Free Pantheon by Sam Bourne Page B

packed into four tins – among them the death warrant of Charles I. Quite why they thought such treasures would be safer here than anywhere else in Oxford, James was not sure: perhaps they simply put their faith in the modern.
    On the first floor, he could see a last remaining librarian, a woman around his age. She had a wireless set on her desk and it was switched on, a sign not only that she was off-duty and packing up for the day but also of how different life had become: you would never have seen a wireless in a library before, but everyone was glued to the device these days, awaiting word of the war. As he approached the desk, he heard the BBC announcer conclude that afternoon’s play,
Adolf in Blunderland.
Some satirical effort aimed at lifting the nation’s spirits, James guessed.
    The woman turned around. She looked nothing like Florence but something in the brightness of her eyes reminded James of his wife and, for a split-second, it seemed to suck the wind out of him. In that instant he was somewhere else entirely, in a pokey little café not far from here – The Racket – where, thanks to rationing, he and his wife had had to make do with a supper of baked beans on toast. They had been arguing, he had gone too far and she had calmly got up and walked out, leaving him to face the embarrassed stares of the staff and the other diners. He had run out after her, searching street after street, eventually finding her just a few hundred yards away from their home. They had patched it up, he couldn’t remember how. But for nearly an hour he had feared that he had lost her. And something in this woman’s face brought back that fear now, made him realize he had been fending it off all day.
    ‘I’m sorry, sir, the library is now closed for the day. We will be open again tomorrow morning.’
    James stared back at her, suddenly unsure what to say, where even to begin.
    ‘Sir?’
    She had dipped the volume on the wireless, but he could hear the start of the six o’clock bulletin: something about Vichy France formally breaking off diplomatic relations with Britain. Unplanned, he began to speak. ‘I’m afraid something serious has happened. My wife has gone missing. One of the last places she was seen was here. I’d like to know what she was here for. It may enable us to find her.’
    The woman blinked a few times, then glanced over James’s shoulder, as if checking to see if anyone else was around. ‘The rules are quite strict on—’
    James looked directly into her eyes. ‘I quite understand that. And that’s how it should be. But this is quite an exceptional situation.’ She said nothing, which he took as a good sign. ‘I’m desperately worried for her, you see.’
    ‘I’d like to help, but the request forms are not kept here. I’d have to—’ She looked away again, towards a door just behind her. He couldn’t tell if she was worried that someone might come – or hoping that they would. She was a woman alone in a large, empty building with a man who had just described himself as desperate.
    ’Would you? I really would be extremely grateful.’
    Speaking hurriedly, conscious that she was breaking the rules, she handed him a yellow slip and asked him to write on it the name of the lender concerned. ‘And the date please, Mr …’
    ‘Zennor. Dr James Zennor.’
    She took the piece of paper, turned and went through the door behind her. James looked upward then around, taking in the vast room. He had barely visited here since the opening: he preferred to do his reading in the Radcliffe Camera, where he came across fewer of his colleagues. But Florence had embraced it right away. ‘Just think: I will be one of the very first scholars to have worked in a building that will probably stand for a thousand years.’ She paused, then gave him that smile he could not resist. ‘I like being first.’
    He began to pace, looking at the rows of desks, new and barely scratched – lacking the dents, cracks,