Penelope Fitzgerald - The Golden Child

‘I like a joke occasionally,’ Sir William said. ‘In any case, it’s true about the camels. But my jokes — well, I find not a lot of people understand them now. Your Director now, John — he seems to understand them. I was having a joke with him yesterday.’

‘Did he laugh?’ asked Waring doubtfully.

‘Well, perhaps not very loud. But that’s enough of that. How are things going below? Do you think they really find it was worth coming?’

Waring described what he had seen, this time to a much more sympathetic listener. Sir William’s whole countenance seemed to change, leaving him very old-looking, pale and serious. He shook his head.

‘Have you had a look at these, by the way?’ he asked, pushing forward the bright yellow leaflet.

‘Yes, I saw one or two of them down in the main courtyard. I thought perhaps a religious maniac’

‘I don’t know why madness should always be put down to religion,’ said Sir William, folding the leaflet up carefully as a useful pipe-lighter. ‘Let us confine ourselves to the good we can do here and now. As it happens, I’ve asked you up here to do a favour for me. I want you to spare an hour or so this evening to take Dousha out to dinner. You can see for yourself how tired she is. She’s had a tiring time lately.’

‘I don’t see how I can possibly do that … I’m expected home, I’m afraid … And I’m pretty sure Dousha wouldn’t want to go out with a married man with a mortgage …’

‘If you weren’t married, I shouldn’t trust you to take care of my poor Dousha. It’s an expensive business, however — she eats copiously. I don’t want you to face ruin …’

Sir William took a handful of coins out of the pocket of his coat, a long Norfolk jacket of antique cut, and sorting through some Maria Teresa dollars and Byzantine gold nomismata he produced a quantity of sterling. With difficulty Waring got him to put away the varied hoard, assuring him that it wasn’t like that — Dousha and he would pay for themselves — and found that he had ended by accepting the absurd commission; he would have to go out with Dousha, whom he scarcely knew, and would be obliged to ring up Haggie and make what excuses he could.

With the handful of money Sir William had taken out of his pocket there was a small clay tablet, which was still lying on the desk. It was a palish red in colour, unbaked and unglazed, and covered with deeply incised characters. Waring felt almost sure that it was from the Exhibition.

‘Ought that to be in your pocket, Sir William? Surely it’s from Case VIII?’

‘Quite possibly. I asked Jones to fetch it up for me last night.’

‘But I thought you didn’t want to see the Treasure again? You said you were too tired.’

‘I am tired,’ said Sir William, ‘but that’s not the reason, no. Regret is a luxury I can’t permit myself. Let yourself go back into the past when you’re an old man, and it will eat up your present, whatever present you’ve got. I was a great man then, or thought I was, when I saw the Treasure for the first time. That was sixty years ago. Let it stay sixty years ago. That’s where it belongs.’

‘It would be a wonderful thing for everyone down at the Exhibition, all the same, if you changed your mind.’

‘I shan’t change it. I just took a fancy to have a look at one of these to see to what extent I could still decipher the script. I knew it well enough at one time.’

‘There’s a copy of the Ventris decipherment downstairs in the Staff Library,’ said Waring eagerly, ‘and the Untermensch commentary, which gives you the whole alphabet.’

‘I don’t use libraries,’ Sir William replied. ‘When I was younger I thought, why read when you can pick up a spade and find out for yourself? I’ve published a dozen or so books myself, of course, but now I don’t agree with anything I said in them. As to the Staff Library here, I might just as well throw away my key: they don’t allow you to smoke in there.’

Waring tried in vain to envisage the old man without the wreaths of ascending haze from his briar which, even when he was half asleep, partially hid him from view. And yet, come what might, he felt it was a privilege to be smoked over by Sir William.

‘I know you’ve got to be off, Waring, and earn your living. But just tell me this. Do you feel anything’s wrong?’

Waring wondered exactly what this meant — the mortgage, about which he had confided in Sir William, or more likely the curious atmosphere of expecting the worst which had existed in the Museum ever since the first unpacking of the Treasure. He could only answer, ‘Yes, but nothing that I can put right.’

He returned to his work. He had to submit suggestions for the layout of the counters in the new selling hall. The public desire to buy picture postcards had reached such a pitch (15,000 Get Well cards representing the Golden Tomb had already been sold) that it was necessary to clear new premises. A large court off the entrance hall had been pressed into service; it had been filched by the administration from the Keeper of Woven Textiles, who was left gnashing his few remaining teeth. Waring laid out his sketch plans, wishing he had rather more room, and wondering if he could ask to move for a while to the Conservation studios, where there was more space.

He had leisure now to think seriously about the report he had read, and over which Dousha had gone to sleep. He had a glimpse for the first time of the murky origins of the great golden attraction: hostilities in the Middle East, North African politics, the ill-coordinated activities of the Hopeforth-Best tobacco company. Perhaps similar forces and similar shoddy undertakings controlled every area of his life. Was it his duty to think about the report more deeply and, in that case, to do something about it?

Advancing cautiously into this unknown territory, he thought first of his job. He frankly admitted to himself that he would have to be very hard pressed to do or say anything that would endanger his position as an AP3. Secondly came his loyalty to the Museum, a loyalty which he had undertaken, whatever his irritations and disillusions, to the service of beautiful objects and to the public who stood so much in need of them. Lastly he thought of Sir William, who, after all, had read the file and apparently attached no importance to it whatsoever. This was a comforting reflection. Let us pity women, as Sir William had said, and let us not worry too much about our manipulators, for whereas we have some idea of what we really want to do, they have none.

He spent part of his lunch hour telephoning home.

‘Haggie! Is that you? It’s your half-day, isn’t it? No, well, not this evening, because something’s come up.’

‘Is it to do with Dousha?’

‘Look, Haggie, I didn’t know you’d ever heard of her. She’s just Dousha, just Sir William’s secretary. I’m sure I’ve never said anything about her.’

‘Why haven’t you?’

‘This is stupid. I don’t know her, and I don’t want to go out with her. It’s just that I don’t feel I should disappoint Sir William. No, Sir William can’t take her out, he’s too old. I can’t think what we’re talking about. She’s asleep half the time, anyway. I love you, I want to come home.’

Haggie had rung off.

In the great hive of the Museum, with the Golden Treasure at its heart, the mass of workers and young ones below continued to file, even during the sacred lunch hour, with ceaseless steps past the admission counter. The long afternoon began. Above in the myriad cells drones, cut off from the sound of life, dozed over their in-trays. But Hawthorne-Mannering, neurotically eager, spent no moment in relaxation. Dr Tite-Live Rochegrosse-Bergson and Professor Untermensch had both arrived, though separately, had been conveyed from the airport in the same car — rather a shoddy manoeuvre, obscuring the inferior importance of the little German — and were now at the Museum. Elegantly groomed, like an attendant wraith, Hawthorne-Mannering urged them towards the passage and the lift for their conference.