Chapter 18
18
The atrium of the British Library was a cavernous open hall, several stories high, all brutalist white and concrete except for two interior brick walls on either side and the ceiling of skylights. Nothing like the small, dark, densely packed library where Mom and I had spent our weekends, the air sweet and hazy with mildew and book dust.
At the rear of the atrium, three additional floors jutted out like mezzanines in a theater. They wrapped around an imposing collection of books shelved behind glass, thousands of them, running the height of the whole building. Clearly inaccessible, they emanated a soft, golden glow, giving the whole hall a mythical, magical aura. I had to tilt back to take it in, and I was mid-tilt when a voice very close to me said, “That’s the King’s Library.”
I startled, and Tess laughed and pulled me into an old-friends hug. Her cheeks were rosy from the cold, and she wore suede leggings tucked into chic riding boots. Too nervous to borrow from Faye’s closet again, I’d carefully rolled the sleeves on one of my slouchy button-up shirts.
Pointing up at the towering wall of books, Tess bobbed on the balls of her feet. “It’s George III’s full collection,” she said. “More than fifty thousand books!”
We looked around at the open hall, me craning my neck. In every corner, on every seat and surface, people were working on laptops or reading books.
“Nice it isn’t the usual crush, chockablock with tourists,” Tess said. “There’s a Peyton and Byrne café up on the next floor.”
“Maybe I’ll catch a little inspiration here,” I said. “I need a topic for my dissertation by the end of the month.”
“What’re you thinking?”
I shook my head. “It’s too open-ended,” I said. “How does anyone choose?” I didn’t say that I was also, plainly, terrified to choose wrong. This dissertation determined everything.
“Theo told me you interned at a publisher,” I said, remembering. “That’s where I’m hoping to work. I was an assistant at a small press before I came here.”
Tess nodded. “I was at an agency, too, Curtis Brown. I interned at Hachette on the publicity side while I was at uni, and in editorial at Bloomsbury after. You’d like it; it’s loads of girls just like us.”
“Like us?”
“Well, you know—girls who can afford to work unpaid for six months. No guarantee of a paying gig after.”
I was not at all that kind of girl, but of course Tess had no way to know that. “I guess I’d always thought an internship was how you got the job,” I said.
“Oh, it is, very much,” she said. “But everyone in those internships, they’re top students, quick studies, really hustling. Well-connected, too, often families in publishing. When jobs open up, that’s usually who they go to.”
My stomach had knotted itself tightly under my ribs; I’d suspected this, but Tess was confirming in real time that my plan to work in publishing here wasn’t just unlikely, it was impossible. I could not afford a six-month unpaid job audition.
“I’d be happy to connect you with my Bloomsbury contacts,” Tess said. “All set to go in?”
I followed her into a dimly lit gallery, spread over two levels, noticeably colder than the main hall. A few other people were browsing, but the space was reverently hushed. “This is the permanent exhibit,” Tess said in a low voice.
We passed slowly by the uplit documents along one wall, and I tried to take them in—Leonardo da Vinci’s notebook, Michelangelo’s anatomical drawings, Mozart’s compositions. A fire-damaged Magna Carta. An ancient Hindu text written on a palm leaf. A child’s birthday card, splayed flat: a train on the front, and on the back, John Lennon’s scribbled lyrics to “A Hard Day’s Night.”
Tess took my hand and tugged me over to the wall of manuscript pages: Shakespeare’s first folio, Virginia Woolf’s pages inked black with edits. We examined a crumbling notebook with tiny watercolor illustrations, captioned, The earliest known writings of Charlotte Bront? (c. 1826), an illustrated short story written for baby sister Anne. I couldn’t believe I was seeing it.
“Look, Anna!” Tess said breathlessly. I realized, belatedly, that she still had hold of my hand. With the other, she was pointing at a long glass case, with an ancient wooden writing desk at one end. The sign was simple: Jane Austen.
I approached the glass, all but pressing my nose to it. Thin wire-framed glasses sat next to the desk, between an ink pot and a few loose leaves of yellowed paper. Handwritten manuscript pages from Persuasion.
My breath caught, and Tess heard it and grinned.
“Can you believe it?” she said. “They rotate a lot of stuff in the exhibit, but her things are always out!”
I let my fingers touch the glass. Here I was, surrounded by fragments of the authors I’d grown up reading. This was why I’d come to London, wasn’t it? I’d been sure that I would be able to feel them here, even if it was decades or centuries after they’d lived and written. And I could; there was magic here. Tess clearly felt it, too.
“ Persuasion ’s been my favorite book since I was sixteen,” I said.
Tess gave me a funny look. “Why aren’t you writing your dissertation about Austen?”
“I wish I could.” I was the most generic thing you could imagine: a young woman who loved Jane Austen. “Scholars have been writing about her for more than a century. What could I possibly add?”
“Who cares?” Tess said, shaking her head. “My professors always said you should look for patterns, then pull them apart, see how they work. You already know her work so well.”
“I guess,” I said, giving myself a moment to think. “I always liked how so many of her heroines are girls dropped into a completely new place, a new social strata.”
Tess nodded eagerly. “ Mansfield Park ,” she said. “Fanny Price.”
“Exactly—a poor relation come to a sprawling estate. A summer away, or an invitation to Northanger Abbey. They’re fish out of water.”
Tess tapped on the glass over the Persuasion pages. “Even Anne Elliot goes to Bath, and Lyme.”
“Right, it jumbles up class, and propriety.”
Tess raised her eyebrows. “Don’t you think there might be a dissertation there?”
“Oh.” I let out all my breath. “I’ll probably need to go deeper than that.”
“Or broader, open it up?” Tess said, waving around the gallery, toward the pages of countless other authors.
I nodded slowly. “I could look at it more widely. Start with Austen, then jump to the twentieth century—bring in E. M. Forster’s novels and stories about Brits in Italy and India.”
“Well, this might be a bit too on the nose, but what about all those novels about Americans abroad?” Tess said. “That Henry James kind of thing.”
I was so relieved that I laughed. “Tess, that’s perfect.” I could see the whole structure opening up now: Henry James, Edith Wharton, F. Scott Fitzgerald. All three wrote novels about Americans in Europe—outside of class, not expected to have land or titles. They just had to be charming. Characters with money, without money, on the hunt for money. Triumphing, failing, losing sight of themselves, losing everything. The results were mixed at best. Which was perfect for a dissertation.
It wouldn’t be a stretch, would it—writing about the crucible of living abroad, the large and small tests you use to wonder, Am I succeeding? Is this what I wanted?
My phone buzzed. A text from Theo: Drinks in Highgate Village? The Red Lion Tess wouldn’t mind that I was different from her other friends, that I hadn’t grown up like they had. She wouldn’t mind that I worked for Faye’s family, or even that I had omitted that fact when we first met. I should try, shouldn’t I?
My whole body tensed, gripping the gold railing, anticipating what I would say. “I’ve just stopped trying to make friends, in class,” I began. “I’m too different there. I grew up differently.” I took a slow, steadying breath, steeling myself to say the rest.
“Who cares about your classmates. Their loss, my gain!” Tess sang cheerily, throwing an arm across my shoulders. “Look at you. Beautiful girl, smart, funny, living her best life in Highgate.” Then she pushed off the railing and turned toward the door. “Where’s your flat? Are you over by the park? That’s where me and Ginny are. George Michael’s a few houses down, been there for ages.”
And just like that, the moment was over. I let go of the railing, and the breath I’d been holding, and it felt like a sigh of relief: not telling Tess.
“My place is just off Swain’s Lane, between the Heath and the cemetery,” I answered. The lie, strange in my mouth, and binding. Irreversible. “It’s a great spot.”
“Perfect,” she said, leading me down the steps. “You should come round our place for drinks some night. We’re always free.”