by Simon Raven
Copyright & Information
New Seed For Old
First published in 1987
© Estate of Simon Raven; House of Stratus 1987-2011
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The right of Simon Raven to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.
This edition published in 2011 by House of Stratus, an imprint of
Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,
Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.
Typeset by House of Stratus.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.
EAN ISBN Edition
1842322044 9781842322048 Print
0755129849 9780755129843 Kindle
0755130006 9780755130009 Epub
0755153952 9780755153954 Epdf
This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author’s imagination.
Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.
www.houseofstratus.com
About the Author
Born in 1927 into a middle class household, Simon Raven became both an outrageous figure and an acclaimed writer and novelist. His father inherited a hosiery business and did not have to work, his mother was an internationally successful athlete. The young Simon, however, viewed the household as ‘respectable, prying, puritanical, penny-pinching, and joyless’.
Initial education was through attending Cordwalles Preparatory School, near Camberley, Surrey, where he later claimed to have been ‘deftly and very agreeably’ seduced by the games master. From there he went on to Charterhouse, but was eventually expelled in 1945 for serial homosexuality. Nonetheless, he still managed to wangle his way into King’s College, Cambridge, to read classics, after a two year gap to complete his national service in the Parachute Regiment.
Raven had loved classics from an early age and read daily in the original, often translating from Latin to Greek to English, or any combination thereof.
At Cambridge, he probably felt completely at home for the first time in his life. In his own words, ‘nobody minded what you did in bed, or what you said about God’. This was civilised to his mind and he was also later to write, in a somewhat fatalistic manner: ‘we aren’t here for long, and when we do go, that’s that. Finish. So, for God’s sake, enjoy yourself now - and sod anyone who tries to stop you.’ Despite revelling in Cambridge life, or perhaps because of it, Raven fell heavily into debt for the first time whilst there and also faced his first real responsibility. Susan Kilner, a fellow undergraduate was expecting his child and in 1951 they married. He took little interest in the marriage, however, and they were divorced some six years later.
He also failed to submit a thesis needed to support an offered fellowship, so fled both Cambridge and his marriage for the army, where he was commissioned into the King’s Own Shropshire Light Infantry. After service in Germany and Kenya, during which time he set up a brothel for his men to use, he was posted to regimental headquarters in Shropshire. It was here that debt once again forced a change in direction after he lost considerable sums at the local racetrack.
Resigning his commission so as to avoid being court-martialled, he turned to writing having won over a publisher who agreed to pay him weekly in cash, and also pick up bills for sustenance and drink. Moving to Deal in Kent he embarked upon producing a prodigious array of works which over the years included novels, essays, reviews; film scripts, radio and television plays and the scripts for television series, notably The Pallisers and Edward and Mrs Simpson. He lived in modest surroundings within rented accommodation and confined many of his excesses to London visits where his earning were dissipated quickly on food, drink and gambling – not forgetting sex which continued to feature as a major indulgence. He once wrote that the major advantage of belonging to the Reform Club in London was the presence opposite of a first class massage parlour.
In all, Simon Raven produced over twenty five novels and hundreds of other pieces, his finest achievements being reckoned to be a ten volume saga of English upper-class life, entitled Alms for Oblivion, from 1959-76 and the First Born of Egypt Series from 1984-92.
He was a conundrum; being both sophisticated and reckless; talented in the extreme yet regarding himself as not being particularly creative; but not applying this modesty (if that’s what it was) to his general behaviour, which was sometimes immodest beyond all reasonable bounds. He was exceedingly generous towards his friends; yet didn’t think twice about the position of creditors when getting into debt; was jovial, loyal and good company, but was unable to sustain a family life. He would drink like an advanced alcoholic in the evenings, but was ready to resume work promptly the following morning. He was sexually indiscriminate, but generally preferred the company of men. As a youth he possessed good looks, but a general abuse of his body in adulthood soon saw that wain.
Simon Raven died in 2001, his legacy being his writing which during his lifetime received high praise from critics and readers alike. He was a ‘one-off’, whose works will continue to delight readers for generations to come.
Queen of this Universe, doe not believe
Those rigid threats of Death; ye shall not Die:
How should ye? By the Fruit? It gives you Life
To Knowledge: By the Threat’ner? look on mee,
Mee who have touch’d and tasted, yet doth live,
And life more perfet have attaind then Fate
Meant mee, by ventring higher than my Lot.
Milton, Paradise Lost: Book IX 684-690
(The Serpent to the Woman)
PART ONE
The Singles Match
‘Of course,’ said the Marchioness Canteloupe, ‘Eton Fives is a game for four. One pair against another.’
‘I know, my lady,’ said Marius Stern.
‘You call me “Thea”. We have, when all is said, known each other for some time. We were both at Sarum’s Christening, for a start.’
‘How is Sarum?’
‘You will soon see for yourself. His nurse, Daisy, will bring him in his pram to the Fives Court during our game.’
The Fives Court in the Marquess Canteloupe’s Wiltshire house was at one end of the Great Court, which they must traverse to reach it. Theodosia Canteloupe’s long and generous legs, dressed in trousers of real flannel gone slightly yellow, carried her so easily and swiftly over the marble paving that Marius, though his legs too were long and fluent, had quite a job to keep up. He started to sweat, just a little, in the April sun. When they reached the Fives Court, Thea said, ‘I’m going to play in shorts.’
She took off her trousers, to show a very brief pair of running shorts. Marius goggled at her huge, smooth thighs.
‘If you’re going to examine my legs so thoroughly,’ said Thea, ‘you might at least let me see yours.’
Marius had dressed himself for their game in a cricket shirt and grey slacks.
‘I’m sorry,’ he now said earnestly, ‘but I’ve no pants on under my greys. You see, at School, when we’re playing games, we’re not allowed to wear underpants under our shorts or trousers.’
‘I shan’t mind that. You’ve got your shirt.’
Marius giggled. ‘I’m afraid it’s rather short,’ he said.
‘Is it? I always thought those cricket shirts had enormous flaps, back and front. We found a trunk full of my father’s,
after he died. They were absolutely voluminous.’
‘They aren’t made like that any more. The manufacturers are far too mingy.’
‘I still shan’t mind,’ she said.
‘But…Sarum…and his nurse?’
‘You can put your trousers on when we see them coming across the Great Court.’
‘But now there’s someone else coming…’
And so there was. Leonard Percival, Lord Canteloupe’s Private Secretary, though his ulcer was playing him up something rotten and he felt about a thousand years old, had nevertheless decided to come out into the fresh air and the sun; and now, seeing that something was in train in the Eton Fives Court, he was wandering along for a gander.
‘In that case,’ said Theodosia with quiet loathing, ‘I’ll let you off until later.’
‘I’m afraid…mine…are a bit thin.’
‘You’re only fifteen and odd months. They’ll fill out.’
She started to put on her flannels.
‘Mr Percival,’ she said, ‘is inclined to lech. Since singles aren’t really pukka at this game, shall we just knock up? Or would you like to play for points?’
‘Let’s play for points, my I – er, Thea. I know they don’t recognise singles at Eton Fives but I used to have super games with…with someone at School.’
‘With your friend, Palairet,’ said Thea.
Marius sat down on the step that divided the lower from the upper court.
‘Oh, Christ,’ he said. ‘Why wasn’t I kinder to him…when he was here, Thea? I’d hardly spoken to him in months when he was killed.’
‘His Aunt told me it was a blessing. There was no money left. Certainly not enough to keep him at School. One parent had died very suddenly. The other was rotten with cancer. The Aunt would have done what she could for him, but that would have been precious little. She’d lost most of her money in some swindle on Lloyd’s.’
‘Still, to die like that at fifteen –’
‘– He died very gallantly.’
‘That’s all very well,’ said Marius. ‘“Here lie we because we did not choose/ To shame the mother-land from which we sprung./ Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose,/ But young men think it is, and we were young.”’
‘He’s dead,’ said Theodosia flatly. ‘Like all of us, he’s better dead. Now forget it. Let’s get going before we have to talk to Mr Percival. I’ll throw the ball up.’ She lumbered lightly on to the upper step. ‘Love all.’
Pity she’s not wearing those shorts, thought Leonard Percival, as he approached and glinted into the Fives Court. That Stern boy should strip well too. You stupid old cunt, you. You couldn’t get a rise if they started fucking on the floor right in front of you. For some minutes he imagined this, and did not get a rise.
‘Five all,’ called Marius.
He threw the ball up for Theodosia to cut it, caught the swinge on the volley with both hands cupped, and patted the ball into the left-hand angle of the upper court. Theodosia, now up there with him, rather sweaty beside him, scooped the ball hard against the front wall so that it sailed back, high but drooping, then seemed to stop dead in the air and plummet vertically, landing just behind the buttress and spinning straight into it, thus making it impossible for Marius, though he was now down on the lower court, to return it.
‘You should have got it left-handed as it came down,’ said Theodosia, ‘before it fell behind the box. Good practice for your left hand.’
‘I wasn’t quite there in time.’
‘Get those thin legs moving quicker.’
Thin legs, thought Leonard Percival: how does she know?
‘Still five all, Thea. You to go up.’
Thea mounted the step to the upper court. Marius turned and walked well down the lower court, so that he might get a good running swinge at the ball. A red-haired girl, whom he just remembered from the day of Sarum’s Christening, was wheeling a black pram towards him. The pram’s hood was up, reminding Marius of a photograph that he had seen of a London cab, taken just after the war.
‘Go and say hallo to Sarum,’ Theodosia called.
Sarum. Sarum of Old Sarum. Canteloupe’s heir by his dead wife, Baby, Marius thought. Theodosia’s stepson. He remembered the fine, lusty, bellowing and beshitten infant whom Sarum’s grandfather, Sir Thomas Llewyllyn, had fully immersed in the Font of Lancaster College Chapel.
‘In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,’ Sir Thomas had boomed (washing away the excreta with Sarum’s Christening shawl), ‘I here baptize thee: Tullius Fielding d’Azincourt’ – at this stage he had raised the newly cleansed baby high in the air above him – ‘Llewyllyn Gregory Jean-Josephine Maximin Sarum Detterling, henceforth to be called, by courtesy of England, Lord Sarum of Old Sarum. AMEN.’
Three years ago that had been. Sarum of Old Sarum. Little Tully Sarum.
‘Hullo, Tully,’ he said, putting his face round the hood of the pram.
An ancient gnome’s face drooled back at him.
Of course, thought Marius. A three-year-old boy, on a lovely day like this: he should be walking, hand in hand with his nanny.
He looked at the pretty ginger nurse.
‘I like to think,’ she said, ‘that the real Tully was taken by the little folk, and this was what they left in exchange.’
There was a nasty little hiss from inside the hood.
‘Now he knows,’ Theodosia thought.
‘Why did she show him?’ Leonard Percival thought.
‘This boy at least has grown well since the Christening,’ the ginger nanny thought.
‘Come on, Marius,’ called Theodosia. ‘Five all. Me to throw up.’
Captain the Marquess Canteloupe and his friend, Major Giles Glastonbury, sat on the balcony of the Pavilion at Lord’s, savouring the first match of the season. Normally, at this time of the year, it would have been cold, damp and probably windy for ill measure; but this afternoon was warm and grateful, a day of all days to sit talking in the open with a friend.
‘Tully’s a stumer,’ Canteloupe said. ‘Something’s gone badly wrong.’
‘I remember,’ said Glastonbury, his black eyebrows flaring, ‘that his behaviour last Christmas was rather odd.’
‘Things have got a lot worse since then. The worse they get, the faster they get still worse. Someone ought to teach this boy to hold his bat properly. Look at his left hand – screwed round the handle like a clamp. He’ll never hit the ball clean if he lives to be a hundred.’
‘They like to do things their own way these days,’ Glastonbury said, ‘even if it’s the wrong one. They don’t take lessons any more.’
‘Which is why most of ’em are so bloody awful, I suppose. Overpaid and pampered, and won’t listen when they’re told. He can’t talk, Tully can’t. He can’t or won’t walk – that nurse of his has to carry him everywhere. He’s beginning to look quite horrible – like a mummy. Bad blood on his mother’s side, of course.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Get another.’
Glastonbury let this pass in silence. He knew, and knew that Canteloupe knew he knew, that Canteloupe could never now ‘get’ an heir in the biblical sense. Whether, where and how he might procure one was another matter.
‘It’s a question,’ Canteloupe said, ‘of getting Theodosia pregnant. There could be an answer. That’s why I’m in London.’
He spoke as if he had come up to see some specialist who would instruct him in the process of fertilizing his wife. In fact, however, as Giles Glastonbury well knew, he was giving Glastonbury an oblique and confidential hint: he was admitting that he was going to cheat, that he had come up to London to leave Theodosia free to take the necessary steps with the least possible embarrassment. Anyhow, who the hell cares, thought Glastonbury. From all I hear, from all he himself has implied from time to time, he seems to have cheated over Sarum. Let him do the same again. What does it matter who’s the next Marquess Canteloupe? That party’s over now, m
uch as we may wish it wasn’t.
‘And the best of luck,’ he said aloud. ‘But even if you get Theodosia to drop another, you’ll still have Sarum on your hands.’
‘Yes,’ said Canteloupe. ‘I want to consult you about that. About the possibilities.’
He broke off to applaud a pretty catch which dismissed the young man with the ugly grip. Though he was clearly out (caught by second slip), the young man did not budge. He stood until the bowler appealed; and then, when the umpire raised his finger, he pretended not to notice. Finally, when the captain of the fielding side had directed his attention to the umpire, who now raised his finger a second time, the young batsman bristled with affront, as though all his human rights had suddenly been denied him, slammed his bat against his pad, and slouched off the field, scowling and blinking.
‘Tell me,’ said Canteloupe, ‘have you heard anything of Fielding Gray?’
Glastonbury, who had been expecting Canteloupe to dilate on the ‘possibilities’ to which he had just referred, wondered what train of thought had prompted the question. The disposal of Sarum could hardly be a matter for Fielding Gray. Or could it?
‘Why do you ask, Canteloupe?’
‘That young fellow’s filthy behaviour reminded me of Fielding. He once carried on just like that during an Army Match at Camberley. Regimental cricket week – game against the Ramblers. Happened just before I sent my papers in. True, Fielding had made 99 and almost certainly wasn’t out – he was given lbw by some cunt of a desk General, who insisted on getting into the act and umpiring – to an off-break that pitched outside the leg stump. Still, it was thought that Fielding should not have displayed such nasty temper.’
‘No more he should. He was always rather hairy at the heel. Not his fault, of course. His father was a small businessman in Wisbech and his mother’s people were bakers. As for what he’s doing just now, last I heard was that he’d left for a tour of the Far East with young Jeremy Morrison – you know, Peter Morrison’s son.’