by Simon Raven
‘He thought…that she had some secret; that she was so scared of revealing this and yet was under such emotional pressure to do so that the only way of keeping it to herself was to cease to communicate altogether.’
‘Under what emotional pressure?’
‘I am not quite sure. Doctor La Soeur said that she yearned, that was his word, yearned to reveal her secret – and yet was terrified of the possible result. I think…that Fielding may know what the secret is. But he has refused to say anything about it.’
‘And now…she is herself again?’
‘No,’ said Tessa. ‘She behaves more or less normally and she addresses people on day to day matters. She gives orders to the hotel staff at Buttock’s; she realized when I must return to school and sent a servant to get a ticket for me. But she is not herself, Marius. There is no zest. Always before…she has treated the smallest things with interest and gaiety. No longer. She didn’t even come to watch me pack. She used to be so helpful, and so funny, that I forgot to be sad that I was leaving her. This time…I was there alone, crying into my trunk.’
‘You have left her often enough this last half year,’ said Marius, ‘without too much sadness.’
‘To be with Theodosia. I had to go to her.’
‘I dare say. But your aunt will have noticed, she must have noticed, how eager you always were to get away. She was alone at Christmas. Perhaps this made her feel deserted and unhinged her mind.’
‘How can you be so cruel, Marius? I’ve told you, Doctor La Soeur said she had some secret –’
‘Could that secret have been her own loneliness and despair?’
Tessa turned and walked away along the dark terrace with the wind behind her, staggering from time to time as it nearly laid her on her face.
Marius next went to the private Lodgings of his tutor, Raisley Conyngham, where he told his master, in a somewhat troubled fashion, of his talk with Tessa.
‘Why did you upset her like that?’ Raisley Conyngham said.
‘She deserves it. She has been altogether too smug ever since Thea Canteloupe took her up. But she must not be distressed for long. Later on, sir, I shall persuade Major Gray to tell me what the secret really is, and then tell Tessa, so that she will know that it is not her absences in Wiltshire that have caused her aunt’s illness.’
‘How do you know it isn’t?’
‘Because Mrs Malcolm has always said she didn’t mind, that she is glad Tessa is going to such a grand house to learn about the world with such distinguished people.’
‘Mrs Malcolm could be lying about that. But as it happens she isn’t – at least I very much doubt it. If my guess is right,’ Raisley Conyngham said, ‘the secret which she suddenly finds uncontainable yet unrevealable is that she was for many years a very successful and very versatile whore.’
‘SIR?’
‘A whore, boy. You know what that is. She gave rather special exhibitions. I went to one of them once, an anonymous member of the audience. We all wore masks, you see, in the Venetian manner. She threw them in with the tickets – as well she might have done considering her exorbitant charge.’
‘I don’t think I can tell Tessa that this is her aunt’s secret.’
‘I dare say not,’ said Raisley Conyngham: ‘so she will continue to think that your suggestion may be true that Mrs Malcolm is pining to despair because Teresa herself is so often away from her.’
‘That Tessa should think that for long would be intolerable,’ Marius said. ‘A brief punishment was all I wished to inflict. Not permanent misery.’
‘Then you should not have suggested what you did.’
‘How can I set this right, sir? I shan’t be happy until I have done so.’
Raisley Conyngham rang for his housekeeper and ordered tea and crumpets, though it was already nearly six o’clock.
‘You have had a long journey,’ he said, ‘and no luncheon, to judge from the look of you.’
‘We went to Salisbury Cathedral instead.’
‘Good. You must be familiar with all the great cathedrals. It is expected of one. Now, as to this matter of Teresa. I shall show you how to set it right – not for her sake, but because her distress so obviously distresses you.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘But this is a weakness in you, and I shall have to punish as well as relieve you. I don’t want this sort of soppiness to occur again. Meanwhile, the thing is quite simple. You may use my telephone to ring up Fielding Gray, who, Teresa told you, is at Buttock’s tending her aunt. He most certainly knows the secret which we have just been discussing, but it is my belief that he knows another as well – one more suitable to tell to Teresa, let us hope. He is, after all, Mrs Malcolm’s most intimate friend in all the world.’
‘And the punishment you have in store for me, sir?’
‘As to that, you will soon see. Now, in order to console Teresa, you must first extract this second secret I refer to from Fielding Gray, and you will need a key to unlock him. So: tell him that unless he tells you a new and more acceptable secret (for you know he possesses one) that could account for Mrs Malcolm’s mental trauma, you will be compelled, for want of another, to tell Teresa the one you have discovered, i.e. Mrs Malcolm’s career as a strumpet. Anything, you will say, rather than have Teresa continue so stricken by your own suggestion that her aunt’s illness has been caused by her own, Teresa’s, desertion.’
‘But I couldn’t –’
‘– Couldn’t is not a word in my vocabulary, boy. Couldn’t what, for the Lord’s sake?’
By the Lord, thought Marius, he does not mean Christ or the Christian God. Just now (though not always) I wish he did.
‘I couldn’t tell Tessa her aunt is bursting to confess to having been a harlot; and I couldn’t blackmail Fielding Gray by threatening to do so.’
‘You can certainly take the latter course. That is your punishment,’ said Raisley Conyngham: ‘to be compelled to do something you find abhorrent in order to rectify something you find even more abhorrent. It will be good training for you, an important lesson well learned. The practice may come in useful later on. Furthermore, from now on you may be more careful to see to it that you do not get into such silly and injurious predicaments. All ways round, I shall be well pleased for you to receive such disagreeable instruction.’
So Marius rang up Fielding Gray at Buttock’s Hotel, where he was staying in the room that was permanently kept for him (as part owner) by Maisie Malcolm, who owned the other part and managed the place. Marius knew and asked for the correct number of the extension to Fielding’s room, but for some reason he was put through to Mrs Malcolm’s. It was quite possible, Marius reflected, that Mrs Malcolm had given special instructions to the switchboard that this should happen; for Maisie was a woman of insatiable curiosity, and it might well be more than she could bear (even if she was not yet quite up to snuff) that telephone calls should get through to Fielding Gray and she not know of them.
‘Marius Stern,’ said Marius. ‘I’m sorry you’ve been ill, Mrs Malcolm.’
‘That’s very civil of you to say so, young Marius, but I can’t think that’s what you telephoned for.’
Marius did a little fast thinking. Obviously he was never going to get through to Fielding Gray now without a long inquisition from Maisie. But he ought to be able to use Maisie to find matter for consoling Tessa, in which case he could postpone telephoning Fielding, or perhaps would not need to telephone him at all (thus saving himself from Raisley Conynham’s ‘punishment’).
‘The thing is, Mrs Malcolm,’ Marius said, ‘that Tessa is very upset about something and I’m trying to cheer her up.’
‘You leave Tessa alone.’
‘I don’t mean her any harm, Mrs Malcolm. We’re old friends, when all is said. And speaking to her as an old friend this evening, I found out that she is very depressed by the idea that she might be to blame for your illness.’
‘How could she be?’
‘Perhaps…b
y being away so much. Perhaps you missed her more than either of you realized. Anyway, that’s what she’s come to think, and she’s very miserable. I wondered whether… whether you might be able to tell me something that might reassure her.’
For a few seconds there was silence.
‘Mrs Malcolm? Are you there?’
‘I’m here, boy. Let’s get a few things straight. You know what form my illness took?’
‘You…you withdrew.’
‘You might call it that.’ Suddenly Maisie’s voice changed from a dreary and monotonous mumble to something taut and plangent, like the plucked string of a lute. ‘But it wasn’t because Tessa was away – I was glad for her to be away with Lady Canteloupe and the rest, do you hear, glad.’ The lute quickened and began to twang. ‘It’s just that there’s something she ought to know and ought not to know. Why am I telling you? Because perhaps you’ll help her more and not cut her dead at one minute and get horny over her the next.’
‘I don’t get horny over her.’ Marius remembered hearing from Fielding Gray that Maisie was subject to importunate fantasies about the lusts which she imagined men brewed up for her niece. ‘And it’s her that cuts me.’
‘With good reason – if she thinks you want to mess her up.’
‘I’ve told you. I don’t want to mess her –’
‘I’ve heard that story before, not just from you. Anyway, I’m going to tell you something that’ll stop you.’
Surely not the first secret of which Raisley had spoken, that Maisie had been a bawd? Why should that stop his wanting to ‘mess Tessa up’, always assuming he did want to?
‘It had better stop you,’ Maisie twanged. ‘Otherwise I’ll slit you. Slit you. Do you understand what I’m saying?’
‘Mrs Malcolm. I only want to help Tessa to understand that your illness had nothing to do with her, or her visits to Lady Canteloupe.’
‘Nothing to do with her and Lady Canteloupe, no. I’ve told you already. Anything that keeps Tessa away from men is all right with me. Mind you, I let Fielding see her again now, I used not to because they fancied each other –’
‘Mrs Malcolm –’
‘– But ever since she’s been going with Lady Canteloupe I know she’s all right. So I don’t mind how long or often she’s away in that gallery, oh dear no.’ The pace of the lute quickened, the note grew shriller. ‘But I’ll tell you a thing. Though Tessa wasn’t to blame for my illness, she was a sort of cause of it. A catalyst, don’t they call it? I can’t bear it, Marius. I must tell her yet I mustn’t, so I decide to shut right up altogether. But then La Soeur brings me round again. He gives me dope, so that I can be a person again but still stay shut up, sealed up, because I tell him that I must. But I hate dope, Marius, so I chucked it all away, and the seal has gone, Marius, the seal is broken, Marius, and you’re the first that’s spoken to me since and I can’t stop myself and here’s what I’m telling you to tell my Tessa though whether or not it’ll stop her being miserable, God alone knows, but it’ll make you keep your hot grubby hands off her honeypot, or if it doesn’t I’ll slit you. She’s mine, Marius, all mine. My child, my child, my daughter. And do you know who got up my quim to get her? Your dad, years ago, when he came to me one night while your ma was trying to have a baby, one of them what died, before she had beautiful you at last, which was not all that long after, come to think of it, perhaps your daddy was turning lucky, anyway he certainly put a bimbo in my belly. You know how? You know why? Because I was so sad when your daddy telephoned the hospital, and we heard that the baby was dead, dead in the hospital, they didn’t know why, not them – I was so sad, I was so desperate for him, that I let him do it, made him do it without either of us wearing anything, just to see what happened, to see what God got up to next. And what happened was Tessa, that’s what God got up to making next, God spurting out of your daddy’s dainty prick – circumcised I remember, I remember to this day, with a little scar where the Rabbi had nicked him, he said, yes he said, pretty Marius, your daddy, what shot his lovely load up my twotty-pie and by the Grace of God almighty made my daughter, your half-sister, Tessa, Teresa, your half-sister and my baby-pooh. Sorry dear,’ she said, suddenly dull and dreary again. ‘I get carried away, you see, whenever I think of that night with your dad, Gregory. Gregory the Jew; gentleman Gregory that rode with the King’s Guard; Gregory, the father of my Tessa.’
‘Why couldn’t you have told her, told her long ago?’
‘Because I was a tart and had her off a client. No matter it was your dad, he was still a client. If Tessa knew she was my child and then found out that I was a whore, that her mother was a whore…’
‘Yes. I understand. What shall I tell her, Maisie?’
‘No respect, you see. No sooner you know I was a tart than you start calling me Maisie.’
‘I’m sorry. It wasn’t like that. You must know it wasn’t. I wanted to show that I sympathize, that all this has made me fonder of you than I ever was before. But what shall I tell Tessa? Or what shall you tell her? She has to be told something before she eats her heart out thinking that you were made ill by her neglect.’
‘Don’t you touch her, don’t you touch her lovely skin or I’ll slit you,’ Maisie howled down the telephone, and rang off.
‘I can’t tell Tessa any of this,’ said Marius to Raisley Conyngham after summarizing his conversation with Maisie; ‘do you suppose it’s true?’
‘We know she was a whore. Whether or not she was really Teresa’s mother, by your father, we don’t know. It’s possible. Anything is possible in this sort of a circus. But you say the wretched woman is now mad?’
‘She’s thrown her drugs away. The ones prescribed by Doctor La Soeur. She started quite calmly, when she first answered, and then…fell apart. Then, when she’d finished the bit about conceiving Tessa, she was quite calm again – but not for long: she ended up screeching like crazy Cassandra.’
‘Fielding Gray is staying there. He will deal with her, if anybody can,’ Raisley Conyngham said.
‘If she does go mad, Tessa will feel even worse about her. What shall I tell Tessa, sir?’
‘What Mrs Malcolm told you. Or most of it.’
‘But I can’t, sir, I –’
‘I told you there must be a punishment for your feebleness. Now it will take a slightly different form. You must tell Teresa what her aunt – or her mother – told you. Then Teresa will know that the causes of Mrs Malcolm’s illness were quite outside Teresa’s control – that the illness was nothing to do with her absences but was caused by a longing that could not be gratified; Mrs Malcolm’s longing to tell Teresa that she was her child.’
‘And my half-sister? Got by my father?’
‘I think,’ said Raisley Conyngham, ‘that is one part of the news which you might suppress. We don’t, after all, know it to be true.’
‘We don’t know any of it to be true. Perhaps Mrs Malcolm’s love for Tessa has caused the delusion that she bore her. And you surely don’t expect me to tell Tessa that her mother was a whore?’
‘Oh yes. An important part of your punishment. You can dress it up, of course…say that Mrs Malcolm was a discreet and highclass courtesan, as indeed she was. But you will definitely omit the exhibition which I attended. It was choice, Marius, very choice, but it might be rather crushing for a gently nurtured girl to hear about. And it would be very shocking for her to know your source of information – that is, me – on which she would no doubt insist. She is my pupil, when all is said.’
‘So am I.’
‘A different kind of pupil. A male pupil. And one with green eyes and blond hair, at that, a very curious combination, Marius, reminiscent of Lucifer, some might say. You can be told anything at all.’
‘Thank you, sir. So. Tessa is to hear that she is not to blame for her aunt’s illness, which was caused by a long inhibited yearning to tell Tessa that she is, in fact, her mother. She is also to hear that Mrs Malcolm was…let us say…an Aspasia. Only she is not to
know that she was fathered by my father and that I am her half-brother.’
‘It is always sensible to keep one’s options open,’ Raisley Conyngham said.
When Marius told Tessa that Maisie Malcolm was really her mother, Tessa laughed.
‘I’ve guessed that for ages,’ she said: ‘what other explanation was there? Nothing much was ever said about the woman who was supposed to be my mother, and that little extremely unconvincing. So I realized, quite young, what “Auntie Maisie” must be up to and after a little longer I realized why. She must have done something appalling, I thought, and she didn’t want me to know I was her child in case I got to know of whatever she had done and was violently ashamed of my own mother. After a little longer still, I worked out what she had done: occasional turns of phrase, little gestures that she hadn’t meant to make but happened too quickly and naturally for her to suppress them, a few choice specimens of “Auntie Maisie’s” gnomic wisdom – they all added up to “loose woman” and even to “tart”.’
‘To one so young? With no experience of such women?’
‘A “hotel child”, which was what I was, has very early experience of everything under the moon. There were a lot of tarts, superior and sometimes not so superior, in and out of Buttock’s the whole time. “Auntie Maisie” never let on about them to me, but some of the servants did, particularly Giuliano, the third waiter, and I noticed how much their general style had in common with Auntie’s.’
‘Just what did Giuliano think he was up to?’
‘He was an ally. He was commissariat (occasional choccy truffles) and also intelligence, giving me the low-down on the staff and the whole hotel. He got his kicks imparting worldly information in an innocent ear – lots of people do, I understand – and being an intelligent girl I was quite fascinated. But it wasn’t Giuliano who drew the comparison between the tarts that used Buttock’s and Auntie, it was me. An apt pupil.’
‘Amen. So how long have you known all this?’
‘Since about the time I came here, to this school. I love this school,’ Tessa said, looking from the path on which they were walking down to the winding river and then up to the troops of fir trees on the slopes above them. ‘I am very happy here. Why make a thing about Auntie Maisie’s past? Why make a song and dance because she hadn’t told me she was my mother? Go on with being happy, I said to myself: if she wants to tell me, she can. If not – well, she’s keeping quiet because she loves me, so what’s the matter with that?’