Dialogues of the Dead

The young man hesitated as if debating how trustworthy his interlocutor was, then seemed to make up his mind and said in a low voice, “It’s quite remarkable considering the circumstances, you know, with me coming back here because of Sam, Dr. Johnson, then poor Sam dying like that, and suddenly I’ve lost my dearest friend, and also I’ve lost my tutor, the one man who could help me hold my studies together. I felt pretty low, you can understand that, I’m sure, Mr. Bowler. Then out of the blue I won the short story competition, and that was a much needed little perk. And out of that …well, it’s early days, but Charley, Mr. Penn, liked the story so much that he showed it to his publishers who liked it as well, and next time his editor comes up to see him, Charley’s going to introduce me with a view to maybe talking about some more stories, a whole bookful, for children, you understand. Isn’t that marvellous?”

“Great,” said Hat. “Congratulations.”

“Thank you, but that’s not all. You know Sam Johnson was working on a book about Beddoes …the poet,” he explained in response to the blank look which must have passed over Hat’s eyes, “early nineteenth century, fascinating writer, the last Elizabethan, Strachey called him, he figures in my study, in fact I’d grown more and more fascinated by him which was one of the things that brought Sam and me so close together. Well, Sam didn’t leave a will, it seems, so his only close relative, his sister, that’s Linda Lupin, MEP, inherits everything, and she’s been so pissed off with academics flocking around like vultures, each claiming to be Sam’s best buddy and the one he’d have wanted receive his research material and finish the book, that she’s told them all to get stuffed! And she invited me to see her and after we’d talked a while, she said that Sam had written a lot about me in his letters, and from what he’d said, it seemed to her if I was willing that I was the person he’d have wanted to finish the book! Isn’t that marvellous?”

“Yeah, great,” said Hat, to whom the prospect of finishing someone else’s book was about as appealing as the prospect of finishing someone’s else’s soup. “Congratulations.”

“Thank you, Mr. Bowler. I can see you understand. A lot of people might think it funny that I can be so happy so soon after losing such a dear friend, but it’s as if Sam’s death has turned my life around. Suddenly I can see before me a path leading to a future that’s got some shape and meaning. It’s almost as if it were meant to be, as if there’s someone out there, perhaps even Sam himself, who likes me and is looking after me. I went to the burial ground first thing this morning and offered thanks at Sam’s grave, and for a while it felt like I was down there with him, chatting away like we did in the old days.”

Hat looked into Roote’s eyes which shone with a born-again fervour and resisted the temptation to say, Why don’t we try to arrange that on a permanent basis then? and instead said, “Great. Excuse me now.”

He turned back to the counter and saw that Rye and Penn seemed to have finished, or at least she had finished with him.

The writer moved away from the counter and gave him an encouraging wink as they passed.

Rye was re-entering the office.

He spoke her name but she didn’t pause. He stood at the counter and watched her through the open door as she sat down at the desk once more.

There was a sheet of paper on the counter. He looked down and read what was written on it.

Man on his way out

Within my heart, within my head,

Every worldly joy lies dead,

And just as dead beyond repeal

Is hate of evil, nor do I feel

The pain of mine or others’ lives,

For in me only Death survives!

At least, unless these literary folk had their own erotic code, it didn’t read like sexual harassment. Perhaps clever old Pascoe and his weird Uni mates could riddle something out of it, and out of Roote’s euphoria too.

He raised his eyes from the poem.

At her desk in the office, Rye was watching him.

He spoke her name again and she stretched out one elegant leg and kicked the door shut.

45

On the day of Percy Follows’ funeral, the library was closed.

Officially this was to permit his colleagues to attend the ceremony.

“Wrong,” said Charley Penn to Dick Dee. “It’s to force his colleagues to attend the ceremony.”

“I think for once your cynicism misses the mark, Charley,” said Dee. “Percy had many good qualities, both as a man and a librarian. He’ll be genuinely missed.”

“Yeah?” said Penn. “Either way, it’s fucking inconvenient. I can’t work in my place with all those hairy workmen banging and shouting and competing whose ghetto-blaster is the loudest. Any road, with the funeral at one, I don’t see why the place needs to be shut all afternoon.”