The Golden Child. Penelope Fitzgerald

man then, or thought I was, when I saw the Treasure for the first time. That was sixty years ago. Let it stay sixty years ago. That’s where it belongs.’

      ‘It would be a wonderful thing for everyone down at the Exhibition, all the same, if you changed your mind.’

      ‘I shan’t change it. I just took a fancy to have a look at one of these to see to what extent I could still decipher the script. I knew it well enough at one time.’

      ‘There’s a copy of the Ventris decipherment downstairs in the Staff Library,’ said Waring eagerly, ‘and the Untermensch commentary, which gives you the whole alphabet.’

      ‘I don’t use libraries,’ Sir William replied. ‘When I was younger I thought, why read when you can pick up a spade and find out for yourself? I’ve published a dozen or so books myself, of course, but now I don’t agree with anything I said in them. As to the Staff Library here, I might just as well throw away my key: they don’t allow you to smoke in there.’

      Waring tried in vain to envisage the old man without the wreaths of ascending haze from his briar which, even when he was half asleep, partially hid him from view. And yet, come what might, he felt it was a privilege to be smoked over by Sir William.

      ‘I know you’ve got to be off, Waring, and earn your living. But just tell me this. Do you feel anything’s wrong?’

      Waring wondered exactly what this meant — the mortgage, about which he had confided in Sir William, or more likely the curious atmosphere of expecting the worst which had existed in the Museum ever since the first unpacking of the Treasure. He could only answer, ‘Yes, but nothing that I can put right.’

      He returned to his work. He had to submit suggestions for the layout of the counters in the new selling hall. The public desire to buy picture postcards had reached such a pitch (15,000 Get Well cards representing the Golden Tomb had already been sold) that it was necessary to clear new premises. A large court off the entrance hall had been pressed into service; it had been filched by the administration from the Keeper of Woven Textiles, who was left gnashing his few remaining teeth. Waring laid out his sketch plans, wishing he had rather more room, and wondering if he could ask to move for a while to the Conservation studios, where there was more space.

      He had leisure now to think seriously about the report he had read, and over which Dousha had gone to sleep. He had a glimpse for the first time of the murky origins of the great golden attraction: hostilities in the Middle East, North African politics, the ill-coordinated activities of the Hopeforth-Best tobacco company. Perhaps similar forces and similar shoddy undertakings controlled every area of his life. Was it his duty to think about the report more deeply and, in that case, to do something about it?

      Advancing cautiously into this unknown territory, he thought first of his job. He frankly admitted to himself that he would have to be very hard pressed to do or say anything that would endanger his position as an AP3. Secondly came his loyalty to the Museum, a loyalty which he had undertaken, whatever his irritations and disillusions, to the service of beautiful objects and to the public who stood so much in need of them. Lastly he thought of Sir William, who, after all, had read the file and apparently attached no importance to it whatsoever. This was a comforting reflection. Let us pity women, as Sir William had said, and let us not worry too much about our manipulators, for whereas we have some idea of what we really want to do, they have none.

      He spent part of his lunch hour telephoning home.

      ‘Haggie! Is that you? It’s your half-day, isn’t it? No, well, not this evening, because something’s come up.’

      ‘Is it to do with Dousha?’

      ‘Look, Haggie, I didn’t know you’d ever heard of her. She’s just Dousha, just Sir William’s secretary. I’m sure I’ve never said anything about her.’

      ‘Why haven’t you?’

      ‘This is stupid. I don’t know her, and I don’t want to go out with her. It’s just that I don’t feel I should disappoint Sir William. No, Sir William can’t take her out, he’s too old. I can’t think what we’re talking about. She’s asleep half the time, anyway. I love you, I want to come home.’

      Haggie had rung off.

      In the great hive of the Museum, with the Golden Treasure at its heart, the mass of workers and young ones below continued to file, even during the sacred lunch hour, with ceaseless steps past the admission counter. The long afternoon began. Above in the myriad cells drones, cut off from the sound of life, dozed over their in-trays. But Hawthorne-Mannering, neurotically eager, spent no moment in relaxation. Dr Tite-Live Rochegrosse-Bergson and Professor Untermensch had both arrived, though separately, had been conveyed from the airport in the same car — rather a shoddy manoeuvre, obscuring the inferior importance of the little German — and were now at the Museum. Elegantly groomed, like an attendant wraith, Hawthorne-Mannering urged them towards the passage and the lift for their conference.

      ‘… in Sir William’s room … a few words with two selected journalists … my good friend Peter Gratsos … Louis Sintram of The Times you will know of course …’

      Rochegrosse-Bergson was a finished product, silver-haired but unmarked by time, wearing a velvet blazer and buckled shoes which could have belonged to one of several past centuries. The aura of one with many devotees, and — equally necessary to the Academician — many enemies, to whose intrigues in attempting to refute his theories he gracefully alluded, hung round about him. Professor Untermensch was smaller, darker, much quieter and much shabbier, but, on close examination, much more alarming, since he could be seen to be quivering with suppressed excitement. His jerky movements, the habitual sad gestures of the refugee, were accentuated, and his nose, as he humbly followed in the steps of the others, twitched, as though on the track of nourishment.

      ‘Could I have a word with you, Mr Hawthorne-Mannering?’ asked Deputy Security, suddenly advancing on the little group up an imposing side-staircase paved with marble.

      ‘It’s not at all convenient at the moment. Frankly, I find all these security precautions somewhat exaggerated. One’s distinguished visitors from abroad are disconcerted … After all, it’s not as though there were any specific trouble …’

      ‘That’s what I wanted to mention to you, Mr Hawthorne-Mannering. The police are in the building.’

       2

      ‘THE police! One imagines they may well be here constantly, with the vast intrusion caused by the Exhibition …’

      Hawthorne-Mannering realised at once that ‘intrusion’ was not the word he should have chosen, but he was too proud to change it.

      ‘If you could step in here, sir, just for a word with the police. Mace is the name — they’ve sent Inspector Mace from the station.’

      ‘But one’s guests …’

      ‘I could take them to the staff cafeteria if you think fit, for a glass of wine before the conference.’

      This was a handsome offer from Deputy Security, but Hawthorne-Mannering received it with a finely-tuned suggestion of irritation.

      ‘I have already given them a glass of wine, though not from the staff cafeteria. I don’t know that Untermensch should have any more. He might easily become tipsy.’

      Inexorably Deputy Security led the two savants away, while Hawthorne-Mannering was left in a small, almost disused room off the corridor, lined with cases containing some hundreds of Romano-British blue glass tear-bottles. Inspector Mace, more solid than anything else in the room, rose to meet him.

      ‘Well, Inspector, I hope you won’t regard it as offensive if I say that one is rather in a hurry …’

      ‘Quite so, sir. I’ve no intention of wasting time, either ours or yours. It is simply that due to increasing our force patrolling the area during the Exhibition it has been reported in passing by one of my men that cannabis indica is being