Barry Maitland - The Marx Sisters

‘I went over and asked her if she’d found something. “Proudhon’s Confessions,” she said. “And look!” Her eyes were shining with excitement as she pointed to the handwritten dedication in the flyleaf. It was in the same black spidery writing as in the letter I’d found, though it had been more carefully scripted, and it was clearly signed “Karl Marx”.

‘“Are they the sort of thing you’d be interested in, then?” Mrs Winterbottom had been watching us from the centre of the room. I remember that as she turned to answer her, Judith suddenly stopped and stared at an old photograph hanging on the wall. She said something like, “Oh, how extraordinary”, and the old lady told her it was their great-aunt, whom her sister admired enormously. “Mind you,” she added, “some of our Eleanor’s ideas are a bit odd to my way of thinking. She’s an intellectual. Both of my sisters are. I inherited the common sense rather than the brain-power. But I’m the one what pays the bills.” Then she said, quick as a flash, “And do you think them books might be worth a bob or two, then?”

‘She caught Judith off guard, and I began to see that she was probably quite a shrewd old duck.

‘“Well, frankly, Mrs Winterbottom,” Judith said, “I don’t think they would fetch much just left out on the shelves of Mr Kowalski’s bookshop. But on the other hand they would be of value to someone like myself, studying the history of that period. I think I could probably persuade my university to come up with quite a reasonable figure for them.”

‘It sounded to me that she was patronizing the old dear, and I wasn’t sure it was going to work.

‘“My granddaughter is at the London University,” Mrs Winterbottom said innocently. “Is that where you are too, dear?” Judith said no, she was at Princeton, in the United States. “Oh, an American university, eh? They have lots of money, I dare say.”

‘Judith began to look a bit worried. “Well, I don’t know about that,” she said. “But I think they might be willing to pay your sister

… oh, perhaps fifty or even a hundred pounds each for these older books.”

‘“A hundred nicker! Well! That’s better than a slap in the face with a cold kipper, eh, Mr Jones?” And she dug me in the ribs with her elbow and cackled happily. Judith said, “But do you think your sister would be interested in selling, though, Mrs Winterbottom? She might be attached to these books?” She sounded pretty anxious.

‘ “Well, you’d best leave that to me, dear,” the old lady said. “She may not want to sell. But on the other hand we have a lot of expenses at the moment, and neither of my sisters contributes much in the way of cash, like. The pensions from their work weren’t so good in their day, and they’d always rented, never bought as my Frank used to tell them-which is just money down the drain, isn’t it? So these books, which was left to all of us, like, when our mother died, perhaps they’re something that my sisters might feel they could now contribute toward the household expenses, now that we’re in need. But I’d have to put it to them.”’

‘So she was quite specific about needing money?’ Kathy said.

Jones nodded.

‘And you don’t think she’d previously had any idea that the books might be valuable?’

‘That’s right. My impression was that she was pretty sharp, and she probably guessed as soon as Kowalski contacted her that she might have something of value. Presumably she’d insisted on meeting us herself, rather than go through the book dealer. And once Judith started looking inside those books she really hadn’t been able to hide her excitement. It was obvious to me, and it must have been to Mrs Winterbottom too.’

‘What about Judith’s valuation of them? Was it fair?’

‘I’ve no idea. My guess, listening to her, was that they had to be worth more.’

‘And if Mrs Winterbottom was as smart as you think, she probably drew the same conclusion?’

‘I wouldn’t be surprised.’

‘Go on, then.’

‘We had a look in Peg’s flat too, but there were far fewer books there, and none held the same interest for Judith. Then we went back down to the first-floor flat, where we chatted about the weather. We assumed that was the end of our meeting, when Mrs Winterbottom suddenly asked if we were interested in papers as well as books, because she’d had a bit of a look and had come across one or two things. We sat down in her living room again while she disappeared into her bedroom. She waddled back in with two sheets of paper covered with the same black ink scrawl as on the letter. As soon as I saw it, I felt the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. I looked across at Judith and she was frozen in her seat, her eyes fixed on the pages.

‘Eventually Judith asked, very quietly, what they were, and Mrs Winterbottom said that they were just a couple of sheets from a bundle of old stuff she’d found among her mother’s papers. There were more, but most of them were in store. She wondered if this was the sort of thing Judith was interested in.

‘Judith took the sheets carefully from her and studied the writing intently. Just the way she held them you could tell she felt as if she was handling something very precious. The old lady was delighted. “I can’t make heads nor tails of it,” she cackled. “It’s like doctor’s writing.”

‘Judith explained that it was very difficult for her, just sitting there, to tell what it might be. She said she’d really have to take them away and show them to someone else.

‘“Oh well, that’s all right, dear, I trust you,” Mrs Winterbottom said. “Only, you might like to show good faith, like, and leave a small deposit.”

‘Judith jumped at the offer, then realized that she was only carrying francs and dollars. I had two ten-pound notes in my wallet, and she reached over and pulled both out and gave them to Mrs Winterbottom.

‘“Thank you, dear,” she said. “I suppose they must be worth at least that? So if there were a few hundred sheets, they’d be worth a few thousand quid?”

‘Judith’s jaw dropped. “There’s a few hundred?”

‘“Oh, I couldn’t say for sure, dear. Not till I look. But I was saying just supposing.”

‘“Well, I don’t know. Perhaps.”

‘“Course if they was valuable,” the old bird went on innocently, “I mean part of our heritage, like, perhaps it would be wrong to sell them to an American university. Maybe I should see if a British university would like to buy them.”

‘To give her credit, Judith didn’t show the panic she must have felt. She gave the old dear a warm smile and said, oh no, it was a specialized field, and Judith was about the only person working in it. She didn’t think there’d be any British university interested in that sort of thing. There were so many old papers in people’s attics, after all. It was a matter of being lucky enough to find a researcher interested in the specific ones. She said it so smoothly and casually. It was interesting to watch someone that you knew doing that, lying through their teeth.

‘Mrs Winterbottom insisted that we drink a glass of port with her to toast our business partnership, as she called it, and then we left. Judith put the sheets between two layers of cardboard which she clutched tightly on her lap all the way back to the airport. She didn’t want to talk. She just stared out of the car window, eyes shining.

‘We didn’t hear anything for a while, then Mrs Winterbottom contacted me again, making the appointment for last Sunday. Judith flew over especially from the States for the meeting, arriving at Heathrow that Sunday morning. She was bubbling with anticipation. The handwriting on the two pages was definitely Marx’s, and the text was an excerpt from the draft of an essay on the theory of socialism, to which she hadn’t been able to find any reference in any of the text books. In my car as we drove from the airport, and all the time we waited for the meeting, she couldn’t stop talking about it. She went on and on about how she hadn’t been able to sleep for thinking about the hundreds of pages that might be lying in some store-box somewhere.’