Lemprière's Dictionary

by Lawrence Norfolk

  ‘Ha!’ He bounces up. The bottle, meanwhile, has continued along Septimus’s aborted trajectory, over the crowd and ends up, slaap, in Lemprière’s hand.

  ‘Have a glug,’ a voice from somewhere down near his hip. He glugs.

  ‘So you’ve met?’ Septimus has disentangled himself from a mêlée of arms and legs, rejected the importunings of something with too much mascara and approaches with perfect composure, one hand fishing in his pocket.

  ‘Bacon?’

  ‘What … ?’

  From the folds of his coat Septimus produces the longest, reddest, greasiest piece of bacon that Lemprière has ever seen. It has to be a yard in length. Is this the first of tonight’s ceremonies? A pig the size of a horse died for this monster but Septimus doesn’t actually expect anyone to eat it, does he?

  Seems not. It dangles lewdly as Septimus makes the introductions.

  ‘Teddy, John Lemprière. John, Edmund de Vere.’ So this was the earl. First impressions were not always the best.

  ‘We’re playing together later, John,’ he continued to Lemprière, then lowered his voice, ‘Don’t drink too much. Hold yourself in reserve.’

  ‘Playing together? Playing what?’

  ‘Foolish boy, the Game of Cups, of course,’ beams Septimus.

  ‘Er … Septimus?’

  But Septimus has already disappeared back into the crush to find that little redhead he’s promised a sure-fire piquet cheat, the one where the Knave of Clubs is tucked inside the garter….

  ‘S’alright,’ the lordly slur near his hip issues in boozy gulps which, being slightly warmer than the surrounding air, rise to his twitching nostrils and mingle there with the odours of smoke, fire and pipe, sweat, half-stifled farts, Bergamot snuff, Jessamine hair-butter and something else….

  Septimus has retreated (is, in fact, draping his flaccid rhabdos about the neck of an unsuspecting maid at the far side of the room, the piquet trick can wait) so it can’t be that. His nose scans the olfactory scene until, there, he lights on the fireplace from which delicious porky fumes are lacing the air with memories of bacon-for-breakfast and sausage-for-supper, sizzling chops and glistening gammon steaks. Yum. Suspended over the fire, trotters touching one side of the chimney, snout grazing the other, a pig of obese proportions oozes fat into the flames below. The spit bends under its lolling weight and on its face (apple in snout notwithstanding) is an expression of ironic martyrdom recalling Saint Lawrence who, after twenty minutes on the griddle, asked to be turned for fear one side was becoming rather well done.

  This pig obviously holds some numinous significance for the assembly. The revellers nearest it are tending towards the racy-conversation-and-pipe-smoking side of indecency leaving the far side of the room to the more gymnastically inclined while the crone giving it an occasional prod with her stick is treated with the greatest respect; nods and gentlemanly ‘good evening’s are coming her way thick and fast.

  Meanwhile the voice at his hip has been replaced by a hand. He swivels about, an apparition in creamy satin and red ringlets is already explaining, no sorry, mistook you for someone … so sorry, before gliding away, leaving only the scent of rose-water and a short trail of cards that drift to the floor from their lodging somewhere beneath her aprons.

  ‘Spectacles!’ The leering Warburton-Burleigh reels up, ‘Grog?’

  ‘Thank you, no I….’ Lemprière stiffly.

  ‘Don’t mind if I do,’ and with that he snatches the bottle, heading back for the seething swell in which Lemprière catches sight of Septimus demonstrating a spirited pas de chat while, in the corner, someone has attached eight bottles on strings to the bannisters above and is trying to pour just the right amount of beer into each one to get doh, ray, me etc. Unfortunately, every time he pours too much in, he is having to drink it down to the right level; success looks remote and the cooing wench who, just half an hour ago, expressed a wish to hear a song from the auld country played in this manner is bitterly regretting ever opening her mouth while Monsieur with the moustache over there is showing his shiny, yellow teeth and winking at her in just the way she likes.

  For Lemprière, everything seems to be happening over there while he is ghettoed over here. No matter, he is here on business. He sits down next to the earl, and instantly knows he has done the wrong thing. The earl is playing ‘find the bean’ on the table, switching the three tumblers with surprising deftness given his addled state. The bean has been lost for several rounds now and his opponent wandered off some time before that. Besides, all the tumblers are glass…. The evidence convinces Lemprière that the earl is in no fit state to divulge anything much, but, he reasons, this is going to get worse rather than better, it’s now or never so here goes.

  To start with, the earl doesn’t respond at all. Lemprière prods him, which gives rise to some non-specific flailing around and lots of slurring. Nothing of use so far, but he keeps at it, explaining about the meeting between their ancestors and so forth. True, this was a century and a half ago, not of immediate relevance, but didn’t the earl want to buy the record of this ancestral tête-à-tête? Gradually he garners that although the earl knows what he’s talking about, he’s not even remotely interested, and why isn’t Lemprière drinking anyway?

  ‘Drinking not my strong-point,’ he explains to the drunkard.

  ‘Good man, never start,’ the earl commends him, offering a glutinous, green substance with one hand and supporting his head with the other.

  ‘You see, this agreement….’

  ‘A thimbleful wouldn’t hurt though, would it?’

  ‘No really, thank you.’

  ‘Here, try this. It really is very, very …’ The earl searches for an adjective. ‘It really is very,’ he concludes. Lemprière declines again, which seems to depress the earl.

  ‘I think you might tell me why you won’t drink,’ he demands in injured tones. ‘Only courteous I’d say.’ The earl’s elbow has hit a patch of pork grease, probably dripped there earlier by Septimus’s outsize rasher, and now every time he tries to rest his head on his hand, the arm is shooting out sideways, dumping his head, bang, on the tabletop. The conversation proceeds to the accompaniment of these collapses.

  ‘Of course, quite,’ Lemprière is obliging the earl’s request. ‘It’s very simple.’ Bang. ‘I was warned not to,’ he pauses, ‘by my parents.’ He looks down for a moment. ‘Now, as to this agreement….’

  Bang!

  The quiz continues on a more equal basis with Lemprière providing a justification for not drinking every time he asks a question but not much is coming of it and he’s down to doctor’s orders when he throws in a last gambit (the earl can’t last much longer) and offers to sell the document. At this the earl offers thruppence and the advice to try ‘Sebdimus, he’s much more interested anyway….’ Lemprière had been half-expecting this and would have pumped the earl for more, but the booze-to-bodyweight ratio is against him and the earl seems about to slide….

  In point of fact, this observation of Lemprière’s, despite being founded on the soundest inductive principles, is quite mistaken. All appearances to the contrary, Thomas de Vere is not getting drunker, but more sober. There is something in these ruinous gatherings that brings out the progressive in him. A mutant strain of the dissent whose viral ancestor might well have had something to do with the little get-together Lemprière’s so curious about is lurking someplace about Thomas de Vere’s lymph-system and now, between sporadic phagocyte attacks, is busy oozing its idea of happiness through his membranes and venous capillaries. As symbioses go it’s one-sided. The leucocytes are reserving judgment.

  Hard to say just what it is or even where it comes from but there’s an austere tinge of self-denial about it. A touch of the Prussian, streaming over like influenza from Königsberg and covering its trail. Only a sprinkling of umlauts give the game away, whispers of a cousin somewhere called Friedrich, or Emmanuel, the faint whiff of bratwurst and a dim, hereditary yearning for black, rained-on f
orests with the steam rolling down the hillsides in the morning sunlight, everything very fresh….

  There’s something very onward about it too, a belief implicit in the earl’s intimate biochemistry that somehow things are always going to improve. His drinking exploits are the stuff of legend, but it is a recent legend. It has nothing to do with prowess and downing a flagon of sack merely to reach sobriety has often seemed to him a cruel reversal. To his friends, the earl’s habit of turning up drunk and leaving sober is nothing but a quirk, he doesn’t need a motive but schadenfreude will do.

  Had Lemprière known all this he might have deferred his questions till later in the evening, but his recidivist heart is set on things getting worse rather than better, and indeed they will, for Monsieur the Moustache has got the girl while her erstwhile companion is still dinging away in frustration, just another quarter-tone, the tonic’s a little out and on top of that people keep coming up and drinking vital parts of the instrument. The crone has left her place at the fire to show Septimus how the step should be done, toe in and flick! her shoe whirls off across the room to crash against an oil-lamp which spills a sinuous tongue of flame across the floor, but everything’s under control as the Pork Club rallies in common crisis, spraying the conflagration with beer, cider and the nastier wines (glad for a refill anyway) and no-one is so much as singed.

  Everything starts up again, but a general and complex movement is taking place, a vague, concentric urge radiating out from the centre of the debauchees, from, in fact, the Crone. She has given up the dancing lesson as a bad job and is turning around, putting the eye on the smoochers, snorters and swiggers who, under this weird pressure, begin to separate. Hands are discreetly removed from bodices, temptingly steatopygous posteriors are no longer being slapped, the sexes are parting like the Red Sea and fond farewells, blown kisses and entreaties to be true fill the melodramatic air like limp translations of a libretto by Calzabigi. An air of expectation begins to take their place. Fops, cads, toffs and swells are now corralled on Lemprière’s side of the room while wenches, damsels, nymphs and baggages take up positions on the other; a few look somehow familiar but there’s no time to ponder that now because the Crone has pounded her stout wand three times upon the floor and retreated back to the fire. The stage is bare and into it bounds Septimus.

  His face is grave. Serious matters are impending as he addresses the bacchanals.

  ‘My friends,’ he begins, ‘dear ladies,’ turning behind him, ‘in this most excellent and convivial of clubs,’ (cries of ‘Hear, hear!’ and ‘None better!’) ‘we have all spent many happy hours which, could we but remember them, would most certainly never be forgotten. We have drunk,’ (mutters of ‘Very true’ and ‘No doubting that’) ‘we have sung, we have,’ a pause for obscene effect, ‘roistered!’ (‘Ha! We have at that,’ and ‘Best roistering in town’. Mutual ‘Well roistered, sir!’s are exchanged). ‘But,’ Septimus holds up his finger, they know what’s coming, ‘above all, we have eaten,’ they’re poised for it, ‘huge quantities of Pork!’

  At the mention of pork the place erupts, whooping and hat throwing are general, a fight breaks out and the combatants are separated amid scenes of license and celebratory lewdness. From the fireplace, the Crone acknowledges the compliment by throwing a sizzling strip of crackling into the midst of the rejoicers who fall upon it with frenzied gnashing and drooling.

  ‘Madame!’ Septimus salutes her, and the company raise their glasses.

  ‘Drink hearty, my boys!’ she throws back and attempts a brittle pirouette which is noisily applauded. Septimus has caught them in appreciative mood.

  ‘My friends,’ he continues, ‘we have with us tonight a very dear acquaintance of mine.’ (Curious glances amongst the assembly, who is it?) ‘A young man cast adrift on life’s river. If he is too young to be an orphan, he is old enough to be our friend. Welcome with me my partner in the game this night, Mister John Lemprière!’ There is polite applause as Lemprière acknowledges the introduction. Septimus switches to mock-lecture tone.

  ‘Now, as all good cooks know, the most succulent, fragrant, the most sublime flitch of pig-flesh is deemed to fall short of its acme, to hurtle down from the zenith of Eumaeus’ pen when deprived of its natural companion, its liquid bed-fellow…. My friends, I speak, of course, of drink.’

  The Pork Club bangs its glasses three times on the table.

  ‘Yes my friends, drink. The solace of abandoned wives, the lubrication of our fleet; if it is good enough for sailors and their tarts,’ hands outstretched in appeal, plangent he goes on, ‘surely, surely it is good enough for us?’ A few grunts of’Certainly is’ confirm the truth of this.

  ‘And so we have a game,’ At this Septimus falls silent and paces the floor, fingers to the bridge of his nose all of a sudden in deep thought. An act.

  ‘… it may not be the most athletic of games, it may not be for the scholars or even the hoi polloi, but it has two great qualities. First, it involves jeroboams, nay salmanazars of drink,’ the Pork Club rumbles its collective appreciation, he’s gingering them up, ‘and second, it is at least our game.’ Dying fall, aah…. Sentimental glances are exchanged, the strong and the dissolute gaze down at their feet. Tears might be welling in their eyes.

  ‘My friends,’ Septimus recalls them before this gets too maudlin, ‘our thanks are due to two dear people; our gracious hostess,’ cheers for the Crone, ‘and perhaps, tonight, her husband-to-be, that stalwart progenitor … King Archon!’

  This is a set-up. The Pork Club booes and hisses, death threats are offered and hideous expressions of loathing can be seen on every face. Lemprière is nonplussed, looking around for the object of so much hatred.

  ‘Over there,’ the earl whispers to him between shouts of ‘Cut his shrivelled ballocks off!’ and ‘Crush his face in!’

  Sitting in a chair by the side of the fire at the foot of the stairs which run at a diagonal up the far wall is King Archon. His once-majestic face falls in unmuscled folds, expressionless, his lips twitch and drool and the drool smears a trail down his shirt. He seems unaware of the Pork Club’s vociferous disgust. The years have burnt away his life from within until only this remains and whatever once sustained him has been eked out further than nature should allow; abomination, old scum, he deserves death but his punishment for living, being life itself, is crueller and more drawn out than that. Filthy, scabrous remnant: long live the King! The compassion of his subjects dictates his life’s endurance although, in some other shape or effigy, the King will be killed tonight.

  Septimus is quieting the mob now, readying them for the off. The Crone hobbles centre-stage to acclamation while the gallants begin to pair off.

  ‘Bon chance,’ the earl offers sportingly to his late interrogator.

  On the far side of the room two of the more venerable courtesans have opened a book and are busy shouting the odds, taking bets in coin and credit notes of one sort or another. Lemprière’s on offer at sixes (and only that generous because of Septimus) while Walter Warburton-Burleigh and the Pug (a barrel-like individual with squinty eyes) are strong favourites at 13-8. Lemprière drifts to tens. The smart money’s ignoring him. The bookmakers look familiar but before he can think about this he sees Septimus hand them a purse of coins which is accepted after some hesitation and the price comes in suddenly to fours.

  The Crone, meanwhile, is doling out lumps of pork to the contestants and setting up an array of bottles on the table in the centre. There are bottles of all shapes, sizes and colours, some bound in raffia, some sealed with wax, and in front of each she places a small earthenware cup with a letter stamped upon it. There are twenty-six of these. On the other side of the room a small table supports a bowl of black beans. Something is stirring inside Lemprière, some inarticulate response to the iconography, but he doesn’t know quite what and before he can think about it Septimus swaggers over, about time too. Lemprière starts hissing his doubts, what is he doing here, what is going on? But his fellow p
layer dismisses this as too metaphysical to be taken seriously.

  ‘That’s not what I meant,’ he hisses.

  ‘Just watch what the others do,’ advises Septimus, chomping on Lemprière’s pork, ‘and stop hissing.’

  Most of the contestants have found their partners, final bets are being taken and the games seem about to start. The Crone has raised her rhabdos for silence.

  ‘The Game of Cups!’ shrieks the Crone.

  ‘Oink!’ oink Septimus, the earl and the other contestants.

  ‘The prize awaits the winner, let the game begin!’

  ‘Pythoigia!’ shouts everyone except Lemprière. Pythoigia?

  ‘What is the prize?’ he asks Septimus when the noise dies down.

  ‘You’ll find out,’ Septimus replies.

  The Crone has retired to the fire. The first contestants rush to their places.

  ‘Eat more pork,’ Septimus advises and the earl nods sage agreement.

  ‘The more pork, the better your chances,’ he confirms.

  The first pair are well into the first round of the game. One drains the cups before him in order, arrack, brandy, cider and so on while his partner takes up station by the bowl of beans.

  ‘Watch the rhythm,’ urges Septimus, ‘the rhythm’s the key.’

  At every third cup drained, the player by the beans picks one out and spits it in a controlled parabola into the empty cup which the drinker holds up while reaching for the next. From nine beans spat, only three find their way, ding! into the allotted empty cup, all of which are immediately refilled in readiness for the next contestants.

  ‘Weak round,’ adjudged the earl.

  By the time they have finished, the drinker is reeling and there is some jeering at his modest capacity.

  ‘Choes!’ screams the Crone.

  This heralds the second round and the first two take up positions on bended knees, one by King Archon, the other by the Crone herself. They seem to be pleading with them, but to little avail. Meanwhile, the second team is in position, drinking and firing, firing and drinking, egg-nog, furmity, pfft, ding! gin, hock, Irrois, and on, five beans out of six so far, pretty good.