He said nothing, which was kind of weird and made me feel as though I shouldn’t have come.
‘No prizes for guessing why you came back from London so quickly,’ the landlady said, in better humour now and winking at me.
Henry bent his head and rubbed the back of his neck with the palm of his hand. ‘Do you want to come up to my room?’ he asked.
‘Now, now, Henry, you know the rules,’ she giggled, having a good old laugh at our expense.
I wanted the ground to swallow me. I got up and tried to think of an excuse to leave. ‘You know, this was probably more of an email thing, so I’ll just email you. Later. Sorry to disturb,’ I said, making a break for the front door.
‘Actually, I was just on my way out so …’
We walked down the street, exchanging pleasantries about the weather and both agreeing that global warming was terrible altogether. Strange how quickly you go from feeling like you can tell someone anything to feeling like two strangers meeting at a bus stop.
‘I wasn’t going to bother you again, you know, what with the way things are, but I was talking to my friend Logan and he said that, you know, it’s the twenty-first century and people can be friends …’ Jesus, it was coming out in the most awkward way possible. I sounded like a five-year-old.
‘Logan? He was the guy at your party?’
‘Yes! He’s become a good friend actually. We’re in class together.’ It still felt so cool, saying that.
‘I’m really happy for you, genuinely. It’s good to see you doing so well.’ He stopped walking and kicked some imaginary dust on the ground with his boot. ‘Thing is, I have to focus on my work now.’
‘That’s what I’m here to talk about. Opaline.’
‘Oh?’
‘The letter you showed me, to Sylvia. It mentioned a book. I think that maybe I have it.’
‘What?’
‘And I’m pretty sure Opaline wrote it.’
‘Hang on, what? How?’
‘I don’t know, I can’t explain everything, and I know it’s not the actual manuscript you’re looking for, so I wasn’t even sure if I should tell you—’
‘No, you absolutely should. I’m glad you did. I’m sorry if I’m being …’ He trailed off.
‘It’s okay. It’s weird for me too. But maybe it is possible for us to, you know, be friends?’
I stood there feeling a bit vulnerable and he took long enough with his answer, which wasn’t the one I was expecting.
‘Shit, I’m going to miss my bus.’
Chapter Forty-Five
HENRY
It 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.