by Simon Raven
‘It is a grief to me, sir. I have always…liked Miss Baby…and I would not have wished to cause her misery or distress. To make her jealous or angry and get her out of the way – that was one thing, a suitable thing, for she has a kind and noble husband and does not need me. Nor I her. True, she may have influence with her father, Provost of the Lancaster College, but if I am to be allowed into that College I think you are the one that will arrange it.’
‘Thank you for your trust.’
‘So to annoy Miss Baby, to drive her away from this house, this was certainly needed and I pardon myself for arranging it. But if I have made her unbalanced…’
‘She seems all right now, Isobel tells me.’
‘But she was not all right when you injected her yesterday. And another thing, perhaps worse: where has Girolamo – where has Jeremy gone to?’
‘Major Gray will look for him.’
‘Where?’
‘It is not your responsibility, Caspar. You are to blame for none of this. However sound or otherwise your original plan, and whatever might or might not have come of it, your scenario was never put on and you bear no guilt at all for the one that was.’
‘I brought them face to face, and then left them alone.’
‘You could not possibly have anticipated what occurred. We don’t even know what did occur.’
‘I shall not mind all this badly, sir, if only Jeremy can be found and made all right. The little Canteloupe started this game herself, you might say, by coming here in the first place and seeking me out, and she has only herself to thank if the play turned sour on her. But Jeremy, he has been only kind–’
‘–To you, perhaps. But he too may be playing games.’
‘However that may be, sir, I wish that he may be delivered from harm. For he is of my heart, as nobody has been since I went to St Francis’ Island.’
‘Let us assume,’ said Balbo to Canteloupe and Leonard Percival in Canteloupe’s study, ‘that both the packet which contained the Canzoni series and the much bulkier one that housed the Asolano had been addressed by Mr fitzAvon to himself. Perhaps the carrier brings them both on the same day, if they have come on the same ship; more probably not; in either case no matter. The watercolours, to judge from the writing on the wrapper, he sent to himself in the name of fitzAvon; the Asolano was probably addressed in the same way, though he might possibly have directed it to himself under his real name – which was what, Canteloupe?’
‘He had one of the titles which disappeared when the Peerage went sideways at my cousin’s death. We needn’t bother with that now.’
‘Can’t you remember it?’ said Balbo.
‘I’m not sure which it was,’ said Canteloupe crossly. ‘His father, though later the first Marquess, was at that time only an Earl, so fitzAvon could have chosen any one of the three or four minor titles.’
‘So never mind that just now,’ said Leonard Percival gently. ‘You were saying, Balbo…?’
‘I was saying that when the two packets arrived they would probably have been addressed to fitzAvon, under whatever denomination, and that his father would have thought it both polite and wise, knowing the man’s temper, to leave them unopened and have them stored somewhere against his son’s return. But then came the news of his son’s death. So now, attention. My lord decides to open the packets…the smaller one first, I think. In this he finds the set of Canzonis, typical evidence, if any were needed, of his son’s louche and blasphemous taste. In the second packet he finds the framed altarpiece. Being something of a cognoscente, he has a rough idea of its provenance and value: something definitely fishy here. Shall he hang it? After all, he tells himself, even if it was procured in some…unorthodox…manner, no one from Burano is likely to walk this way just now, and the irregular mode of exporting this object from its own country is largely condoned by the British aristocratic tradition of “collecting” foreign art treasures without ceremony. On reflection, however, he decides against hanging the picture: it would probably offend the bourgeois canons of the Hanoverian monarch who is arriving shortly to be his guest and recuperate in the Wiltshire countryside from one of his recurrent bouts of mental disorder.’
‘One can go on all day long working out what he didn’t do with it,’ said Leonard Percival, ‘you’re here to tell us what he did.’
‘All right,’ said Balbo. ‘Once more, attention. He doesn’t want the picture on display – not when the Royal family are present, or on any other reputable occasion; furthermore, he knows that it must be kept in a suitable state of warmth and dryness. So he has it masked, by another painting, perhaps, or by a tapestry – anything which could be fitted over it and fairly easily detached at will. He also decides, being given to sardonic humour and at the same time respectful of justice, that the cover must in some sense act as a monument or memorial to the benefactor – Mr fitzAvon – who has donated the painting beneath it. Not a portrait of him – that, in all the circumstances, would be overdoing it – but just some little reminder.’
‘And I suppose he forgot to tell anyone else he had done this,’ grumbled Canteloupe, ‘and having occasionally uncovered the picture for his own lonely delectation, carried the secret with him to the grave, remembering, first, in the Byzantine fashion, to extract the eyes and tongues of the craftsmen who made or fitted the covering, whatever it was.’
‘He certainly measured the frame,’ said Balbo patiently, ‘before having it wrapped up again. He ordered the covering – I incline more and more to a tapestry – in London, brought it down here when it was complete, fitted it, perhaps himself, over the picture, and then had it hung, for his own convenience and private inspection, in his study. Where else?’
‘This study?’ said Leonard.
‘No. In those days his lordship’s study was what is now the First Night Nursery. Let us all pay a visit, therefore, to Lord Sarum of Old Sarum.’
‘Any change in Baby?’ said Ptolemaeos Tunne to Isobel Stern.
‘None for the worse…or not as far as her health goes. She’s playing backgammon with Jo-Jo, undismayed by any association of the set with the – er – incident. She is uninterested in whatever occurred and unembarrassed by it. She is unaffectionate to Jo-Jo, though condescending to gamble with her, uncivil to myself, and utterly ungrateful to you for your hospitality.’
‘But not unfit, I trust, to leave here tomorrow?’
‘She can certainly leave here, she should leave here, tomorow. But she should not, I think, drive herself, so I shall take her to Wiltshire in my Lagonda. Her own car can be driven back there by a hired driver.’
‘Shouldn’t you take her in her car? I mean…your Lagonda is rather uncomfy.’
‘So she said, the little bitch. I’ll tell you what it is: Canteloupe’s spoilt her. She’s only twenty. She should be making a living as a typist,’ said Isobel, ‘and heating up tinned soup for dinner on a gasring, and mending her own tights. Not wafting about on a cloud like a rococo goddess and being my Lady Wipe-my-arse. She can’t even bother to take proper care of that little boy.’
‘At least she’ll be back with him tomorrow,’ said Ptolemaeos, ‘though of course he’s much better off with his nurse. Most children are if they’re lucky enough to have one.’
Sarum’s ginger nurse greeted the deputation to the nursery quarters with great charm and pleasure. Sarum, being already possessive of her, scowled.
When Canteloupe had explained that they wanted to examine the First Night Nursery, the Nurse gathered up Sarum and led them all along a corridor, past two bathrooms (one for Sarum and one for her) and into a tall panelled room which looked out over the park to the river and the bat willows.
‘You see why he liked it as his study?’ said Balbo.
Opposite the window was a sensible iron bedstead for Nanny and by it Sarum’s cot.
‘Hullo, Tully,’ said Canteloupe, in belated greeting to the infant, who responded by turning up his snub nose even further.
‘Well?’ said Leonard
to Balbo. ‘A monument or memorial to fitzAvon, you said. Probably on a tapestry. No tapestries that I can see.’
‘Over the head of the cot,’ said Balbo.
Over the head of the cot was a small, square alcove in the wall (Isobel, had she been there, might have compared it to an ‘aumbry’) at the back of which was a statuette, perhaps three inches high, of a naked boy or young man with crisp, short curls all over his scalp and his rump turned to the audience.
Balbo stretched his hand into the alcove.
‘You can’t move it; I’ve tried,’ said the ginger Nurse, and gave a merry laugh.
‘Very few people knew the secret,’ said Balbo, nerving himself for a gamble, ‘for although it did not quite die with the first Marquess, the transformation of the study into a nursery, during the alterations of 1805, made first for vagueness, then for carelessness and at last for obscurity about its contents. A cunning second Marquess, let us hazard, anticipating the prudishness which was to come with a young queen, knowing the value of the Asolano, knowing, too, that it was quite probably “hot” and that he lived in an age of increasing moral sensitivity about the appropriation of such objects – a cunning and prudent second Marquess decided it had best stay out of sight and out of mind. Out of everybody’s mind,’ said Balbo, ‘after his own instantaneous death from a fall while steeplechasing.’
He grasped the statuette. As the Nurse said, it was secured in its place. On its invisible side was (what else, in memory of Mr fitzAvon?) a rampant phallus. Please God, Balbo prayed. He tried pressing the phallus up: it would not budge. All right; try pressing it down then…and two large panels slid back over the head of the brass bedstead, leaving a recess in the high wall some fifteen feet tall by six across by two in depth. From a canopy at the top of the recess hung a tapestry, queasy in sentiment but not inept in execution, of Christ surrounded by gambolling children.
‘Now look underneath,’ Balbo breathed.
Since no one else moved to do so, the ginger Nurse did. She found a dangling chord, hidden under the right edge of the tapestry. Balancing Sarum competently on one arm she pulled the chord with the hand of the other. The tapestry swept away to the left. A throng of pretty boys lifted their dress and thrust their firm, white thighs towards a deprecatory yet eagerly observant Virgin, each boy pointing to a black bubo beneath a hint of black pubes.
‘Asolano,’ said Balbo.
‘Arselano?’ said the Nurse.
‘Taso-tano, Taso-tano,’ Lord Sarum crowed.
‘What a flop,’ said Baby to Piero as they walked towards Isobel’s Lagonda. ‘That first night was fun in a ghoulish sort of way…digging up the past…but after that, what a flop.’
‘There was nothing there except a memory,’ said Piero. ‘Once that had been used up…nothing.’
‘Once you had shown the woman how you would have corrupted the child,’ Baby said.
‘Once the woman had permitted and exulted in the child’s corruption,’ Piero rejoindered.
‘With me it was just a dirty little itch, like a mosquito bite which you scratch until the pus runs out,’ said Baby.
‘With me, I suppose, it was just a cringing anxiety to oblige a vain woman who might later be useful,’ said Piero.
When they had thus succeeded in poisoning for each other even what they had had (which was not nothing), when they had finally turned their brief but quite genuine and joyous lust into a handful of damp garbage, Baby climbed into the Lagonda and was driven away by Isobel. Jo-Jo had said a guarded goodbye to Baby in the hall before withdrawing to her pool. Ptolemaeos had merely waved from the Library window as Baby crossed the drive with Piero. Nobody cared about Baby’s departure, herself least of all. All those who were left behind (Ptolemaeos, Piero and Jo-Jo, if one didn’t yet count Oenone), remembered the hideous, grimacing thing that had crouched hissing on the bed; and one of them, Piero, remembered the terrible howl of pain and despair which Jeremy had given as he bolted from the room.
Fielding Gray, charged with the search for Jeremy Morrison, had taken a country train from Ely to his own home at Broughton Staithe, thinking that Jeremy might conceivably have gone there, and had drawn a blank. The next place to look for Jeremy was obviously Jeremy’s own home. Having considered and rejected the idea of announcing his approach by telephone, he boarded a bus from Broughton (the same bus as he had taken many years ago when going from Broughton to visit Peter) to the Morrisons’ house at Luffham by Whereham. Here a stately lunatic who styled himself the ‘Chamberlain of the Household’ (formerly Detterling’s manservant, Fielding remembered) reported that Master Jeremy had not been seen since the beginning of term at Lancaster. After this, Fielding took a train for London, to put his affairs in order, in so far as this was possible, and plan what he would do if Jeremy did not shortly reappear.
‘I wonder,’ said Theodosia Salinger, ‘if they would ever let women play.’
The Salinger girls were seated in the spectators’ gallery of the Tennis Court at Lord’s, where Ivan Blessington had brought them after luncheon at the Ritz.
‘I thought the game would interest you,’ Ivan said. ‘A big, strong lass like you would have no difficulty with the hard ball and the heavy racket…nor with the basic stroke. You cut down on the thing,’ he said, chopping at the back of the padded bench in front with the edge of his hand and raising a fly which thought it was there for the winter.
‘They wouldn’t let a girl play at Lord’s,’ said Carmilla, ‘because you can’t belong to the MCC. But at Queen’s…or Hampton Court…?’
‘Why not at Cambridge?’ said Ivan. ‘There’s a Court there.’
‘I’ll enquire when I get back there,’ said Theodosia. ‘But I mustn’t let it wreck my badminton.’
A bell rang.
‘You win the point outright,’ said Ivan, ‘if you strike the ball from this end into the far gallery – and ring the bell. I wish all the rules were as simple. It’ll take you a month to learn them.’
‘Chase better than half a yard,’ called the marker.
‘I see what you mean,’ Theodosia said, and gave a little shiver of excitement.
‘We must be off back to Cambridge,’ said Carmilla.
They stopped between the Pavilion and ‘Q’ Stand to look at the October green.
‘Poor Da,’ said Theodosia.
‘Just to check up finally,’ said Carmilla to Ivan Blessington, ‘you have seen Ashley Dexterside, who knows exactly what to do about Gregory Stern’s book?’
‘Yes. Stern leaves for the continent today – Monday. He will deliver his text to Ashley, person to person, when he gets back. He now seems much vaguer than he was about when this will be – I gather he’s prolonging his trip – but whenever it is Ashley will be ready at five minutes’ warning.’
‘Good,’ said Carmilla. ‘That’s that taken care of. How are Betty and Jakki and Caroline?’
‘Well, I thank you. All three of ’em loved it when you came to tea the other day. Come again, any time.’
‘I’m glad you’ve taken on this nasty job for us,’ said Theodosia. ‘Funny; all those times Carm and I came here with Da, we never went into the Tennis Court.’
When Jeremy Morrison turned up at Oudenarde House that same Monday afternoon, Walter (Wally) St George, the assistant master was delighted to see him. Glinter Parkes, the Headmaster, was having an afternoon off playing golf, otherwise he would have been quite pleased to see Jeremy too. For after all, young Morrison had an important father, he himself had been an agreeable boy while at Oudenarde, apparently responsive to Glinter’s homilies and appreciative of Wally’s conjuring tricks and anecdotes; he had recently presented a seat, which not every Old Boy troubled to do; he had won the Kilmarnock Gold Medal for a Latin poem at Cambridge in June: he was, in short, a Credit to the School and what was more he looked it (with his big, round, friendly face, his brown wavy hair, his strong, soft, brown hands to match), and if he had once or twice been suspected of precocity, well, that was some years ago
now and no one (as far as could be known) the worse for it.
As for the events at Tunne Hall (as Len liked to call it) Wally knew nothing of these. Glinter, had he been there, just might have remembered how Isobel had been urgently summoned by Provost Llewyllyn and then wondered what Jeremy was doing, four days later, so far away from Lancaster College; but since he would have known of no connection between Isobel and Jeremy, he would almost certainly have seen no connection between the two incidents, and in any case he was fussily four-putting on the eighth green of the Cinque Ports Golf Course when Jeremy appeared at Oudenarde House.
Monday afternoon was ‘Odds and Ends’. Jeremy went politely round with Wally to watch carpentry, raffia work, gardening, shooting (in the indoor range which was being financed by Gregory Stern), and junior judo.
‘In fact,’ said Wally, ‘we really concentrate on teaching ’em all to box, but judo’s such a fad these days that we’ve decided to take it on as well.’
After all this, Jeremy said that he would like to have a bit of a walk on his own, and Wally, who knew how sentimental Old Boys could be and did not despise them for it, let him loose with his blessing, adjuring him only to be back in Minden Wing in time for School Tea at five.
‘Tell me,’ Jeremy said to the plainest boy he could find (in case Wally were still watching him) among those who were messing about on the footer ground, ‘where can I find Marius Stern?’
‘He goes riding at Birchington on Mondays, so you can’t,’ the boy said, revelling in the opportunity to disoblige.
But Jeremy too, in his day, had gone riding at Birchington. The stables were in the woods, near the aerodrome: there was a small clearing, with elementary obstacles, in which the boys generally exercised, though sometimes they rode two by two through the woods and over what little still survived of the heath. Either way, Jeremy would find Marius. He must. He left a friendly note for Wally excusing himself from School Tea on the plea that a ‘nasty knock’ in the engine of his Morris 1000 needed a garage, set off past the Barbican for Lord of the Manor Corner, turned left there, and then, after another four miles odd, to the right, and approached the stables by the rough road which led past the Big Game Museum and on to the little gymkhana ground.