The Long Room

by Francesca Kay

  Stephen unlocked each of the five remaining cabinets in turn. Three held pending files, by date. He could find no tapes. The last cabinet contained Muriel’s registers and a large safe-box. Absurdly, it was not secured to the cabinet itself. But it was locked and the code was not the same as the one used for the cabinets.

  Wouldn’t it be simple to walk out with this box? Not out of the main door, on a weekday, when he might be stopped. But tonight, when he was booked into the Annexe? To reach the Annexe you used a door at the end of a passage on the ground floor. But the Annexe, which was actually an ordinary house, a relic of the time when the alleyway behind the Institute was residential, had a front door of its own to make it inconspicuous to passers-by. Even though you couldn’t get in without a key, you must be able to get out.

  Stephen hesitated. He was sure the PHOENIX file must be in that box. He wanted very much to know the details of the licence, the background to the case and how the technicians had got access to the flat. And there might be other useful papers in it. Then he came to his rightful senses. At least he now knew where to find the box. If Muriel had set her own code for the lock, it was bound to be her date of birth. That would be easy to work out. And if she had used a different date, he could probably take the box to a locksmith – it had no outward sign of provenance.

  He was on the point of sliding it back into the cabinet when he heard the jangle of keys that warned of an approaching guard. She was a woman, whom he did not think he had seen before. She stopped at the door and gave him an enquiring look. ‘Special duty,’ he said. ‘In the room next door. I need access to a file.’

  She nodded. ‘Right you are, sir. Can I take your name please? For the list?’

  Unwillingly he gave it. He knew that he could not give a false one in case this guard chose to cross-check other lists.

  Back in the long room, he worked for another three hours and finished the tapes that he had been allocated. By now it was very late. But he had bought the time he wanted: he’d be well ahead of everyone else tomorrow. He locked up properly and went downstairs. The woman guard was on her own at the side door. ‘Is there a key to the Annexe?’ Stephen asked her.

  ‘There is. But you’d be better to use the internal passage. It can be dodgy out there in the alley. All sorts of shady people use it. The fire escape especially; you’d be surprised.’

  ‘I need to go and get something to eat.’

  ‘Well, off you go then. I’ll be here when you get back, whatever time, and I’ll sign you in.’

  It was very cold and very dark. Past eleven on a Sunday night. The pubs had long since closed. He should have thought of that; he was dying for some whisky. He tramped over blackened snow to Piccadilly Circus where there was a Wimpy that he hoped might still be open.

  Pallid faces in the harsh light, behind the counter, at the tables. The few people who were in the Wimpy could have been survivors of disaster. Their pallor was the pallor of blown pieces of scrap paper, of those deprived of sunlight, of dwellers in subterranean places; in their eyes the look of those who have witnessed things they wish they could forget and know they never will. I did not know death had undone so many, Stephen said below his breath.

  The soft white bread and the thin brown disc of fatty meat coagulated in his mouth, coating his tongue and palette with the bloom of grease that also hung like vapour on the air. Near him was a young man, a boy really, alone – they were all alone, these refugees from the winter night, the starveling boys with nowhere else to go – but this one looked more solitary than the rest. His skin had the same unhealthy waxen sheen but it was pocked with angry red infected pustules. He ate hunched over his food, his forearms flat on the formica table-top, encircling the polystyrene housing of the meal as sea walls guard a harbour or a hungry dog a bone. He crammed the burger and chips into his mouth so fast that he barely had time to swallow, let alone taste the food or chew it. Stephen, watching him, tried to slow his own pace down but found he gobbled anyway; everyone was shovelling food into themselves as if it were essential but disgusting, like a barium meal.

  Sated, in a way, Stephen went back to the Institute. He cut through Shepherd Market where there were still a couple of doughty prostitutes standing in their doorways, defying the lack of trade and the freezing night. ‘Looking for someone, love?’ the first asked him, and for longer than a heartbeat he thought of answering: yes.

  Later, in a cell-like bedroom in the Annexe, he questioned this decision too. It was so bleak in there, and comfortless. What would it be like to spend the night beside a warm and yielding body, to be lying in someone’s arms, not on this cold and narrow bed, with his face pressed to a pillow that smelled of strangers’ unwashed heads? To cup a hand around a breast and feel a nipple rise, a breast that fits the hand exactly, as an acorn fits its shell, a bone its smooth white socket. Lay your sleeping head, my love, human on my faithless arm: foot against foot, thigh against thigh, mouth against mouth; reflected in each other’s eyes, cradled in each other’s thoughts. Ah no, that’s the whole point: he is not faithless; when a woman lays her head upon his shoulder, he will have earned her trust.

  He remembered a time in college. There had been a celebration, of victories on the river maybe – the rowdy boys and their ringing voices. Stephen had kept to his room, making no sound that might betray his presence. It was safer to stay out of sight. Up and down the stone staircase: the clattering shoes, the laughter, and a voice more boisterous than the others shouting, Have you met my girl? And later, when the revellers had swept out into the night, a shocking glimpse through a bathroom door of a naked woman stretched unmoving on the floor. He had stood stock still by the door, afraid of her, afraid she was a corpse, until he forced himself to go in and he saw the bright pink vinyl that made her skin, the horrible gaping O that was her mouth, the conical red tips of her inflated breasts.

  Yes, a man might as well fuck a blow-up doll as a woman he did not love. A woman who didn’t love him. Making love, that’s entirely different. But. But it is hard to tell apart the hunger of the body and the hunger of the heart. Millions are crying out for love. The world is shuddering to the silent howl of the lonely and the unconsoled. Here he lay, as cold as a corpse himself, between the stiff white sheets that he had spread upon this single bed, and he was crying too. But. But nobody ever said it would be effortless, the search for love. Love, like elemental gold, is rare and precious; a man must fight for it as Lancelot fought for Guinevere or Galahad the Grail.

  Monday

  Muriel was complaining that she had got up at four o’clock to be sure of catching the first train and getting to work in time, knowing all too well there would be much to do and she’d be required, but then she’d had to wait a whole hour on the platform in the perishing cold because the train was cancelled and so she might as well have aimed for the later train in any case. And on top of that, there were terrible delays along the line, apparently caused by frozen points, whatever they might be, and the train was so full she had had to stand until at last a nice young man had noticed her and offered her his seat. ‘Chivalry is not quite dead,’ she said, ‘although it probably is dying.’ And now there are all these Department Four chaps stamping around and kicking up a fuss and no one with a minute to spare to make a cup of coffee.

  ‘We were busy yesterday,’ Louise told her. ‘I was in all day, with Damian and Christophine, and Harriet came in later, and Stevie here, and I must say that, although it was a bit chaotic, we managed to get through a heap of tapes and I honestly feel we should be giving ourselves a big pat on our backs this morning. But I do think that we are being tasked to find the proverbial needle – and I’m not at all convinced that it’s in any of these haystacks. Not in the ones that we’ve been given, anyway.’

  ‘Charlotte wasn’t here, then?’

  ‘No, her baby niece had that op on Friday. You know, that’s why she had to go off early. She’d promised her sister that she’d stay the weekend so that she could take care of the other l
ittle one. A dreadful time for them, poor things, her sister and her brother-in-law.’

  ‘So how did it go, the operation? Poor wee mite.’

  ‘I don’t know, Charlotte’s not in yet, but I expect she’ll be here soon. If the worst had come to the worst, she’d have called in to say she couldn’t make it. Yes. It was busy. Just like a weekday really. I even saw a couple of Department Six chaps rushing in and out.’

  ‘Really? What were they doing here?’

  ‘No idea. Another operation, I suppose. Or it could be they were that short-staffed in Department Four. Gracious! It’s like a madhouse! I’m just hoping against hope that we can have the party. I’ve two dozen mini-quiches sitting in my fridge!’

  Louise left the room to put the kettle on and Muriel, grumbling about the likely mayhem caused by locum registrars, set off to find her ledgers. Stephen, who had been hovering beside the women, seized his chance. ‘Look, Muriel,’ he said, ‘the Department Six men were in the office yesterday because they’re also on high alert. It’s about something that even Louise is not totally cleared to know. I appreciate that the other stuff has priority but this is also desperately important, so if there is any way that you could really kindly find the latest PHOENIX tape, Department Six and I would be grateful to you for life.’

  ‘You boys think I’m superhuman,’ Muriel said, but she’d see what she could do.

  Stephen could have sworn that he had spent the whole night lying sleepless in his cell in the Annexe, but he must have slept, for morning came as a surprise and he knew that he’d been dreaming. He’d been on a mountainside, alone. A steep and very high mountain, snow-bound and, scattered on the snow, the bodies of dead climbers, their bones picked white by carrion birds beneath their ropes and furs.

  It had been very cold in the little room. He could hear other people rising in the rooms nearby and although he had a pressing need to relieve himself, he was shy of encountering these strangers. Even worse, though, would be meeting someone he knew: how disquieting to see a colleague in pyjamas. He himself had no pyjamas, not having anticipated staying for the night. His mouth, uncleaned since the night before last, tasted bitter and disgusting.

  Breakfast would have been a sensible idea but Stephen could not stomach the thought. He’d go out later, buy himself a toothbrush and a razor. Right now he craved Helen’s voice. There were only four days till Christmas; it was unbearable not to know where she would be or what she would be doing.

  Muriel, half an hour later, clutching a pile of envelopes, stopped at Charlotte’s desk. Stephen, listening to nothing on his headphones, could not hear what they were saying but guessed that they must be talking about the baby. He hadn’t known that Charlotte’s niece was ill; he hadn’t even known she had a niece. It was rather hurtful to think that when his colleagues talked to each other about such things they excluded him. Perhaps Charlotte had only confided in the women. Men were not supposed to care about sick babies. But, actually, he did care: it was very sad to think of a tiny baby on an operating table. He thought of the child who had waved to him through the railings of the park – that solemn little girl. In the one photograph that he had seen of his dead twin, she too had been grave-faced; wide eyes staring from a small triangular face, beneath a suprisingly thick fringe of hair. Charlotte, he was glad to see, looked tired but not tearful; the baby must be alive.

  There were five sealed envelopes: the tapes from Friday, Saturday and from Sunday morning. ‘You owe me a very large gin and tonic at lunchtime,’ Muriel said, when at last she got to Stephen’s desk. ‘I really had to ferret around to find these tapes in the bag.’

  Stephen, rising to his feet to take the envelopes from Muriel, wondered for a moment about giving her a kiss. Might she expect some manifest display of gratitude? In a situation like this, Charlotte would certainly have thrown her arms around the woman; she was constantly bestowing little hugs and squeezes on her colleagues. He saw himself lunging towards Muriel, his lips aiming for her powdered cheek, the awkwardness of it if she were to recoil and his trajectory had to be absurdly halted. Instead he merely thanked her. It didn’t matter anyway, nothing mattered now; he had the tapes he wanted.

  The tapes he wanted? No, the tapes he needed, as a drowning man needs air to fill his lungs in place of cold saltwater. Helen unheard since Friday, left behind in last week, the days of her calendar and his never yet in synchrony, their lives for ever out of step. His tomorrow hidden behind a tear-off tab; it used to be a source of pleasure, that Advent ritual – opening a new window every morning, daily coming closer to the window in the centre of the scene, the breathless wait for Christmas Eve – but it is torture now, when Helen’s tomorrow will not be his till Thursday. Unless he can compel their days to mesh. Until he can compel their days to mesh. But when? But how? And how much longer can he survive in his isolation chamber, like a hermit in a doorless circle of stone wall?

  For now, it’s Helen’s Friday. A routine workday morning, the last of the school term. It used to be enough for Stephen to know her as a blinded prisoner serving a life sentence behind glass might know a lover: by her voice alone. An inflection or a tone, a way she has with words that is all her own, the way she laughs on a small intake of breath, the way she sings when she’s alone, have been the signposts that he trusted. It’s not so strange to trust like that. Newborn babies trust their mothers from the moment of their birth for they’ve been cradled by their voices, by their heartbeats, for nine months. (Do unborn twins sing to each other in the womb?) Besides, Helen is not the only one whom Stephen intimately knows by sound alone. Why then had he felt so urgent a desire to set eyes on her in person? The answer is that he will lose her if he continues to trust to words instead of deeds. Now is the time for action, and action requires the evidence of the eyes as well as ears. But it is also that he’s starving. He aches with a hunger that can no longer be ignored and will only be allayed by flesh on flesh, by hearing his own name spoken in a lover’s voice.

  Friday evening. Helen is getting ready for a party; she’s showering, spraying scent between her breasts, brushing out her golden hair. The liquefaction of her clothes. She is in a slip of silk, standing before her mirror, heedless of her loveliness, her shoulders smooth and white, her arms as graceful as a swan’s neck, a bracelet of bright gold around the bone. She leans closer to the mirror to paint her mouth, rose petals settle softly on the snow, she is lampglow, she is starlight, Helen, the beloved, who walks in beauty, like the night.

  She telephones a number but says nothing; there is no one at the other end. There will be a record of the number on the other tape, which he will listen to when he has time, although he probably won’t tell Rollo. Helen is not the target of Rollo’s investigation, why should Rollo care to whom she talks or where she’s going? A minute later she makes another call, she says: ‘Allegra? Hi! I’m not yet dressed, which is why I’m ringing you instead of running up the stairs. Look, I can’t quite remember – did we say that we’d meet there or that we’d go together? I know you said something about going via your sister’s …’

  Stephen cannot hear Allegra’s answer on this tape. After she has listened to it, Helen says, ‘That’s fine, yes. And is Marlow coming too?’ Then: ‘Yes, don’t worry, I’ll be fine, I’ll see you there. Bye now,’ and she puts the receiver down, picks up her handbag, shrugs on her winter coat and knots her scarf and leaves the flat.

  Stephen envisages her going: the staircase she walks down, her hand on the same banister that he touched, the door that opens onto the street; the slender figure pausing for a second on the threshold in the dark. But he cannot follow her to the party. He can picture it – held in a tall, white house in Notting Hill or Chelsea, a house with steps leading to a front door painted glossy black, on which is hung a wreath of holly; a lit tree is visible through a window. Helen hands her coat to an aproned maid and goes softly through an open door into a book-lined room, where a real fire burns in the hearth and there are real paintings that are not prints
or posters on the walls. Beautiful women in flowing dresses, their bare backs gleaming, diamonds and pearls, and Helen, the fairest of them all. Champagne, palest gold, topaz, citrine, fizzing in crystal glasses, murmured talk of love and books and art. Or perhaps in a more modest house – Clapham, Fulham – both rooms on the ground floor filled with people talking, laughing, drinking mulled wine – scent of cloves and oranges – and later, dancing. It could be either, how can he be sure? He has to let her go that evening and wait till she comes back.

  She’s not very late. Probably she told her friends that she had to get up early for the carol service in the morning; she has a busy day ahead. She left Allegra at the party. And Marlow. Who is Marlow? Marlowe? Strange to have heard that same name yesterday; coincidence or not? She was singing ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’ quietly to herself as she walked home through the dark and dreamless streets of London. She came back with her husband, faithless Jamie Greenwood. They hardly spoke to each other at all; evidently tired they went straight to bed. Did she ask him where he had been earlier in the evening? Does she know when he is lying? Where had he been in fact? That’s another thing that doesn’t matter – the truth, whatever that is. Stephen is in control now; he is creating Greenwood.

  Saturday morning. Surer ground. Stephen’s day before yesterday, and he was with her then. As Helen gets ready to leave he reminds her that she will need her warm hat and umbrella. Snow falls and melts and turns to sleet. Helen in her pale coat, her tall black leather boots.