The Museum Of Doubt. James Meek

turned to page 228, quarter of the way through the book. Present pluperfect, he read out. Mercian tense structure in the present follows the pattern laid down in lesson 25:the future. I thought Mercian didn’t have a future.

      Read to the end and you’ll see, said Cate. Don’t be so fucking smart. If you read it to the end there will be a future, won’t there?

      Rowp thy postillion, said Adam, putting the book down carefully and moving over to Cate. He put his left hand into the fair curls of her hair, warm from her scalp, and it made an ultrasound like foil streamers a million miles long and a millimetre wide, crinkling and billowing in a solar wind, which only he and dogs could hear. Their tongues tasted each other and the fingertips of his other hand were running up the back of her leg.

      Y tess ley, he said. It was the only Mercian phrase he knew, the one he’d asked her to teach him the first time they went out, which was also the first time they slept together, and had learned straight off.

      Y tess leya, she said, and started to take off his jeans. Before he entered her she took him in her mouth, which he didn’t like, but this time he did, he barely stopped himself coming there, her grip between the tongue and the palate was so determined. Afterwards they lay on the settee together for half an hour, dozing off and on, watching the lights blinking stupidly in the branches of the tree, the fanheater thrumming against their thighs and creaking.

      It’s so old, said Cate. I was lucky to find it. A library was being merged out and they were selling off a load of old books.

      It’s great.

      Will you study?

      Of course.

      I’ll help you.

      Yes.

      I bought you a shirt as well.

      Food for the mind and food for the eh, the other thing.

      If you don’t want to learn it, it’s fine, there’s no reason for you to.

      I said I would, I want to, I want to be able to speak it.

      I know, it’s that I saw your face – not like you were disappointed, but that the book was old, like it’d been dug up and it’d been supposed to have stayed buried.

      I was hoping there’d be pictures.

      That’s because you’re a moron.

      They left the house at noon and took a cab to where Cate’s dad lived. As the last but one native speaker of Mercian he was to have been living in a beehive-shaped wattle and daub hut, strengthened with stone and brick in the latter generations, on a ridge among derelict cattle-pens, out poaching in all weathers, keeping the Sabbath and standing stock-still of a late summer afternoon in a cropped meadow of thistles and cowpats and horse-flies, scoured by the shadows of the clouds passing across him.

      Instead he lived in a one-room council flat in a cubic four storey block in a street with lots of space between the cars, a gasholder at one end and a triangular park with grass at the other like badly laquered hair. He had the family’s Mercian bible which he’d told Cate and Adam he didn’t read and a bronchitic black labrador. He hoarded specific items at Christmas: cans of McEwan’s Export and tins of Fray Bentos steak and kidney pudding.

      I wasn’t expecting you so early, he said. He had the kind of face that everything which had happened to him in the past sixty years had been unexpected, but he’d made the best of it. He was astonished to find his fridge full of shiny red cans of fizzy beer, and astounded to see the size of the pot of simmering water on the cooker, and the number of inverted pudding domes hottering inside it. He was incredulous that his daughter should turn out to be married to a man called Adam, and sceptical that they should decide to visit him on December 25, of all days. When Adam recognised the theme to the Guns of Navarone, as played by the band of the Coldstream Guards, he twisted round and looked at the Bush mono player in amazement.

      Happy Chrismas, Dad, said Cate, handing over the socks. The incredible act of gift-giving just about sent him doing a double somersault backwards through the window. His mouth dropped open and his eyes bulged like a fish in a net. It’s from both of us.

      Thanks very much, he gasped. He’d barely sat down in his armchair and started getting over the shock when he was sent reeling again by the discovery of two small parcels on the windowledge, hidden by a line of cards. He issued the gifts, a leather wallet for Adam and a gold chain for Cate. Cate went over and kissed him and Adam tried to make a joke about money not included, eh.

      Anyway, he said. Eh … Ellsta.

      Cate smiled and looked at her dad. He shrugged and wrestled with the arms of his chair, looking down and away, trying to smile and looking like a condemned man waiting for the second buzz after the first application of 2,000 volts had failed to finish the job.

      Ellsta very much, said Adam.

      Adam, said Cate.

      Anyway, Mr Finzy, Cate’s given me this brilliant book so’s I can learn Mercian and next Christmas I’ll be speaking it properly.

      Cate’s dad nodded slowly, calmer now but more worried-looking. It’ll take up a lot of your time, he said. It’s not going to help you find a job.

      He wants to, Dad. We’ve got time.

      It never helped me.

      Adam took a drink of Export. There was silence in the room. Cate was checking her nails, frowning. Her dad was looking into the middle distance, nodding his head as if a spring had broken. He coughed.

      Did you put the vegetables on, Mr Finzy? said Adam. Those puddings’ll be ready before long.

      I forgot. Cate’s dad didn’t make a move.

      Mm? said Cate, who’d been looking out the window.

      I’ll go and see to it, said Adam.

      I’ll do it, said Cate, not making a move.

      Adam got up. Cate and her dad were looking at him. He let them sweat for a couple of seconds. The sun came out and all the glass in town blazed with cold reflected fire. He went to the kitchen, leaving the door open. This also had meaning in their festive entertainment.

      He put a couple of pots of salted water on to boil, located the frozen sprouts and started peeling the tatties. The dog waddled in and collapsed panting on the lino with the effort. Adam tossed a scrap of potato peel in front of his nose. The beast didn’t even sniff it, he just looked at Adam pityingly. Don’t look so superior, said Adam. Your children will eat scraps and be glad of them. They’ll make a dog that eats all the rubbish we throw away. Eh Samm? Want to have your genes altered and eat teabags? He knelt down in front of the dog and scratched it behind its ears. You’re not a Mercian dog, are you? he whispered. Just keep listening to me havering. We had this same conversation last Christmas, eh. It’s crap, isn’t it?

      Samm got up and walked out of the kitchen. Cate and her dad were talking. You couldn’t make out the words, not that you’d understand them if you could. Adam stood still for a while, listening, with his hands in the water of the basin, gripping the knife, the slivers of peel rocking on the surface tickling his wrists. Great long speeches they were making to each other. What the fuck about? It sounded eloquent and interesting. He only heard his own name mentioned once. Ad-dam. He’d never be able to prove she spoke better in Mercian, even if he learned it, especially if he learned it, what could he do but slow her down, but he knew for certain, even though she denied it, that she was better in Mercian. Her English was perfect of course in a way that you didn’t think about it but her Mercian was perfect in a way that you did. It was like an otter, there was nothing to prove they preferred land or water, but you knew they liked pussing about in the river more, you just had to look at them. Dryk, the in-law kept saying, dryk.

      Adam stuck the peeled tatties in the pot and went and leaned back against the windowsill, looking down the kitchen. He tapped the box in his jeans pocket with the flat of his fingertips and didn’t take it out. That was another Mercian word he knew: cygaret. Also televysion, radyo, VCR and wheel. Wheel! That was a giveaway. They