The Book Collector Read online

  The Book Collector

  Alice Thompson’s new novel is a Gothic story of book collecting, mutilation and madness. Violet is obsessed with the books of fairy tales her husband acquires, but her growing delusions see her confined in an asylum. As she recovers and is released a terrifying series of events is unleashed.

  Praise for Alice Thompson

  “What makes a book happen? Where does literary inspiration come from? These are some of the underlying questions asked by Alice Thompson’s deliciously creepy tale that is almost an homage to surreal horror stories such as Angela Carter’s The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman and John Fowles’s The Magus ... Her prose style tackles these questions in spare and simple language, devoid of drama and, it would seem, ambiguity, and in that sense, she avoids echoing the richness of both Angela Carter and John Fowles, even as she appears to be paying her tribute to both of them. It’s a wise decision, as this prose style also matches better the sparse landscape of the island itself. This is a simple yet clever tale, gently satirising literary ambition as it explores the darker sources of inspiration, and told with all the supernatural horror of the best Hammer stories..” —LESLEY McDOWELL The Scotsman

  “Thompson’s gripping narrative invites the reader to solve the mystery of Burnt Island and the true purpose of Max Long’s fellowship. A dark, compelling novel with strong themes of paranoia and strange eroticism throughout.” —LIZZIE GREENHALGH The Lady

  “Haunting, strange, Kafkaesque, poetic mystery.” — IAN RANKIN on The Existential Detective

  “A gothic music video of a novel that whirls with weirdness... madly energetic ... genuinely scary.” — STEPHEN KING on Pharos

  The Book Collector

  ALICE THOMPSON was born and brought up in Edinburgh. She was the keyboard player with post-punk eighties band The Woodentops and joint winner, with Graham Swift, of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction for her first novel, Justine. Her second novel, Pandora’s Box, was shortlisted for the Stakis Prize for Scottish Writer of the Year. Her other novels are Pharos, The Falconer, The Existential Detective and, most recently, Burnt Island. Alice Thompson is Lecturer in Creative Writing at Edinburgh University.

  Also by Alice Thompson

  Justine (1996)

  Pandora’s Box (1998)

  Pharos: A Ghost Story (2002)

  The Falconer (2008)

  The Existential Detective (2010)

  Burnt Island (2013)

  for Nick Royle

  Chapter 1

  She waited, sitting on the window seat, for the carriage to drive up the long avenue to their country house. Violet was looking forward to her husband Archie’s return from London. The daffodils that bordered the driveway held their golden heads still. Later, a servant would perhaps bring them drinks in the drawing room, and Archie would lounge back in the velvet wing chair by the fire as he told her all about his day at work. As she waited she could hear, from the nursery, the baby crying again.

  Archie had come into her life over a year ago. They had met by chance. She had been sitting at an outside table in a small artisan café off Oxford Circus, reading a book. She had been wearing one of her late mother’s best hobble skirts that had accentuated her waist, and a delicate cerise blouse. A middle-aged man had sat down at an adjoining table, in a quick agile movement, as if on impulse. It was this apparent intuitiveness that had at first attracted her to him.

  ‘What is the book you are reading?’ he asked, before ordering a coffee from the waiter.

  She had looked up at him but he had not smiled. He had just stared at her with relentless eyes, not looking at her, but straight through to her thoughts. At that moment, she felt she could never be anywhere else but here again.

  ‘It’s a book my parents gave me,’ she replied, holding his gaze. She did not add that she had recently lost them both.

  She tried to hold on to the details of his face but could only decipher a certain ponderousness that weighed down his symmetrical open features and clouded his dark blue eyes.

  ‘You seem very young. How old are you?’

  ‘Nineteen.’

  ‘So what brings you to London?’

  ‘I’ve just come in from Camberwell. I’ve come to look for work. Perhaps in one of the dress shops.’

  ‘I wish you luck,’ he said.

  Was he flirting with her? She wasn’t sure. His language sounded flirtatious but he appeared serious. She noticed his nails had been bitten down to the quick and the fingertips were tobacco stained.

  He looked at her. ‘Rose. Rose,’ he repeated. ‘By any other name.’

  ‘It’s not my name,’ she replied.

  Inexplicably, she knew she had to leave. Where had that brief, arbitrary exchange of words come from? As if their thoughts had been meeting in the air between them. She felt perturbed, not quite frightened. She carefully placed her half-drunken coffee cup down on the checked tablecloth, then turned round in her seat for her wide brimmed, battered felt hat that was balancing precariously on the back of her chair. Standing, she picked up her book from the table. Without catching his eye, she started to weave in and out of the outdoor tables back onto the pavement.

  As she walked around the corner and out of sight, she felt surprised by a sense of loss. How could she be experiencing such a sensation of disappointment over a stranger? A small ivory card fell out of her book and fluttered onto the pavement. Violet picked it up to see it was a business card, printed in black ornate calligraphy, for a second-hand bookshop called Looking Glass. A Lord Archie Murray was the proprietor. He must have slipped the card inside the pages of her book when her back had been turned.

  She pocketed the card and spent the rest of the day fruitlessly looking for work but it didn’t occur to her to visit his bookshop. It was just another man showing interest in her; it meant nothing, after all.

  On her way back to the railway station, she decided to take a short cut through an arcade. It wasn’t a route that she normally took. There, halfway down the arcade, was a bookshop and she knew what its name would be before she could read the clear lettering on its frontage. But what made her decide to go in? She was intrigued by his interest in her. Should that have warned her off, rather than piqued her curiosity? But she was the sort of person who would invariably be drawn to a man’s attentiveness. Fate and character conspiring together, playmates playing tag with each other, taking turns to play ‘It’.

  Circumstance. Impulse. Desire. They all drew her to the door and placed her leather-gloved hand on the dull brass door handle. Just another unconscious decision unconcerned with its irrevocable consequences, a choice that would determine the rest of her life.

  Chapter 2

  VIOLET OPENED THE door, which set off the clanging of a bell hanging from the ceiling. The room was dimly lit. The bookshop was divided by many rows of towering bookcases. Every shelf was laden with old books. Piles of ancient leather-bound books were also heaped up on the floor. A moss-green carpet, faded and worn, was just visible beneath the clutter. There was the overarching smell of dry must.

  A young man was sitting on a stool in the corner at the far end of the bookshop, reading a book. He looked a few years older than her. His eyes were very dark and his skin had a pale lustre, like mother-of-pearl. His golden hair was curled close to his head like a cherub. He glanced up as she came in. Instead of saying ‘Can I help you?’ he simply returned to reading his book, as if he hadn’t registered her. Unsure of her next step, she decided to browse the shelves. The books were arranged miscellaneously: Botanical, Anatomical and Ornithological all propped up next to each other.

  She took out a book at random and opened it up at an anatomical drawing of a naked woman. Etched in fine ink-black lines, the bo
dy had been stripped of skin. The muscular tissue of the woman’s breasts were like the elaborate swirling of cartographic mountains.

  ‘They don’t look like what they are, do they?’

  She gave a start. The voice came from just over her shoulder. It was the low direct voice of the shop assistant. She turned to find him standing right behind her. There was a mischievous, indecent, wild look to him. She took a step back.

  ‘They’re just drawings,’ she said, closing the book and putting the book back on the shelf.

  ‘It’s interesting,’ he said, ‘when people draw reality in lines – make it schematic without flesh or colour. It’s like the skeleton of a fish. You can see the structure but it tells you nothing about how their scales flash silver in the sun. Or how they move and jump, poised in the air like apostrophes.’

  ‘I wondered if Lord Murray was in?’ she asked.

  A petulant look crossed his face at her refusal to engage in his paradoxical conversation.

  ‘He hasn’t got back yet. He’s been out most of the day. Would you like to leave a message for him?’

  He had an odd scent about him. What was it? It was sweet and flowery like honey. He seemed too vivid, like all his desires were on display. But when he had been reading, he had seemed so intact, as if he had given himself over to the interior world of the book.

  ‘Just tell him that Rose paid him a call.’

  His expression changed immediately to one of severity. The mischievousness had left him.

  ‘Is that supposed to be humorous? If so, I don’t find it funny.’

  Violet was bewildered. ‘It’s Lord Murray’s humour. Rose is just the name he called me.’

  ‘Well, I don’t understand. I can see by your face you have no idea. Rose is the name of his late wife.’

  Violet was speechless. A surge of protectiveness and empathy welled up inside her; Archie had suffered such pain and survived. It explained everything, she thought, why she had felt a vague unease in his presence. He was protecting his grief, as if it were a tender bloom that needed to flower fully before he could finally pick it and appreciate its perfume and the sensuous beauty of its silky white petals.

  She wondered if the death of Archie’s wife explained the sense she had received in the café that Archie was somehow separate from the rest of the world. Her heart went out to him. She would be patient. Already she was imagining how their love would grow, how they would have a different kind of bond together, indissoluble and strong.

  The shop assistant was looking at her. ‘Actually, now I look at you, I can see a slight resemblance, which might explain his actions. She had a kind of inconspicuous beauty that crept up on you when you weren’t looking. It was more to do with who she was.’ There was a look of such tender grief in his eyes as he said this, Violet suddenly wondered if he had been in love with Rose himself. The man’s expression changed to one of detachment, as if the thought of Rose had obviated thoughts of anything else. He was looking at Violet as if she were an object.

  ‘Have you got an address?’ he asked.

  He sounded practised. Did Archie have many women, since the death of his wife, visiting his bookshop, she wondered?

  ‘No,’ she said, quickly. ‘I might visit again, another time.’

  ‘Do you want to take that book?’

  ‘Oh.’ She looked at the book still in her hands.

  ‘No thanks.’ It was too expensive anyway. She didn’t need a book on anatomy.

  But when she got home to Camberwell, she thought of her beloved parents who were no longer with her, and she wished she did not feel so alone.

  Returning to the bookshop the following day had felt like taking the same step all over again. She knew that returning had involved another self-defining act but after that she had lost all ability to choose.

  A few days later, she and Archie visited an art gallery together. The paintings of contemporary significant figures in science, politics and the arts looked down at them. She caught her reflection in the glass of one of the portraits, her face superimposed onto the heavy bearded face of Edward Elgar. She could make out the oval shape of her face, her large dark eyes, the narrow stubborn chin. She looked round to see Archie smiling at her, as if knowing what she was doing.

  ‘You can see your face in the glass,’ she had said.

  ‘Indeed you can,’ he said. She could see in his eyes that he liked what he saw.

  Their romance had been like a fairy tale. She felt that if only she could work out which fairy tale it was, it would somehow help her. They rarely spoke – just to be in each other’s presence was enough. Previously, when she had visited cafes on her own, she had become overwhelmed by people’s chatter. But now she was with Archie, what they shared together didn’t need words. Their attraction operated in silence. Why would you need words when you could read each other’s thoughts and desires?

  All that existed was his desire for her. She felt consumed and overwhelmed. This feeling was new, frightening and unnatural. All she could think about was him. He attended to her every need, and anticipated her wishes as if he could read her mind. It was enchanting.

  A month after their first meeting he asked her to marry him; it had seemed inevitable. She had allowed him to enter her life, embraced him, without question. And he had somehow understood her receptiveness, picked up on it by silent instinct. His need of her and her response had been a perfect match.

  However, she sensed an inherent danger in this equivalence, in the hidden closeness of their intimacy and understanding. That what lay underneath was real, but the equally attractive surface was an illusion like a mirage of water on desert sand. She had been beguiled by appearance, by Archie’s charm and attractiveness, how they looked together, his love for her. She had been like a child entering a world full of wonder and awe and excitement. It was an image that presented itself to her, of beauty and security. She had not asked herself why this imagery should have such power over her.

  He too had lost his parents and had inherited, a couple of years ago, a small country estate just a few miles outside London. He never spoke of his dead wife and she never asked him about her.

  Violet and Archie were married, without guests, at a registry office. Archie’s gardener and an old school friend of his that Violet never saw again acted as witnesses. The morning after their wedding night, she woke up in his ancestral home, to see him lying next to her in their marriage bed, rumpled, unshaven and full of need. She bent over him and kissed him full on the mouth, bringing her hand down over his body, back and forth, high and low. He groaned and turned over and without opening his eyes reached for her.

  She had never known such yearning and it was as if he had woken her up from slumber like Sleeping Beauty. His elusive nature offered up promises to her that could never be fulfilled, except for that brief orgasmic moment when everything finally did make sense. He had a voice that lulled her, sustained her, with its musical indifference to anything but his own wishes and desires.

  Chapter 3

  HAVING WAITED TOO long on the window seat for Archie’s carriage to arrive, Violet went into the kitchen. She knew as lady of the house it was not where she belonged, but, when the cook and other servants were elsewhere, it was to where she always gravitated. It was a big room with a large table in the centre and a wooden dresser standing behind. Copper saucepans hung on the white-painted walls. She looked around at all the physical things and suddenly felt scared. Scared at the contrast between her emotions and all these things. Her emotions seemed incoherent but the physical reality of the world around her felt compact and self-contained.

  She picked up a plate from the dresser and deliberately let it fall from her fingers onto the tiled floor. She heard the sound of the crack, saw it break into three pieces. It was one of the ancestral plates, precious, with the crest of a lion. Was it a coincidence that she had broken one of his precious ancestral plates or was it because it was one of the precious ancestral plates that she had deliberately let i
t slip from her fingers?

  She bent down and picked up the pieces and wrapped them in newspaper and carefully placed them in the sink. She wondered if Archie would notice if a plate had gone missing. Or if he would be cross if she told him the truth. Material possessions meant a great deal to him. She had learnt during the short time they had been married how much physical things mattered to him. As if things symbolised the emotions he couldn’t have. And this plate would symbolise the most practical and simplest of losses. But she loved him, always struggled with her love for him. For if there was one defining quality about her, it was her loyalty.

  Later that evening, she took a luxurious bath. As she listened to some music on the gramophone she told herself how lucky she was to have her husband, her baby and this wonderful house, before retiring to bed. She heard Archie get in late, heard his steps on the stairs, felt the weight of his body shift down on the mattress as he got into bed, but she didn’t respond as he cuddled up to her back. She pretended to be asleep, and a few moments later she could hear his deep unconscious breathing.

  Many years later, looking back, she was amazed at the capacity we have for not wanting to confront the truth. How the humdrum of our own lives, the security of habit and comfort, prevent us from questioning the clues and hints that the truth gives us. We can ignore them, make excuses and forget whatever we want.

  She extricated herself from the sheets and went into the nursery. She listened to the baby’s soft breathing as he slept, the sweet rhythms. She softly stroked his naked back so as not to wake him. Looking at him she felt her nipples prick with leaking milk. These constantly soporific, sensuous days of Felix sleeping, waking, crying, breastfeeding, she had never felt more of an insensate animal. Archie was like a cut-out shadow moving in and out of rooms while her new identity, of giving flesh, warm milk, soothing soft hands, was her undulating reality.