Shadows 7 (25 page)

Through the intercession of the local clergyman, the infant was taken in and raised by a childless couple in the parish. Samuel and Margaret Coombes were poor—he was a wheelwright whose one skill was in ever-decreasing demand with the coming of the automobile—but they gave the child their home, their love, and their name.

Robert Coombes was a quiet child, not at all athletic, and not much suited to life in the countryside, but he was a good student and loved reading above all else in the world. In his youth, the hero of his favorite book of boys' adventure stories had been named Robert Clairthorpe, and in his eighteenth year, upon his arrival in London following the deaths of both his foster-parents, he changed his name to Clairthorpe.

But, though he was dazzled by the wonder and variety of London, the world had not intended a life of adventure for young Robert. The only success he had was in finding a place as a clerk in a small bookstore in an almost hidden back street of Bloomsbury, near the British Museum. Wealth had never been one of his goals, so he was satisfied where he was.

And he was satisfied to remain there. Six years after his arrival, the old proprietor of the shop passed away. Without children or family himself, he left the shop to his young assistant. Robert, absolved from all military service by his weak eyesight and generally frail physical condition, spent all the rest of his life in the bookshop, keeping it open six days a week and living alone, always surrounded by his beloved books, in the small dark room just behind it.

He was still there fifty years later when a lashing rainstorm drove me in at his door.

It seems odd now, with the memory of Robert Clairthorpe so vivid in my mind, to recall that I came to London that time seeking relief from memories.

I must state this part as simply as grief permits. Elizabeth, my beloved wife of forty years, had passed away very suddenly. As we had never been blessed with children, we were perhaps even more dependent on each other for love and support than other long-married couples. Neither of us had other living relatives, and hardly any other friends, and her death left me totally alone in the world. What is more, I had just retired from my position with the bank and purchased a home for us near Woodstock, in the Catskills, an area we both loved immensely and where we had been looking forward to spending our last years, away from the city, in each other's constant company, and pursuing together the interests for which there had never been adequate time before. So I was all the more alone, living by myself in an empty house, more than adequately supplied with income, but with all our happy plans crumbled to dust in my heart.

I had to leave. I had to get away.

I had always, through the years, loved London, loved all of England, and coming here seemed the best thing to do. Here I could find pleasure, entertainment, relaxation, perhaps a few new friends among my British banking acquaintances: here I could find distraction.

My career in banking had left little time for hobbies and other interests. Even so, I had done a fair bit of traveling, often combining business trips with vacations, and had occasionally contributed a minor travel article to several magazines. I loved music and had amassed an extensive library of recordings. And I collected books.

As it turned out, my tastes in reading were virtually identical to those of Robert Clairthorpe. It was that likeness of mind and sensibility that drew us so close so very quickly in our acquaintance, and that accounted for what happened to us after.

I came crashing into the shop that day, dripping wet and quite out of breath.

I was staying at a very comfortable bed-and-breakfast house in Bedford Place, just around the corner from the British Museum in Great Russell Street. My situation would have permitted a finer hotel, at least for a short stay, but I preferred Bedford Place above all else. Completed in the first quarter of the eighteenth century, it is quiet, sedate, and pretty, only one elegant street long, with the trees of Bloomsbury Square at one end and the trees and roses of Russell Square at the other. On this particular day, I was exploring the narrower, less often traveled streets of the vicinity, when suddenly the heavens seemed to open and a moment later the rain was pounding down violently. I was in Little Russell Street, just behind the church that fronts on Bloomsbury Way, and there seemed no escaping the rain.

I was instantly soaked. I looked around for a shelter and saw the dark and dusty little bookshop. An elderly gentleman, perhaps ten years older than myself, stood in the doorway with his hand on the knob. Perhaps he had been watching the skies, or perhaps the sudden crashing noise of the rain had drawn him to the door. In any case, we saw each other at the same moment. He beckoned, and I dashed to the dry safety he offered.

It began so haphazardly, the product, in part, of all the circumstances of our lives up to the moment when we found ourselves together in that street. Then it needed only a sudden, chance spattering of rain, and we were both of us trapped.

"Come in, come in!" he said. "Oh dear, you're wet already!"

He instantly closed the door behind me, for the wind was driving the rain hard against the glass of the windows. As soon as it was firmly shut, we both breathed a little sigh of relief, as if we had just succeeded in rescuing ourselves from a band of ravening wolves. And a moment later we both laughed a little at ourselves, just a bit self-consciously. It was right then—we spoke about it a few days later and agreed—that each of us began to sense a kindred spirit in the other.

I thanked him for his kindness and told him, a little breathlessly, how glad I was that he'd been standing there just then. He shrugged away my gratitude. We stood for a moment, looking at the rain and listening to it clatter against the glass.

"It's a little like the start of a nineteenth-century novel, isn't it?" he said, but he murmured the words so softly that I wasn't quite sure if he'd spoken them aloud or if I'd had the thought myself.

"Here," he said, "you must have that coat off and warm up a bit. Will you take a cup of tea? I was just about to fix some."

Naturally, I hesitated, but as I looked around for the first time at the shop, and incidentally had my first good look at the kind face of Robert Clairthorpe, he said, "Do," and added, "You shall have to wait out the storm anyway."

The bookshop certainly suggested, to my way of thinking, at least as warm a welcome as its owner was offering to provide. The walls were lined from floor to ceiling with sagging shelves of books, and I could see at a glance that his stock ranged from used copies of recent bestsellers to yellow piles of
National Geographic
to fine older books and sets of classics. On a shelf near the door I recognized a complete set of Joseph Conrad, the edition signed in Volume I shortly before his death, for I had the same set on my own shelves in the now empty house in Woodstock. On an immense center table almost filling the floor space of the tiny shop were teetering piles of more books, of all ages, sizes, and conditions, apparently waiting there to be catalogued. Best of all—and only true booklovers will understand this—the shop
smelled
so right, with the familiar and comforting scent of old paper and bindings.

"Well, all right," I said. "Thank you very much. I'd be glad of a cup of tea. In fact," I added, looking around more carefully at the shop and its contents, "if I'd known your shop was here, I would have come by before now."

I had nothing to do in London, of course, no plans, no agenda, and a quiet, rainy afternoon spent in a little bookshop like this would let me lose myself for hours. Now it also held out the prospect of a hot cup of tea and, I anticipated, a pleasant conversation with the owner.

We introduced ourselves and, with only mild embarrassment but, I think, the mutual hope of several pleasant hours together, shook hands. We were two strangers, sealing a bargain of which neither of us was aware. If things had turned out differently in the end, I might have added here that Robert Clairthorpe had a better idea than I—at least an inkling of the possibility—of what was to follow from this meeting; for he was the one who proposed, only a week later, the course of action we were to take, and that would have such frightening results for both of us. But he assured me afterward that, at our first meeting, the thought of sharing his secret with me had not once entered his mind, so long had he held it close, away from the sight of the world, away from even his own conscious thoughts.

But a week later, all of that was changed.

Our friendship grew quickly. We were of similar ages. We were both completely alone in the world. And, most important of all, we shared our love for the whole world of books. What is more, we liked the same kinds of books. No effete academic novels for us, no ephemeral or faddish books, no cynical bestsellers by renegade priests writing about trashy sex, not for us. What we loved, and what had been an intimate part of all our lives, both a formative and an ever-present part, was the literature of fantasy and adventure, books that made the heart beat faster, tales that could sweep the reader away to lands that never were, among characters who were far larger than life and passionate in seeking their goals.

And best of all we loved the literature of what is known as dark fantasy, those tales that explore the darker regions of the mind, the monsters of the night, the blackest passions that inhabit the human soul, stories that use as their ruling metaphor an overwhelming image of evil. That was what we'd always loved best.

I spent almost four hours in the shop that first day, and when Robert Clairthorpe and I parted, we parted as friends, each of us aware that our lives had been enriched by this chance meeting.

I can see him in the doorway now, saying goodbye as I left. He was a small man, somewhat shrunken by age, I suppose, as I may be myself or will be as the slow years pass. He had extremely fair skin that appeared very soft, so that the wrinkles only gentled the lines of his face. A crown of white hair ringed his head. An ordinary person would not have noticed him in the street, I am sure, but that person would have missed seeing the bright blueness of his eyes, startling in his otherwise pale face. There was life in those eyes; they were the eyes of a young man, for whom the dawn held only promise and the night no threat of death. When I looked into his eyes, I saw a promise for my own future.

We shook hands, lingering for a moment, reluctant to part, reluctant to end the afternoon.

"Come back again," he said.

"I will," I said.

I was holding in one arm a parcel of books I had purchased from his enormous stock. The price he had asked was, I knew, far below their real value, but he would hear not a word of protest from me.

"I must help you empty more of your shelves," I said, indicating the parcel.

"Oh, do," he said. "I should be glad of another chat."

"Well, I'll see you again, then," I said.

I went back the next day. I must admit that I returned with some trepidation, fearing that my welcome would be less warm than it had been. After all, this man and I did not really know each other, and perhaps I was presuming too much. Several days a week, I imagined, he must have other customers like myself wandering into the shop. Indeed, he must have many regulars, oldtimers like himself—or like myself, I had to admit—who came by, perhaps on a regular schedule, to sort through the books, to chat, and to drink tea with him. I was assuming too much, yes, and I was also self-conscious about my own, seemingly obvious, need for a friend.

But I need not have worried. Robert Clairthorpe was visibly as happy to see me as I was to be welcomed warmly once again. We spent another four hours together, talking about books, reminding each other and ourselves about old favorites and scenes we'd particularly enjoyed. Over and over again, one or the other of us would say, "Oh, and do you remember the part where . . ." We had a grand time. When I left, I said, "Well, I suppose I'll see you tomorrow."

"I'll be looking forward to it," he said happily, those bright blue eyes beaming with pleasure.

It was only when I'd eaten some dinner and returned to my room in Bedford Place that I realized today was Sunday and that the shop would normally have been closed.

On that Sunday, the day of our second meeting, Robert Clairthorpe had six days left to live.

And I must now continue in the knowledge that, had it not been for my arrival in his shop and in his life, my friend would still be alive today.

I went to the shop every day that week. On Tuesday, the day of my fourth visit, I tried to coax him out of the shop to a local restaurant for dinner, but he would not come with me. He was, he said, a creature of long habit, and he would not be comfortable eating in a restaurant.

The next day, Wednesday, he insisted that I stay and let him prepare the meal. He had, he told me, already been out to the butcher around the corner and purchased lamb chops for both of us. Although I protested that he must, in return, accompany me to a restaurant, I was touched by his invitation, and of course I agreed to stay. I could not remember the last time I had had the simple pleasure of a quiet meal with a friend, where the exchange of the evening was nothing more than mutual interest and friendship. And I am certain that he felt the same.

It was that evening, while he prepared the simple meal, refusing to let me help in any way, that I first saw the back room of the shop where he lived, a single, small room, dark and cramped, that served him as sitting room, bedroom, and kitchen, all in one. This too was cluttered with books, books that had the look of good companions about them, books that had been read recently, or were being read now, or that were waiting to be read very shortly. The helter-skelter way they littered his living quarters made me think that the books were almost alive, each one jostling the others in friendly rivalry for the privilege of being the next one read. Even in the man's private quarters, where I had not before been admitted, I immediately felt at home.

Other than the books, there was nothing at all remarkable about this little room, except for a very handsome showcase against the wall. It was perhaps four feet high and two feet square, its sloping glass top covered in green baize. I could see from the carvings of its legs and the ornamentation on its sides that it was a very fine piece of furniture and, presumably, quite valuable. Possibly it might once have stood in a very elegant private library.