trace with his eye a gospel’s endless interlacings, when holding a glittering prayer book no bigger than a house key and once worn on the belt of a noblewoman. He wanted to explain the unique scent of parchment, that thick perfume that clung to the fingers for hours. He longed to quote from Hilla’s delirious conversations with God, to tell the legend of Columba copying Finnian’s psalter.

  ‘Humidity levels,’ he said, ‘are important.’

  At the end of the hour the students began shifting in their seats, putting away pens and pencils, shutting folders. Patrick collected the slippery transparencies together. ‘Next week we’ll talk about moths,’ he said, and switched off the overhead projector.

  ‘I used to visit you at the museum,’ said a soft voice. ‘Those were happy times, weren’t they?’

  Patrick lost his grip on the transparent unicorns, ivy leaves, serpents, lilies; they slid across each other like sheets of ice.

  ‘Rosemary?’ He frowned, as if something about her face confused him, although there was nothing puzzling about it, nothing mysterious at all. It was far too familiar a face. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I finally took your advice,’ she said. ‘I’m studying again. Only part-time, but it’s going well.’

  She was wearing some sort of ridiculous, fluttering dress. No more Hedley’s blazers, then, no more sensible trousers with pockets so shallow they held only half a cold hand: this must be her student look. Nearly sixty, and she was dressing like a student. The black fabric billowed around her like smoke. Her hair was grey.

  ‘I’ll be graduating next year.’

  ‘Good for you,’ said Patrick, looking at his watch.

  ‘It said in the prospectus that you’d be giving some lectures. I’ve really been looking forward to it. Gosh, you look great. How long has it been?’

  ‘It’s been years, Rosemary,’ said Patrick. ‘Eleven years.’

  The other students were moving past, threading out the door and away to coffee, the library, home. Rosemary lowered her voice.

  ‘I was dying to tell everyone that we used to be married. They’d never believe it, you know, that I’m single and independent. Without children. All mature students get tarred with the same brush. I’m sure they think I’m a bored grandmother.’ She paused, knotted the microphone around her tape recorder as if trimming a gift. Then she touched the back of Patrick’s hand, her voluminous sleeve spilling on his skin. ‘I’m sorry about your mum. I did want to go to the funeral, you know, but—’

  Patrick took his hand away, smoothed the transparencies into a pile again. One on top of the other like that, the angels and lilies and letters and unicorns and monkeys blurred into a dark mass.

  ‘Are you okay is there anything I can do?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ said Patrick, looking at his watch again. ‘I’m just off to her place now, actually, to sort through some things, so I should be getting on.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Rosemary. ‘I thought your lecture was brilliant, by the way’ She slipped a piece of paper into his hand. ‘Give me a ring, we could get together for a drink some time.’

  Although it was autumn, the sun was unbearably bright outside the lecture theatre. Patrick peered into the shimmering blue sky, felt the corners of his eyes tense. He climbed into his car. What in God’s name, he thought, was Rosemary doing in the class? How dare she turn up uninvited, a stale gust of smoke, the wicked fairy at the christening?

  At least she hadn’t come to the funeral. It had been a small affair, peopled by those who really had meant to visit Doreen, but just hadn’t had the time.

  ‘She was never the same after the fire,’ said a cousin who, despite having ignored Patrick’s mother for years, had numerous opinions on her mistakes in life. ‘It was the loneliness that got to her,’ she said. ‘She lived too long. She should have remarried after Graham passed on, that’s what she should have done.’

  ‘They lost everything, you know,’ he overheard another relative saying. ‘It broke her heart. You don’t get over something like that.’

  ‘It was the boy, wasn’t it? Playing with a magnifying glass.’

  ‘She never mentioned it. Tried to pretend it was all forgotten. Very unhealthy’

  Patrick placed his folder of transparencies, his lecture notes and Rosemary’s phone number on the passenger seat. He remembered the fire. It had got into his eyes and it was still there now, a dark after-image that sometimes sprang to life at night. It’s not your fault, it’s nobody’s fault, his mother had said, but he knew better.

  He flipped down the sun visor against the glare. He could feel the heat seeping through the roof of the car, softening the vinyl, making the steering wheel difficult to hold safely. The sun was just a star. But although there were millions of other stars in the sky during the day, they were invisible, drowned by the sun. Get your moles checked, his mother used to scold him every time he visited her. Have you had your moles checked? She avoided the outdoors when the sun was shining. It’s dangerous, she said, and you know it. And of course, Patrick did. He’d known it for years, ever since the fire, and every time his mother mentioned the dangers of the sun he wanted to tell her that he hadn’t meant any harm, hadn’t dreamt he could cause such damage with a star and a piece of glass.

  As he started the car he thought he saw Rosemary in his rearview mirror. She was with a group of friends, laughing, sliding on a pair of sunglasses that were far too young for her, probably revealing that she used to be his wife. She never could keep a secret. He glanced in the mirror again, but the woman had turned
her back and was walking away, and maybe it was just someone who looked like her.

  He accelerated away from the university, the tree-ringed campus disappearing behind him. He found himself taking the turn-off to his mother’s, although he hadn’t really intended going there. He’d been delaying the solitary visit, reluctant to sort through the clothes, the china, the shoes lining the wardrobe like motionless lizards. But now his car was whizzing under the sign to her suburb, not even slowing down, and there was no time to change his mind. Telling Rosemary he was going there had somehow made it true.

  He sped past fields dotted with sheep, cattle, goats, pigs, the occasional cluster of deer. He tried to recall what venison tasted like. It was fashionable now, and often appeared on the menus of up-market restaurants. Patrick rarely ate out, though; he couldn’t justify spending that much on food, which was gone in an instant, and besides, he had to think of his retirement. He never took taxis, never bought flowers. The most valuable thing he owned was his manuscript, probably German, probably twelfth century, which described how to produce other manuscripts. You must now know what bones are proper, its author advised. For this purpose take the bones of the thighs and wings of fowls or capons; and the older they are the better. When you find them under the table, put them in the fire, and when you see they are become whiter than ashes, take them out, and grind them well on a porphyry slab. On parchment you may draw or sketch with the above-named stylus, first rubbing and spreading some of the powdered bone dust over the parchment, scattered thinly and brushed off with a hare’s foot. Patrick occasionally let guests take a look at the manuscript, but was careful to show them how to handle it properly.

  At the supermarket a few weeks back there had been a venison promotion. A young woman in a white smock and a white hat had been standing behind a cardboard stall, the sort that would, Patrick imagined, fold away like a toy at the end of the day. As each shopper passed she said, ‘Would you like to try some Deerly Beloved venison, ma’am?’ or, ‘Sir, can I interest you in our new Deerly Beloved venison?’ And she extended a paper plate with little cubes of meat on it, each one pierced by a toothpick. Patrick had watched the other shoppers taste the venison, smile and move on. They were so relaxed about it, so brazen. He’d rushed his trolley past, avoiding eye contact with the venison girl, although the aroma of the meat was delicious.