Cushing's Crusade (19 page)

December 10. Derek flicked the small wheel on his plastic desk calendar and turned winter into summer. Dates had become largely a matter of the past; the calendar itself had been a gift from Diana to insure that her husband never forgot days when she had arranged shopping expeditions, dinners, or other outings or festivities.

He stared across the manuscript room at the empty tables between the tall bookshelves and looked at his watch. Since it was Thursday, Professor Elkin would be arriving soon. There were two new PhDs doing research on the East India Company and the Opium War respectively, and an elderly woman who claimed to be writing a book about Sir Bartle Frere. There were not going to be any other readers in during the day, unless the visiting
professor
from Madras turned up. Derek wandered round the room, checking that most of the radiators were more or less at blood temperature—the best that could be expected. Having hung up his coat, he returned to his desk. Recently he had been so bored by his days at the Institute that he had contemplated sending a circular to a number of publishing houses suggesting that they drew to the attention of some of their more popular authors the controversial material in the archives. Eye-witness accounts of infanticide, voodoo, sutteeism, ritual murder, and religious excesses of every description, not to mention the odd colonial massacre and missionary scandal.

Derek started opening the day’s mail, and quickly glanced through a letter from an American academic wanting to know about possible copyright problems on the Swettenham papers. The next letter was hand-written. ‘Here’s my address. Come and
see me. If you’ve patched things up with Diana, don’t bother. Angela (Vaughan).’ Dear Angela, Considering the chaos you have wrought in my formerly predictable and peaceful life, do you think it likely that I should wish to see you? Dear Angela, Your letter came when I was so terribly in need of comfort, both mental, spiritual and sexual … Derek was still pondering as he opened the next letter: ‘Dear Sir, Your adamant refusal to accept the authenticity of my two letters written by Cecil Rhodes is completely at variance with the opinion of Dr Muldoon, whose opinion as you must be aware …” Derek was re-reading Angela’s letter when he heard the door opening and a second later saw Professor Elkin coming towards him. Elkin’s normal routine was to hang up his coat, arrange his papers on his usual table and then write out numerous manuscript slips. Today he came straight up to Derek, who noticed that he looked irritable and worried. Derek stuffed Angela’s letter into his breast pocket and looked up.

‘I must ask you to come down to the archives with me,’ the professor demanded authoritatively.

On coming in to the Institute that morning, Derek had been certain that the day would be as drearily predictable as most days were. He would have laughed heartily at the idea that any reader might involve him in any debate that would have more than the most transiently fleeting repercussions; and yet the proximity of Elkin’s red and sweating face and his undoubted anger seemed likely to lead to an unusually involving dialogue. Derek smiled affably and said, ‘I’m sure you must know, Professor, that no reader is allowed into the archives.’

Elkin rested his hairy hands on the table and looked down at Derek grimly.

‘I have reason to believe that you are withholding documents from me.’

‘What reason?’ asked Derek innocently, knowing perfectly well that this confrontation had been inevitable ever since he had deliberately stopped Elkin getting hold of the private
correspondence
of the secretary to the Imperial British East Africa
Company
. Elkin was well aware that Derek was working on the same subject, and had been doing so for several years. For ten months
since the donation of these precious documents, the archivist had kept quiet about them. They had been given by an elderly
Scottish
widow, who rarely visited London on account of steadily deteriorating sight. Derek listened while Elkin explained that on a trip to Edinburgh he had happened to meet a cousin of the lady in question; and this cousin had very understandably expressed surprise that the professor had not heard about the gift to the Afro-Asian Institute.

At first Derek inclined to let the angry scholar have his way, but then he changed his mind. He would lie, lose the key to the chest, fake a letter from the donor, do almost anything in his power to prevent Elkin getting his hands on the letters. Grown men should not be allowed to take such things so seriously. Derek wanted to tell Elkin how his own marriage had been destroyed by his work on East Africa, that the subject was lethal and should be avoided at all costs. The possession of sixty thousand pounds gave him confidence. For a moment he felt inclined to ask the professor offensive questions about his private life, or at least to call him a gorilla and to inform him that the dense hairs in his nostrils moved when he breathed. Instead, he removed his glasses and polished them carefully.

‘The letters in question were given on condition that they are not made available until after the death of the donor.’

‘You can substantiate this?’ asked Elkin, looking momentarily shaken.

‘You mean, do I have letters? The answer is no. Mrs Macdonald is nearly blind. When I suggested that she ought to send me a letter or her solicitor’s instructions, she refused.’

Elkin nodded knowingly.

‘How very convenient.’ He paused and smiled unpleasantly. ‘I see that I shall have to talk to the lady in person.’

‘By all means,’ replied Derek. ‘I ought perhaps to tell you that she lives in Inverness.’

‘If necessary I shall go there,’ replied the professor resolutely.

*

Half-an-hour after Elkin’s departure Derek was making notes for his letter to the Director. Then he wrote on another sheet of
paper: ‘This clock was donated to the Institute by readers of this library as a token of their gratitude for the dedicated services of D. E. Cushing. Chief Archivist 1964-1973.’ He screwed up the paper and reapplied himself to his letter of resignation. A few minutes later he brought down his fist on the table and shouted aloud in the empty room, ‘I’m damned if I will. They can sack me.’

By midday the three other readers he had expected were all working diligently at different tables, and Derek himself was
getting
on with the work he had been doing the previous day: explanatory notes to go with a series of letters written by H. M. Stanley between 1875 and 1888. The third in the pile was one written from The Grafton Hotel, St Lawrence-on-Sea,
Ramsgate
. Headed paper with a very fine picture of the hotel, a vast neo-gothic structure with a tall tower and various minor pinnacles and numerous arched windows. In front of the hotel people were walking on the beach. Beneath the picture, on three separate scrolls, was the following description: ‘The climate of St Lawrence is largely recommended by the Medical Profession for its health-giving properties. Famous for its complete system of Baths, comprising Turkish, Ozone (most efficacious in all cases of Rheumatism, Gout &c), Salt Water Plunge, Hot and Cold Sea Water, Sitz, Douche, Electric, &c., &c. A medical rubber in attendance.’

Derek picked up the phone and dialled a number.

‘Directory enquiries? Good. I’d like a number for the Grafton Hotel, St Lawrence-on-Sea, Ramsgate.’ After a short wait he was surprised to hear that the hotel was still in business. He jotted down the phone number on a scrap of paper and pocketed it. Then he started reading the letter: ‘On Saturday the Doctor brought me down here for a change of air—I have made rapid progress but it will be several days yet before the system can be said to have regained its former tone & vigour….’

Derek read on, making occasional notes. He was going through his seventh letter when his phone rang and he heard Giles’s voice. His form was being taken to the Science Museum and could Derek meet him somewhere afterwards since the Institute
was so close? Derek suggested the Natural History Museum instead of the Institute since he knew how keen Giles had always been to visit the Fossil Rooms. He was a little disappointed when the boy simply asked him to be there at quarter to five and made no comment on the venue. But Derek wasn’t depressed for long. He hadn’t heard from Giles for almost three weeks, and although he hadn’t believed his son had stopped thinking about him, there had been moments of anxiety: visions of Diana ripping the phone from his hands and weeping whenever the boy mentioned seeing his father; Diana suggesting films as a diversion, working slowly but persistently at undermining her son’s affection for his absent father. Derek smiled at the folly of such melodramatic thoughts. Giles had simply been waiting for the right time and, as soon as that time had come along, he had got in touch at once. Now there was no question of the embarrassing performance of making a special occasion of it. Derek looked at his watch and willed time onwards. His trouble with Elkin seemed very much less important.

*

A fine drizzle had misted his glasses by the time Derek reached the imposing wrought-iron gates of the museum. Drops of water fell heavily from the tall plane trees, making the rain seem worse than it was. But neither the darkness, the rain, nor the fumes of the slowly-moving traffic in the Cromwell Road could do
anything
to reduce Derek’s happy anticipation. Several yards from the ornate entrance archway was a notice: ‘No ice creams to be taken beyond this point’, and near it another sign forbidding the feeding of pigeons. Derek smiled to himself. He would amuse Giles by telling him that the authorities were alarmed by the thought of pigeons becoming the recipients of discarded ice creams.

He looked up at the dark soaring twin towers above the entrance. As a child, the extravagant architecture of the place had overwhelmed and alarmed him; the rows of grotesque animal gargoyles staring out from beneath the upper windows, and, inside, in cold echoing halls, the vast skeletons of dinosaurs, stark against stained-glass windows and gothic arches, had seemed
more terrifying than instructive. But with Giles’s affection for the museum, Derek had undergone a change of heart. He liked the way the atmosphere of the building could change so suddenly.

When he’d started on his wait he had peered into the main exhibition hall and seen streams of schoolchildren milling about shouting and chattering, giving him the illusion that the museum with its high iron-vaulted roof was a huge Victorian railway station and the children passengers waiting for a long-expected school train. But now, as Derek stood under the archway, the children were leaving, laughing, pushing each other, shoving notepads into pockets, buttoning raincoats as they went. Soon the exhibition halls were quiet and the railway station, with its arches and columns, had become a medieval cathedral filled with strange relics.

Fifteen minutes passed without Derek becoming worried. The master had obviously kept them in the Science Museum longer than Giles had expected. After another five minutes Derek felt momentarily irritated, but to become too concerned about twenty minutes outside a museum in which was recorded the passing of several hundred million years seemed petty. If Giles had been kept waiting he would have gone inside and wandered round the Fossil Rooms. Derek pushed open one of the two doors and went inside. Giles was an intelligent boy; he’d know that rather than do nothing, his father would look at things. The Fossil Rooms were on the ground floor immediately to the right of the entrance. Derek intended to walk round them fairly briskly and then return to the entrance.

As he walked Derek occasionally glanced at an exhibit. ‘Lower Jaw Fragment of the Dinosaur Megalosaurus: Middle Jurassic’. The possessor of the jaw had once lived a few miles outside Oxford. A few yards away there was an artist’s impression of the London area in the Lower Eocene Period. Wide swamps,
interspersed
with belts of tropical rain forest, not unlike Malayan jungle. Large reptiles, some with wings, lived in this steaming landscape. Around Bournemouth and Southampton there would have been mangrove swamps. Then there was the elephant found by some Royal Marines near Chatham in 1911—or what was left
of the elephant; it had lived and died there a million years before. There was the picture of Mary Anning, a fat middle-aged
carpenter’s
daughter from Lyme Regis who found the first skeleton of an ichthyosaurus. After a cursory glance at the gigantic skeleton of Diplodocus Carnegii, eighty-four feet long and with a brain estimated to have been no larger than a hen’s egg, Derek headed back for the entrance.

Still no Giles and the rain had become harder, slanting in under the archway and running in rivulets down the steps. The notice about ice creams, the animal gargoyles and the scale of the building all seemed less amusing. It was half-past five and in another fifteen minutes the staff would be ushering members of the public out into the rain. The large lamps above the gates picked out the bare branches of the overhanging trees and cast reflections on the wet pavingstones. Derek felt bitter and lonely. The traffic flowed westwards; people returning to warm, well-lit homes and happy families. He had decided to wait five minutes more when he saw Giles hurrying towards him up the steps. Only pride made him look sternly at his son; in fact Derek’s anger had gone and all he felt was affection and relief: humiliating happiness. He was touched to notice how flustered and disconcerted his son seemed to be. No point in making a thing of his lateness. Derek smiled and said, ‘Come on. We’d better get going. They’ll be turfing everyone out in a quarter of an hour.’

Giles looked down at the steps. He hadn’t come in out of the rain.

‘I can’t,’ he stammered.

‘That’s absurd.’ Derek took his son’s arm and guided him under the shelter of the archway. ‘Would you rather go
somewhere
else?’

‘I meant I can’t stay to do anything.’

‘That’s a bit much, Giles. I hadn’t meant to say anything about it but I have been standing here getting on for an hour.’

‘I know. I feel awful. Mummy came to the Science Museum. She hadn’t told me she was coming to collect me. She’s got tickets
for some Christinas show. A musical, I think; and if I don’t go now we’ll be late. I’d forgotten.’