River had known that: Of course he had. But the word had got lost, or at any rate, hadn’t sprung to mind when he and Erin had been discussing it. This fazed him: What else had he forgotten lately? Was there a whole page of vocabulary torn from his mind, scattering in his wake? Like the O.B. in his final days; that bright shining intelligence grown rusty, and its owner barely aware of the fact. Except for occasional moments, the memory of which River suppressed; moments in which his grandfather’s eyes had turned black with horror in the knowledge of what was happening to him.
“How did you know?”
“Well.” Stam came to a halt, the better to fix his eyes on River. “I could say it was obvious. That I’ve studied the film you sent us, and it became apparent something was missing. That that was always likely to happen, don’t you think? Items going missing in the . . . kerfuffle of books being transported?”
Kerfuffle was one way of putting it. The façade of the O.B.’s house had been removed, to ensure that any lingering toxicity had been dealt with. This wasn’t a state secret. There’d been a photograph in
“But this wasn’t a book, it was a safe,” said River. “So what are the chances this particular volume would be the one to vanish?”
“I’m not a statistician. But that would be unlikely.”
“And isn’t what happened.”
“No, of course not. I took it, as you’ve guessed. Erin too, probably.”
“Yes.”
“And you want to know why.”
In fact, the why seemed obvious to River: because it was there. You were unloading a spook’s library, and came across a treasure chest. Why wouldn’t you steal it? But what he said was, “As long as we’re here.”
Stam started walking again. They were on their second circuit, and a light breeze was blowing. It chased sunbeams around, or that was the effect beneath the quad’s largest tree, its branches’ shadows rearranging themselves as they passed. Stam said, “I wish I could tell you the box contained state secrets. We might both feel better about that. Well, you might.”
River felt the ground shift beneath his feet. “What do you mean?” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he wanted them recalled; wanted nothing more to do with this conversation. He could walk away, unpark his car, perform the morning in reverse. Fold the landscape behind him as he tootled back to London, to Sid, pretending nothing had happened; that the book was a book, that it had turned up again. But it was too late for any of that, even the parts of it that were possible.
“He was a good man, your grandfather, even a great one. He achieved a lot. That the Park is still standing, that we have an intelligence service esteemed the world over—that’s down to him. Don’t forget that.”
“What was in the box?”
“But he was still just a man.”
“What was in the box?”
“The safe,” Stam corrected. And then repeated himself: “Just a man, with a man’s ordinary wants. I found nothing that would make you think better of him, but that doesn’t mean you should think him any the worse.”
He thought: I could hold this old man down on the ground and pound the truth out of him until it bleeds. I need to know everything. I need to know now. But the breeze was still pushing its way round the quad, ruffling the grass and setting leaves to trembling, and the day was just too ordinary—too civilised—to shatter.
Instead, he took refuge in the obvious. “You found pornography,” he said.
“Yes.”
“You found pornography.” It didn’t sound any better, second time round. “Was it illegal?”
“It wasn’t—it wasn’t
The very hedging, the prevarication, made it all so much, so much worse.
“River,” said Stam, and his voice was gentle. “I destroyed it. All right? I destroyed what I found, the safe too.”
“Why the safe?” Irrelevance is a shelter; stops you thinking about anything else. “Why not just put it back?”
“I should have done. I’m sorry. You need never have known about any of this. But I wasn’t thinking. I burned what it contained, and I threw the safe, the box, in the fire too. It’s all gone. You don’t ever need to think about it.”
“Easy to say. I mean—”
But he didn’t know what he meant. His grandfather had raised him, he and Rose. When he thought about being an adult, living a proper life, it was David and Rose he was thinking about. That his grandfather had a secret life was a given. That the secrets it held might be so banal: This threatened to unmoor him.
“We all have things we’d like to hide in boxes,” Stam was saying. “That we wouldn’t want exposed. It doesn’t undo all the good in our lives.”
