He explained, ‘The bomb wasn’t in the library; the bomb was somewhere nearby. I suppose that whoever makes these decisions believed that we were safer inside the library than outside roaming the streets.’
‘Which is, of course, the raison d’être of libraries.’
There was a pause, during which I feared that I had offended him, but then came a sigh that was close to a laugh and he said, ‘You’re a cynic, Sadie.’
I had to tell him, ‘It’s been said before.’
So, yesterday, I went to the steps of the British Museum. I have only ever been into the building on school trips. When I was a child, I was fascinated by the ancient Egyptians. Why? Because of their appealing, pictorial literacy? their extensive, opulent monarchy? their literally earth-moving faith? My primary school years teemed with projects, drawings, stories and library loans on the subject of the pharoahs. I was confident that I was going to be an Egyptologist.
Egyptologist: even the word captivates me; that ringing stress on the third syllable, the kind of sound that usually compensates for a silent consonant, although in this case everything is spoken.
How odd, that the passing of my passion was so thorough and so unconscious: a passion of which I had no memory until yesterday when I walked into Coptic Street. As soon as I saw the building, I wondered why I had never achieved that ambition of mine, and decided that I must have lacked resolve. But then I pondered the real, live curators in there: what had they wanted to be when they were eight, nine, ten years old? Train drivers, probably, or nurses, or ice skaters: the usual; something action-packed. What was puzzling was why, as a child, I had been drawn to a disappeared civilisation, to corpses that were buried bizarrely with their earthly essentials in the hope of some further, fantastical life.
To me, as a child, the British Museum meant ancient Egyptians. Yesterday, approaching the building, I had no clearer idea of its contents: it was still a misshapen pyramid in central London, a massive mausoleum for the wrapped husks of people who, over thousands of years, have been excavated, ripped open, broken up, and stripped of their treasures. The journey that they have endured is not the one that they had in mind when they chose to have their brains drained down their noses. For them, the vital organ was not the brain but the heart; the state of one’s heart decided one’s fate. On their version of judgement day, the heart was placed on some scales with a feather, and if the heart fell, then the owner was condemned. How would I have fared? During the past year or so, my brain could well have leaked away down my nose. But with a heart like mine, I am sure as hell not going to heaven.
From their chosen site on the banks of the Nile to captivity in the vicinity of Russell Square tube station: that building must be alive with ghosts.
Plunder: a faintly sickening word, with echoes, to my mind, of asunder, lunge and pluck, all words that have in common a sense of utter disregard.
What an irony: the more precautions, the more plunder. Massively, absurdly fortified, both materially and spiritually, they were unable to prevent their inevitable downfall. What goes up, must come down, and down they came, with so very far to fall. And then the final insult: the all-seeing, unstoppable assault from X-rays. In my library books, the mummies’ remaining embedded charms were exposed in black-and-white, along with their frailties and fatalities. I was horrified to see that their jewels looked like stupidly-swallowed sixpences. To those who knew the code, who could read the X-rays, the pristinely-preserved bones displayed indelible patterns of fractures, erosions and misplacements. Those embalmed bodies, which had been biding their time, became mere bundles of dietary deficiencies, diseases, domestic accidents and treasons.
As I walked through the gateway, I saw Edwin in the distance. He was sitting on the steps, and had not seen me; he was reading, his attention locked down over a book. I did not recognise the clothes that he was wearing; jeans and a shirt. I stopped, struck that this was the first time that I had ever seen him from anywhere but up close. He was, of course, so much more than the person to whom I had chatted on a train. He had a whole life that was unknown to me; and there he was, in that life, back in that life, quite beyond me. I had everything to learn about him.
Standing there, I realised that he would look up and see me before I could reach him. I was going to have to walk towards him for whole seconds while he watched me. The crowds of tourists added to the problem: he would watch me blundering through those intangible tripwires between posers and photographers. And my dress was too short. My entire wardrobe flashed before me, every article of clothing tantalisingly more appropriate than the one that I had chosen. I had only two options: to rush towards him, or to try to creep up on him. That was when he saw me, and spared me: he smiled but then became busy, slotting his book into his bag and removing his glasses. Reaching him, I closed the remaining distance between us with a kiss on his cheek. As I came away, his hand stayed for a moment in the small of my back.
We headed back towards the road.
‘How was your journey?’ he asked.
‘Fine, but I’m in need of refreshments, to use a good, old-fashioned word.’
‘Rehydration, to be more prosaic.’
‘And cake, to be blunt.’ I indicated his bag. ‘What were you reading?’
He fished for the book, showed me: a novel, not one that I had read.
‘What’s it about?’
‘Oh, you know, the usual: life, love …’ Having delved into his bag, he had found some sunglasses and was now staring blackly into the crowds.
‘With jokes?’
He laughed, or almost laughed. ‘They are the jokes, aren’t they?’
‘And you said that I was a cynic.’
‘I didn’t say that I wasn’t.’
Listening to the jauntiness in his step, I thought, No, but you’re not, you know; not quite.
He asked me, ‘Are you reading anything?’
‘Rereading,’ I had to admit. I have been unable to settle to anything new for some time.
‘Rereading Grace Paley.’
Airily, over my head, he said, ‘I don’t know her.’
‘Well, you should.’
‘Well of course, but there are so many books that I should read.’
I stopped, so that he had to stop. ‘No, I mean for your own sake.’ For me, returning to her stories had been like turning up treasure that I had forgotten I had hidden. I had experienced a sense of reprieve. ‘The pleasures in life are so few and so brief that I don’t think that you can afford to be without her.’
‘I’ll do my best, then.’
‘You do that.’
We went into a coffee shop which, like all the others that we had passed, was crowded. We were lucky to have one of the few tables for two by the window. Our tiny tabletop barely accommodated two tall glasses, gaudy with ice cubes and lemon, and two bottles of mineral water; big, bulbous bottles of green glass, ostentatiously Italian. Edwin checked, ‘Not tempted by the cakes?’
‘No room.’
‘You’ve already had lunch somewhere?’
‘No, I mean, no room on this table. When I’ve had my water, I’ll consider cake.’ Then, to be polite, I asked him: ‘You?’
‘No room because I devoured a not-insignificantly-sized bar of chocolate while I was waiting for you.’
I was alarmed, ‘Was I late?’
‘No, I was greedy.’
I