by Simon Raven
‘Not up to the point of allowing him to exploit, as you call it, his own sister,’ Carmilla said.
‘It is not quite what you imagine. Marius thinks that if Canteloupe wants your sister, Theodosia, to conceive again in hope of a boy, then Tessa can help to bring about this conception, by acting as a kind of catalyst (Marius’ phrase again) between Marius and Thea. You see, their feelings are now such, Marius’ and Thea’s, that they would not come together with a good will, or indeed at all, unless some such…enticement…was to operate on them.’
‘For a start,’ said Carmilla coolly, ‘Teresa must be warned that Marius is her brother.’
‘Half-brother,’ Piero said. ‘It makes a difference, as we used to say in Syracuse.’
‘Teresa must be warned,’ repeated Carmilla.
‘Marius has told me,’ said Fielding, ‘that if Tessa is told that he is her half-brother, he will be very displeased.’
‘Then he must be displeased,’ said Carmilla.
‘We shall get nowhere without his trust. It would be better if you, Carmilla, tell your sister, Theodosia, and leave her to make sure that nothing untoward should occur. She is a capable woman, Thea, and can easily manage this. What is perhaps more to the point,’ said Fielding, ‘is that Marius’ perverse attitude in all this is almost certainly based on Conyngham’s advice. I put this to Marius, and he did not try to deny it.’
‘What has been happening,’ said Jeremy, ‘to this daimon which Marius is so pleased with?’
‘I think that its light has diminished since he rejoined his master, Raisley, at school.’
‘What you are saying,’ said Carmilla, ‘is that whether or not Marius’ daimon is a part of God, Raisley Conyngham is certainly part of the Devil, and that Marius, daimon or no daimon, is too weak to resist him. As we have so often said in the past, Conyngham must be driven out. Yet, as we have also said, he is a respectable schoolmaster of long service, and his teaching of the classics has produced unimpeachable results. So how is he to be driven out? It must be evident now that this is what we have to decide. First,’ she said, rising and walking over to a shelf of reference books, ‘one must know one’s enemy.’
She took down a recent edition of Who’s Who.
‘Let us now consider the official curriculum vitae of Raisley Conyngham.’
‘It is surely the unofficial parts with which we are most concerned,’ Piero Caspar said.
‘Precisely,’ said Carmilla; ‘but we shall best begin to find those by looking through the gaps in the rest. Now then’ – she flipped the pages – ‘“CONYNGHAM. Raisley Moffat Windsor: b. 1936,”’ she read, ‘“s. of late Tewkesbury Moffat Conyngham, of Ullacote in the county of Somerset, esquire.”
‘Rather an elaborate way of referring to one’s dead father,’ commented Carmilla; ‘and I see he lists no mother. Rather odd.’
‘Lots of people don’t,’ said Fielding, ‘I didn’t myself. It generally means that they didn’t like her (as in my case) or that their father had married beneath him.’
‘“Educ.: Brydales, and Marcian College, Cambridge (BA Hons. [Cantab.] 1956; MA [Cantab.] 1960). Second Lieutenant, The Blue Mowbrays, 1956-8.” Hmmm,’ said Carmilla; ‘National Service, of course.’
‘He must have been one of the very last to do it,’ said Fielding: ‘I must say, he seems to have got his commission very quickly – probably sent straight to OCTU because he was a graduate.’
‘After his Service he went to teach at your school,’ said Carmilla. ‘Started in 1959. He is described here as having become, in 1972, “Mag. Sec. Lit. Hum.” and in 1976 “Baro vers. Lat. et Graec.” What on earth does all that mean?’
‘Second Master of Classics,’ said Jeremy, ‘and Baron of Latin and Greek Verse.’
‘Baron? What an extraordinary title, in the context.’
‘Not really. Like calling somebody Lord of Misrule or King of the Toasts and Cups. Barons of the Verse or Verses,’ said Fielding. ‘What’s wrong with that? Rather splendid.’
‘I find it most touching and appropriate,’ said Piero, ‘this loyalty to your old school. Try this port: I have just bought a dozen cases from Berry Bros and should value your advice.’
‘Nothing very sinister or out of the way, so far,’ said Carmilla, rapping the pages of Who’s Who, ‘…though rather fancy about his dead father’s having been squire of Ullacote, and very finicking about his degree at Cambridge.’
‘Schoolmasters have to be finicking about their degrees,’ said Fielding. ‘Paying parents expect it. What’s this place, Brydales, he went to before ’Varsity?’
‘A co-educational crank school in the West Country,’ said Jeremy. ‘My brother Nickie was sent there as a forlorn hope when his brain started to soften. I can’t think Raisley was taught much Latin and Greek there.’
‘There used to be a famous female at Brydales,’ said Carmilla, ‘who taught Latin and Greek very vividly – to anyone who wished to learn. So if he’d been well grounded at his prep. school and liked the classics, he’d have had an ideal instructor. Perhaps, if he was a delicate boy (more than likely), his father taught him before he went to Brydales. A man called Tewkesbury Conyngham – it must be the same one – was famous in the thirties as a classical archaeologist and roving antiquary. The war would have brought him home in good time to teach little Raisley, and it sounds from his previous career as if he might have been rather an exciting teacher.
‘But we shall be going into all such details later,’ said Carmilla: ‘myself, I very much look forward to finding out a lot more about Miss Jesty Hyphen, the Classical Mistress at Brydales. There is a big question mark over her name: she had to retire early, but the secret behind that was so well kept that no one ever found out why. Meanwhile…let us note that Who’s Who makes no mention of Raisley’s string of horses – bad publicity for a schoolmaster, I suppose – but does mention a sabbatical year in the mid-seventies, just before he became “Baron of Latin and Greek Verse”. Apparently he was offered a grant by his old College, Marcian, to do what is described as “Ecclesiastical Research in the Languedoc”, and your school gave him a year off to go and do it. Generous – though I expect it was without pay. And so what, we ask ourselves, was Raisley sniffing after in the Languedoc in 1975? The whole thing was obviously pretty prestigious, since his old college sponsored him and the school at which he taught was prepared to release him. And yet, unless I am very much mistaken, nothing has been heard about this research since.’
‘A gap,’ said Fielding, ‘of the kind we are looking for. The entry records the expedition – of which nothing further is known. Why is the entry there then? It would not be like Raisley to record a flop. There must be more to this than appears here.’
‘I hope that this and other matters will soon be made very plain,’ said Carmilla, ‘when we look closer. Now then. Division of tasks. Fielding, the old soldier, to find out what he can about Raisley’s time as a National Serviceman in the Blue Mowbrays – and the period during which he was being trained for his commission. Fielding and Jeremy to pursue Raisley’s career at Marcian College, Cambridge. Myself to assist them with local knowledge. Piero and I to look at his time at Brydales (with special reference to Jesty Hyphen, who must have taught him), at his early years at Ullacote, and at the character and achievements of his father, from whom Raisley may (or may not) have received his early education. Myself and Piero also to investigate what condition Ullacote is in at the present time, along with Raisley’s string of National Hunt horses; and Jeremy and Fielding to make enquiries about Raisley’s performances as a Classics Master at their old school and the general impression which he has made over the years. Particular notice to be taken both at the school and at Marcian College of anything that may still be known of Raisley’s sabbatical year and the “Ecclesiastical Research” which he attempted.
‘Finally,’ said Carmilla, ‘if my instinct is right, we shall all of us, having learned whatever we may and pooled our knowledge, have to set out tog
ether to the Languedoc to follow up the expedition which Raisley undertook. There can be, in my view, no proper plan made by us until full account has been taken of the sabbatical year and whatever Raisley was engaged in, “Ecclesiastical Research” or something other, during the course of it. The item about this sabbatical year is for our purposes the most suggestive in his entire entry. It must surely be probable that anything…anything which he might wish to hide… occurred during the year he spent in the Languedoc, during the period of the so-called “research”, the date and auspices of which have been so prominently recorded but of the substance of which not one jot or title has apparently been published since.’
‘Tomorrow,’ said Piero, ‘will be time enough for us to consider the details of our journeys and enquiries. Meanwhile,’ he said, filling liberal glasses of the Taylor ’49 from Berry Bros, ‘what shall we drink to to mark our assembly here?’
‘To the final downfall and departure of Raisley Conyngham?’ said Fielding Gray.
‘To the final salvation of Marius Stern?’ said Jeremy Morrison.
‘To the discovery of the truth?’ said Piero Caspar.
‘To none of these,’ said Carmilla Salinger as she raised her glass: ‘but to the art and pleasure of the Hunt.’
‘To the art and pleasure of the Hunt,’ they cried; then drained their glasses in one and, led by Piero (to whom, after all, the very expensive glasses belonged), flung them into the grate.
Footnotes
1 See Blood of My Bone, by Simon Raven (House of Stratus; 2001).
2 Correctly spelt and pronounced in four syllables, Nausikaa, but commonly shortened in speech to Nausika
3 See Fielding Gray, by Simon Raven (Blond & Briggs; 1967).
4 See The Sabre Squadron, by Simon Raven (Blond & Briggs; 1966).
PART TWO
Cathar County
It sited was in fruitful soyle of old,
And girt in with two walls on either side;
The one of yron, the other of bright gold.
That none might thorough break, nor overstride:
And double gates it had which opened wide,
By which both in and out men moten pas:
Th’ one faire and fresh, the other old and dride.
Old Genius the porter of them was,
Old Genius, the which a double nature has…
(Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queen,
Book III, Canto VI, Stanza xxxi)
…And all about grew every sort of flowre,
To which sad lovers were transformde of yore;
Fresh Hyacinthus, Phoebus paramoure
And dearest love;
Foolish Narcisse, that likes the watry shore;
Sad Amaranthus, made a flowre but late,
Sad Amaranthus, in whose purple gore
Me seems I see Amintas wretched fate,
To whom sweete Poets verse hath given endlesse date.
There wont fair Venus often to enjoy
Her deare Adonis joyous company,
And reape sweet pleasure of the wanton boy:
There yet, some say, in secret he does ly,
Lapped in flowres and pretious spycery,
By her hid from the world, and from the skill
Of Stygian Gods, which do her love envy;
Put she her selfe, when ever that she will,
Possesseth him, and of his sweetnesse takes her fill.
Ibidem, Stanzas xlv and xlvi
Since Tunne hall was so close to Cambridge, they started their search with enquiries about Raisley Conyngham’s time at Marcian College.
‘An ancient and obscure college,’ Carmilla said to Jeremy and Fielding, ‘with two Eton Fives courts. Marcian was a rather successful Emperor of the Roman Empire of the East round the middle of the fifth century AD. There is no conceivable reason why a college should have been named after him, except that he had the misfortune to preside over Byzantium when it was split from top to bot by the monophysite controversy – which had to do with the relationship between the Father and the Son. Were they of the same substance or of a similar substance?’
‘The old Arian squabble?’
‘With knobs on,’ said Carmilla. ‘Was Christ both human and divine? Could he get an erection? That kind of a thing.’
‘To which party did the Emperor Marcian incline?’
‘To the party of common sense. He was principally interested in promoting peace and quiet, which, in practice, meant dowsing extremists, with which Constantinople was absolutely heaving, of all persuasions.’
‘He sounds rather a good chap,’ said Jeremy.
‘By a perverse association,’ said Carmilla, ‘the college named after him has always particularly favoured theologians – though this was the very class that had turned his reign into a nightmare. The college has a famous library of theology and divinity known as the Chalcedonian Library, in memory of the Oecumenical Council of Chalcedon, which made a series of moderate pronouncements in religious affairs.’
‘How extraordinary,’ said Jeremy. ‘I hardly knew Marcian existed when I was up. Where is it?’
‘Near the Round Church.’
‘Where one used to get taxis? I never noticed a college round there.’
‘That is hardly surprising,’ said Carmilla. ‘The entrance gate is very humble, and is halfway down one of those squalid alleyways behind the church – the one that leads to the pawnbroker’s near Portugal Place. So there you are, boys: you are now supplied with information historical, academical and topographical: off you go.’
‘Which is all very well,’ said Fielding to Jeremy; ‘but where does one start?’
Fielding had never attended a university: Jeremy had.
‘One starts with the head porter,’ Jeremy said. ‘After all, Conyngham was there only twenty-five years ago. Head porters go on forever.’
The head porter of Marcian was a brisk forty-five years old, having started his career at the age of twenty and been promoted over the heads of his seniors (though of course Fielding and Jeremy were not to know this) because he cherished a nasty little secret about the Master’s second daughter, who had been allowed access to certain crucial papers, on certain crural conditions, just before Part II of her Tripos. Mr Trapp (‘Call me plain “Trapp”, gentlemen: “Mister”, these days, is merely common’) was of military cut and civil speech. Yes, he remembered Raisley Conyngham; yes, he would show the gentlemen Conyngham’s old rooms. He had been junior porter but one when Conyngham was up and had frequently carried parcels there. Conyngham was rich and had a lot of interesting parcels. He, Trapp, had therefore remembered the man (weedy but well groomed, with an Edwardian air) and remembered his rooms (expensively furnished – Conyngham was probably the last gentleman in the college to have furnished his rooms himself). And here they were; now occupied by one of the Junior Fellows, who was away on some footling conference. Not as spick as they had been in Conyngham’s time; downright sloppy in fact; not even clean; he must have a word with the stair slut (Marcian usage for bedmaker) about that. But you could tell the status which Conyngham had enjoyed as an undergraduate from the fact that he’d had rooms that were now thought good enough for a Fellow – albeit a Junior Fellow and a scruffy little Geordie at that. What gave Conyngham that status? Money and intelligence. He was not much liked. He had, however, one close friend, a certain Prideau Glastonbury, with whom he shared an interest in racehorses. They used to go to Newmarket together, which was in those days forbidden, if only as a matter of form.
‘Your memory of the early fifties seems admirably clear, Trapp,’ said Fielding Gray.
‘Raisley Conyngham was about the only thing remotely memorable, sir,’ said Trapp. ‘This, as you may know, is the least distinguished college in the kingdom, with the possible exception of Hertford College, Oxford – which did at least produce an author called Evelyn Waugh.’
‘Well then,’ said Jeremy, ‘if your memories of Conyngham are so vivid, perhaps you will recall that nearly twenty ye
ars after he went down this college sponsored him to undertake “research” in the South of France.’
‘No, sir. “Research” is not my business.’
‘Then whose business?’
‘The registrar may be able to help you. If Raisley Conyngham is a rich man, gentlemen – and I notice from the sporting press that his horses run from time to time on the turf – why could he not have sponsored his own “research”?’
‘A very good question, Trapp. Thank you for the tour,’ said Jeremy, who now produced a five pound note in his left hand and a ten pound note in his right, and examined them both alternately, in a solemn and scholarly manner. ‘Tell me, Trapp: did Conyngham ever invite ladies to his room?’
‘No, sir, not even in May week. He never attended a College Ball. Yet he was a handsome young man in a slightly sallow way. All the stair sluts fancied him rotten. They thought he was “interesting”, you see. But from the look of him as he walked through the college and into the street he fancied nobody nor nothing. No woman; not the other thing neither.’
Jeremy gave Trapp the tenner. As they went on their way to the registrar, he observed, ‘Trapp might easily have tried to make something up to amuse us. Or he might even have been awkward about talking at all. On balance he deserves ten.’
‘He’s not been a lot of help,’ said Fielding, who never liked to see money being given away to other people.
‘Swingeing Court, he told us,’ said Jeremy, ignoring Fielding’s avaricious grouch; ‘the registrar is to be found, he said, not in the office area but in Room T 5, Swingeing Court.’
They came into a court no bigger than an Eton Fives court – which, indeed, it had evidently been before the buttress and the ledges had been hopelessly eroded by the gargoyles which spewed from the gutter above.