INTO THIN AIR
Oxford, April 1971
No,” he said positively. Roger swung round to peer out the window at the soggy sky, holding the phone to his ear. “Not a chance. I’m off to Scotland next week, I’ve told you.”
“Oh, now, Rog,” coaxed the Dean’s voice. “It’s just your sort of thing. And it wouldn’t put you off your schedule by a lot; you could be in the Hielands a-chasin’ the deer this time a month—and you told me yourself your girrrl’s not due till July.”
Roger gritted his teeth at the Dean’s put-on Scots accent, and opened his mouth to say no again, but wasn’t quite fast enough.
“It’s Americans, too, Rog,” she said. “You’re so good with Americans. Speaking of girrls,” she added, with a brief chortle.
“Now, look, Edwina,” he said, summoning patience, “I’ve things to do this holiday. And they don’t include herding American tourists round the museums in London.”
“No, no,” she assured him. “We’ve paid minders to do the touristy bits; all you’d need to be concerned with is the conference itself.”
“Yes, but—”
“Money, Rog,” she purred down the phone, pulling out her secret weapon. “It’s Americans, I said. You know what that means.” She paused pregnantly, to allow him to contemplate the fee for running a week-long conference for a gang of visiting American scholars whose official minder had fallen ill. By comparison to his normal salary, it was an astronomical sum.
“Ah…” He could feel himself weakening.
“I hear you’re thinking of getting married one of these days, Rog. Buy an extra haggis for the wedding, wouldn’t it?”
“Anyone ever tell you how subtle you are, Edwina?” he demanded.
“Never.” She chortled again briefly, then snapped into executive mode. “Right, then, see you Monday week for the plans meeting,” and hung up.
He resisted the futile impulse to slam the receiver down, and dropped it on the hook instead.
Maybe it wasn’t a bad thing after all, he thought bleakly. He didn’t care about the money, in all truth, but having a conference to run might keep his mind off things. He picked up the much crumpled letter that lay next to the phone, and smoothed it out, his eye traveling over the paragraphs of apology without really reading them.
So sorry, she’d said. Special invitation to engineering conference in Sri Lanka (God, did all Americans go to conferences in the summer?) valuable contacts, job interviews (job interviews? Christ, he knew it, she was never coming back!)—couldn’t pass it up. Desperately sorry. See you in September. I’ll write. Love.
“Yeah, right,” he said. “Love.”
He balled up the sheet again and threw it at the dresser. It bounced off the edge of the silver picture frame and fell to the carpet.
“You could have told me straight,” he said aloud. “So you did find someone else; you were right then, weren’t you? You were wise, and me the fool. But could you not be honest, ye lying wee bitch?”
He was trying to work up a good rage; anything to fill the emptiness in the pit of his stomach. It wasn’t helping.
He took the picture in its silver frame, wanting to break it to bits, wanting to clutch it to his heart. In the end, he only stood looking at it for a long time, then put it down gently, on its face.
“So sorry,” he said. “Yeah, so am I.”
* * *
May 1971
The boxes were waiting for him at the porter’s lodge when he returned to college on the last day of the conference, hot, tired, and thoroughly fed up with Americans. There were five of them, large wooden crates plastered with the bright stickers of international shipping.
“What’s this?” Roger juggled the clipboard the deliveryman handed him, groping in his pocket with the other hand for a tip.
“Well, I dunno, do I?” The man, truculent and sweating from the trip through the courtyard to the porter’s lodge, dropped the last crate on top of the others with a bang. “All yours, mate.”
Roger gave the top box an experimental shove. If it wasn’t books, it was lead. The push had shown him the edge of an envelope taped securely to the box below, though. With some difficulty, he pried it loose and ripped it open.
You told me once that your father said that everyone needs a history, the note inside read. This is mine. Will you keep it with yours? There was neither salutation nor closing; only the single letter “B,” written in bold angular strokes.
He stared at it for a moment, then folded the note and put it in his shirt pocket. Squatting carefully, he got hold of the top crate and lifted it in his arms. Christ, it must weigh sixty pounds at least!
Sweating, Roger dropped the crate on the floor of his sitting room and went through to the tiny bedroom, where he scrabbled through a drawer. Armed with a screwdriver and a bottle of beer, he came back to deal with the box. He tried to damp down his rising feelings of excitement, but couldn’t. Will you keep it with yours? Did a girl send half her belongings to a bloke she meant to break off with?
“History, eh?” he muttered. “Museum quality, by the way you packed it.” The contents had been double-boxed, with a layer of excelsior between, and the inner box, once opened, revealed a mysterious array of lumpy, newspaper-wrapped bundles and smaller boxes.
He picked up a sturdy shoe box and peeked inside. Photographs; old ones with scalloped edges, and newer ones, glossy and colored. The edge of a large studio portrait showed, and he pulled it out.
It was Claire Randall, much as he had last seen her; amber eyes warm and startling under a tumble of brown-silk curls, a slight smile on the lush, delicate mouth. He shoved it back in the box, feeling like a murderer.
What emerged from the layers of newsprint was a very aptly named Raggedy Ann doll, its painted face so faded that only the shoe-button eyes remained, fixed in a blank and challenging stare. Its dress was torn but had been carefully mended, the soft cloth body stained but clean.
The next bundle yielded a tattered Mickey Mouse hat, with a tiny pink foam-rubber bow still fixed between its perky ears. A cheap music box, that played “Over the Rainbow” when he opened it. A stuffed dog, synthetic fur worn away in patches. A faded red sweatshirt, a man’s size Medium. It might have fit Brianna, but somehow Roger knew it had been Frank’s. A ragged dressing gown in quilted maroon silk. On an impulse, he pressed it to his nose. Claire. Her scent brought her vividly to life, a faint smell of musk and green things, and he dropped the garment, shaken.
Under the layer of trivia there was more substantial treasure. The weight of the crate was caused mostly by three large flat chests at the bottom, each containing a silver dinner service, carefully wrapped in gray antitarnishing cloth. Each chest had a typewritten note tucked inside, giving the provenance and history of the silver.
A French silver-gilt service, with rope-knot borders, maker’s mark DG. Acquired by William S. Randall, 1842. A George III Old English pattern, acquired 1776 Edward K. Randall, Esq. Husk Shell pattern, by Charles Boyton, acquired 1903 by Quentin Lambert Beauchamp, given as a wedding present to Franklin Randall and Claire Beauchamp. The family silver.
With a growing puzzlement, Roger went on, laying each item carefully on the floor beside him, the objects of vertu and objects of use that comprised Brianna Randall’s history. History. Jesus, why had she called it that?