advantage of at least a foot. Maybe it was the imploring, not to say intimidated, look on the poor man’s face; or the recollection that Hook was a staunch anti-fascist – as intolerant as James himself of the appeasers who had had quite a presence in Oxford not so long ago – but James felt a dose of sympathy for Hook, standing there in his bottle glasses. And with the sympathy came shame for his rudeness, and the attendant need to make amends.
‘Apology accepted.’ He extended his hand, which Hook took gratefully. ‘So what you working on then, Hook?’
‘Well, strictly speaking, I shouldn’t say.’
‘Good man. “Careless talk” and all that. I’d better be—’
‘Put it this way, though. All this focus on fish and potatoes complements my research very well.’ He looked expectantly at James but, getting no response, went on. ‘Nutrition.’
‘Glad to hear it,’ James said, lifting up his bike.
‘You see, consumption patterns map very precisely onto income and education levels. I’d intuited that before, but now – thanks to the ministry – I have very precise data. They show that in those social categories we would define as weak, potato consumption outstrips fish by a ratio of up to three to one. Among those we might classify as defective, the ratio rises to five to one. In superior groups, the data—’
‘You’re saying the poor eat more chips?’
‘Well, that’s obviously a great simplification. I’d prefer to put—’
‘Yes, of course. Well, I really do have to—’
‘Oh. But I hadn’t explained the link between oily fish in the diet and mental performance. And the benefits of school milk on national strength indices for teeth and bones!’
‘Another time, Magnus.’ James got back on his bicycle, relieved to see that the rear wheel was bent but still functional. He had pedalled a couple of yards when he stopped and looked back over his shoulder. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve seen Florence recently, have you?’
Hook looked down at his feet, his face flushing. James had seen this reaction before: Florence only had to walk into a room to reduce men to stammering wrecks. He had not appreciated that the mere mention of her name could have the same effect. The realization of it brought that deadweight of melancholy back onto his chest.
‘The last time I saw her was on Tuesday. I was on my way into college and she was coming out with her friend, what’s her name?’
‘Rosemary?’ James had only met her a couple of times, but he had found her irritating. And she clung to Florence like a growth.
‘That’s right. Rosemary.’ Hook squinted at James once more. ‘I say, Zennor: is that a rowing shirt under your jacket?’
The last leg of the ride down Parks Road took no time at all, but as he leaned his bike against the low wall outside Wadham College, James had a dread thought. Opening hours at the libraries were shorter now, the New Bodleian included. And it was nearly six o’clock.
He dashed across, heading into a building that still stood out for its novelty. Where almost every other structure in the town was covered in grime, stained with the soot generated by coal fires in every room, the brick of the New Bod was still a pristine beige. Not only was it clean but it was made of straight lines, free of the gargoyles, gnarled brickwork and battlements that made university Oxford resemble a walled city from the Middle Ages. That gloom had only deepened thanks to the strictures of the blackout, demanding that every college cover its windows in blinds or curtains or, when supplies of those had run out, brown paper or even black paint. At first, pride ensured that the curtains were drawn back or the paper removed each morning. But staff were short and so was patience, and so, with the war now in its eleventh month, many of Oxford’s medieval or Tudor windows remained cloaked in darkness all day long.
And to think it had only opened a year ago: James and Florence had gone together, invited as the Greys’ guests. The speeches had looked forward to a bright future, full of dreams for the scholars of the next generation. Even at the time, James remembered, those seemed to owe more to hope than expectation. Only the hopelessly deluded, or those fanatical for appeasement, believed war could be avoided. For some, like James, the war had begun long ago.
Sure enough, the New Bodleian was closing its doors. ‘Have to wait till tomorrow now, sir,’ said the commissionaire, producing a key from his belt in the manner of a gaoler.
‘Of course,’ James replied. ‘I just need to retrieve some notes I’d left in one of the reading rooms.’
‘Opening hours are nine am till—’
‘Yes, yes, I know the opening hours. But—’ He leaned in, his voice dropping to a whisper. ‘This is for the, er, war effort. If you get my meaning.’
The doorman pulled back as if to assess James’s honesty from a distance. All he had to do was feign confidence. That, his instructor back in Spain had told him, was the key. So he held the commissionaire’s gaze, convinced in his own mind that he was engaged in intelligence duties at Balliol or Oriel, until the man eventually stepped out of his way, gesturing him towards the stairs.
He noticed that the landings were full of what he guessed were paintings wrapped in brown paper and string, stacked together against the wall: those must be the artworks he had heard about, brought here for safekeeping. All the colleges were doing it, emptying out their collections, even removing stained glass windows and statuary, using the newly-built Bodleian building as their refuge. And not just the colleges. The House of Lords library had sent some of the nation’s most precious documents here, packed into four tins – among them the death warrant of Charles I. Quite why they thought such treasures would be safer here than anywhere else in Oxford, James was not sure: perhaps they simply put their faith in the modern.
On the first floor, he could see a last remaining librarian, a woman around his age. She had a wireless set on her desk and it was switched on, a sign not only that she was off-duty and packing up for the day but also of how different life had become: you would never have seen a wireless in a library before, but everyone was glued to the device these days, awaiting word of the war. As he approached the desk, he heard the BBC announcer conclude that afternoon’s play, Adolf in Blunderland. Some satirical effort aimed at lifting the nation’s spirits, James guessed.
The woman turned around. She looked nothing like Florence but something in the brightness of her eyes reminded James of his wife and, for a split-second, it seemed to suck the wind out of him. In that instant he was somewhere else entirely, in a pokey little café not far from here – The Racket – where, thanks to rationing, he and his wife had had to make do with a supper of baked beans on toast. They had been arguing, he had gone too far and she had calmly got up and walked out, leaving him to face the embarrassed stares of the staff and the other diners. He had run out after her, searching street after street, eventually finding her just a few hundred yards away from their home. They had patched it up, he couldn’t remember how. But for nearly an hour he had feared that he had lost her. And something in this woman’s face brought back that fear now, made him realize he had been fending it off all day.
‘I’m sorry, sir, the library is now closed for the day. We will be open again tomorrow morning.’
James stared back at her, suddenly unsure what to say, where even to begin.
‘Sir?’
She had dipped
