A Splash of Red by Antonia Fraser Page B

Sussex poor. ["But the book was my idea, Valentine," thought Jemima.] My dear girl, throughout the whole of August, I just can't wait to leave my world-famous Elizabethan garden for the ordered tranquillity of my Bloomsbury office. Those same sweaty professors from Minnesota also hie themselves inexorably to Helmet. Weekends, when the office isn't functioning, are pure hell. It's not so much them asking questions about the history of Helmet - Mummy always insists on answering them by the light of invention anyway - as telling me things about the place. And there I am, at one and the same time a cringing victim and the unworthy possessor. At Helmet in the summer they have me at their mercy; I much prefer the anonymity of Bloomsbury.'
    It struck Jemima, glancing from her new vantage point of B9, that for the purposes of disappearing in London, the Reading Room would be ideal; for everyone, that is, except the very few physically famous. It was not ideal for Jemima Shore, for example.
    As she looked up the press marks of the books she needed in the lumbering leather catalogue, a girl with long brown hair and a sharp nose spoke softly at her elbow.
    'Miss Shore, I simply loved The Unvisited. It's all true, so true; the artificiality of our geriatric culture ...'
    'Thank you so much,' said Jemima hastily, beginning to move away.
    'Just one question. It's rather personal I'm afraid; in fact I did think of writing to you—'
    Firmly, Jemima filled in SHORE J. on the white book slip, gave the reference number, hoping devoutly she had got it right, and beat a quick retreat, murmuring: 'Yes, why don't you?'
    The girl stared after her. Her gaze was both annoyed and vulnerable. Jemima posted her slips, six of them, in the little brown tray at the central desk and settled down in the harbour of B9 to await her books. One to two hours was said to be the average delivery time: perhaps on a Saturday she would be luckier. B for Beware - yes, indeed, beware of strangers accosting you in the British Library.
    But then it seemed that no place was absolutely ideal for Jemima Shore's planned disappearance. The tomb-like weekend quiet of the concrete Bloomsbury block had been disrupted already by one visitor and one squatter - no, revivifier, but the interruption was the same; what was more the revivifier showed no signs of leaving, and the visitor might be lurking anywhere in the district. There had been that cacophony of telephone calls both from the pathetic Stovers and a so-far-unidentified male of presumed Irish extraction.
    Only Chloe Fontaine possessed the magic art of disappearance, eluding a persistent ex-lover, worried elderly parents, and her great friend Jemima Shore with equally maddening grace.
    Jemima had a book of her own with which to while away the waiting time - Fallen Child, which she had begun to reread with pleasure while in the Pizza Perfecta - but the heat and stickiness made her more inclined to put her head in her hands and rest. As for B for Beware, V for Violence and the rest of it, she put that down at Kevin John Athlone's door. The British Library was, if anywhere, a safe refuge from physical violence; no possibility of assault here (except verbally by importunate strangers).
    As a resting-place it was also unparalleled, if you could stand the airless atmosphere. The man - or was it a woman - next to her had already given up the struggle for consciousness. The fair head was bowed onto the desk and the pile of delivered books ignored. Jemima recalled other people sleeping on their hands in the Reading Room in the past, on a hot afternoon, but they had been older; retired professors perhaps, turned out by their wives to graze peacefully in these quiet pastures. But there was something different about the attitude of this slumbering flaxen poll. The figure was utterly slumped, giving the impression of total abandon, even despair. It was almost as if its owner were dead rather than asleep, had found his or her last