by Simon Raven
Table of Contents
Copyright & Information
About the Author
List of Characters in Order of Appearance
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
First Born of Egypt Series
Novels
Stories/Collections
Synopses of Simon Raven Titles
Copyright & Information
Before the Cock Crow
First published in 1986
© Estate of Simon Raven; House of Stratus 1986-2011
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The right of Simon Raven to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.
This edition published in 2011 by House of Stratus, an imprint of
Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,
Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.
Typeset by House of Stratus.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.
ISBN EAN Edition
1842321730 9781842321737 Print
0755129733 9780755129737 Kindle
075512989X 9780755129898 Epub
This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author's imagination.
Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.
www.houseofstratus.com
About the Author
Born in 1927 into a middle class household, Simon Raven became both an outrageous figure and an acclaimed writer and novelist. His father inherited a hosiery business and did not have to work, his mother was an internationally successful athlete. The young Simon, however, viewed the household as 'respectable, prying, puritanical, penny-pinching, and joyless'.
Initial education was through attending Cordwalles Preparatory School, near Camberley, Surrey, where he later claimed to have been 'deftly and very agreeably' seduced by the games master. From there he went on to Charterhouse, but was eventually expelled in 1945 for serial homosexuality. Nonetheless, he still managed to wangle his way into King's College, Cambridge, to read classics, after a two year gap to complete his national service in the Parachute Regiment.
Raven had loved classics from an early age and read daily in the original, often translating from Latin to Greek to English, or any combination thereof.
At Cambridge, he probably felt completely at home for the first time in his life. In his own words, 'nobody minded what you did in bed, or what you said about God'. This was civilised to his mind and he was also later to write, in a somewhat fatalistic manner: 'we aren't here for long, and when we do go, that's that. Finish. So, for God's sake, enjoy yourself now - and sod anyone who tries to stop you.' Despite revelling in Cambridge life, or perhaps because of it, Raven fell heavily into debt for the first time whilst there and also faced his first real responsibility. Susan Kilner, a fellow undergraduate was expecting his child and in 1951 they married. He took little interest in the marriage, however, and they were divorced some six years later.
He also failed to submit a thesis needed to support an offered fellowship, so fled both Cambridge and his marriage for the army, where he was commissioned into the King's Own Shropshire Light Infantry. After service in Germany and Kenya, during which time he set up a brothel for his men to use, he was posted to regimental headquarters in Shropshire. It was here that debt once again forced a change in direction after he lost considerable sums at the local racetrack.
Resigning his commission so as to avoid being court-martialled, he turned to writing having won over a publisher who agreed to pay him weekly in cash, and also pick up bills for sustenance and drink. Moving to Deal in Kent he embarked upon producing a prodigious array of works which over the years included novels, essays, reviews; film scripts, radio and television plays and the scripts for television series, notably The Pallisers and Edward and Mrs Simpson. He lived in modest surroundings within rented accommodation and confined many of his excesses to London visits where his earning were dissipated quickly on food, drink and gambling – not forgetting sex which continued to feature as a major indulgence. He once wrote that the major advantage of belonging to the Reform Club in London was the presence opposite of a first class massage parlour.
In all, Simon Raven produced over twenty five novels and hundreds of other pieces, his finest achievements being reckoned to be a ten volume saga of English upper-class life, entitled Alms for Oblivion, from 1959-76 and the First Born of Egypt Series from 1984-92.
He was a conundrum; being both sophisticated and reckless; talented in the extreme yet regarding himself as not being particularly creative; but not applying this modesty (if that's what it was) to his general behaviour, which was sometimes immodest beyond all reasonable bounds. He was exceedingly generous towards his friends; yet didn't think twice about the position of creditors when getting into debt; was jovial, loyal and good company, but was unable to sustain a family life. He would drink like an advanced alcoholic in the evenings, but was ready to resume work promptly the following morning. He was sexually indiscriminate, but generally preferred the company of men. As a youth he possessed good looks, but a general abuse of his body in adulthood soon saw that wain.
Simon Raven died in 2001, his legacy being his writing which during his lifetime received high praise from critics and readers alike. He was a 'one-off', whose works will continue to delight readers for generations to come.
List of Characters in Order of Appearance
Captain the Most Honourable Marquess Canteloupe of the Aestuary of the Severn
Major Fielding Gray, a novelist
Major Giles Glastonbury
Leonard Percival, secretary to the Marquess Canteloupe, a Jermyn Street man
The Marchioness Canteloupe (Baby): née Llewyllyn; niece to Isobel Stern and cousin to Rosie and Marius
Daisy, Lord Sarum’s nurse
Tullius Fielding d’Azincourt Llewyllyn Gregory Jean-Josephine Maximin Sarum Detterling, called by courtesy Baron Sarum of Old Sarum, son and heir to Lord and Lady Canteloupe
Jo-Jo (Josephine) Guiscard née Pelham
Theodosia Salinger (Thea), an undergraduate of Lancaster College; Carmilla’s twin
Teresa (Tessa) Malcolm, Maisie’s ‘niece’
Rosie Stern
Jakki Blessington
Caroline Blessington
‘Mrs’ Maisie Malcolm, Proprietress (with Fielding Gray) of Buttock’s Hotel
Jeremy Morrison, an undergraduate of Lancaster College; younger son of Peter Morrison
Ptolemaeos Tunne, an amateur scholar; uncle, through his dead sister, to Jo-Jo Guiscard
Piero Caspar, an undergraduate of Lancaster College
Carmilla Salinger, an undergraduate of Lancaster College; Theodosia’s twin
Sir Thomas Llewyllyn, kt, D. Lit. & Litt. D., Provost of Lancaster College Cambridge, father of Lady (Baby) Canteloupe, brother-in-law of Isobel Stern, being married to her sister Patricia
Len, his secretary
Isobel Stern née Turbot, mother of Rosie and Marius
Milo Hedley, a schoolboy
Raisley Conyngham, a schoolmaster
Palairet, a schoolboy
The ‘Chamberlain’, Peter Morrison’s manservant at Luffham; formerly manservant to Canteloupe
Peter Morris
on, MP, ’Squire of Luffham
Betty Blessington
Colonel Ivan Blessington, her husband, a stockbroker
Ivan (‘Greco’) Barraclough, an anthropologist; Fellow of Lancaster College
Nicos Pandouros, indentured page to Barraclough after the Maniot custom; undergraduate of Lancaster College
Jude Holbrook
Alfie Schroeder, a journalist
Jack Lamprey, an ex-officer of Cavalry
Ashley Dexterside, a designer
Myles Glastonbury
Gat-Toothed Jenny, a stable lass
Oenone, a daughter to Jo-Jo
Don Simone Fontanelli
Jimmy Pitts, a jockey
Mrs Statch, servant to Ptolemaeos Tunne
Corporal-Major Chead, an old soldier
Aunt Flo
Part One
In The Shade of the Old Judas Tree
'Time for “Absent Friends”,’ announced Captain the Marquess Canteloupe of the Aestuary of the Severn, and rose to his feet.
Everyone else round the table rose after him: Major Fielding Gray and Major Giles Glastonbury (both formerly of the same regiment as Lord Canteloupe, the 49th Earl Hamilton’s Light Dragoons, commonly known as Hamilton’s Horse); Leonard Percival (formerly of the Wessex Fusiliers, with whom Hamilton’s Horse had a close connection, and of what may loosely be called the Secret Service); and the Marchioness Canteloupe (formerly Miss Theodosia Salinger). Also upstanding was Daisy the Nurse, who lifted her little charge, the thirty-four month old Tullius, Lord Sarum of Old Sarum, heir to Canteloupe and stepson to my lady, from his chair beside her, stood him up on the seat of it, and gave him a glass of well watered Montrachet with which to honour the coming toast.
‘Absent Friends,’ intoned Lord Canteloupe. He drank off his glass and threw it over his left shoulder to shatter against the wainscot.
‘Absent Friends,’ all the company repeated after him – all, that was, except Lord Sarum of Old Sarum, who gave a crow of excitement and struck with the rim of his glass at the face of his stepmother, who was sitting on the other side of him from his nurse.
‘A good thing that girl Daisy was on the ball,’ said Leonard Percival to Fielding Gray and Giles Glastonbury as the three of them walked in the bare Rose Garden. ‘If that glass had got home on her ladyship’s face–’
‘–Thea would have caught his wrist if Daisy hadn’t,’ said Fielding Gray. ‘She has very quick reactions. Have you ever seen her in a tennis court? Always there to guard the galleries or the dedans a tenth of a second before the fastest ball.’
‘Still, it’s not the sort of show one wants at Christmas luncheon,’ said Glastonbury; ‘it very much upset my process of intake. Not a good thing when there’ll only be cold supper.’
‘The whole thing was thoroughly mal à propos,’ agreed Fielding, ‘quite apart from any damage to the digestion. It was a major boob by Canteloupe. Such a toast, coming when and where it did, was almost certain to put Theodosia in mind – painfully in mind – of Canteloupe’s first wife, Baby. And in the event, it did even worse. It somehow sparked young Tullius off to make a kind of protest at Theodosia’s sitting in the place of his mother.’
‘Whoa there,’ said Percival. ‘Nobody’s going to tell me that Tully understands anything about that…at his age.’
‘Nearly three,’ said Fielding. ‘Who was it – John Stuart Mill or Macaulay – who’d read the whole of Gibbon before he was two and a half?’
‘But nobody has actually told Tully anything,’ Percival said, ‘so how could he be making protests?’
‘Unless that ginger nurse of his–’
‘–But even if she had, how could he understand? He can’t even talk yet. Not a single word. The boy’s potty,’ said Giles Glastonbury.
‘Language, language,’ said Percival. ‘You’ll be talking about niggers next.’
‘Imbecile, then.’
‘Still not allowed,’ said Percival. ‘Worse than the first, in fact, because even more contemptuous.’
‘Backward, for Christ’s sake, or whatever mealy-mouthed piece of unction is current. There’s something deeply amiss with that child. You’ve only got to look into his eyes.’
Glastonbury and Percival, both of whom, as very old friends of Canteloupe, knew that the child was Fieldings’, begot on the previous Marchioness at Canteloupe’s own request, now had the grace to look embarrassed.
‘I didn’t want the job,’ said Fielding, knowing what they were thinking; ‘don’t blame me.’
‘Oh, we don’t, my dear fellow. But what,’ said Glastonbury, ‘do we think ought now to be done?’
‘That’s hardly for me to say.’
‘No good having a potty heir. Better none at all. I speak,’ said Glastonbury, ‘without malice and as one of Canteloupe’s oldest chums, anxious to consult two others.’
The three men filed out of the Rose Garden through a tunnel of yew. When they débouched into open ground, they formed a line of three and proceeded, at a stately military saunter, over the wide lawn in front of them towards a distant copse of lady birch. At last, as they converged with a stream that was also heading for the copse: ‘The decision must clearly be for Detterling,’ Leonard Percival said.
‘Detterling?’ said Glastonbury.
‘That is what I call him.’
‘To his face?’
‘Let us say…that it is the privilege of a long established ally. I have been in his service as private secretary ever since the year in which he first…acquired his title; and before that I was intimately involved with him in one affair and another…when, of course, he was still known as Detterling. So that, to remind us both of the dear old days, is what I call him.’
‘I’ve often wondered why he engaged you,’ Glastonbury said, his voice rustling with irritation.
‘So have others. Baby Canteloupe couldn’t stand me. Theodosia has to make a great effort, almost successful, bless her heart, to conceal her distaste. Daisy loathes me outright. I conclude,’ said Leonard Percival, ‘that I do not appeal to women. But that is beside the point…which is that Detterling, he alone, must decide what to do about his heir.’
‘Has he asked your advice?’ said Fielding, partly to annoy Glastonbury, and partly because he knew that Canteloupe would almost certainly have asked Percival’s advice and he was very anxious to know what Leonard had counselled.
‘Hypothetically,’ said Leonard. ‘“What,” he remarked to me a few weeks ago, “should we do if something happened to Tully?” I suggested, as I think he expected I would, that a child would have to be fathered on Theodosia in the same fashion – though not, I thought, by the same person – as a child had been fathered on Baby. “The trouble is,” he said, “that Theodosia married me on the absolute agreement that there should be no sex. None at all of any kind whatever.” Still, he seemed to think he might find a way of persuading her. He is exceedingly keen, you see, that the marquessate should continue.’
They came, with the stream, to the edge of the copse. The silver trunks grew from the verges of the stream and thronged impenetrably for at least twenty yards on either side of it.
‘This is not the way in,’ said Percival.
‘Do you know it?’ asked Fielding.
‘Theodosia could have as many brats as you like,’ grumbled Glastonbury, ‘but that still leaves Canteloupe with a potty heir.’
‘Unless, as Detterling himself put it, “something happened to Tully.” To get in, we go round the edge this way,’ said Leonard Percival leading off to the right.
‘What did you mean just now,’ said Glastonbury, ‘about something happening to Tully?’
‘I should have thought it was clear enough. Even these days children get childhood diseases. Even these days,’ said Percival, as he parted two bramble-bushes and led the way down a narrow path, ‘there can be unexpected variants or complications, which lead to early death – or “tragedy” as the yellow press insists on miscalling it, not having read Aristot
le’s definition. Or again,’ said Leonard, ‘if a child is not quite normal, not quite happy in the head, it is often easy to persuade highly paid doctors and nurses to exercise what is known as “benign neglect”…particularly if their charge shows signs of turning vicious. Detterling’s old friend Doctor La Soeur,’ smiled Leonard, ‘will be an expert, I think you would find, in the theory and practice of “benign neglect”. And then, in this appalling world, there are myriad types of accident.’
They stepped off the path through the birch trees on to the green margin of a pool, round the entire circumference of which were massed more birches, leaving only two or three yards between themselves and the grey waters.
‘Why have you brought us here?’ said Glastonbury.
‘We simply came. A casual walk on Christmas afternoon… has led us, by chance, to Baby’s private copse. “Absent Friends.”’
A chill breeze briefly ruffled the pool’s surface. Five or six flakes of snow spiralled down from a platinum sky.
‘I’m going in, damn it,’ Glastonbury said.
He disappeared, shivering jerkily, down the tiny path that had brought them into the copse.
‘That summer,’ said Percival to Fielding, ‘that summer after Baby Canteloupe had borne Tullius, she used to sit here with Jo-Jo Guiscard, herself by then heavily pregnant. I used to eavesdrop. Some very peculiar things were said. Jo-Jo was fierce to bear a boy, with whom she was already dangerously infatuated: she was going to play with his little prick, she said, and seduce him as soon as he had hairs. All healthy boys want to fuck their mothers, she said; and since boys ought to be instructed by older and experienced women, what better and more economic arrangement could you have than letting them learn with mummy?’