by Simon Raven
‘Carmilla said two Fives courts,’ said Fielding. ‘They’ve certainly let this one go to rack. T 5 in that corner. No mention of the registrar.’
They ascended one flight of stairs and knocked. A small whiny voice bade them enter. Inside they found a creature like the shrivelled Sibyl of Cumae (who had to be kept in a birdcage, Fielding remembered, for her own protection). The registrar (if he it was) sat on a hard chair, his feet barely reaching the floor, and looked plaintively into a wheezing gas fire.
‘What do you want?’ whined the Sibyl who appeared, by courtesy of dress, to be of the male sex.
‘You are the registrar, sir?’ said Jeremy.
‘So I believe. Doctor Davie Gamp, DD.’ He held up a small notebook. ‘What would you wish me to register? The files and so on are in my office. I go there at dead of night to transfer information from this book. My office overlooks the street, you see, and the noise disturbs me. That is why the Fives court outside is not used any more. Even the patter of a Fives ball would drive me mad.’
‘Couldn’t you have found another room?’ said Fielding, failing to see why the legitimate pastimes of the undergraduates should be abandoned for the convenience of this unattractive personage.
‘This is the smallest and most remote of Marcian’s Courts, and therefore the least raucous…provided, of course, that there are no Sphaeric games like Fives, which are in any case prohibited by a college statute of 1515.’
‘Notwithstanding which,’ said Fielding, ‘I hope they still play in the other college Fives court.’
‘I believe they are erecting a women’s latrine on it. We are to have females, you see. None of which concerns you, unless you are connected with the college. What would you wish to register? Perhaps you wish to put down the names of your sons? I’m afraid the college does not reserve places on that basis any more. Even if you are old members of the college – which you are not, or I should know you – I could not keep places for your sons. There is now some kind of examination which determines the matter.’
‘Surely,’ said Jeremy, ‘there always was.’
‘Oh yes. But if someone we liked the look of failed it, we took no notice. Now this is no longer possible. Unlike the Provost of Lancaster, the Master of Marcian is not sovereign within his college. Officials and politicians – even welfare workers – can interfere with him.’
‘I was at Lancaster,’ said Jeremy. ‘The interference there was of another kind.’
‘Indeed?’
‘The late Provost, Sir Tom Llewyllyn,’ said Jeremy, thinking the Sibyl would enjoy this and co-operate in consequence, ‘believed that the tree nymphs from the felled trees of the College Avenue still lingered to haunt and curse the place.’
‘Tom Llewyllyn was a fool.’
‘We stand here for him,’ Fielding said.
‘I know from reading his books. Exercises in one form or another of velleity – Socialist velleity when he was young and hot. Laodicean velleity when he was comfortable and middle-aged. Or take the absurdity of his marriage. He married the elder of the Turbot girls, Patricia. A nephew of mine was at the wedding. Jonathan Gamp; nasty catamite. He should have known – Llewyllyn, I mean, not my nephew Jonathan – that the Turbots were bad stock. Matter for Bedlam. The younger girl, Isobel, set fire to the house and eloped on her sister’s wedding day.1 What sort of behaviour do you call that? And I gather they put Patricia away years ago, because she chewed a boy’s ear off.2 So what sort of behaviour do you call that?’
After a brief silence, Doctor Gamp waved his notebook in the air.
‘What information would you wish me to record?’ he asked.
‘On the contrary, sir. We would wish you to give some information to us. Does the name Raisley Conyngham mean anything to you?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘Then what do you know of this man’s being sponsored, by this college, in the mid-seventies, to undertake a year’s research in southern France…in the Languedoc?’
‘Fudge,’ said Doctor Gamp, DD: ‘fudge, fudge, fudge.’
‘You mean,’ said Fielding, ‘that the thing was spurious in some way?’
‘Conyngham wanted a year away from that school at which he was teaching without prejudice to his future career there. It was therefore important to him that the sabbatical leave which he was about to request should appear to be for the most prestigious purpose. It occurred to him that the school might believe this if we at Marcian said we were prepared to sponsor his research.’
‘You mean, prepared to fund his research?’ Jeremy said.
‘Prepared in some fashion to support it. We could say that we were sponsoring his research if, for example, we gave him a set of rooms for a few weeks and the free run of our libraries. Since Raisley Conyngham’s research apparently had to do with theological controversy and religious deviation, our Chalcedonian Library, which specializes in such matters, would be an appropriate place of preparation for his task.’
‘Why bother with the man at all?’
‘We bothered, because Conyngham’s proposition to us was as follows: he was planning, he said, a serious project of research into medieval heresies; would we, in return for a very handsome donation towards the upkeep of the Chalcedonian Library, permit him to live in college, with dining rights, and work in the Chalcedonian Library all through the Long Vacation of 1975? Yes, said the College Council: we would.
‘So you see,’ whined Davie Gamp, ‘Conyngham was able to tell the Governing Body of his school that the Council of his old College was so impressed by his plans for research that it was prepared to give him the privileges of a Fellow for four whole months, from early June to the beginning of October, in order that he might live in the peaceful precinct of the college, within convenient distance of the college’s famous theological library, which would be thrown open to him. He then, he said to the Governors of the school, wished to spend eight months researching in “the field” in Provence and the Languedoc, which would bring him to the end of May 1976. After this he would devote himself to two things – to the collation of his findings in the south of France, and to preparation for his duties in the appointment of “Baro vers. Lat. et Graec.” – “Baron of Latin and Greek Verses” – which, as was already known, he was to take up in the autumn of 1976. All this I learned from the Honorary Senior Usher of the School, with whom I had been for many years in correspondence. He was no longer a working member of the school staff, but he was still very much of the place and occasionally gave lectures on Art and Literature.’
‘Now dead, alas,’ said Fielding. ‘A pity. I should have enjoyed discussing all this with him.’
‘Not a lot to discuss, in the end,’ said Gamp, who sounded like a moribund cicada. ‘The school consented to release Raisley Conyngham for four Quarters, Cricket Quarter ’75 to Cricket Quarter ’76, inclusive, without pay. After that Conyngham would take up his appointment as “Baro”. The Governors felt rather flattered that a master in their classical department should be doing research under the aegis of Marcian College – little knowing that Conyngham was indirectly paying for the college’s support by a substantial anonymous gift to the funds of the Chalcedonian. As for the actual results of the research, it was appreciated that it is always a very long time before such work is published, and the Governors were happy as long as they deemed the Council of Marcian to be happy. The Council of Marcian, for their part, were entirely satisfied with Conyngham’s seigneurial gift, honoured their agreement about accommodation and the rest, and gave never the faintest goddamn about the outcome of the research, which had never in practice concerned them.’
‘They did, however,’ said Jeremy, ‘appear to the public to be sponsoring it?’
‘To what public? Only to the Governors of that school and to a tiny group of academics, who could find nothing extraordinary if publication of the research were deferred for a generation or forever. True, my correspondent, the Honorary Senior Usher, smelt something a bit whiffy, but he had long been
supernumerary and now, as one of you has just observed, is dead.’
‘But surely,’ said Fielding, ‘there must have been some research. Raisley Conyngham must have wanted all that time off, including four months here in Marcian, for something. Otherwise he would hardly have paid out all that money to provide a convincing scenario. He did come here that Long Vac? And read in the Chalcedonian?’
‘Certainly he did. I found his company at High Table most sustaining. Not many dons stay here during the Long Vacation, as you may know, and those that do are for the most part specialized scientists of narrow discourse. Raisley Conyngham commanded any kind of table talk one had a mind to.’
‘Did he speak of his research?’
‘He was only preparing for it at this stage, you should remember. But he spoke of its purposed scope and nature: late developments of the Cathar or Albigensian Heresy – that most fascinating of Dualisms – with particular reference to the Demiurge, who made the material universe, or, as some would call him, the Devil.’
‘And how did he get on,’ said Jeremy, ‘when he arrived in “the field” in Provence and the Languedoc?’
‘I never heard,’ said Doctor Gamp. ‘No more did anyone else. When I said goodbye to him at the beginning of October, 1975, I urged him to keep me posted – so intrigued had I become by some of his speculations. But never, from that day to this, had I any word more from him.’
‘Well then: can you remember any of his speculations?’
‘Oh yes,’ chirruped Gamp morosely; ‘but I’m not going to tell them to you two. You mean Raisley harm, don’t you? I can see it in your mean, prying faces. You want to raise discredit or scandal against him – I should have realized earlier. But I see little company these days and am prone to chatter when I have an audience; and now my tongue has flown out of my head.’
‘No harm done. You have only confirmed what we already surmised – that Raisley’s Conyngham’s “research” wasn’t quite as respectable as it seemed to be from the reference to it in Who’s Who; that it might have been a cover for something else…when he got into “the field”.’
‘Ah. That’s more than we know, isn’t it? None of us was there in “the field” with him. He has published no results, as far as we apprehend, reputable or disreputable, true or false. Nothing to go on for any of us. We don’t even know where, in the Languedoc, he went – or whether he went there at all. He went away in October, 1975, and came back to England in May of 1976. That’s all anybody knows. Tee-hee,’ said Doctor Gamp, DD. ‘You clever young man, and you clever middle-aged one – you know not a tittle more than silly old senile Gamp.’
‘And of course,’ said Carmilla Salinger to Fielding and Jeremy in Piero Caspar’s rooms that evening, ‘he’s quite right.’
Piero Caspar was a Fellow of Lancaster as well as Squire of Tunne Hall. He had caused the college kitchens to produce a very passable dinner for four, which had started with caviar (beluga at that) and was now ending with bone marrow on fried bread.
‘So,’ Piero said now: ‘before we start investigating Conyngham’s research we first need to confirm that he ever did it?’
‘We know,’ said Fielding, ‘that he studied in the Chalcedonian for four months, and that he studied the Albigensians.’
‘We think he studied the Albigensians,’ said Carmilla. ‘The fact that he told poor old Gamp that he was doing so means nothing. He might have been reading anything in that library. Before we can proceed we must know exactly what he was up to and exactly where he really intended to go. We should have a very good chance of finding further clues at Ullacote – servants’ gossip and so on – and at the school on Farncombe Hill. After all, he must have communicated with somebody there about his progress. We must find out what reports he sent in. If they were true, good. If they were false then so much the better, because once established to be so they should lead to significant inference.’
‘The Manor of Ullacote,’ mused Jeremy, ‘and the old school on Farncombe Hill… So you think that we need no longer bother with Raisley’s time at Brydales or in the Army?’
‘I think nothing of the kind. I said Ullacote and the school were the most likely places to yield clues, not the only ones.’
‘It is difficult to see,’ said Jeremy, ‘how anyone now at Brydales, even if Raisley is still remembered there after thirty years, can tell us much about his activities in 1975 and 1976. Much the same must apply to the Blue Mowbrays – a regiment that is in any case extinct.’
‘I still think that Miss Jesty Hyphen, formerly senior Classical Mistress at Brydales, might have some pertinent things to tell us,’ Carmilla said.
‘Giles Glastonbury,’ said Fielding.
‘What about him?’
‘A regular soldier.’
‘But not, surely, in the Blue Mowbrays?’
‘No. But he may well have had a hand in getting Raisley Conyngham a commission in that regiment. Raisley Conyngham knew Prideau Glastonbury, Giles’ cousin, when they were both up at Cambridge. I remember Giles’ telling me, some time back, that Raisley was introduced to him by Prideau, as a fellow enthusiast for racing and, in general, as someone of a kind that Giles might find “useful” as the years went on. And in fact Raisley has since done Giles several good turns (Giles told me), one of them being to accept an old friend of Giles as his private trainer; but the point is that these good turns were done in recognition of what Giles had previously done for Raisley, in order to put Raisley under obligation and keep his name on Giles’ books as a potentially “useful” fellow. The great thing that Giles did for Raisley was to stop his being axed from OCTU when he was an officer cadet in 1956. Raisley had disgraced himself by being feeble on an important exercise on Dartmoor, and was quite rightly about to lose his cadetship; but Giles, then in the War Office, managed to interfere on Raisley’s behalf and bring him safely off with a commission. It is therefore not unlikely that it was through Giles’ good offices that Raisley (clearly a very doubtful commodity in military terms) was accepted by the Blue Mowbrays. In which case a conversation with Giles Glastonbury might be in order.’
‘Very well,’ said Carmilla. ‘Piero and I will seek out Miss Jesty Hyphen. I have already established from her old college, Newnham, that she is in an old people’s home on the coast of Kent. Meanwhile, you and Jeremy, Fielding, had better beard Giles Glastonbury.’
Len, Private Secretary to the Provost of Lancaster, said to Sir Jacquiz Helmutt, the Provost:
‘Carmilla Salinger is rounding up a posse to ride after Raisley Conyngham.’
‘How do you know?’ The Provost looked fiercely through the window of his office and down on to the rear lawn of Lancaster, in the middle of which three female undergraduates were lasciviously kissing, contrary to any number of regulations. ‘Who told you this about Miss Salinger?’
‘Miss Salinger did. She wanted a little advice.’
‘And you gave it?’ said Sir Jacquiz, watching with interest as the senior college gardener approached the erotic group in the centre of the lawn.
‘I told her to leave Conyngham alone. He was no threat to her, I told her. She said he was a threat to Marius Stern. I reminded her that Marius was quite tough enough to take care of himself. But she has a heavy maternal crush on the boy, so that was no good.’
‘Do we much mind if Carmilla rides the range in pursuit of Conyngham?’
The senior gardener doffed his cap to the three osculants. It now became apparent that one of these was not a female but a long-haired androgyne.
‘We don’t much mind, Provost. But she’s got interesting academic work in hand, and I wish she’d get on with her book. If she doesn’t produce something soon, one of your lovely left-wing council will try to do her the dirt and fuck up her Fellowship. They hate her, you see, for being rich.’
The two females and the androgyne languished round the gardener. The scene began to look like a Burne-Jones. The gardener, however, now spurned his worshippers and drove them away before him w
ith a small three-pronged fork, which he had produced from his left-leg gumboot. More trouble to come from the Student Union, thought Provost Helmutt: a motion condemning the fascist attitudes of the college servants. But it had been worth it. The three faces of the undergraduates who were being driven towards the window in which he sat were memorably contorted, like those of a crowd in panic rendered by Munch.
‘If anyone makes trouble for Carmilla,’ said the Provost, ‘we can always accuse him of being anti-feminist or sexist or something of the sort.’
‘Clever Provost. But suppose it’s one of the female Fellows that turns nasty?’
‘Then we say she’s lacking in female solidarity and in proper loyalty to her own minority group.’
‘Clever Provost,’ cooed Len once more. ‘Len likes it. Len likes it a lot. All the same, Carmilla should steer clear of Raisley Conyngham and get on with her work. As I say, he’s no threat to her just now, but if she starts provoking him, well, Conyngham can be most disagreeable, Provost, quite diabolically disagreeable.’
‘How disagreeable is that?’
‘You have read the novel of Balzac in which somebody dies because the arch-crook has touched his head and sent poison down the tubes of his hair and into his bloodstream?’
‘Yes. Sheer rubbish.’
‘So you may say, learned Provost, but that’s how nasty Conyngham can get (or so they say) if he’s crossed.’
‘You are speaking metaphorically?’
‘Yes, I hope; but quite possibly no. I have positively heard it alleged, Provost, that Raisley Conyngham has…caused at least one person to die in that kind of way. In any case at all, Knightly Provost, he can be a whole lot beastlier than even your beastly left-wing council.’
‘Raisley Conyngham,’ whinnied Miss Jesty Hyphen: ‘best boy I ever taught at Brydales. Not that that was saying much, because the standard was appalling, and the children were all the pampered brats of silly rich socialists…the sort of children that said, “I wanna be an artist”, or, “I wanna be an orchestral conductor”, and expected to be transformed into Augustus John or Constant Lambert in a matter of minutes.’