‘I don’t think we do,’ agrees Bogdan.
‘“Where’s your mother?” he would ask me sometimes.’ Stephen moves a piece on the board. A holding move, nothing risked, nothing gained. ‘Only, my mother had died, many years previously.’
Bogdan is looking down at the board now. Let Stephen talk. Only answer a question if one is asked.
‘So, you see,’ says Stephen, ‘why it might worry me that I don’t know where Elizabeth is today?’
OK, that sounds like a question. Bogdan looks up. ‘Some things we remember, Stephen, and some things we forget.’
‘Hmm,’ says Stephen.
‘The first time I ever thought I was in love,’ says Bogdan. He has been thinking about this recently. ‘You know, when it makes you sick …’
‘Don’t I just,’ says Stephen.
‘It was a girl from school, we were nine, in Mr Nowak’s class. She sat in front of me and to the left, and she would arrange her pencils so neatly. When she wrote, the tip of her tongue poked between her lips. She lived on the next street from mine, and sometimes we would walk home together, when I could make it happen, and she had silver buckles on her shoes, so she didn’t like to go in puddles. I liked to go in puddles, but when I walked with her I would pretend I didn’t. I was sick, Stephen, sick. Her father was in the air force, and they sent him overseas, so she left school, didn’t even say goodbye, because she didn’t know we were in love – why would she? But I still remember how I felt, still remember how she smelled, her laugh, all these tiny details. I remember them all.’
Stephen smiles. ‘You old romantic, Bogdan. What was her name?’
Bogdan raises his eyes from the board, and raises his hands in a slow shrug. ‘We all forget things, Stephen.’
Stephen smiles, and nods. ‘Very clever. But you would tell me? You would tell me if something was up? I can’t ask Elizabeth. I don’t want to worry her.’
Again, Stephen has asked Bogdan this question a number of times. And Bogdan always answers in the same way.
‘Would I tell you? Honestly, I don’t know. What would you do, if it was someone you loved?’
‘I suppose if I felt it would help, then I would tell them,’ says Stephen. ‘And if I felt it wouldn’t help, then I wouldn’t tell them.’
Bogdan nods. ‘I like that. I think that is right.’
‘But you think I’m all right? A bit of fuss over nothing?’
‘That’s exactly what I think, Stephen,’ says Bogdan, and moves one of his pawns further up the board.
Stephen stares at the board. ‘But it leads me to another question. A worse question.’
‘We have all day,’ says Bogdan.
‘Is Elizabeth OK?’
‘Sure,’ says Bogdan. ‘I mean, Elizabeth is never OK, you know. But she is well.’
‘She was in a tizz,’ says Stephen. ‘The other night. She was talking about a library and a Viking, making no real sense, and when I questioned her about it, she took herself off. Dose of the waterworks, which she tried to cover up. Very unlike her. What’s that, do you think?’
‘Doesn’t ring a bell at all?’ asks Bogdan.
‘Good question actually,’ says Stephen, making his next move. ‘The question of the day, I’d say. “The Viking” – your guess is very much as good as mine, but the library. I didn’t think about it at the time, but I have been in a library recently. I’m sure I hadn’t told Elizabeth about it though.’
‘What library?’ asks Bogdan.
‘Friend of mine,’ says Stephen. ‘Bill Chivers, you know him?’
‘Bill Chivers? No,’ says Bogdan.
‘Where do I know you from, Bogdan?’ asks Stephen. ‘Where did we meet?’
‘I came to fix something in the flat,’ says Bogdan. ‘I saw the chessboard, and we started playing.’
‘That’s it,’ says Stephen. ‘That’s it. No reason why you’d know Bill Chivers, then. He’s a book dealer. Bent as a nine-bob note, between you and me.’
Bent as a nine-bob note. Bogdan always likes to discover a nice new idiom.
‘Only he invited me up to his place, forget where, got Staffordshire in my head, but that can’t be right. But big old pile, doing well for himself, and there I am in his library, and I’m looking around, Bogdan, being nosy, you know me …’
‘You never know what you might see,’ says Bogdan.
‘Always been that way,’ agrees Stephen. ‘And, anyway, I finally come to my point, there are books on the shelf that shouldn’t be there.’
‘Shouldn’t how?’
‘Expensive,’ says Stephen. ‘Famously expensive. Not first editions but one-offs. Should be in museums, but some are in private collections. Worth tens of millions if you want to add them all together, but there they are in Bill Chivers’s library. So what do we make of that?’
‘In a library, in a big house in Staffordshire? You saw these books?’
‘I feel like I did, yes,’ says Stephen.
‘You remember the names of the books?’
‘Of course,’ says Stephen. ‘He had the Timurid Quran, for goodness’ sake, and a volume of the Yongle Encyclopaedia. Not my area, but he had a Shakespeare First Folio. So, yes, I remember the names. I haven’t gone loco.’
‘I know,’ says Bogdan.
‘“Doolally”, they used to call it.’
Bogdan nods. Elizabeth needs to find out the identity of the Viking. Could this help? Could they track him through these books? He will tell Elizabeth as soon as she is back, and Elizabeth will have a plan.
‘I don’t know when it would have been,’ says Stephen. ‘But recently, I think. Though I feel as if I don’t go out so much any more?’
‘You’re always out and about,’ says Bogdan. ‘Walking with Elizabeth. All sorts.’
‘This will seem another very silly question to you,’ says Stephen. ‘And forgive me. But do I have a car?’
Bogdan shakes his head. ‘Lost your licence.’
‘Blast it,’ says Stephen. ‘Do you have a car?’
‘I have access to cars, yes,’ says Bogdan.
‘When is Elizabeth back?’
‘This evening,’ says Bogdan.
‘Righto,’ says Stephen. ‘Could you run me down to Brighton?’
‘To Brighton?’
‘Old pal of mine runs an antique shop. Dodgy as they come –’
‘Bent as a nine-bob note?’ says Bogdan.
‘Never a truer word spoken,’ says Stephen. ‘I want to ask him about these books. See how Bill Chivers came to have them. Bit of detective work, if you fancy it?’
OK, perhaps Bogdan won’t have to wait for Elizabeth to come up with a plan.
‘And, speaking of detectives and fancying,’ says Stephen, ‘why don’t we invite your pal Donna along too? Been dying to meet her. Elizabeth really hasn’t clocked that you two are dating?’
‘She knows something is up, but she hasn’t worked out what,’ says Bogdan.
‘Oh, Elizabeth,’ says Stephen. ‘You can see why I worry about her?’
Bogdan and Stephen shake hands on a draw. Now to get Stephen changed and shaved, and then a trip to Brighton. Should he ask Elizabeth’s permission?
No, he has Stephen’s permission. He will do as Stephen wishes.
51
‘I’m a dreadful nuisance, I can’t apologize enough,’ says Elizabeth, stretched out on a sofa in an Elstree Studios dressing-room.
‘Don’t be silly,’ says a paramedic, removing a blood-pressure sleeve from Elizabeth’s arm. ‘Blood pressure all normal, but people faint for all sorts of reasons. It happens all the time.’
‘Silly sums it up,’ says Elizabeth. ‘A silly old woman spoiling everyone’s fun. I think it’s because they don’t let you have any food. I’m elderly, you see.’ Elizabeth tries to sit up, but the paramedic is having none of it.
‘Not a bit of it,’ says the paramedic, turning to Joyce. ‘She’s not spoiling anyone’s fun, is she?’
‘I mean, I was enjoying it,’ says Joyce. ‘But these things happen.’
‘Must have been a bit of a shock for you too?’ says the paramedic. ‘Your friend keeling over twenty minutes into the recording?’
‘Yes and no,’ says Joyce, then looks straight at Elizabeth. ‘Yes and no.’