by Simon Raven
‘And there will be no more talk of Raisley Conyngham?’
‘None. Until we are back with your Auntie Flo, making you ready to return to school. And then, I am afraid you will find, the talk of Raisley Conyngham will begin once more.’
‘I shall be with him at school,’ said Marius, ‘learning from him.’
‘That is why the talk will begin again, though most of it, of course, not in your presence. Your friends will be asking each other what is the most important thing you are learning from Raisley. They do not think it is Latin verse or the geography of the Peloponnese.’
For a while the tall fair thin boy and the even taller fair and fattish man walked on in silence. Then Marius turned his face up towards his friend’s and said:
‘I have just told you myself. He is teaching me the world’s game.’
‘There are as many versions of that,’ said Jeremy Morrison, ‘as there are of fives or football. What interests your friend is which version he is teaching you and under what code he is instructing you to play it. And now – no more of him, I promise, until we return to England. This fortress is Byzantine with Ottoman additions or Venetian with Turkish additions; I forget which. But I do remember that there is a brilliantly sited hotel just underneath it. The hotel stands partly in the bay itself, and some of its rooms have windows from which you may look straight down into the waters –
…magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas in faery lands forlorn.’
‘Oh Jeremy… Why are we staying in the dreary old Xenia Nestor instead of in this enchanted hotel?’
‘Because, dear boy, the dreary old Xenia Nestor is warm and dry and feeds one after a fashion. This enchanted hotel, as you call it, provides lukewarm bath water and damp sheets, as I once found out at the cost of a horrid bout of bronchitis. Shrewd players of the world’s game give such places a wide berth. This one, as you can see now we are coming closer, is in any case shut for the winter.’
Carmilla Salinger came from Cambridge to be with her sister in her labour. As soon as she arrived the tide rose and Sandy Lodge was surrounded by the sea.
‘Thrilling,’ said Theodosia.
‘Not if you start and the doctor can’t get through,’ Carmilla said.
‘Flo was a nurse during the war,’ said Theodosia. ‘I’d sooner have her than anyone else. That’s why I’m here. I couldn’t have borne a room in a hospital – all that hygienic fuss, and Canty lowering about like a ghoul, and all the left-wing nurses hating me.’
‘You could have had it at home.’
‘I’m having it here.’
‘Suppose Flo gets drunk?’ said Carmilla.
‘Suppose it’s got two heads. Drunk or sober, Flo would kill it. In a hospital they’d keep the beastly thing going. I had enough trouble with my stepson, Sarum. I don’t want any more freaks about the house.’
‘These days,’ said Carmilla, musing and not reproaching, ‘you’re meant to preserve freak babies. Once upon a time they didn’t bother, but now they do.’
‘I wonder why.’
‘It seems there’s now something called the “sanctity of life” – a kind of monsters’ charter. Its real object is to annoy and inconvenience normal people.’
‘No monsters’ charter in this house,’ said Auntie Flo, who was entering with a tray of vodka, toast and caviar, ‘never you fear. I learned all I need to know in that line in the Red Cross in Greece, before everyone got so sanctimonious. No food or medicine to spare for geriatrics or stumer babies, you see – so they just got their quietus. And lucky to get it, when one considers what everyone else in Greece had to put up with just then.’
‘How did they get it?’ Theodosia enquired.
‘One can always find a way when the time comes,’ said Auntie Flo, ‘if one keeps one’s wits about one. Anyhow, I’ve telephoned Doctor La Soeur for some reminders, and he’s told me about one or two modern tricks which you have to use now that there’s so many busybodies about. So that’s all right. And now eat these nourishing black balls, girl, paid for with your own money, and when your pains come on, just yell for Auntie Florence.’
‘A snake,’ said Marius: ‘see where it goes. That yellow streak in the centre of the floor.’
Marius and Jeremy were sitting in the theatre at Epidaurus, halfway up the semicircular tiers of stone seats.
‘Do you see it?’ Marius said.
‘I see it. It is moving off the floor now, and away into the woods. No doubt Raisley Conyngham has told you the significance of such a snake.’
‘I thought you promised not to mention him until we got home.’
‘Just a reference en passant. What has he told you of the yellow snakes of Epidaurus?’
‘Nothing,’ said Marius reluctantly.
‘They are the sacred serpents of the Temple of Asclepius. They heal the sick, by licking them in their sleep. You will find an account by Walter Pater in Marius the Epicurean, the imaginary biography, largely confined to religious activities, of a young Roman namesake of yours. He came here – or to some similar shrine of Asclepius – for a cure.’
‘What had he got?’ Marius enquired.
‘Acute discontent, common then as now among the rich and idle. This place and those like it were the ancient equivalent of Aix-les-Bains or Baden-Baden. One came here for rest and peace of mind. Mind you, there were the same kinds of injurious distractions – gambling and luxurious restaurants. But if you could resist these and surrender to the beauty of the countryside you had some sort of a chance.’
They walked away from the theatre, along a track which took them past the low-built museum, then turned right over a stream and towards the excavations.
‘Did Marius find peace of mind here?’ Marius asked.
‘For a time.’
‘And then?’
‘I rather think he became a Christian. His spiritual progress, as told in Pater’s ponderous prose, is a great trial of one’s patience. So you will forgive me if I cannot be too precise about its later stages. But I do recall quite clearly that Marius was kissed or licked by a yellow serpent of Asclepius, and was thus rendered temporarily stable, at about the halfway mark of a longish book.’
‘How did Marius end up?’
‘As I told you, I don’t remember the details. But one thing I can tell you: after being licked by the yellow serpents, he strove consciously and constantly for virtue.’
‘Is that a hint? Now I’ve seen one of them, am I supposed to strive too?’
‘I saw it as well. Perhaps both of us should begin striving.’
‘The trouble is,’ said Marius as they came to a temple, ‘virtue is so beastly boring and unattractive.’
‘It is easier on the nerves and the constitution – as your eponym discovered – than the pursuit of pleasure.’
‘That’s old men’s talk. This is the Temple of Asclepius?’
‘No. There’s nothing left of that. This is the Temple of Themis, who personifies Justice. The day is crammed with moral lessons.’
‘A few weeks ago,’ said Marius, ‘when I was travelling through Italy with Piero Caspar before we met you in Brindisi, Piero was laying on the moral lessons as well. It seems that I am considered a natural target for them.’
‘We all desire to improve you,’ Jeremy said.
‘You know,’ said Marius, ‘that I was coming through Italy to betray you? To turn you back home before you could find what you were looking for. I was too late. When Piero and I reached Brindisi, you had already…already found your Grail, so to speak.’
‘Why should you have wished me not to?’
‘I was being tested…to make sure of my obedience, I believe, though other motives were alleged. But what it comes down to is that my loyalty was being tried by Raisley Conyngham.’
‘I thought,’ said Jeremy, ‘that we were not allowed to mention him.’
‘You are not. I am when I wish, as I cannot explain myself or my behaviour without reference to
him. I have to explain myself now, Jeremy. You had been sent out by Theodosia and Carmilla to redeem yourself after your disgrace in Australia. Right?’
‘Right.’
‘You were to sail westward from Ithaca, with Fielding for company, until you came to the “Islands of the Blessèd”, a figure of speech that intimated some vision or marvel which you would recognize as the sign of redemption, granted after your long endeavour, and as the conclusion of your search. Raisley Conyngham commanded me to stop all this, since it was not what he wished, and have you brought home. First I begged Carmilla to recall you, but she would not. Yet I obtained permission from her to go and try you in person, provided that Piero came with me as a kind of umpire and duenna. We had news of you as you approached Brindisi, but by the time we got there you had met with your marvel and your journey was done, so that I was too late to do anything about it myself.’
‘Which brings us to the question,’ said Jeremy, ‘of what you would have done if you had found me before I had had my… vision. Were you still minded, after your journey through Italy with Piero, to betray me by denying me my passage to the “Islands of the Blessèd”?’
‘I was just coming to that. But first…tell me, Jeremy: what was it you saw which made you realize that your search was over? That you were redeemed?’
‘I saw myself as the friend and confidant of the poet Virgil. I spoke to him as he died, there in Brindisi nearly 2,000 years ago, and comforted him, and saved him from traitors who were trying to steal his poetry from him.’
‘That is to say, Jeremy, that you somehow imagined all this?’
‘No. It happened. To say “I saw myself” as Virgil’s friend is wrong. I was his friend. I was part of his being and he was part of mine.’
‘And that is what I might have taken from you if I had come upon you earlier and persuaded you to go home?’
‘Yes. So I must know, Marius, here in the Temple of Themis who is Justice, would you have taken this from me had you been able?’
‘I should not have known what I was taking. How could I have known?’
‘Granted. But would you deliberately have tried to take from me whatever God or miracle or Cup or portent might come to me and redeem me?’
‘How can I know?’
‘You set out to do it.’
‘I might have changed my mind.’
‘And displeased Raisley Conyngham?’
Marius scowled. ‘I told you: I am the one who will talk of Raisley Conyngham, when I wish.’
‘We can hardly conduct this discussion without my being allowed to as well.’
‘Yes, we can,’ snapped Marius. ‘You must simply conceive that I act as I see fit. Whatever is suggested to me by anyone else, I do my will.’
‘Yet you are so uncertain of yourself that you do not know what this would have been?’
‘No. But I should have known when I saw you.’
‘How?’
‘I should have been told.’
‘By whom?’
‘My daimon. My genius. The god who guides me.’
‘Your conscience?’
‘No. My personal daimon who watches over me. We all have one. Raisley Conyngham wants power over mine. He has some – not yet enough for him, and much less when I am far away from him – from his charm and his persuasion. He still has too little, Jeremy, to have forced my daimon to force me to betray you. Had I done so, it would have been more from jealousy than out of desire to please Mr Conyngham. Though that desire was real enough, it would not have been strong enough, by itself, to move me or my daimon, without the jealousy I felt because I wanted you at home with me, not sailing the ocean with Fielding Gray at the behest of those two women.’
‘Jealousy is the meanest vice of all. If your daimon could not rid you of it, then he were a poor daimon indeed – more under Raisley Conyngham’s influence than you might think.’
‘Only I am to talk of Raisley Conyngham.’
Marius was verging on a tantrum.
‘Come on,’ said Jeremy. ‘Time to go back to Nauplion. Let us talk no more of this.’
Marius trembled. ‘First…I must see another yellow serpent,’ he said.
‘They do not come,’ said Jeremy, ‘just for the asking. Not even to pretty boys like you.’
‘Then I shall remember that one we saw on the theatre floor…which went gliding away into the forest. My daimon tells me to remember it.’
Gradually Marius grew calmer.
‘The personal daimon or genius,’ said Jeremy, as they walked back towards the stream, ‘is a Platonic concept put in the mouth of Socrates, in The Apology and elsewhere. Who introduced you to the concept?’
‘I did,’ said Marius. ‘I was to read The Apology with Raisley Conyngham during one holiday. But we only read the end of it, the only part worth reading, he said, where Socrates conjectures what death may hold for him. But I thought it would be worthwhile to go back and look at the rest. So later, some time later…last summer, when I was staying with Auntie Flo in Burnham…I did. And then I realized for the first time that, as Socrates premises of himself and of all men, I had my own daimon or daimonion: my own particle, perhaps, of God.’
The tide rose and made an island of Sandy Lodge for three nights. On the fourth it came high enough to flood Auntie Flo’s ground floor to a depth of six inches. Upstairs Theodosia lay in labour, while Auntie Flo, ably attended by Carmilla, played the midwife. Despite the difficulties that had plagued the conception, there were none about the birth. It was a straightforward affair of pain and blood that cost Theodosia a groaning but no extreme trauma. The infant female, once ejected, was promptly seized by its heels and started up by a no-nonsense slap from Auntie Flo. It then wailed fit to drown the wind, was washed, bedded and named.
‘May as well get that straight,’ said Auntie Flo, ‘before Canteloupe comes blundering along. We’ll have to let him know – if the telephone’s still working. And when he gets here he’ll want to choose the name himself. You know how overbearing men are.’
‘Keep him away from here,’ said Theodosia. ‘Tell him I’ll bring the child back when I’m ready, and meanwhile that it’s got everything it should have and nothing extra. We’ve both known it would be a girl since the test was made late last summer, and I decided long ago that it should be called Nausikaa.2 Marius will like that and he deserves some say in the matter.’
‘Nausikaa it shall be,’ said Carmilla: ‘a princess of the Phaeacians.’
‘Now get some rest, girl,’ said Auntie Flo.
As Carmilla and Auntie Flo drank Marc de Bourgogne in Auntie Flo’s bedroom, Carmilla said to her hostess:
‘Unless there is a boy later on, that child will be called Baroness Sarum of Old Sarum when Canteloupe dies. The Barony descends in the female line.’
‘Not the Marquessate?’
‘No. There was originally a complicated special remainder for heirs male of the first Marquis’ eldest daughter – that’s how Canty got the thing. But none of that entitles Canty’s daughter to inherit anything other than the Barony and the property.’
‘Which should be enough to be going on with,’ said Auntie Flo. ‘But if Canteloupe dies without a male heir, the Marquessate is done for?’
‘Right,’ said Carmilla.
‘Pity.’
‘Do you really think so?’
‘What will the girl be called now, while Canteloupe lives?’
‘Lady Nausikaa Sarum,’ said Carmilla: ‘what else?’
‘As daughter of a Marquess,’ said Auntie Flo, ‘she will take precedence as a Countess. But if she actually inherits the Barony on Canteloupe’s decease; what precedence will she take then? Still as a Countess?’
‘A nice conundrum,’ said Carmilla. ‘When I telephone Canty, I’ll ask him. He’ll know.’
‘Not very tactful to refer to what will happen when he’s dead.’
‘He won’t mind that. There’s a lot of things to be said against Canteloupe,’ Carmilla said:
‘that he’s arrogant, deceitful and callous; but one thing is also very clear; that he’s far too grand to be piqued by the idea of death.’
‘Here is your daughter,’ said Theodosia Canteloupe to Marius Stern: ‘Lady Nausikaa Sarum.’
Marius and Jeremy bent to examine the uncovered sex of the sleeping child, and then the rest of it.
‘She favours Teresa Malcolm,’ said Marius. ‘Teresa – Tessa – has been with you to comfort you, when she was not at school, all the time you have been carrying this child. Why is she not here now?’
‘Her aunt, Mrs Malcolm, is ill. Teresa is with her in London.’
‘Mrs Malcolm must be very ill indeed for Tessa to desert you at such a time.’
‘She is very ill,’ said Theodosia.
‘Fielding Gray is with her too,’ said Carmilla.
‘And my sister, Rosie?’
‘She is in the Languedoc with your mother. But Teresa has the two Blessington girls to support her, Jakki and Carolyn. And of course their father.’
‘I do not understand,’ said Marius. ‘Mrs Malcolm is never ill.’
‘She is now,’ Carmilla said.
‘I should go to her,’ said Marius. ‘What is she ill with?’
‘Anno domini,’ Carmilla said.
‘She is not all that old.’
‘Some bodies wear out quicker than others,’ said Theodosia.
‘In any case, I should go to her,’ Marius repeated. ‘We have not always agreed, Mrs Malcolm and I…but for a long time she has been there for me. And I for her, I think.’
‘She wants nobody,’ said Carmilla; ‘nobody except Fielding and Teresa.’
‘You said Jakki and Carolyn –’
‘– They help Teresa by being kind to her when she is not with her aunt. They do not see Mrs Malcolm.’
‘But she always liked them very much.’
‘She will not see them now,’ Carmilla said. ‘I have had full accounts from their father, Ivan Blessington. And from Fielding. Maisie will see nobody except Fielding himself, her niece, Teresa, and her doctor, Doctor La Soeur.’
‘I thought he’d retired,’ said Auntie Flo.