Summary
Tony comments on how he belongs to a local history club and still has an interest in the subject. However, he finds that recent events like 9/11 are more difficult to grasp than the ancient history of the Romans and Greeks, whose histories have more or less been agreed upon. More recent history is harder to pin down because it relies on the fallible memories of those who remember it.
Tony receives a letter from a lawyer. He has been named in Mrs. Sarah Ford’s will. It takes him a while to remember who she is—someone whose first name he probably never knew. She has left him five hundred pounds and two documents. He sits down and thinks back to his visit to Veronica’s parents’ house forty years prior, but can’t think of why Veronica’s mother would consider him significant enough to be in her will.
Tony speaks to the lawyer and learns that one of the documents is in Veronica’s possession. The other is a short note from Mrs. Ford telling Tony he thinks it is right for him to have what should have been attached to the letter. She says Adrian always spoke fondly of him. She apologizes for the way her family treated Tony all those years ago and adds that, “It may sound odd, but I think the last months of [Adrian's] life were happy.”
He phones the lawyer again and learns that the other document is Adrian’s diary. Veronica has told the lawyer she isn’t ready to part with it. Tony asks for Veronica’s address, but the lawyer says she would need permission before providing it. Tony also asks for Veronica’s brother Jack’s contact information. He then meets with his own lawyer for advice. His advice is to leave the matter alone because estates sometimes take two years to settle. His pressure would also risk the diary getting “lost.” Two weeks later, the other lawyer hands over Jack Ford’s email address. He emails asking for help in persuading Veronica. Ten days later, Jack replies that a word from him on Tony’s behalf might make things worse.
Tony meets his ex-wife for lunch and fills her in on the diary and will. M speculates that he may still have feelings for Veronica, joking about him rolling up his sleeve for Veronica to rub against. Tony blushes at the insinuation. He claims there’s no “undoused fire” in his breast. M suggests he could try to steal it back, but warns him against getting himself in a situation where he’ll unintentionally discover something unpleasant.
Another week later, Jack sends his sister’s email address and asks Tony not to tell her where he got it. Tony begins his email to Veronica by stating that her brother provided the address. The narrative cuts ahead in time to Veronica’s reply: “Blood money?” Tony doesn’t know what to make of it. He decides she’s just as difficult today as she was forty years ago. Having learned from a lawyer friend how to be persistent enough to wear people down, Tony sends her further emails.
Eventually, Veronica’s lawyer informs him that she has provided a fragment of Adrian’s diary for him. It is a page in which Adrian has a set of numbered paragraphs exploring “the question of accumulation.” He wonders to what extent human relationships might be expressed in a logical formula. He writes: “Thus how might you express an accumulation containing the integers b, a1, a2, s, v? a2 + v + a1 x s = b?”
At the end of the page, Adrian writes, “So, for instance, if Tony…” This is where the photocopy of the page cuts off. Tony thinks of the document as Adrian making a rational argument for his own suicide. He can only speculate on what the rest of the sentence might have said. But regardless of what the hypotheticals are, they all implicate him.
Tony continues to email Veronica, doggedly pursuing the rest of the diary. Finally she replies, asking to meet on the Wobbly Bridge—the pedestrian bridge over the Thames linking St. Paul’s to Tate Modern. In person, she appears impatient. She comments on how he is bald now. He privately thinks it is a mistake to have kept her old hairstyle rather than change it to something more appropriate for her age.
After a passive-aggressive exchange, Veronica says she can’t give him Adrian’s diary because she burnt it. She says people shouldn’t read others’ diaries. Tony says her mother must have, and she must have as well if she sent him that page. She shrugs and gives him an envelope, saying he can read this. With that, she walks off.
Analysis
Barnes opens the novel’s second part by building on the theme of memory’s mutability. Tony comments that he has never lost his interest in history—ancient history in particular. As he points out, it is paradoxically easier to agree upon what happened during times that are further in the past. With recent events like 9/11 and Britain’s transformation under Margaret Thatcher, there is going to be much more dispute over what exactly happened because there are too many living, changeable memories to work from.
Tony’s trip back into his own fallible memory—the time period that made up Part 1—turns out to be a letter from a lawyer saying he has been named in Veronica’s mother’s will. To emphasize his surprise and lack of connection to the woman, Tony remarks on how it takes him a moment to realize who Sarah Ford even is; he wonders if he ever learned her first name. Adding to the mystery is her comment that Adrian’s last months alive “were happy,” a statement whose significance Tony will only understand at the end of the book.
Intrigued by the unexpected excitement in what is otherwise the dull life of a retired arts administrator, Tony pursues the matter, chasing down the diary he has been bequeathed. The theme of reticence arises again when Veronica responds to his emails with terse replies, opting for indirect communication rather than explaining to Tony why he was named in Sarah’s will.
Veronica’s indirect style of communication continues with the fragment of the diary she sends Tony. With the equation Adrian has laid out on the page, Tony can only conclude that Adrian used logic to outline his reason for killing himself. As though she is purposefully goading him, Veronica chooses a page that ends mid-sentence on Tony’s name. Tony has no choice but to continue pestering Veronica for information that will bring about the clarity he seeks.
At their first encounter in forty years, Veronica and Tony speak to each other in a hostile but potentially flirtatious manner while judging each other’s appearances. Despite having aged four decades, it is as though they are continuing the conversation they had when they agreed they could never be friends. Tony learns Veronica has burned the diary and so cannot give it over—a claim Tony doesn’t readily accept. She does hand over another document, however, declining to say what it is, or why. As ever, Veronica’s reticence only invites more intrigue as Tony is left to wonder what he is being pulled into.
