The Lost Bookshop

Chapter 45

Chapter Forty-Five

HENRY

I t was a terrible idea. I hadn’t a clue what I was going to do when I got to St Agnes’s and now I was going to have an audience. No word came from my companion, who was happily devouring the most foul-smelling packet of crisps, which threatened to pollute the entire bus.

I looked out the window at the rolling countryside. It was a dazzlingly bright day and every colour seemed to leap forth. I overheard someone say that Ireland would be a beautiful country if they could just put a roof on it. I had to agree. We were heading west and the coach had just pulled into some one-horse town for a toilet break and for Martha to procure these stinking crisps. I decided on a can of fizzy orange, which I was already regretting as now I needed the toilet.

‘We might not even find anything. You need to adjust your expectations slightly. Usually in these kinds of situations, the information doesn’t just drop into your hands.’ I was irritable and not very good at hiding it.

Finding the manuscript was my only focus now. I told myself that if I didn’t find it, then all of this was for nothing. My career would be in tatters but so, more importantly, would be my reputation. I had staked my professional standing on that one letter from Abe Rosenbach, which still hadn’t even been verified properly. But then again, didn’t all the books I’d read about the most successful book collectors, like Rostenberg and Stern in the US, or the Sinai Sisters from Scotland, point to the power of instinct and gut feelings?

‘Don’t worry, Henry. Something I could never be accused of is having great expectations.’

I smiled. ‘I see what you did there.’

‘It’s on my course.’

She blushed slightly and it was all I could do not to brush her fringe away from her eyes. I had to distract myself.

‘Do you know anything about this place?’ I asked her.

‘The asylum? Not really. But that’s the idea, isn’t it? To keep these places hidden in the shadows.’

‘And the women. Conveniently.’

She turned her body towards me, as though she wanted me to go on and I decided this trip would be a lot less complicated if I could keep our minds centred on the issue at hand.

‘I’ve been researching other women who were sectioned around that time. Did you know James Joyce’s daughter, Lucia, was sectioned in 1932?’

She shook her head.

‘Women were institutionalised by the men in their family for all sorts of reasons, but it was said she was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Apparently she was treated by Carl Jung at one point.’

‘How long did they keep her there?’

‘Her whole life. Almost fifty years.’

‘Jesus!’

We sat in silence for a while, the gravity of what we were investigating becoming more real.

‘She was a dancer. Before, you know. In Paris. There are some books that claim she became mentally unstable after her break-up with Beckett, but I suppose we’ll never know. Her nephew burned all of her letters.’

Had the same fate befallen Opaline? Perhaps I’d never find the real truth.

‘There are some scholars who suggest she may have even written a novel, but it’s never been found.’

‘What if it doesn’t want to be found?’

‘Of course it wants to be found. What kind of question is that? I mean, if we’re assuming that inanimate objects have wants, which is a pretty bonkers assumption.’

She frowned, then looked out of the window. When she turned around she looked properly annoyed.

‘So that’s all it’s about for you? Getting the glory—’

‘No, it’s more than that. It’s about adding to our knowledge of history, rediscovering lost treasures so we can study them and, well, it’s our cultural inheritance. It belongs to us.’

‘But why should you get to decide what gets found and what remains lost?’

‘What?’

I couldn’t understand where this line of questioning was coming from or why it felt like we were arguing about it. She knew what my profession entailed. And she was the one who’d suggested coming along.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said eventually.

‘Eh, it clearly does. You “found” the book that you think was written by Opaline.’

‘I didn’t find it. It was … given to me.’

I looked at her askance.

‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

Neither did I. It was the main reason I had agreed to let her come with me – the lure of seeing this book at the end. Although why she wanted to come here at all was a mystery to me. Conversation was clearly at an end, so I did what all sensible people do when embarking on a long bus journey; I pretended to sleep so I wouldn’t have to look at her.

‘Henry.’

It would have helped greatly if she didn’t say my name with that Irish accent of hers.

‘Yes?’

‘We’re here.’

The bus chugged and rattled to a halt at what passed for a bus stop around here – a hard shoulder with a statue of the Virgin Mary inexplicably keeping watch. The engine made a whining noise as it pulled off again, leaving us in a cloud of dust.

‘Is this it?’ I asked, as I strained to look up the laneway beyond the wrought-iron gates.

‘Looks like it,’ Martha replied, pointing to the small sign that said Saint Agnes’s .

‘You’re a natural.’

She gave me a withering look. I had to stop being such a dickhead. Was it possible I was just jealous? Who was Logan anyway? I dragged my thoughts back to the present. The laneway was lined with pine trees that had overgrown and merged into one thick, dark wall. As we walked along the curving drive, the building itself loomed into view around the corner. It was a dark grey block of a thing, hunkered down into the land. It could have passed for a stark kind of monastery, if it weren’t for the bars on the windows.

I stopped walking.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

‘It’s just so … real.’

I’d never had a sensation like it. As though something heavy was pressing on my chest. It was one thing reading about these things on paper, but being here was entirely different. I hoped that my hunch was wrong and that Opaline had not been incarcerated here. Martha put her hand on my arm, as though to steady me and I came back to my senses. There were three old doorbells outside and it didn’t look as though any of them worked. I pushed the buttons and waited.

‘Have you thought about what you’re going to say?’

‘I’m going to ask if Opaline Carlisle was a, um, resident here.’

Martha shook her head, making it clear that this approach was utterly useless.

‘You don’t know much about Catholic Ireland, do you?’

‘In what sense?’

‘These kinds of places, they’re not exactly known for offering up information.’

I decided to knock firmly on the door. After several minutes, there was still no answer.

‘Right.’ I smacked the palms of my hands together. The universal signal to leave. ‘Let’s go home.’

‘But we came all this way!’

‘Yes, and now we’re leaving,’ I said. ‘What time is the next bus back to Dublin?’

‘You can’t leave now. What’s the matter with you?’

‘Because it’s just another wild goose chase. It’s not bringing me any closer to the manuscript, is it? People can waste their whole lives chasing shadows and I can’t let myself become one of them.’

I refused to stand there arguing about it. I’d made my decision. I didn’t owe her an explanation. I started walking briskly down the drive, assuming she would follow eventually.

‘Can I help you?’ A middle-aged woman held open the heavy wooden door and addressed us in a tone that left no doubt – the last thing she wanted to do was help. She had short, tight curls and wore a white nurse’s uniform. I didn’t blame her for being miserable, I would be too in a place like this.

‘Yes, I would like to establish if a woman by the name of Opaline Carlisle was a resident here at one point?’ I said, rushing back.

‘Do you have an appointment?’

No greeting, just direct animosity.

‘No, but I—’

‘You have to make an appointment.’

She was about to close the door when I stuck my boot in the door.

‘Excuse me, what are you doing?’

I didn’t know. I’d seen it done so many times on TV I just did it without thinking of a follow-up plan. I stammered something incoherent. I just wanted to pull my foot back out but I couldn’t seem to move it.

‘We’re from the Department of Health and we’re running a spot-check,’ said Martha.

I couldn’t even look at Martha. I knew if I did, I would give the game away. What the hell was she doing?

‘I wasn’t informed about this,’ the woman replied, suspicion narrowing her gaze.

‘It’s a spot-check, that’s the point.’

I didn’t know who this person beside me was. For all I knew she was an undercover spot-checker for the Department of Health, such was her conviction.

The woman shifted her weight from one foot to another and she looked even more cross than she was when we’d first arrived.

‘I’ll need to see some identification.’

‘Mr Field, show her your ID,’ Martha said.

Was she talking to me? Where the fuck was I going to get ID? I finally looked across at her, trying to express my what-the-fuckness with my eyes. She widened hers as if to say just bloody do something. So I pulled out my ID card. The one from university. The one that said I was a rare manuscript specialist.

‘Very well, Dr Field’ she said and let us both inside. ‘I hope this won’t take long. We close at four o’clock.’

Doctor Field? That was what she took from my ID? Not that I was a PhD candidate?

The place was eerily quiet. Inside, it looked as though the building was slowly deconstructing itself and nobody had bothered to fix it. The walls, painted a sickly green, were peeling and there were damp patches everywhere. Black mould spread out from the windows and the lino on the floor was curling at the edges. The smell was toxic. A mix of bleach and boiled cabbage. It was old and uncared for – just like the residents, I imagined.

‘We just need to check some records, isn’t that right, Dr Field?’

‘Um yes.’ I cleared my throat. ‘Pertaining to the Freedom of Information Act, we would like to look at how the records of past residents are, you know, filed.’

The woman glared at me. ‘Oh. Aren’t you going to inspect the ward?’

‘The ward? You still have—’ I stopped myself before saying the word ‘inmates’.

‘Another time,’ said Martha. ‘We wouldn’t want to keep you, and this is something that the minister really wants to get on top of before the new legislation comes in.’

‘New legislation?’ the woman asked, falling for Martha’s spiel.

‘It’s being put before the Dáil next year.’

I looked at Martha with new star-struck eyes. It was a revelation to see her so confident and unfazed whilst lying through her teeth. I was so impressed, I almost forgot why we were there.

We were led into a narrow office on the first floor with a thin brown carpet and a flickering light overhead. There were rows upon rows of steel-grey filing cabinets.

‘Sharon normally takes care of the admin,’ the woman explained, immediately absolving herself and again checking her watch.

‘Not to worry Ms …?’

‘Mrs Hughes.’

‘Mrs Hughes,’ I said, ‘this won’t take long. Any chance of a cup of tea in the meantime?’

‘No.’

With that, she left the room and we both waited until her footsteps were far enough down the hall.

‘What the hell was that, Angela Lansbury?’ I whisper-shouted.

‘I don’t know! It just … happened.’

‘I can’t believe it worked.’

‘Nor can I.’

She was giddy with excitement. We didn’t know how to celebrate so in the end we just high-fived.

‘Okay, we better start looking.’

We didn’t have much time and our task was daunting. Admissions files were categorised by date, but then some records were filed under the resident doctor’s name and others still were filed under the patient’s name. It was basically a mess. We agreed to begin at opposite ends of the room. I was searching the dates – mid-1920s onwards – and Martha was searching for Carlisle. We hardly spoke, apart from the occasional ‘I still can’t believe you did that’ coming from me. I was pleasantly surprised by how much she wanted to help me. Or perhaps that was conceited. If what she said turned out to be the case and she had found herself in possession of Opaline’s book, then it made sense that she had her own connection to this intriguing woman. After all, as I’d told her on the bus, you didn’t need a qualification on paper to make a big discovery. Knowing my luck, she’d probably find the manuscript before me. The thought hit me like a sucker punch. I looked across at her and watched as her fingertips picked their way through the hanging manila files. Had I been played all along? Was she using me?

‘Henry. What are you doing?’

‘What?’

‘We don’t have much time,’ she said.

‘Right. Yes. Sorry.’

I pulled open another drawer and flicked through the files. They were all too recent. We were about to meet at the middle filing cabinet when I heard footsteps coming quickly down the hall.

‘Shit!’

‘Stall her,’ Martha said.

I didn’t think, I simply did what she said and met the woman just outside the doorway.

‘I’ve been on to the department, and they’ve never heard of a Dr Field. In fact, they said there was no spot-check arranged. So now, would you care to tell me who you are and what you’re doing here?’

‘I would like to tell you, Mrs Hughes. But if I did, I’d have to kill you.’

‘Excuse me?’

Jesus, what was I saying?

‘Candid camera,’ Martha smiled, coming out of the room. ‘See, I have a camera in my bag,’ she explained, pointing to what looked like a badge on her rucksack.

‘I don’t—’

‘Oh, you’ve been such a good sport, hasn’t she, Henry?’

‘Yes, yes, absolutely,’ I said. ‘Thanks for taking part.’

‘Oh, I—’

‘Someone will be in touch shortly. Of course we’ll need your consent before we can use the footage on our show, but there’s a two hundred euro fee so just have a think about it, okay?’

Martha took my arm and we half-ran down the stairs. We kept running until we reached the bus stop and I had to bend down with my hands on my knees for a good ten minutes, trying to get my breath back. She was still laughing when I looked up.

‘You should be on stage. Honestly, how do you improvise like that?’

‘I don’t know, maybe Madame Bowden’s rubbing off on me.’

The bus pulled in and we got back into the very same seats that we’d had on the way out.

‘Well, that was an experience. Pity we didn’t find the file,’ I said.

‘Oh, but we did.’

She pulled a folder out from her backpack and handed it to me. I was speechless.