The Office of the Dead. Andrew Taylor

wouldn’t have thought space was a problem in this building.’

      ‘You’d be surprised. It’s our duty to make the best use of our resources we can. But to go back to the books. One possibility is that we give some or all of them to another library, and yes, perhaps the one at the Theological College might be appropriate.’

      I noticed he did not mention the possibility that the Theological College might close.

      ‘Or we may sell some or all of them. But we can’t really decide what to do until we know what we’ve got. There’s never been a complete catalogue, you see.’ He stood up and lifted down a heavy foolscap volume from a shelf. He blew off the dust and placed it on the table. ‘Dean Pellew’s original collection is listed in here. Just authors and titles, nothing more, and I’d be surprised if we’ve still got them all. And then over the years there’ve been one or two half-hearted attempts to record acquisitions as they were made. Some of them are in here.’ He tapped the book. ‘Others are in the filing cabinet by the door.’

      Hudson sat down again. He took out a pipe, peered into its bowl and then put it back in his pocket. I wondered what he would pay me and whether it would be enough to allow me to stay on in Rosington. He was going bald on top. Next I wondered whether he and his wife were fond of each other, and what they were like when they were alone together. Her name was June. She was one of the few ladies in the Close who not only recognized me but said hello when we met.

      ‘Couldn’t you get someone from a bookshop to look at the books?’

      ‘We could. They would certainly do a valuation or us, I imagine. But we don’t even know if we want to sell them yet. And if we wanted a catalogue, we’d have to pay them to do it.’ He hesitated, and added, ‘There’s another reason why I’d like the books catalogued before we make up our minds what to do with them. There are a few oddities in the library. I’d like a chance to weed them out.’

      ‘What do you mean exactly?’

      ‘Apparently my predecessor found a copy of Mrs Beeton’s Household Management. One or two novels have surfaced as well. Perhaps my predecessors muddled up some of their own books with the library’s.’

      ‘Look, it’s very kind of you, but I still don’t think I’d be suitable. I’ve never done anything like this before.’

      He beamed across the table. ‘Personally I’ve never found that a good reason not to do something.’

      Hudson was persistent, even wily. He proposed I try my hand after lunch at half a dozen of the books under his supervision. If the results were satisfactory to me and to him then he suggested a trial period of a week, for which he would pay me three pounds, ten shillings. If we were both happy after this, the job would continue until the work was finished. All it needed, he said, was application and intelligence, and he was quite sure I had both of those.

      The week passed, then another, then a third. It was easier to carry on with it than to try to explain to Hudson yet again why I wasn’t suitable. The money was useful, too. I worked methodically round the room, from bookcase to bookcase. I did not move any of the books except when reuniting volumes belonging to a set. I used five-by-three index cards for the catalogue. On each card I recorded the author, the title, the publisher and the date. I added a number which corresponded to the shelf where the book was to be found and I added any other points which seemed to me to be of interest such as the name of the editor, if there was one, or the name of the series or whether the book contained one of Dean Pellew’s bookplates, and had therefore been part of the original endowment.

      It was surprisingly dirty work. On my first full day I got through several dusters and had to wash my hands at least half a dozen times. At Janet’s suggestion, I bought some white cotton dusting gloves.

      I reserved a separate table for the books which were in any way problematical. One of these was Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which I found halfway through my second week sheltering in the shadow of Cruden’s Concordance. I flicked through the pages, feeling guilty but failing to find anything obscene. So I borrowed it to read properly, telling my conscience that it wouldn’t matter two hoots to Hudson if I found it today or next week.

      I watched the cards expanding, inching across the old shoebox I kept them in until that shoebox was full and Canon Hudson found me another. My speed improved as I went on. The first time I managed to dust and catalogue fifty books in a single day, I went to the baker’s and bought chocolate eclairs. Janet and Rosie and I ate them round the kitchen table to celebrate the achievement. As time went by, too, I needed to refer fewer and fewer queries to Canon Hudson.

      At first he came in once a day to see how I was getting on. Then it became once every two or three days or even longer. There was pleasure in that too.

      ‘You’ve got a naturally orderly mind, Wendy,’ he told me one day towards the end of April. ‘That’s a rarity.’

      Henry would have laughed at the thought of me in a Cathedral Library. But the job was a lifeline at a time when I could easily have drowned. I thought it came to me because of the kindness of Canon Hudson, and because I happened to be in the right place at the right time. Years later I found out there was a little more to it.

      It was in the early 1970s. I met June Hudson at a wedding. I said how much the job in the Cathedral Library had helped me, despite everything, and how grateful I was to her husband for offering it to me.

      ‘It’s Peter who was grateful to you, my dear. At one point he thought he’d have to catalogue all those wretched books himself. Anyway, if anyone deserves thanking it ought to be Janet Byfield.’

      ‘What do you mean?’

      ‘It was her idea. She had a word with me and asked if I would suggest you to Peter. She said she hadn’t mentioned it to you in case it didn’t come off. But I assumed she’d have said something afterwards.’

      ‘No,’ I said. ‘She never did.’

      That increased my debt to Janet. I wish I knew how you pay your debts to the dead.