And while writing, here was a link to the website the marketing people were building for Wilberforce. Michael should remember it was a work in progress, and everyone was sure it would be possible to change the colour of Wilberforce’s fur in the illustrations, although so far nobody had admitted to making it that peculiar tangerine shade when it was well known by them all that Wilberforce – the fictional one at any rate – was black and white.
Michael regarded the orange splodge intended to represent Wilberforce with dismay, then typed an email to Beth, asking what her year and the year below her were currently learning in history at school. He added a line about her now being editorial consultant, which he thought would amuse and please her, and sent it off.
By this time his student had arrived for the tutorial, and an absorbing hour followed, in which the student, who was Michael’s particularly promising first year, displayed some satisfyingly original thinking, and argued his points with polite insistence.
After the student had left, Michael put in a couple of hours on his lecture, covering his desk with books, and enjoying himself wandering along paths in the company of such people as Jane Austen, Oliver Goldsmith, and Fanny Burney. He added Tobias Smollet and Henry Fielding to the mix to spice things up a bit.
It was mid-afternoon before he was able to tell the professor about the Porringer letters.
‘I should like to see them very much,’ said Leo. ‘Are you free at the moment?’
‘I am,’ said Michael. ‘I’ll drop them in now, shall I?’
‘Yes, do. I’ll get someone to bring coffee.’
Michael, seeing the rooms for the first time – seeing the charm of their clutter and feeling the gentle atmosphere of books and scholarship – understood why they were a small legend of their own within Oriel. Seeing the professor bestow his smile on the bearer of the coffee, he also understood why the tray had been carried up three flights of stairs without demur.
Rosendale read the letters with deep interest.
‘I don’t know if they’ll provide any answers for you,’ said Michael, when Leo laid them down, ‘but it’s all useful material. It might be worth delving into Salamander House, as well – oh, and you note the suggestion that there was some kind of private arrangement between Breadspear and Porringer – something off the record, as it were.’
‘Oh, yes.’ Leo thought for a moment, then said, ‘Dr Flint …’
‘Michael.’
‘Michael, I think I told you I lived near to Deadlight Hall as a child. I was one of a group of children who were smuggled out of Poland in 1942, and I was sent to live with a brother and sister. Simeon and Mildred Hurst, at Willow Bank Farm.’
‘Maria Porringer mentions that place,’ said Michael eagerly, reaching for the printouts. ‘And the name Hurst, as well. Yes, here it is. John Hurst, of Willow Bank Farm.’
‘Yes. And I rather think,’ said Leo, ‘that John Hurst might be the man Simeon and Mildred referred to as their shameful ancestor. “Wild and godless” they called him, usually with the Biblical line about the sins of the fathers, as well.’
This was the most Michael had ever heard the professor say about his background – he thought it was probably the most anyone at Oriel College had ever heard him say. Not wanting to intrude, but interested, he said, ‘Were they good to you, that farmer and his sister?’
Leo smiled. ‘They were strict and rather severe, but they were kind in their own way. But when Mildred Hurst died, she left the contents of the farmhouse to me. Furniture and china and so on. I sold most of the furniture – it was nearly all Victorian and rather florid, but one of the things I did keep was that old blanket box.’ He indicated an oak box beneath a latticed window. ‘It stood outside my bedroom at Willow Bank, so it felt like a bit of my childhood. The Hursts used it to store odd papers and photographs. None of them were relevant to me, but it seemed wrong to destroy them.’
‘Are they still there?’ said Michael, hardly daring to hope.
‘Oh, yes. I’ve never really looked at them, but I always felt they were a fragment of a particular era of history, so I kept them.’