The Bookman's Tale: A Novel of Obsession

by Charlie Lovett

  Ridgefield, 1986

  Peter had replayed in his mind a hundred times in the past two days the conversation that he and Amanda had had just a few weeks ago on the night she had given him the Volvo. After a second round of lovemaking, they lay side by side, their hands loosely nestled together, gazing at the high ceiling.

  “Did you like being an only child?” Amanda had asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Peter. “I guess if I’d had a little brother, I would have had someone to talk to. I might be more . . . socialized. But then I would have worried about him growing up in that house. I’m good at worrying.”

  “I’d have liked a little sister,” said Amanda.

  “Not an older one?” said Peter.

  “No. I guess since I was first and I always thought another might come along, I never dreamed of an older one. But I used to wish I had a baby sister. To take care of, you know. I want my kids to have siblings.”

  “How many?” said Peter, after a long pause.

  “Do you mean how many kids would I like?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Three or four,” said Amanda. “If the first three are all boys, I might try once more for a girl.”

  “So you’d like girls?” Peter asked, suddenly seeing himself and Amanda walking through a park with two dark-haired toddlers wearing frilly pink dresses. He found the vision equally frightening and enthralling.

  “I’d like at least one of each,” said Amanda. “But I’m realistic. What about you?”

  “I’d like any kids that had you as a mother,” said Peter, and Amanda lay her head on his chest and fell almost instantly asleep.

  After that, Amanda would sometimes make a seemingly offhand comment—though Peter knew there was no such thing with her—about wanting her daughter to take ballet lessons or hoping that her son would apply to schools other than Ridgefield. Peter began to picture himself as a stay-at-home dad, writing antiquarian book catalogs in his home office while the children napped.

  Now he sat at the bedside of the woman who would never bear children and gently woke her.

  “How are you feeling?” said Peter.

  “Better,” said Amanda. “Stronger. I think I can sit up.” Peter pressed a button and the bed raised Amanda to a sitting position.

  “Not as bolt upright as you like,” said Peter.

  “Still,” said Amanda, “I feel more human.”

  “We need to talk,” said Peter.

  “That doesn’t sound good,” said Amanda. “Besides, I thought the girl was supposed to say that.”

  “A couple of things have happened while you were sick.”

  “Peter, you’re scaring me. Did somebody die?”

  “Nobody died,” said Peter. “It’s just that you had a pretty bad infection.”

  “But they said it was clearing up.”

  “It is. It is clearing up. You’re going to be fine. It’s just that . . .”

  “I’m not going to be fine, am I?”

  “The infection got into your ovaries,” said Peter, taking her hand. “We’re going to have to rethink the whole children issue.”

  “Oh,” said Amanda softly, looking away from Peter for the first time in the conversation. She stared out the window at the pale blue summer sky for a long minute before Peter pulled her back toward him. He made no attempt to wipe away the tears trickling down her cheek. “It’s just that I . . .”

  “I know,” said Peter. “We both did.” They sat quietly for a long time, Amanda’s hand resting limply in his. Peter felt he should give the news a chance to settle before he went on. Finally, when he could bear the silence no longer, he said, “There’s something else, too. Some good news.”

  “I could use some good news,” said Amanda, forcing a smile as she drew her sleeve across her eyes. Peter gripped her hand more firmly and slipped out of his chair. “Did you lose something?” asked Amanda, as he knelt on the floor by her bed.

  “Yes,” said Peter. “About two years ago. I lost my heart.”

  “Peter, what are you doing?”

  “Amanda Ridgefield,” said Peter—and to his own surprise he felt not panic but supreme peace as he said it, “will you marry me?”

  Amanda began to cry again, but Peter thought he saw a smile behind her tears. He got back up and pulled a ring from his pocket. “What do you think?” he said. Before she could stop him, he slipped it onto her finger.

  “Peter, it’s . . . it’s beautiful.” She was sobbing now, and Peter waited patiently for her to compose herself. After a few moments, she slipped her hand from his and reached for a tissue.

  “I don’t want you to marry me because you feel sorry for me,” said Amanda.

  “I don’t feel sorry for you,” said Peter. “Look, we can adopt, we can do all sorts of things. I’m prepared to do a lot of things to make you . . . to make us happy. The one thing I’m not prepared to do is leave this room without being engaged to you.”

  “And this isn’t a sympathy proposal?”

  “Amanda, you know me. You know us. You know how much I love you. Why do you think I’ve been buying and selling all these books? To make money for this.” He pointed to her ring, which already looked like a natural part of her hand.

  “Really?” said Amanda.

  “Really,” said Peter.

  “Okay then, Peter Byerly. Yes.”

  Though Peter often mourned the scar on Amanda’s heart left by her inability to bear children, he never regretted choosing that moment to propose to her. He had been planning to buy the ring after he had sold his Volvo full of books and to propose on Halloween in the Devereaux Room, but he felt a need to balance Amanda’s grief, and her family’s grief, with joy. Charlie and Sarah were nearly as happy as Amanda when they saw the ring on their daughter’s finger and heard the news.

  “I’m gonna call you ‘son’ now,” said Charlie, clapping Peter on the back in a gesture that failed to hide the depth of his emotion. “I hope you won’t mind that.”

  “No,” said Peter, “I won’t mind at all.”

  Peter drove Amanda home five days later. He spent the rest of the summer in a guest room in the Ridgefield house, helping nurse his fiancée back to health. Amanda seemed to be her old self, sitting in the study reading, laughing and teasing Peter in the kitchen and around the pool, even making love when her parents had gone to New York for the weekend. But from that time on there was between Amanda and Peter a small unspoken barrier, which had not been there before, around the topic of children. He rarely noticed it, but once in a while, when they saw a baby in a restaurant or flipped past a channel playing a Disney movie, Peter felt it—this slight awkwardness, as if they were friends who had accidentally seen each other naked. Peter would learn that marriages acquire such scars, but it was this blemish on their absolute intimacy, even more than Amanda’s barrenness, that grieved him. That he never had the courage to talk to Amanda about it was something he would regret for the rest of his life.

  Kingham, 1876

  By the time his son was born, Phillip Gardner had finally persuaded Isabel to be reasonable, though it had not been easy. The first several times he had visited her following the meeting at Fortnum’s, she had insisted that she did not want money from him but affection and a father for her child. He had explained that these were the only two things he could not provide. It was Miss Prickett, in the end, who helped Isabel to see the hopelessness of her situation, and for that Phillip had been grateful.

  When the child was old enough to travel, it was decided that Isabel would return to America. The child would be presented as a foundling whom Isabel had discovered outside her art school and from whom no power of Miss Prickett could part her. Isabel conceded that her parents would willingly adopt the child and raise it as part of her family. In the meantime, Phillip would be available for whatever Isabel might need, within reason. He would arrange for a doctor, should that prove necessary, and he agreed to pay a small stipend not to Isabel, who would not accept it, but to Mis
s Prickett, who would use it to buy clothes and such for the baby.

  Isabel could continue to contact him through Benjamin Mayhew, but Phillip had directed Mayhew not to forward messages to Kingham. Phillip could find an excuse to come up to London and check in with his bookseller at least once a week—for anything that required more expedient attention, Miss Prickett would have to do.

  Since their conversation in Fortnum’s, Phillip and Isabel had continued to meet on a regular basis, though those meetings were entirely chaste. As Isabel reached the last months of her confinement, Phillip’s visits to her lodgings were generally limited to a short conversation with Miss Prickett confirming Isabel’s health. As for the needs of the flesh, Phillip had felt curiously uninterested in such activities since his discovery of Isabel’s condition. He avoided Covent Garden.

  The child, known to his father only as Phillip, was born on a cold morning in late November. Miss Prickett dispatched a letter to Benjamin Mayhew at once, but Phillip had accompanied Mrs. Gardner on a trip to Yorkshire to visit her niece and did not arrive in London until just before Christmas. The first time he laid eyes on his only son, the boy was three weeks old. Isabel had expressed, in Phillip’s prolonged absence, an intense desire not to see her son’s father, so Miss Prickett carried the sleeping child into the sitting room, where she offered the bundle to Phillip.

  “I think it’s best that you hold him, Miss Prickett,” Phillip had said. He was appalled at the thought that such a young child should be offered by its de facto nurse to what amounted to a total stranger.

  “I suppose you’re right about that, Mr. Gardner.” She sat with the child in her arms for a few minutes, then returned to the nursery. In her absence, Phillip showed himself out.

  Walking the cold and dim streets of London, up to Hyde Park where he had once strolled so innocently with Isabel under the summer sun, then on the long walk to Trafalgar Square and up Fleet Street to Benjamin Mayhew’s office, Phillip decided that he must not see his son again. He had barely glimpsed the boy’s face, but seeing the child, coming face-to-face with the reality of what had happened, had left him torn. This evidence of his sins engendered in Phillip the most horrific feeling of shame and disgust he had ever experienced. At the same time, he was overcome by the sense of connection he felt with that peaceful infant. This was his son, his rightful heir, whom he must never know. Phillip could not bear the thought of returning to the emotional blackness that lay in that narrow space between love and shame. In a few months Isabel and the boy would be gone forever. Until then, he would avoid London.

  —

  The wind blowing down from Churchill howled around the eaves of Evenlode House on a March afternoon, as the sun hung low in the pale blue Cotswold sky. Phillip did not envy the workmen who were laying stone high up on the top floor of the new west wing. Mrs. Gardner was once again in Yorkshire visiting her niece, who was not well. Phillip had stayed behind to supervise the work, though today it needed little supervising, and he had remained in his study all day, answering correspondence and reading. He had just put another log on the fire and had settled into his favorite chair when the housekeeper—she was new and Phillip would keep forgetting her name—appeared in the doorway, silent as a ghost.

  “Yes, what is it?” said Phillip, not pleased at the disturbance.

  “A young woman and her companion to see you,” she said. “Not knowing the young lady or your wishes, I asked she stay at the door. She’s got a . . . well, I was not sure you’d be wanting her in the parlor, sir.”

  —

  From an upper window of Evenlode Manor, Reginald Alderson squinted into the eyepiece of a long brass telescope, trained on his neighbor’s front door a mile and a half away. It had proved useful to pay the stationmaster a few pounds to inform him whenever Mrs. Gardner left the village, but he did wish that she might have left sooner. Nonetheless, Reginald was a patient man. He had been patient all the days he had followed Phillip Gardner through the streets of London, and had been rewarded by seeing him speaking with a young American in the Royal Academy. He had been patient in following the girl and discovering her lodgings. He had been patient in waiting for the girl’s companion to take a day off—a day when he had placed himself next to Miss Prickett on the train to Brixton and had the first of several useful conversations.

  “It’s quite a coincidence,” he had said, “that I travel to Brixton by this route every Thursday as well.”

  He had been patient in waiting for Mrs. Gardner to take an extended journey without her husband, but once she had departed, the final phase of his plan had swung into action. Phillip Gardner had written Reginald a taunting letter two years ago, not long after he had married Mrs. Gardner, offering to purchase Reginald’s collection of historical documents. Thankfully, Reginald had saved this obscenity, and he had little trouble copying the script in writing the letter that now summoned Isabel, Miss Prickett, and the child to Evenlode House. When Gardner had turned them out, knowing as he must that Mrs. Gardner was due to return that evening, Reginald would conveniently meet them just outside the gate and offer his dear friend Miss Prickett and her young charges lodgings for the night. Once the trio were ensconced in Evenlode Manor, the rest would be easy.

  Ridgefield, 1986

  Early in the fall of his senior year at Ridgefield, Peter was reading an assignment for his medieval history class in the Devereaux Room when Francis Leland dropped a dusty cardboard box on the table in front of him.

  “How would you feel about getting some extra hours this year?” asked Francis.

  “Are there any more hours in the day?” asked Peter. He was already spending most of his waking time either in class or in the library. Francis had him working fifteen hours a week in Special Collections, and he worked with Hank in Conservation when he could. His time had become more limited as he worked to fulfill his academic requirements. The dean had grown tired of Peter’s inventing classes—this semester he was taking a full load of courses in English, history, and economics.

  “Well, there are six more boxes where this came from, and I think it’s time we got this stuff cataloged,” said Francis. “Given your . . . personal circumstances and your cataloging talents, you’re the perfect man for the job.”

  “What is it?” Peter asked, his curiosity piqued.

  “The personal letters and papers of Ms. Amanda Devereaux,” said Francis.

  “Are you serious?” said Peter, lunging for the box. “Why didn’t you tell me about these before?”

  “To be honest,” said Francis, “they’re not a high priority. Researchers are more interested in Ms. Devereaux’s collection than in the lady herself. But now that you’re marrying into the family, I thought you might like to learn about manuscript cataloging and Amanda Devereaux at the same time.”

  “You bet I would,” said Peter, pulling open the box while his history text lay on the table, forgotten.

  Over the next several months, Peter worked with the Devereaux papers, carefully sorting through correspondence with book collectors and dealers. Every day he told Amanda something new about her grandmother, and Amanda quietly indulged his passion, despite the fact that she could not keep straight the maze of collectors and dealers with whom her grandmother had interacted. On Saturdays, when he and Amanda spent the afternoon at the Ridgefields’ house, Peter would sit by the pool or in the sunroom regaling Sarah Ridgefield with tales of her mother’s collecting. Sarah showed a genuine interest in what Peter discovered.

  “By the time I was old enough to understand what book collecting was, she had slowed down a bit,” said Sarah. “I remember that one trip to the auction house in New York, but other than that she didn’t share that part of her world with me.”

  “But didn’t you ever look through the papers?” asked Peter.

  “It wouldn’t have done any good without you to explain who Rosenbach was or Huntington or any of the others. You’re an excellent tour guide, Peter,” said Sarah, kissing him gently on the cheek.


  “I was reading her correspondence with Henry Folger this morning,” said Peter.

  “You mean the founder of the Folger Shakespeare Library?” asked Sarah.

  “Exactly. Folger was the Shakespeare collector. They seemed to be pretty good friends. I guess Folger could be a nasty rival when it came to book collecting, but his letters to your mother are really kind.”

  Amanda Devereaux, Peter discovered, never bid on a Shakespeare First Folio while Folger was alive—a courtesy to her friend who collected dozens of First Folios, by far the largest assemblage in the world. A letter to Amanda from Emily Jordan Folger, written two weeks after her husband’s death, read, in part, “He valued your friendship, and will no doubt rejoice in your finally acquiring a First Folio.” It was more than fifteen years later that Amanda bought the First Folio from which Peter had so often read.

  “So many of the big collectors were kind to her,” said Peter, “and treated her like an equal—even though book collecting in those days was pretty much a boys’ club. Of course she couldn’t join the Grolier Club. She was pretty angry about that.”

  “What’s the Grolier Club?” asked Amanda, who had just come into the room with a look on her face that told Peter she was determined not to let Sarah monopolize her fiancé’s conversation.

  “It’s a club for book collectors in New York,” said Peter. “The oldest book-collecting club in America, and it was all boys until the nineteen seventies.”

  “That must have pissed her off,” said Amanda, slipping onto the couch next to Peter.

  “Amanda!” said Sarah. “Your language.” Peter had noticed that Amanda’s speech had become more colorful around her mother lately. When he’d asked her about it, she had shrugged and said she was only trying to see if her mother would notice, but Peter thought there was more to it than that. Since Amanda’s parents hadn’t been shocked by her choice of a socially unsuitable husband, she was determined to shock them some other way. Peter saw it as part of a plan Amanda seemed to have implemented since her illness to put herself into Peter’s world, rather than that of her parents, at every opportunity. He supposed that was what engagements were for—to allow the bride time to move from the world of her parents to the world of her groom—and, of course, Peter was not surprised that his friendship with Sarah Ridgefield, which threatened to make those two worlds one, still annoyed Amanda at times.