‘I s everything okay?’
I’d heard the commotion and was quite surprised to see Martha, still with that defiant expression, having something of a disagreement with the librarian. Having spent so long in libraries myself, my sympathies tended to lie with the staff, but not today.
‘Fine, thank you,’ she replied, tugging the strap of her bag on to her shoulder a little too vigorously, whereupon it snapped and dropped all of the contents to the floor.
‘Oh, let me,’ I said, bending down to help.
‘It’s okay, I can manage,’ she stage whispered. ‘I just bought this,’ she said, looking somewhat forlorn.
I wasn’t sure what to say to make it better.
‘Buy cheap, buy twice,’ I said, in case there was any doubt that my chosen Olympic event would be sticking my foot in my mouth.
She rolled her eyes as I picked up the leaflets and left her to gather her personal effects.
‘Oh, you’re thinking of going to university? Cool,’ I said, flicking through them.
‘You really think so?’ she asked.
‘Yes, of course. Especially as a mature student, I think that’s …’ I looked at her face as she stood up and held her hand out in order for me to return her leaflets. ‘Oh. You were being sarcastic.’
It was possible she might have smiled at that, but only fleetingly. ‘Apologies. None of my business. Quite right.’
She sighed heavily.
‘No, I’m sorry. It’s all just a bit—’
‘Can you keep the noise down please?’ the librarian whisper-shouted at us. ‘People are trying to read.’
‘Give me a sec to grab my stuff,’ I said, motioning for her to stay where she was, as though she were a car with a dodgy handbrake.
Once outside, she seemed much happier, but still very guarded towards me, which was fair enough.
‘So, are you still looking for your lost manuscript?’
Her tone made it clear that she didn’t see it as the life-changing search I knew it to be.
‘Very much so, yes. Actually, I came across an old catalogue that was printed by Opaline in the 1920s. It’s really quite fascinating—’
‘Opaline? What a beautiful name,’ she said, and I stupidly felt glad that I was the cause for the smile that spread across her face.
‘Yes, it’s unusual, isn’t it?’ ‘And what happened to her?’
We stepped through a stone archway which led into something of a secret garden, right in the middle of the city, with marble statues and a fountain, which was currently empty.
‘Well, that’s what I’m trying to find out. I’m hoping it will give me a clue as to what happened to the bookshop.’ And the manuscript – that was where my interest truly lay. I would make my name, then return home to London a success and show Isabelle that marrying me wouldn’t be a ‘last resort’, as she had put it once.
She took a can of Coke out of her giant bag and pressed down hard on the top so it wouldn’t spray everywhere.
‘Do you want to sit down for a minute?’ she said, pointing to a bench positioned neatly in front of a miserable flowerbed. ‘I’m not really in a rush to get back. Turns out being a live-in housekeeper means you’re on call 24/7.’
I was only too delighted. It seemed her first impression of me had thawed somewhat. That’s when it dawned on me why her company mattered so much. I was lonely. My whole life I had been quite comfortable with the lone wolf lifestyle, but I felt like a total outsider here.
‘So what’s with the obsession?’ ‘Obsession?’
‘With this manuscript?’
‘I don’t think I’d call it an obsession.’
‘Erm, you seemed pretty obsessed outside my window the other day.’ ‘Oh, right. I suppose I did a bit. I’m writing a PhD proposal about lost
manuscripts and why we’re so fascinated with them.’
‘Are we?’ she questioned, scrunching up her nose, then taking a large gulp of her Coke.
‘Come on, surely you can see the appeal? Look at Harper Lee, for example. All those years assuming that she had only written one novel.’
She looked at me askance.
‘To Kill a Mockingbird?’ I said, in case there was any confusion. ‘Oh right, yes.’
There was an awkward silence in which I realised that being an expert in rare books and lost manuscripts could sometimes be construed as quite boring.
‘Of course, there’s Sylvia Plath’s second novel, Double Exposure, which mysteriously vanished after her death.’
‘Who?’
‘You’re not much of a reader, are you?’
She stole a glance at me then, a mixture of spite and hurt in her eyes. I really had a knack for pissing her off.
‘Okay, listen to this. Let me tell you the story of Walter Benjamin. He was a writer, intellectual, genius of a man who also happened to be Jewish living in Nazi-occupied Paris. He didn’t have the right papers, so he had to trek south with other refugees, across the Pyrenees and into Spain.’
‘That’s awful,’ she said, turning her whole body to face me.
‘But there was one thing slowing him down on this perilous journey – a heavy black suitcase containing his manuscript. Speaking to a fellow traveller, Benjamin said that the contents were more valuable than his own life.’
Her face was so animated, as though she were on the journey herself. ‘What happened to him?’
‘Well, when he arrived at the border, Benjamin was informed by Spanish authorities that he would have to go back to France. He knew it meant certain death, so that night, he swallowed a bottle of morphine.’
‘Jesus!’
‘Indeed.’
‘And what about the manuscript? Did he give it to someone?’
‘After his suicide, there was no trace of the black suitcase. The manuscript has never been recovered.’
She shook her head and looked to be almost on the verge of tears. And just like that, she was bitten by the same bug. The unrequited love for what might have been, if not for these cruel acts of fate. I had told the exact same story to Isabelle and yet her only response was that she’d never had a properly good holiday in Spain.
‘So, for all we know, someone could have published it under their own name?’
‘Hmm. I’m not sure which scenario is worse – having lost the work for all time, or having it stolen by someone else.’
I would develop that idea in my paper when I got home.
‘There are so many more stories like that one – rumours of hidden books, forgotten drafts in shoeboxes or novels burned by the author’s family. Poor old Hemingway’s wife had his novel in a briefcase that got stolen from a train station in Paris!’
Paris. Paris. The lost generation. I wondered …
‘What is it?’ she asked, sensing my thoughts as they formed.
‘Oh, maybe nothing. It’s just I can’t seem to find any other records of Opaline Gray and now I’m wondering if she spent any time in Paris.’
She took out her phone, which I thought was rather rude but one can only capture attention for so long.
‘Is this her?’ ‘What?’
She shoved her phone in my face, showing a grainy black and white photo from an old newspaper clipping.
‘Who is it? What did you do?’
‘Well, Mr Fancy-Pants Scholar, I googled the words “Opaline”, “books” and “Paris” and found this.’
I looked closer, hardly daring to believe my eyes. ‘This is Ernest Hemingway!’
She grinned like the proverbial cat, but did not meet my eyes. I read the caption underneath: ‘Sylvia Beach, proprietor of Shakespeare and Company, shop assistant Opaline Carlisle’. There she was; a young woman with dark cropped hair, halfway up a ladder with a book in her hand, Hemingway by her feet.
‘Carlisle? Oh my God, this is huge.’ ‘You’re welcome.’
‘Oh gosh yes, of course, thank you.’ I moved to hug her but she jumped away from my clumsy attempt and I immediately felt her reproof. ‘I’m sorry, I just, you’ve no idea how much this means.’
‘I think I do,’ she said, then grabbed her phone back and picked up her bag. ‘Anyway, I better go.’
