He advanced on Smiley, massive and genial, with his splendid mane of grey hair falling anyhow across his forehead, and his gown billowing behind him.
‘Smiley? Ah! You’ve met True, have you – Miss Truebody, my housekeeper? Marvellous this snow, isn’t it? Pure Bruegel! Seen the boys skating by the Eyot? Marvellous sight! Black suits, coloured scarves, pale sun; all there, isn’t it, all there! Bruegel to the life. Marvellous!’ He took Smiley’s coat and flung it on to a decrepit deal chair with a rush seat which stood in the corner of the hall.
‘You like that chair – you recognise it?’
‘I don’t think I do,’ Smiley replied in some confusion.
‘Ah, you should, you know, you should! Had it made in Provence before the war. Little carpenter I knew. Place it now? Facsimile of Van Gogh’s yellow chair; some people recognise it.’ He led the way down a corridor and into a large comfortable study adorned with Dutch tiles, small pieces of Renaissance sculpture, mysterious bronzes, china dogs and unglazed vases; and Fielding himself towering magnificent among them.
As senior housemaster of Carne, Fielding wore, in place of the customary academic dress, a wonderful confection of heavy black skirts and legal bib, like a monk in evening dress. All this imparted a suggestion of clerical austerity in noted contrast to the studied flamboyance of his personality. Evidently conscious of this, he sought to punctuate the solemnity of his uniform and give to it a little of his own temperament, by adorning it with flowers carefully chosen from his garden. He had scandalised the tailors of Carne, whose frosted windows carried the insignia of royal households, by having buttonholes let into his gown. These he would fill according to his mood with anything from hibernia to bluebells. This evening he wore a rose, and from its freshness Smiley deduced that he had this minute put it into place, having ordered it specially.
‘Sherry wine or Madeira?’
‘Thank you; a glass of sherry.’
‘Tart’s drink, Madeira,’ Fielding called, as he poured from a decanter, ‘but boys like it. Perhaps that’s why. They’re frightful flirts.’ He handed Smiley a glass and added, with a dramatic modification of his voice:
‘We’re all rather subdued at the moment by this dreadful business. We’ve never had anything quite like it, you know. Have you seen the evening papers?’
‘No, I’m afraid I haven’t. But the Sawley Arms is packed with journalists of course.’
‘They’ve really gone to town. They’ve got the Army out in Hampshire, playing about with mine-detectors. God knows what they expect to find.’
‘How have the boys taken it?’
‘They adore it! My own house has been particularly fortunate, of course, because the Rodes were dining here that night. Some oaf from the police even wanted to question one of my boys.’
‘Indeed,’ said Smiley innocently. ‘What on earth about?’
‘Oh, God knows,’ Fielding replied abruptly, and then, changing the subject, he asked, ‘You knew my brother well, didn’t you? He talked about you, you know.’
‘Yes, I knew Adrian very well. We were close friends.’
‘In the war, too?’
‘Yes.’
‘Were you in his crowd, then?’
‘What crowd?’
‘Steed-Asprey, Jebedee. All those people.’
‘Yes.’
‘I never really heard how he died. Did you?’
‘No.’
‘We didn’t see much of one another in later years, Adrian and I. Being a fraud, I can’t afford to be seen beside the genuine article,’ Fielding declared, with something of his earlier panache. Smiley was spared the embarrassment of a reply by a quiet knock at the door, and a tall red-haired boy came timidly into the room.
‘I’ve called the Adsum, sir, if you’re ready, sir.’
‘Damn,’ said Fielding, emptying his glass. ‘Prayers.’ He turned to Smiley.
‘Meet Perkins, my head prefect. Musical genius, but a problem in the schoolroom. That right, Tim? Stay here or come as you like. It only lasts ten minutes.’
‘Rather less tonight, sir,’ said Perkins. ‘It’s the Nunc Dimittis.’
‘Thank God for small mercies,’ Fielding declared, tugging briefly at his bib, as he led Smiley at a spanking pace out into the corridor and across the hall, with Perkins stalking along behind them. Fielding was speaking all the time without bothering to turn his head:
‘I’m glad you’ve chosen this evening to come. I never entertain on Fridays as a rule because everyone else does, though none of us quite knows what to do about entertaining at the moment. Felix D’Arcy will be coming tonight, but that’s hardly entertaining. D’Arcy’s a professional. Incidentally, we normally dress in the evening, but it doesn’t matter.’
Smiley’s heart sank. They turned a corner and entered another corridor.
‘We have prayers at all hours here. The Master’s revived the seven Day Hours for the Offices: Prime, Terce, Sext and so on. A surfeit during the Half, abstinence during the holidays, that’s the system, like games. Useful in the house for roll-calls, too.’ He led the way down yet another corridor, flung open a double door at the end of it and marched straight into the dining-room, his gown filling gracefully behind him. The boys were waiting for him.
‘More sherry? What did you think of prayers? They sing quite nicely, don’t they? One or two good tenors. We tried some plainsong last Half; quite good, really quite good. D’Arcy will be here soon. He’s a frightful toad. Looks like a Sickert model fifty years after – all trousers and collar. However, you’re lucky his sister isn’t accompanying him. She’s worse!’
‘What’s his subject?’ They were back in Fielding’s study.
‘Subject! I’m afraid we don’t have subjects here. None of us has read a word on any subject since we left University.’ He lowered his voice and added darkly, ‘That’s if we went to University. D’Arcy teaches French. D’Arcy is Senior Tutor by election, bachelor by profession, sublimated pansy by inclination …’ he was standing quite still now, his head thrown back and his right hand stretched out towards Smiley, ‘… and his subject is other people’s shortcomings. He is principally, however, self-appointed majordomo of Carne protocol. If you wear a gown on a bicycle, reply incorrectly to an invitation, make a fault in the placement of your dinner guests or speak of a colleague as “Mister”, D’Arcy will find you out and admonish you.’
‘What are the duties of Senior Tutor, then?’ Smiley asked, just for something to say.
‘He’s the referee between the classicists and the scientists; arranges the timetable and vets the exam. results. But principally, poor man, he must reconcile the Arts with the Sciences.’ He shook his head sagely. ‘And it takes a better man than D’Arcy to do that. Not, mind you,’ he added wearily, ‘that it makes the least difference who wins the extra hour on Friday evenings. Who cares? Not the boys, poor dears, that’s certain.’
Fielding talked on, at random and always in superlatives, sometimes groping in the air with his hand as if to catch the more elusive metaphors; now of his colleagues with caustic derision; now of boys with compassion if not with understanding; now of the Arts with fervour – and the studied bewilderment of a lonely disciple.
‘Carne isn’t a school. It’s a sanatorium for intellectual lepers. The symptoms began when we came down from University; a gradual putrefaction of our intellectual extremities. From day to day our minds die, our spirits atrophy and rot. We watch the process in one another, hoping to forget it in ourselves.’ He paused, and looked reflectively at his hands.
‘In me the process is complete. You see before you a dead soul, and Carne is the body I live in.’ Much pleased by this confession, Fielding held out his great arms so that the sleeves of his gown resembled the wings of a giant bat; ‘the Vampire of Carne,’ he declared, bowing deeply. ‘Alcoolique et poète!’ A bellow of laughter followed this display.
Smiley was fascinated by Fielding, by his size, his voice, the wanton inconstancy of his temperamen
t, by his whole big-screen style; he found himself attracted and repelled by this succession of contradictory poses; he wondered whether he was supposed to take part in the performance, but Fielding seemed so dazzled by the footlights that he was indifferent to the audience behind them. The more Smiley watched, the more elusive seemed the character he was trying to comprehend: changeful but sterile, daring but fugitive; colourful, unbounded, ingenuous, yet deceitful and perverse. Smiley began to wish he could acquire the material facts of Fielding – his means, his ambitions and disappointments.
His reverie was interrupted by Miss Truebody. Felix D’Arcy had arrived.
No candles, and a cold supper admirably done by Miss Truebody. Not claret, but hock, passed round like port. And at last, at long last, Fielding mentioned Stella Rode.
They had been talking rather dutifully of the Arts and the Sciences. This would have been dull (for it was uninformed) had not D’Arcy constantly been goaded by Fielding, who seemed anxious to exhibit D’Arcy in his worst light. D’Arcy’s judgements of people and problems were largely coloured by what he considered ‘seemly’ (a favourite word) and by an effeminate malice towards his colleagues. After a while Fielding asked who was replacing Rode during his absence, to which D’Arcy said, ‘No one,’ and added unctuously:
‘It was a terrible shock to the community, this affair.’
‘Nonsense,’ Fielding retorted. ‘Boys love disaster. The further we are from death the more attractive it seems. They find the whole affair most exhilarating.’
‘The publicity has been most unseemly,’ said D’Arcy, ‘most. I think that has been prominent in the minds of many of us in the Common Room.’ He turned to Smiley:
‘The press, you know, is a constant worry here. In the past it could never have happened. Formerly our great families and institutions were not subjected to this intrusion. No, indeed not. But today all that is changed. Many of us are compelled to subscribe to the cheaper newspapers for this very reason. One Sunday newspaper mentioned no fewer than four of Hecht’s old boys in one edition. All of them in an unseemly context, I may say. And of course such papers never fail to mention that the boy is a Carnian. You know, I suppose, that we have the young Prince here. (I myself have the honour to supervise his French studies.) The young Sawley is also at Carne. The activity of the press during his parents’ divorce suit was deplorable. Quite deplorable. The Master wrote to the Press Council, you know. I drafted the letter myself. But on this tragic occasion they have excelled themselves. We even had the press at Compline last night, you know, waiting for the Special Prayer. They occupied the whole of the two rear pews on the west side. Hecht was doing Chapel Duty and tried to have them removed.’ He paused, raised his eyebrows in gentle reproach and smiled. ‘He had no business to, of course, but that never stopped the good Hecht.’ He turned to Smiley. ‘One of our athletic brethren,’ he explained.
‘Stella was too common for you, Felix, wasn’t she?’
‘Not at all,’ said D’Arcy quickly. ‘I would not have you say that of me, Terence. I am by no means discriminatory in the matter of class; merely of manners. I grant you, in that particular field, I found her wanting.’
‘In many ways she was just what we needed,’ Fielding continued, addressing Smiley and ignoring D’Arcy. ‘She was everything we’re forced to ignore – she was red-brick, council estates, new towns, the very antithesis of Carne!’ He turned suddenly to D’Arcy and said, ‘But to you, Felix, she was just bad form.’
‘Not at all; merely unsuitable.’
Fielding turned to Smiley in despair.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘We talk academic here, you know, wear academic dress and hold High Table dinners in the Common Room; we have long graces in Latin that none of us can translate. We go to the Abbey and the wives sit in the hencoop in their awful hats. But it’s a charade. It means nothing.’
D’Arcy smiled wanly.
‘I cannot believe, my dear Terence, that anyone who keeps such an excellent table as yourself can have so low an opinion of the refinements of social conduct.’ He looked to Smiley for support and Smiley dutifully echoed the compliment. ‘Besides, we know Terence of old at Carne. I am afraid we are accustomed to his roar.’
‘I know why you disliked that woman, Felix. She was honest, and Carne has no defence against that kind of honesty.’
D’Arcy suddenly became very angry indeed.
‘Terence, I will not have you say this. I simply will not have it. I feel I have a certain duty at Carne, as indeed we all have, to restore and maintain those standards of behaviour which suffered so sadly in the war. I am sensible that this determination has made me on more than one occasion unpopular. But such comment or advice as I offer is never – I beg you to notice this – is never directed against personalities, only against behaviour, against unseemly lapses in conduct. I will acknowledge that more than once I was compelled to address Rode on the subject of his wife’s conduct. That is a matter quite divorced from personalities, Terence. I will not have it said that I disliked Mrs Rode. Such a suggestion would be disagreeable at all times, but under the present tragic circumstances it is deplorable. Mrs Rode’s own … background and education did not naturally prepare her for our ways; that is quite a different matter. It does, however, illustrate the point that I wish to emphasise, Terence: it was a question of enlightenment, not of criticism. Do I make myself clear?’
‘Abundantly,’ Fielding answered dryly.
‘Did the other wives like her?’ Smiley ventured.
‘Not entirely,’ D’Arcy replied crisply.
‘The wives! My God!’ Fielding groaned, putting his hand to his brow. There was a pause.
‘Her clothes, I believe, were a source of distress to some of them. She also frequented the public laundry. This, too, would not make a favourable impression. I should add that she did not attend our church …’
‘Did she have any close friends among the wives?’ Smiley persisted.
‘I believe young Mrs Snow took to her.’
‘And you say she was dining here the night she was murdered?’
‘Yes,’ said Fielding quietly, ‘Wednesday. And it was Felix and his sister who took in poor Rode afterwards …’ He glanced at D’Arcy.
‘Yes, indeed,’ said D’Arcy abruptly. His eyes were on Fielding, and it seemed to Smiley that something had passed between them. ‘We shall never forget, never … Terence, if I may talk shop for just one moment, Perkins’s construe is abysmal; I declare I have never seen work like it. Is he unwell? His mother is a most cultured woman, a cousin of the Samfords, I am told.’
Smiley looked at him and wondered. His dinner-jacket was faded, green with age. Smiley could almost hear him saying it had belonged to his grandfather. The skin of his face was so unlined that he somehow suggested fatness without being fat. His voice was pitched on one insinuating note, and he smiled all the time, whether he was speaking or not. The smile never left his smooth face; it was worked into the malleable fabric of his flesh, stretching his lips across his perfect teeth and opening the corners of his red mouth, so that it seemed to be held in place by the invisible fingers of his dentist. Yet D’Arcy’s face was far from unexpressive; every mark showed. The smallest movement of his mouth or nose, the quickest glance or frown, were there to read and interpret. And he wanted to change the subject. Not away from Stella Rode (for he returned to discussing her himself a moment later), but away from the particular evening on which she died, away from the precise narration of events. And what was more, there was not a doubt in Smiley’s mind that Fielding had seen it too, that in that look which passed between them was a pact of fear, a warning perhaps, so that from that moment Fielding’s manner changed, he grew sullen and preoccupied, in a way that puzzled Smiley long afterwards.
D’Arcy turned to Smiley and addressed him with cloying intimacy.
‘Do forgive my deplorable descent into Carne gossip. You find us a little cut off, here, do you not? We are often held to be cut off, I know. Carne
is a “Snob School”, that is the cry. You may read it every day in the gutter press. And yet, despite the claims of the avant-garde,’ he said, glancing slyly at Fielding, ‘I may say that no one could be less of a snob than Felix D’Arcy.’ Smiley noticed his hair. It was very fine and ginger, growing from the top and leaving his pink neck bare.
‘Take poor Rode, for instance. I certainly don’t hold Rode’s background against him in any way, poor fellow. The grammar schools do a splendid job, I am sure. Besides, he settled down here very well. I told the Master so. I said to him that Rode had settled down well; he does Chapel Duty quite admirably – that was the very point I made. I hope I have played my part, what is more, in helping him to fit in. With careful instruction, such people can, as I said to the Master, learn our customs and even our manners; and the Master agreed.’
Smiley’s glass was empty and D’Arcy, without consulting Fielding, filled it for him from the decanter. His hands were polished and hairless, like the hands of a girl.
‘But,’ he continued, ‘I must be honest. Mrs Rode did not adapt herself so willingly to our ways.’ Still smiling, he sipped delicately from his glass. He wants to put the record straight, thought Smiley.
‘She would never really have fitted in at Carne; that is my opinion – though I am sure I never voiced it while she was alive. Her background was against her. The fault was not hers – it was her background which, as I say, was unfortunate. Indeed, if we may speak frankly and in confidence, I have reason to believe it was her past that brought about her death.’
A Murder of Quality Page 5