Ten
Penny handed her ticket to the conductor and watched as he punched it and then handed it back to her.
“We should be arriving at Chester in about twenty minutes,” he said as he turned away to attend to the passenger sitting across the aisle.
“Thank you,” Penny murmured to his back, as she tucked the ticket in her handbag.
She shifted in her seat and contemplated the green fields that rolled by the train window. Heavy, grey clouds hung low in the sky, shrouding the tops of the hills. It doesn’t look very promising, she thought, glad she had remembered to bring an umbrella. With a small sigh, she picked up the unread Tatler that lay forgotten in her lap and stuffed it into her carrier bag.
She tried to think about her plans for the afternoon, but her mind was reluctant to go there. Instead, her last phone conversation with Gareth played out in an endless loop. He had seemed flat and distant at the start of the conversation, and then it got worse. He had declined to come with her to Liverpool.
“I think I’d rather not,” he had said. “I don’t fancy cooling my heels for four hours while you look through back issues of the Liverpool Echo.”
What he was really saying, she thought, is “I’ve got better things to do.” It had seemed unnecessarily harsh. And what about the time we could have spent together on the journey there and back? Maybe a nice dinner afterward? A creeping feeling of disquiet and unease alarmed and worried her. She felt she had been taking him emotionally for granted, and now, sensing that he was losing interest in her, she realized how much she didn’t want to lose him.
The fields outside the window were gradually giving way to semidetached houses and industrial-type buildings as the countryside was left behind and the landscape changed from rural to urban. The train began to slow and then pulled into the station. She stepped out of the carriage and walked along the platform to the lift that would take her up to the footbridge so she could cross to the other platform to catch the Merseyside train for Liverpool.
She didn’t have to wait long and soon found herself in a crowded carriage. Across the aisle four women sat in facing seats with a table between them. In front of each woman was a pile of coins, and with a lot of shouting and hooting, they played cards. At the signal from one, the cards were quickly put away and a carrier bag filled with groceries came out.
Penny watched in amazement as they then silently began to assemble sandwiches. One woman opened up a tub of margarine and, using a metal knife, spread two slices of white bread. She then handed the bread to the woman beside her, who slapped a piece of grey meat on it and handed it on to the next woman while the first woman spread margarine on two more slices of bread. The third woman placed a piece of sweaty cheese on top of the meat, folded the sandwich together, and handed it to the fourth woman, who added a generous spoonful of coleslaw and then, using the same knife the first woman had used to spread the margarine, cut the sandwich into four and placed the pieces on a paper towel in the centre of the table. No one touched a sandwich until four had been prepared and their little production line shut down. Then, at some unspoken signal, they each grabbed a sandwich and all started talking at once.
How very strange, thought Penny. Wouldn’t it be easier to make the sandwiches at home and just wrap them up and bring them along already made? But she had to admit being grateful for the distraction, and by the time the women had eaten their sandwiches and tidied everything away, her journey was over as the train slowed down for the approach into Liverpool Lime Street station.
She got off the train, rode the escalator to the ground floor, and then continued on to the ticket inspection barrier. As she started to fumble in her bag for her ticket, the man guarding the barrier waved her through and she walked to the exit through the seating area and shops of the main concourse.
She paused for a moment to take in the vast iron-and-glass roof, and then, because the main entrance to the station had been closed as part of a massive renovation project, she emerged from a side exit into a day filled with deepening gloom and the heaviness in the air that comes before the relief of rain. Across the way stood the magnificent and recently refurbished St. George’s Hall and behind it, on William Brown Street, three great neoclassical buildings, including the Central Library. She worked her way around the side of the Hall, and with an admiring glance at St. John’s Garden, picked her way across the cobblestones to the main entrance of the library.
Built in the 1800s, with all the exuberance of the Victorians’ passion for grand, intimidating architecture in their public buildings, Liverpool’s Central Library is everything a British library should be. Its weathered brown fa?ade, complete with imposing columns, prepares visitors to be impressed.
Penny entered the library and found it surprisingly bright and modern. A helpful attendant at the reception desk pointed her toward the lift, and promising herself more time for browsing on the next visit, she made her way to the fourth floor, where the microfiche copies of the Liverpool Echo, along with municipal records, are kept.
After a word with the reference librarian, she was shown the drawers where hundreds of neatly labeled white boxes were stored. Each box contained one month’s worth of the newspaper. The librarian pointed out a wooden block, about the same size as one of the white boxes.
“When you remove a box, please put the block in its place so you’ll know where to put it back,” she requested.
Penny pulled her notebook out of her bag and set it down beside a microfiche reader.
“I’ll be just over here if you need any help,” said the librarian, who returned to her desk near the entrance.
Having decided she was a start-at-the-beginning kind of person, Penny pulled the little box that read APRIL 1967 from the drawer and dutifully put the wooden block in its place.
She took the box over to the reader and sat down. She switched on the machine, then removed the spool from the box, threaded it through the magnifier, and wound it forward using the little crank.
She couldn’t resist a smile. This seems so low tech, she thought, but when the first page of the Liverpool Echo wound into view, she had to admit that low tech as it was, it apparently worked. And you had to admit that storing one month’s worth of newspapers in a box just a little bigger than a pack of cigarettes was a huge space saver. But as she turned the little crank that advanced the film forward page by page, she realized the huge drawback. She would have to examine every page looking for one name. Alys Jones. No search and find here. A computer could have pulled the stories she wanted in seconds.
She plowed on through 1967, returning the spool she had finished viewing to its place in the drawer and taking out the next month. Pressed for time because the library closed at four, she tried to resist the temptation to start reading the news stories, but occasionally one caught her eye. The release in June of the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band LP was big news in the Beatles’ hometown. She soon found the advertisements more interesting than the stories. She loved the look of things priced in old money. A man’s fine white dress shirt for only five shillings! However much that was.
The years flashed before her. Celebrities died, Pierre Elliott Trudeau was elected prime minister of Canada, the Vietnam War ground on, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy were assassinated, Richard Nixon was elected president of the United States, the microwave oven was invented, the Concorde made its first flight, and men landed on the moon.
And then, in November 1970, just as she was about to wind on to the next page, she saw a photograph that made her heart beat faster. Taken from an artistic angle, it showed a group of four people laughing as one held up a painting and the three others pretended to judge it.
LIVERPOOL ART TEACHERS PREPARE FOR NEW EXHIBIT Liverpool artists, left to right, Alys Jones, Millicent Mayhew, and Cynthia Browning sort through canvases in the staff room of the Liverpool School of Art, Hope Street. Looking on is Andrew Peyton, who will be curating the exhibit, scheduled to open in February at the Walker Art Gallery.
She leaned forward to try to get a better look at the grainy black-and-white image. Alys had very short, dark hair and was wearing a tailored white shirt with what looked like a man’s tie. She was leaning back in her chair and holding a cigarette in a jaunty but affected kind of way, as if it were in a long cigarette holder.
Penny had to smile. Although she had never been a smoker, she could remember the days when people smoked everywhere—on airplanes, trains, and buses, at meetings and the cinema and even in college and university classrooms, students and professors alike puffing away. That’s one thing I definitely don’t miss, she thought.
So there was to have been an art exhibit. She wondered if it had gone ahead. The Walker Art Gallery, Penny knew, was next door to the library. She had been there many years before and was now asking herself why she hadn’t been back to Liverpool in such a long time. But a visit there would have to wait for another day.
She glanced at her watch. Twenty after three. She reached for her pen to note down the details of the item and then had a better idea. She approached the librarian, who was reading on her computer.
“Excuse me. I’m sorry to trouble you, but I wonder if I could print a page from the microfiche,” Penny asked. The librarian’s eyes stayed on the screen for a moment, then her head turned in Penny’s direction.
“Yes, you may,” she said, “but there’s a small charge, I’m afraid, and the quality won’t be very good.”
After carefully placing the copy of the printed page in the file folder in her bag, Penny respooled the film, returned it to its spot, picked out the December spool, and, with slightly shaking fingers, loaded it into the microfiche reader. This one would probably contain the details of Alys’s death. In fearful, knowing anticipation of what she was about to see, she wound the reel on slowly. And, sure enough, there it was on the front page of the Monday, December 7, 1970 issue.
LIVERPOOL ARTIST DIES IN HIT-AND-RUN TRAGEDY A well-liked, promising artist and teacher at the Liverpool School of Art has been killed in a hit-and-run accident.
Alys Jones, 32, died in the early hours of Saturday, December 5 from injuries sustained when she was struck by a car on a back lane in the Welsh market town of Llanelen. Miss Jones, who was born and grew up in Llanelen, was believed to have been visiting family at the time of the accident.
The driver has not been caught, and police are asking anyone who might have information to come forward. The investigation continues.
Friends and colleagues at the college are devastated by Miss Jones’s death.
Close friend and fellow artist Millicent Mayhew said, “We are reeling from the loss. Not only have we lost a dear and treasured friend but the Liverpool art movement has lost a great talent. She was among the best painters of her generation and will be missed by all who knew her.”
Miss Jones had been due to exhibit her work, along with that of other artists from the Liverpool School of Art, at the Walker Art Gallery in February.
Funeral arrangements have not been announced.
Penny sent the page to the printer and, realizing that the librarian was waiting to close for the day, spooled the film back to the beginning of the reel, put it back in the box, and replaced it in the drawer. She gathered up her bags and, nodding a thank you to the librarian, who was switching off her computer, left the room and descended the stairs to the main exit.
She found herself on the street and, a few steps later, outside the Walker Gallery, now closed. She took in the colourful banners promoting the current exhibits and promised herself she would return soon and give herself more time. A visit to the art gallery would be a must.
The journey home seemed to go very quickly, and Penny had changed trains at Chester before she knew it. Lost in thought, she went over the few details she had learned and wondered how she could find this Millicent Mayhew woman, if she was still alive.
Perhaps someone at the old Liverpool School of Art, now part of John Moores University, could help. She’d try to make some calls tomorrow. And then she remembered that Eirlys, her new assistant, was starting the next day. She’d have to spend the day training her, but once that was done, she should have more free time to pursue other things.
And, she realized, she hadn’t been painting in ages. She resolved to contact Alwynne and get the sketching club together for an outing. Thinking that her to-do list was getting longer by the minute, she put her head back on the seat, closed her eyes, and lulled by the rhythm of the train, fell asleep. When she awoke, the train was just pulling in to Llandudno Junction. She sighed, picked up her bag, and prepared for the arrival in Llandudno and the short walk to catch the bus to Llanelen.
And then she remembered Gareth and realized she hadn’t thought about him for hours.
She arrived home tired and hungry but reasonably happy with her day’s work. Not only had she discovered a couple of possible leads into Alys’s last days and the people who knew her, but she felt invigorated by the visit to Liverpool. She vowed to go again, and soon. Maybe Victoria could come with her. Being a day-tripper was all right, but an overnight stay would be more fun and they could get in some good shopping. Perhaps they could stop in a rather nice hotel in the centre of the city. The getaway would have to be with Victoria, as Gareth hadn’t seemed interested and the hotel business with him might be a bit tricky. Or would it? Maybe that would be the best route to go.
After popping a frozen chicken korma in the oven and retrieving the items she had printed from the Liverpool Echo, she taped the photo to the whiteboard and then stood back, arms folded, contemplating it. She remained lost and absorbed in the image until the ringing of the telephone startled her back to reality. Hoping it would be Gareth, she answered it on the fourth ring.
“Hello? Oh, Thomas, yes, good evening. Fine, thanks.”
A few minutes later she thanked him, replaced the receiver, sank into the comfort of the sofa, and stared unseeing at the photos on the whiteboard.
Four of Emma’s diaries were missing. Yes, he was sure. He’d checked and double-checked. The years 1967 to 1970 were not there. And 1971 contained nothing of interest.