by Simon Raven
‘“The world is too much with us,” Provost,’ said Greco Barraclough.
‘That’s about it, darling,’ said Len. ‘Or you could say that spring upsets people. April is the cruellest month, and all that crap.’
Piero, who had observed Carmilla’s departure, caught her up on the naked Avenue.
‘More bother with Marius Stern?’ said Piero.
‘How did you know?’
‘You had the “Marius” look about you in the garden, a sort of bloated-with-excitement look that everyone gets when Marius is under discussion.’
‘I thought you hardly knew him.’
‘That is true. But I know a lot of other people who do know him. And always, when there is news of Marius Stern, they get that special bulging-eyed “Marius” look.’
‘None of which is really your affair,’ said Carmilla sharply.
‘No? I am a friend of the Provost: Marius is the Provost’s nephew by marriage. I notice, incidentally, that you did not bring your news of Marius to him.’
‘Mind your business, Piero.’
‘I was a friend – a very close friend – of the late Ptolemaeos Tunne, who indeed left me a great deal of his money. Ptoly Tunne’s niece, Jo-Jo Guiscard (née Pelham) is having a prolonged walk out, under the Pyrenees, with Marius’ mother. Or again, I have been intimate with Baby Canteloupe (née Llewyllyn), your sister’s predecessor as Marchioness, Sir Tom’s daughter, and Marius’ loving cousin. With all this, revered Carmilla, you should understand that Marius may soon become very much my business.’
‘Don’t meddle, Piero. Don’t meddle, or I shall wish you back in your convent in the Laguna Morta. Questions could be asked, you know, about your…emergence from there and your actual identity…as opposed to the identity which Ptolemaeos Tunne purchased for you.’
‘You know nothing about all that,’ said Piero, barely managing not to snarl.
‘No. But Fielding Gray and his friend – and mine – Jeremy Morrison, know a lot about all that.’
‘You are a decent and civilized woman. You would never –’
‘– Don’t try me, Piero. And just don’t meddle. Enjoy Tunne’s money. Get a First, become a Fellow of this College, and then a fashionable pundit – all with my blessing. But leave yourself out of this, out of all this about Marius. You did enough damage with Jeremy Morrison and Baby. Don’t meddle in Marius.’
‘My father was an Officer Cadet here,’ said Jeremy Morrison, looking out from the balcony of his room over what had once been the British Military Cantonment of Bangalore. ‘One of the few places in India with a grass wicket, he used to say. Wasted on him, of course. He always was a wretched player.’
‘Not so bad,’ said Fielding Gray. ‘He played once or twice for the XI at School in ’forty-five. It was a good XI too.’
‘He said there used to be a funfair next to the cricket ground here, to amuse the troops. Can you see a fairground, Fielding? After all, this is still a garrison town.’
‘I dare say that Indian troops are not amused by the English idea of a funfair.’
‘Nor were the British troops in my father’s day. The funfair was meant to keep them from the women of the houses. But of course there is no substitute for sex.’
‘No,’ said Fielding. ‘Who was that bit of Indian rubbish you dragged back here last night?’
‘That “bit of Indian rubbish” was a Naik in the Mysore Lancers. He chose his regiment aptly.’
‘I see. First that boy, Milo Hedley. Now, pick-ups in the bazaar. You’re getting quite a taste for being laid, aren’t you? You’d better watch it, Jeremy. There’s a rumour going round of a new and very nasty disease. Carefully designed by God, I hear, for those who offend Him by getting their pleasure – active or passive – per anum.’
‘What was it that Irishman said? “’Twas God that made this love, not I.”’
‘Yes. Made it – and cursed it. It’s a trick God has, you see… offering people prettily wrapped choccies with nasty centres. This is the most unwholesome of any yet.’
‘If the rumours are true.’
‘There are some people dead of it already. This thing kills, Jeremy, and has no cure. And in any case you can’t tell me that chambering with other ranks of the Mysore Lancers is a good advertisement for your mission. Oneness with the Soil; Absorption in the Universal Motherhood of the Good Earth – people do not expect the High Priest of such a religion to be a common pathic.’
‘The message still seems to be going down well. Remember my reception at Delhi. Mother Teresa wasn’t in it.’
‘Quite clearly, there are many that think of this as a fertility cult, many that imagine you may have some new secret by which you can increase the yield of their miserable land. Ample cause for mild hysteria – especially as you do not disabuse them of the dream.’
‘Nor do I lie to them. I tell them the message, and let them interpret it as they will.’
‘What do you want, Jeremy? To get rich quick before you’re rumbled?’
‘I have a great deal of money already, now that my father has let it flow.’
‘Well, then. Do you want to achieve notoriety through deception? To make people hope that there may be, if not a new abundance in their crops, at least a new balsam for their despairing souls?’
‘Certainly I do.’
‘Knowing that very soon you must be discredited…that you will be revealed as a fraud, and that when that happens all the hope you have raised, all the balsam you have spread, will turn to a scorching poison?’
‘Why, Fielding, why should I be revealed as a fraud?’
‘Because you don’t believe in any of this. You never did. You just set out to show them all at Lancaster that you too could reach eminence – and much quicker than they ever could, much quicker than poor old Tom Llewyllyn with his history books or pompous Jacquiz Helmutt with his artefacts and excavations. So you preached your gospel plausibly, with much publicity, and without believing a word of it; and when people do that, while they may succeed briefly, they are very soon caught out, usually because they become careless, arrogant or stale. What shall you do when that happens to you?’
‘Do stop lecturing, Fielding. You’re being a bore.’
‘I know. I’ll stop – if you’ll answer my last question.’
‘Right. When and if I’m caught out, since I shall have committed no crime, embezzled no money, taken no life, I shall simply go quietly home and spend the rest of my life fishing with flies for salmon and reading Plato and Virgil (as the saying is) with my feet on the fender. For public life has given me a great yearning for the pleasures of the country, of scholarship and of solitude. Meanwhile, Fielding, the whole point of this circus – have you not guessed, for Christ’s sake? – is simply to see just how long I can keep it going, how long I can take the booby world in. I am engaged in an experiment – to exemplify and illustrate the credulity of the human race and the sheer farce of human existence. I’ve already had a very amusing run, and I’m not yet entirely bored with it – despite my longing for the good life of the Sabine farm. So it could have quite a way to go yet. Do you still want to accompany me? Australia next lap: Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney – the golden apples, you might say, of the Antipodes.’
Telephoning from Lancaster College to Wiltshire, Carmilla told her sister, Theodosia, levelly and accurately, what Richard Harbinger had said about Marius.
‘No proof,’ said Theodosia.
‘None,’ agreed Carmilla.
‘You need a concrete instance to show that Conyngham’s influence is evil, corrupting or criminal. Now, that business at Bellhampton – it showed nothing of the kind. Not as it appeared to the naked eye. Does Richard think that anything is impending?’
‘Perhaps. But he certainly doesn’t know what.’
‘Tessa,’ said Theodosia. ‘Tessa Malcolm was staying there with Conyngham in Somerset at the same time as Marius. She was present at the races at Bellhampton – dressed up in some extrao
rdinary way. She may know if there was anything – corrupt or peculiar – behind that mêlée at the meeting. She may know…of a pattern or purpose behind it all. She may even know if anything at all definite is planned by Conyngham for the future.’
‘Shall you take her on? Or shall I?’
‘It had better be me,’ said Theodosia. ‘I have an entrée.’
‘But, do you feel up to it?’
‘I feel a bit queasy in the mornings. Otherwise okay.’
‘And what is this entrée?’ Carmilla asked.
‘Canteloupe gets an occasional newsletter from his old School. It seems that Tessa Malcolm is a star of the Girls’ Under Sixteen Cricket XI. They have a match, very soon, at Hurlingham. Nothing more natural than that I, the sporting girl, should be hanging about at Hurlingham. I should be able to engineer a quiet word with Tessa.’
‘Do you know her well enough?’
‘We shall be two sporting girls together,’ Theodosia said.
Tessa Malcolm was sick as mud. She had allowed herself to be yorked by a half-volley – only her third ball, after cutting the first two deliciously late for four. Her chum Jakki (twelfth man, as she insisted on calling herself, and scorer) had then annoyed her bitterly by pointing out that this was the third time she had been out that way in the last fortnight. Leaving Jakki a prisoner in the scorers’ box, Tessa stomped off round the boundary of the Hurlingham Cricket Ground and soon came to a pretty little copse out of which somebody had shaped a pretty little arbour inside which a long, large yet lissom lady of some twenty-three summers, and dressed in dark grey flannel trousers and a silk cricket shirt, was sitting on a seat.
‘Sit you down with me, Teresa Malcolm,’ said the lady. ‘I’m Theodosia Canteloupe, “Thea” to my friends.’
‘Yes, my lady,’ said Tessa, ‘I remember you very well.’
‘“Thea” to my friends, girl. Why do they trick you out in those silly little white skirts? What’s wrong with trousers? Not but what you look lovely, but that’s not the point.’
‘What is the point, Thea?’ said Tessa. Christ, she thought, is this what it’s like? She had seen Thea quite often before, of course, but this was the first time she had ever really seen her.
So is this what it’s like, she thought, is this what they’re all on about, from Sappho to that song about the Isle of Capri? Milo, Rosie, Marius – none of them had made her melt, melt and yet tingle all over with sheer adoration, like this.
‘Cricketers ought to wear trousers,’ said Theodosia. ‘That’s the point.’
‘I think you’re lovely too,’ said Tessa, ignoring the polemics.
‘So we both know where we are, don’t we?’ said Theodosia. Christ, she thought, is it possible to yearn for somebody, like this?
She kissed Tessa on the lips. A shudder ran down from Tessa’s hips, over her knees, and rippled among the ginger down just below them.
Tessa raised her face for another kiss.
‘Later,’ said Thea. ‘We shall have time enough for that.’
‘All our lives,’ said Tessa.
‘We must begin,’ said Thea, ‘by talking of Raisley Conyngham. You spent last holidays at his house in Somerset?’
‘Ullacote.’
‘With Marius Stern?’
Tessa nodded and held Theodosia’s hand.
‘Tell me,’ said Thea.
‘I escaped. They still have Marius.’
They: Conyngham and his henchman, Milo Hedley, Thea thought.
‘What will they do with him?’
‘They will try to make him do things…not so much because they desire them done, though sometimes they may, but for the pleasure of watching him act according to their absolute will and knowing he can do none other.’
‘As at Bellhampton?’
‘Yes,’ said Tessa. ‘Only there he was made to submit according to their will. But even this submission required very accurate obedience on his part: such an obedience as they could never have obtained from him without full possession of him.
Possession of his spirit.’
‘It has come to that?’
‘Yes. But I know nothing of their future plans, as I no longer exist for them. Do you know anything…darling Thea?’
‘Yes, I do. Oh, sweet Tessa. But very little. At Marius’ suggestion (why did he make it?) Milo may go to stay in the Provost’s Lodging in Lancaster. With Marius’ uncle by marriage, Provost Llewyllyn. Why, one wonders again? But whatever the reason, he would not be free to do this until the end of your Quarter.’
‘Yes, he would be, Theodosia. We have a break in the middle of the Quarter. Nearly ten days. Mid-June.’
‘You will come to me in Wiltshire then?’
‘If you please, my lady, if you please. And is that all you know?’
‘One more thing. Marius has breached their influence. Enough to cry out to be saved. Though how long he will be sincere in this we do not know.’
‘It happens in brief spurts. Last spring at Ullacote, Milo, who did not desire Marius, nevertheless desired to see him dressed as me – and me as Marius.’
‘What sort of quirk was that?’
‘It had to do with power. Milo wished to convince himself that he was so far in command of Marius and me that he could absolutely dictate our roles even to the extent of making us exchange personalities. I, who at that time worshipped Milo, was willing. Marius rebelled. He would wear my clothes, he said, if Milo wished. But he would not put on a brassiere fitted with false breasts, an item as to which Milo was very specific. When Milo still insisted, Marius made to strike him. He flattened his palm and proffered the heel of his hand, ready to aim the blow he had used on poor Pally Palairet at Oudenarde House – straight at the throat. This was enough. Milo just shrugged and went away.’
‘So Marius was mutinous,’ said Thea. ‘On that occasion he protested. And now he seeks salvation.’
‘Same thing,’ said Tessa. ‘To seek escape is the most radical form of protest. But his resistance did not last long, that time at Ullacote. I do not think it will last long now. Theodosia. Thea. Theodosia.’
‘Teresa. Tessa. Teresa.’
‘June is near. Birdsong. Do you hear it, Thea? “Against our wedding day, which is not long; sweet Thames, run softly till we end our song.”’
‘Interesting developments, Lenikins.’
‘Darling Carmilla…?’
Carmilla and Len sat one each side of Provost Llewyllyn, who had suddenly become so apprehensive of what the dispersed dryads of the College elms might do to him that the College Matron had had to be summoned to sedate him.
‘But Provost darling,’ Len had said, taking one hand of the Provost as the injection began to act, ‘the dryads are all dead. They died with the trees.’
‘Their ghosts will want vengeance.’
‘Dryads are related to the gods,’ Carmilla had said, taking the Provost’s other hand. ‘The gods, once dead, have no ghosts; nor have their relations, the dryads.’
And now, speaking over the recumbent and unconscious Provost, Carmilla said to Len, ‘Theodosia has spoken with Tessa Malcolm – with Teresa, as she now calls her. If you wish, you can get that boy Milo here in June, when his School has a long half-Quarter break.’
‘The good Sir Thomas certainly needs taking out of himself,’ said Len, surveying the crumpled heap between them.
‘Item,’ said Carmilla. ‘Tessa… Teresa…when told by Thea that Marius was showing signs of wishing to escape from Conyngham’s influence, said that while such moods of revolt or revulsion did stir in him from time to time, they did not last. The implication was that when Marius did get recalcitrant, Conyngham or Milo Hedley softened him up with some extra-special treat.’
‘Which has probably already been done by now?’
‘Or very soon will be. Certainly before any kind of rescue can be justified, let alone carried out. Item,’ Carmilla said. ‘Theodosia says that Teresa says that Conyngham and Hedley are not so much interested in the
things they make Marius do as in the process of making him do them and in the spectacle of his performance. They care more for this performance than they desiderate its consequences – though they always know very clearly what these should be.’
‘Presumably, if they are horrid enough, they must lend spice to the spectacle of action that precedes them?’
‘Presumably,’ said Carmilla. ‘But for Conyngham at least the emphasis seems to be on the pleasure of making and initiating the spell, of casting it on Marius and watching him move to its urging.’
‘Christ,’ said Len. ‘God does make them. God does really make them.’
‘An interesting postscript,’ said Carmilla. ‘Nothing to do with Marius, but with our old chum Fielding Gray.’
‘What’s he done now? Slept with the Pope?’
‘Caused a minor stir with his Memoirs.’
‘I didn’t think they were finished yet. Let alone published.’
‘They’re not. But the Observer is very keen to publish extracts from the first half of them, and so is the Perth Envoy and the Adelaide Angelus.’
‘Oz papers?’
‘Yes. A lot of Fielding’s family on his mother’s side emigrated to Australia.’
‘I always thought he had convict blood in him,’ said Len. ‘Something to do with that one eye of his.’
‘He wasn’t born like that. His face was wrecked by a bomb in Cyprus.’
‘No doubt he was putting it where it wasn’t wanted,’ said Len.
‘He was simply doing his duty as an army officer.’
‘Yes,’ said Len, ‘putting his face where it wasn’t wanted.’
The Provost began to shift and whimper between them.
‘I thought he was meant to be under for a good six hours,’ said Len.
‘Perhaps it’s only a dream?’
‘Tullia,’ whined Sir Thomas, ‘where have they taken you – the ghosts?’