ONE

Mr Cedric Coombes

In the year 2007 my wife left me for an American computer expert and flew away with him to Connecticut. At first I was depressed, for we had been married nearly thirty years. But I quickly got a grip on myself and determined to look as cheerful as I could. I decided this was my chance to indulge in adventures I had long contemplated but never undertaken. Straightaway I asked my editor to assign me to cover the war in Afghanistan, and although he was reluctant because of my age, he finally was persuaded. Within a month I had sold my London house, put my dog in the care of a neighbour, and was on an airplane to India. India had intrigued me ever since childhood, and I had decided to enjoy a month of travel in that fabled land before taking up my duties as a war correspondent. I visited Lucknow, Kanpur and other places where great battles had been fought by British troops in those faraway days when Britain ruled the waves and much of the world. As I stood by the Ganges at Varanasi, and by the desert at Jaipur, I had the strange feeling I’d been here before. Perhaps it was Kipling. I had read Kipling as a child, and he had made me feel almost as if I’d grown up in India.

I regretted that I was unable to enter Afghanistan through the Khyber Pass, the route by which our troops had entered in 1878, fighting their way – yard by bloody yard – at the outset of the second Afghan war. The stories of that campaign had always excited me and I was anxious to walk the ground. Everyone told me, however, that travelling through the Khyber was impossible. I took the usual air route to Afghanistan, landed in Kandahar and reported to 6th Division Headquarters in early September, full of high hopes and good cheer. I had no inkling what bad luck and bad dreams lay in store for me. I had vaguely anticipated the horrors of war, but my knowledge had all come from talk and from pale words on a page. To see maimed men hobbling and dead people rotting, to see hungry cats crawling out of corpses, to see citizens weeping with fear and troops collapsing of wounds, is to know a different truth than the one told in books. I was attached to the Royal Horse Artillery and for three days I interviewed soldiers and filed dispatches to my newspaper, and all went well. Then I fell ill from dysentery and was forced to return to Kandahar where I lay in a twilit world for several weeks until at last my miseries ceased. Next I was assigned to the Household Cavalry. Our squadron of light tanks floated and jounced merrily across the desert landscape, and somehow – amidst all the mayhem, dust and discomfort – I occasionally found some pleasant moments. But then as we passed through a valley I stood up too high and was hit in the shoulder by a sniper’s bullet that shattered bone, grazed the subclavian artery, and knocked me down so forcefully that I thought, before I blacked out, that I was dead. The jolting ride to the field hospital soon reminded me, sharply, that I was still alive . . . unfortunately, as I then thought.

I lay for a long time in various hospitals. I knew that in the vast scheme of things my injury was only minor. In the bed next to mine lay a young soldier who never spoke a word, just stared. He had lost both legs. Across the hallway was a man who had suffered burns. He screamed unmercifully whenever he wasn’t moaning. He had, I think, lost his mind. This entire war – concocted as it was by men who all their lives had never done anything but hide in the safety of their national borders – was such a disaster that I should have guessed in advance that my part in it would be a pointless debacle. My performance as a war correspondent had been dismal. I had sent very few dispatches to my newspaper, and not one of them had seemed worthy of the reality which surrounded me.

When I returned to England I took a few months to recuperate and get my bearings, then made my decision: I retired from the newspaper and resolved to spend my days amidst green hills and good books, and to indulge in life’s less turbulent pleasures. My life had changed utterly. I no longer had a wife, a house or even a dog, for now my little hound preferred my neighbour. I had neither obligations nor regrets. In brief, I was free to do whatever I could afford. I considered emigrating to America and ‘holing up’ in a cabin in the Wind River Range. I also imagined finding a small cottage in one of the old British Hill Stations of India – Simla, perhaps – and passing my days in a replica of the nineteen-thirties. Hills or mountains seemed to be the common denominator. One morning I awoke with a start, remembering a curious little place in Wales set in the hills just across the border from Herefordshire. It was a castle town with winding streets, bell tower, good pubs, and many antiquarian book shops. I had passed through there ten years earlier, and it had seemed to me a Kingdom of Books. The thought appealed. Hills for the heart, books for the brain. I packed my car, settled my lease, and left London.

On a blowy October evening, just as the sun was setting behind the hills, I arrived in Hay-On-Wye, slid into a shadowy parking spot behind the Old Black Lion Inn, and booked a room at that venerable hostelry. No reservation needed. I began to think that to plan life’s journeys was to ruin them. Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow . . .

Days were sometimes dull with fog and rain, sometimes sharp with shadow and sun. I spent most mornings rambling steep hill paths, afternoons browsing bookshops, evenings eating fine food, and late nights travelling through Shakespeare, Tacitus and Newton in vain hope of becoming a half-educated man. One day I was standing in the Black Lion Bar when someone tapped me on the shoulder. Turning, I recognized Percy Ffoulkes, who had been a schoolmate of mine at Eton and later at Oxford. He was several years my junior and we had never been particular cronies, but seeing him appear so unexpectedly here in the wilds of Wales caused me to greet him with great enthusiasm, and he likewise seemed delighted at our surprise encounter. In a burst of good feeling I invited him to lunch. As we strolled up Bear Street he said, ‘What have you been up to, Wilson! You look like ten pounds lighter than you did at college.’

‘Illness does wonders for the waistline,’ I said, and I briefly described the recent cataclysmic circumstances that had landed me in Wales.

‘Poor fellow,’ he said. ‘But if a man your age is mad enough to allow himself to be shipped off to the Afghan War – well, you’re lucky you were no more than wounded. What you up to now?’

‘I’ve decided to stay the winter in this little town, if I can,’ I replied. ‘But I’ll go broke if I remain at the Old Black Lion. I’m looking for a decent little cottage to rent at reasonable rates.’

‘How odd,’ remarked Ffoulkes. ‘You are the second man today I’ve heard say that same thing.’

‘And who was the first?’

‘A fellow I literally bumped into at the Castle Bookshop. Later I encountered him again at the Poetry Book Store, and I asked him if he had had any luck finding lodgings. He said he had located a rental property right in town, but he needed someone to go halves with him, or else he could not afford it.’

‘I wish I knew him,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t mind a roommate.’

Percy Ffoulkes looked at me with a sceptical smile as he set down his wine glass. ‘I’m not sure you’d want this chap as a constant companion.’

‘Something wrong with him?’

‘I can’t say that. But he certainly has a few quirks.’

‘Such as?’

‘Evidently he buys books by the hundreds at several bookstores in town, but only agrees to buy them on approval. He loads them into a wheelbarrow and wheels them to his lodgings. About a week later he returns with most of the load, having kept only a few. The bookseller who told me this is one of several in town who have agreed to give him a refund on whatever he doesn’t want to keep. The booksellers don’t like it, but he buys enough books to make it worth their while.’

‘A wheelbarrow!’

‘A regular garden wheelbarrow. I saw it with my own eyes.’

‘Anything else odd about him?’

‘I don’t know. Would you call it odd, Wilson, if a man habitually analyzed books and pretended to be able to tell tales of their previous owners? That’s one of his habits. I saw him do it. He was buying seven books out of the barrow load, and he laid one on the table and said to the bookseller, This volume has a curious history: it was owned by a parson from Suffolk who purchased it in 1890 and gave it to his secret mistress, next owned by an elderly piano teacher from Bath who used sugar in her tea, then owned by a corrupt bank official who smoked Havana cigars and was imprisoned in 1950. And it is now about to be owned by a dead man.’

‘That certainly is odd,’ I admitted.

‘He seemed amused at his joke about the dead man, if joke it was.’

‘Some people are like that,’ I said. ‘They amuse themselves with harmless lies. Remember little Tony Stamford, at Eton?’

‘Oh, heavens! I haven’t thought of him in years,’ cried Ffoulkes. ‘The lies he used to tell!’

‘Whatever happened to Tony, I wonder?’

‘Twenty years ago I heard something about him taking up a post in Singapore. I forget who I heard it from. Ye gods, how old we have become, Wilson!’

‘Remember how earnest we were? We were so anxious to learn. For we felt that before Eton we were too young to think, and soon we would be too busy, and eventually we would be too old. The golden time, we thought, was now. And now that now is nearly half a century ago.’

‘I used to admire you greatly, Wilson – captain of the rowing team, and all that. We younger boys looked up to you.’

‘You know Ffoulkes, those Eton days seem so distant that I remember them almost as if they were a tale I read in a book, rather than a life I really lived.’

‘Yes, yes,’ he said, and he looked bemused, seeming struck by the idea. He took a sip of wine. ‘That’s exactly how it feels – like a story I’ve read. Seeing myself from the outside, like a character in a story, or a movie. How curious!’

‘I have,’ I said, ‘often asked people to remember a long-ago scene, and then I ask them whether they see that scene from within themselves or if they actually look at themselves from the outside, as in a movie. Ninety per cent say the latter.’

‘It is hard to believe it’s been almost half a century since we were standing on Eton Bridge and pegging biscuits to the swans. You’re right – I see myself from the outside, a little boy in a uniform, standing there and looking down at the winking water. Say, this food is rather good.’

‘You’ll be around for a while, Ffoulkes?’

‘I’m afraid not. I came just last evening, and in the morning I must drive back to London.’

‘You didn’t happen to hear where that strange chap was staying at present, did you?’

‘No, but the bookseller would surely be able to – but wait, I do know. I remember him saying he was staying at Oxford Cottage.’

I asked the waitress where Oxford Cottage was located. She gave me directions, saying it was only a few minutes’ walk. I paid the bill and a moment later we were out on the street in a flood of autumn sunshine, and a ghost of leaves was scurrying along the kerb ahead of us.

‘The funny thing is,’ said Ffoulkes, ‘as I was watching that fellow I continually had the feeling that I knew him, that I had seen him before. As if perhaps he were a movie star, or a celebrity of some sort. But I can’t place him. And yet I’m sure I’ve seen him, or someone very like him.’

‘How old is this chap? If he’s young I doubt he’d be interested in rooming with an old guy like me.’

‘About our age, I expect. But don’t get your hopes up. He is a very queer duck. As he was leaving the shop he asked the bookseller where he might purchase Fussell’s Milk in solderless sterilized tins. Can you imagine that? Solderless sterilized tins. He said he always likes to keep a supply of Fussell’s Milk for emergencies.’

‘I’ve never heard of Fussell’s Milk,’ I said.

‘Nor has anyone,’ said Ffoulkes, with a laugh.

‘He must have some deep research study under way,’ I said, ‘if it requires wheelbarrows full of books. Yet what could he be studying that couldn’t be studied more efficiently at a bona fide research library? We have enough of those in this country.’

‘I wondered the same thing, and after our strange friend had left the shop I asked the bookseller that very question. So far as he could tell, the man is interested in all history from 1914 to the present day, with particular emphasis on pop culture and science.’

We had now reached the top of the street, and we turned right into a busier road. After a little distance we reached Oxford Cottage and rang the bell. An empty wheelbarrow was parked out front. At the second ring, the door opened and a tall man about my own age – early sixties – stood before us, looking quizzical and just a little querulous. Like my friend Ffoulkes, I instantly had the impression that I had seen him somewhere before, though I couldn’t imagine where. He was tall, slender – almost emaciated – with bright active eyes that glanced up, down, this way, that way, as if to take in every separate detail of me, and also every detail of Ffoulkes and the street behind us. His eyes I found a little unnerving, though his thin lips were smiling. His manner was genial enough, though tinged with impatience, as if he had many things pressing on his mind. He had a hawk nose and sharp chin, and made a pleasant impression despite his intensity of look and manner.

‘Good day, gentleman,’ said he. ‘Who might you be looking for? I believe all the other guests are out at the moment.’

‘I believe it is you we are looking for,’ said I. ‘My name is James Wilson. My friend here, Mr Percy Ffoulkes, recently overheard you wishing for someone to share the cost of a cottage.’

‘Yes, yes, I remember you, Ffoulkes. You bumped into me at the bookshop.’

‘That’s it,’ said Ffoulkes.

‘I’m Cedric Coombes. By all means come inside, gentlemen, and let us get better acquainted.’ He opened wide the door and led us into a rather gloomy sitting room. As he did so I noticed he had a slight limp in his left leg.

‘I couldn’t help overhear your comment about wishing for a roommate,’ said Ffoulkes. ‘So when my friend here mentioned that he was seeking inexpensive lodgings, I thought we should look you up.’

‘I’m not much of a host, gentlemen. I have nothing to offer you from the kitchen, but please do make yourselves comfortable.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, taking a seat on the sofa.

‘I have found a very nice holiday cottage just around the corner in Chancery Lane. It is too pricey for me to rent on my own, and that is why I am looking for someone to share. My intention is to settle there for the next two or three months, where I can do my experiments more comfortably than I can here.’

‘Experiments?’ said I.

‘Excuse me,’ cried Ffoulkes, ‘do you smell something burning!’

‘Oh, no!’ cried Coombes. ‘I forgot.’

He leapt to his feet and, in several jerky steps, rushed into the kitchen while we followed close behind. He hurried to the stove where several sheets of paper in a flat pan had burst into flames. He removed the pan and set it in the sink, and black ash floated upward towards the ceiling.

Ffoulkes was leaning in the doorway with his hands in his pockets and a grin on his face. ‘So that’s what you do with your wheelbarrows full of books,’ he said. ‘You slice them up and burn them on the stove?’ Ffoulkes nodded towards the kitchen table where a book and a knife lay. The book had been torn apart.

‘Oh, a little hobby of mine,’ said Coombes. ‘It is possible to learn a great deal more from books than what is printed in them. I’m just carrying that notion to its logical conclusion. I’m trying to develop a process to determine scientifically who has owned, or handled, any book in the world.’

‘And what,’ said Ffoulkes, ‘could be the point in doing that – even if it could be done?’

‘Why, good Heavens!’ cried Coombes. ‘Had a test to prove who has handled a particular book or document been invented long ago, thousands of criminals now walking free would instead be paying the penalty for their crimes – criminals of every sort, from murderers to white-collar swindlers.’

‘Do you have a theory how such a test might be constructed?’