Before The Cock Crow (First Born of Egypt)

by Simon Raven

  ‘Right. You’re available for the whole of the Easter holidays?’

  ‘Sir,’ said Marius.

  ‘No chance of complaints from your mother? Milo was saying something about her.’

  ‘No, sir. I’ve had rather a disagreement with her, and as there isn’t much room in her house in France, she’ll be glad if I stay away.’

  ‘Good. I think I can promise you an unusual Easter. Milo will be there, of course. And we rather hope to secure your chum, Tessa. You’d like that?’

  ‘Sir,’ said Marius heartily, though conscious of a flicker of jealousy, that Conyngham and Hedley should want Tessa as well as himself. At any rate, he comforted himself, she’s not much good with horses. The one time she had been allowed a riding lesson in the Park had been sheer disaster. Whether Tessa had an allergy against horses, or horses had an allergy against Tessa, was uncertain. Whichever way it went, it was conclusive, one could almost say terminal.

  ‘But that’s at Easter,’ said Conyngham: ‘meanwhile we have ten weeks of stimulating studies before us. Greek verses next Thursday. I’m sick of those damned niminy-piminy ti-tom ti-tom iambics. Do the first twelve lines of Tennyson’s Morte d’Arthur into Homeric hexameters. They include, incidentally, one of the most sinister lines in the English language.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘“A broken chancel with a broken cross.” I shall be interested to see, my dear Marius, how you find an Homeric Greek equivalent for that.’

  Part Two

  Queens’ Pawns

  The ‘Queen’, as we have her, betokens the Vizier,

  which was an Eastern Prince’s most mighty minister.

  ANON: A Child’s Manual of Chess

  Is it an echo of something

  Read with a boy’s delight,

  Viziers nodding together

  In some Arabian night?

  LORD TENNYSON: Maud; VII; iii

  Theodosia Canteloupe, fearing lest she was growing sluggish, took to exercising in the Fives Court which was tucked away in one corner of the Great Court. She would take two Fives balls with her and try to keep them both in play at the same time, a trick which required split-second calculation and absolute accuracy as to length.

  It’s high time I got back on to tennis, she told herself, Hampton Court or Queen’s, instead of patting little balls about down here; but if I tell Canty I’m going to London to get some tennis practice, he may insist that I use the opportunity to look around for a mate with whom to do what he wants me to do. He’s been silent about that since Christmas; but now that the guests (such as they were) are gone and the celebrations (such as they were) are done, I know that he may come back to the subject at any time. I cannot disappoint him, she thought, remembering Captain Detterling at Lord’s that summer afternoon when she was fourteen: how gallantly he had lifted his panama hat, how kind and easy he had been with her, how pleased he had been to see her father and her father to see him. No, I cannot disappoint him; but I cannot do what he asks. I must just play for time, do as Carmilla says, keep the thing calmly and constantly before me until sooner or later a solution (but what solution?) presents itself.

  One afternoon, when the early dusk forced her to discontinue her solitary game and she turned to leave the Fives Court, she saw Leonard Percival in wait at the far end of it.

  Canty’s jackal, she thought; but then she thought also of Leonard’s age and ulcers, and a weary pity came over her.

  ‘Good evening, Leonard,’ she said, as pleasantly as she could.

  ‘Good evening, my lady,’ said Leonard, who often, and very greatly to her annoyance, addressed her in this form; ‘taking the Christmas pudding off, I see.’

  ‘Keeping in trim,’ she said flatly, just restraining herself from telling this nasty old wreck (but Canty’s friend, Canty’s old friend) to be off and mind his business.

  ‘Fielding Gray once told me,’ said Leonard, ‘how much he used to enjoy playing Eton Fives. At school…and later, whenever he could find a court and three other players…and so long as he still had two eyes.’

  ‘He could have gone on playing with only one,’ said Theodosia: ‘simply a matter of adjustment.’

  ‘But at that time, my lady, he had many other adjustments to make. As indeed he has now.’

  ‘You mean…that he has to get over being dropped by Jeremy Morrison?’

  ‘Among other things, yes. But what it comes down to, Lady Canteloupe, is that Fielding needs work. He has enough money, for the time, but he must have occupation.’

  ‘Why are you telling me this?’

  ‘Because you – and you sister – are important people these days in Stern & Detterling – Salinger, Stern & Detterling, that is. Or you could be if you wished, when one considers your shareholding. Now, Fielding has told me that he is out of sympathy in literary matters with Ashley Dexterside, the Managing Director – much as he respects and likes him in other ways. He also says that Detterling, your husband, no longer takes much interest. Since Gregory Stern is dead, Fielding has no audience in the firm and has therefore become slack and indifferent about his work. Encouragement from you, and from Miss Carmilla Salinger, might be salutary, my lady. If he don’t begin to work soon, he’ll fret himself to pieces.’

  ‘About Jeremy?’

  ‘Yes. And his own decay. He decays neither quicker nor more evidently than any of the rest of us, but he is a fastidious man and therefore the more sensitive in this region. And, of course, in his case old age holds no prospects of dignity or serenity…merely those of boredom and neglect. Fielding likes movement, journeys, the pleasure of seeking out new sights and of recognising and greeting old ones. As age comes on, he is less capable of travelling alone and (as he sees it) less able to find adequate and willing companions. From all thoughts such as these, he must be distracted – by work.’

  ‘You want me to tell him that?’

  ‘More than that.’ Canteloupe was coming across the Great Court towards them. Courtesy compelled them to move to meet him. ‘Persuade him that the firm needs books by him,’ said Leonard hurriedly. ‘Notions of loyalty, phrases like “the old firm”, carry weight with him. And do you and your sister convince him that you will be the audience that Gregory Stern and Detterling – your husband – used to be. Then he will work.’

  ‘Good evening, Thea, Leonard,’ said Canteloupe. ‘It’s nice to know that old court is used again – if only just for knocking up.’

  Knocking up, thought Thea; that’s what they call it, in some circles, when a man gets you pregnant; he knocks you up. Was that a hint or a pun of Canty’s? Surely not? Surely he couldn’t have been as crude and indelicate as that? No, of course he couldn’t. I’m imagining things; and until this solution of which Carmilla speaks ‘presents itself’, until something is settled, I shall go on imagining them. Well, at least Leonard Percival has given me something to think about other than myself. And an excuse to get away from here, if only for a day or two, without committing myself to Canty’s horrible purpose. I shall telephone Carmilla at Lancaster this very evening.

  After she had telephoned Carmilla, Theodosia went to Canteloupe’s dressing room.

  ‘Leonard has been telling me about Fielding Gray,’ she said. ‘He thinks Carmilla and I can help him.’

  ‘How?’ snapped Canteloupe.

  ‘By giving him the encouragement…about his writing… which is no longer forthcoming from elsewhere.’

  ‘Time he stopped. He’s said all he has to say.’

  ‘He must have work, Canty. He must have occupation.’

  ‘So you and Carmilla are going to form a Fielding Gray Fan Club?’

  ‘We are going to talk to him about his future books. I’m to pick up Carmilla in Cambridge the day after tomorrow, Saturday, and we shall go on to spend a night or two in the hotel at Broughton Staithe. Fielding is there and will be dining in the hotel.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Canteloupe. ‘I remember that hotel. He dines there every night when he’s at Broughton. I won
der his stomach hasn’t disintegrated. You will not, Thea, even consider Fielding Gray for the role…of father. He’s done enough damage already, from what I can see. Tully will never do as Sarum.’

  ‘But Tully is Sarum. He will not just go away to suit you,’ said Theodosia. God, she thought, how I loathe being with Canty when he gets on to this obsession. I can only endure it because I know that it will soon pass (for a time) and that I shall love being with him when he is himself again. ‘Tully,’ she continued, ‘is as much your fault as Fielding’s. Why did you insist? Why could you not let the thing take its natural course?’

  ‘Because then it would simply have stopped. I want the thing to go on, Thea. Never mind about Tully just for now. Let us think of your child. Not to be by Fielding.’

  ‘I couldn’t bear to be touched by Fielding.’ She did not add that she could not bear to be touched by any other man either, not even by Jeremy Morrison, whom she had loved so much. ‘In any case,’ she said, ‘all that must wait. Until Carmilla and I have seen to Fielding. And for much longer. For what you are asking, Canty, you must allow me time.’

  ‘Certainly. But time must have a stop. There now, my darling. Darling Thea. Smile your big, wide, lazy smile at me. You know, you surely know, how much I want this.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘Then let us say three months. I promise you I shall talk no more of this subject, or any aspect of it, providing you, for your part, promise to come to me and tell me…whom you will take as your lover…on or before the first of May. A very suitable date,’ he said, ‘and giving you much more than three months, nearly four.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Theodosia. ‘But surely we could adopt? If enough money is spent, the birth could be fudged and the infant passed off as our own.’

  ‘But it would not be our own. It would not be the child of our bodies.’

  ‘Nor will it be…if I do what you ask.’

  ‘When you do what I ask. But it will be the child of your body, Theodosia, and a fine body you have for the purpose. To that extent at least, it would be admissible as our heir.’

  So what, she wanted to say: so bloody what? Do you really think that I don’t know, or at least strongly suspect, the truth behind all this? Women, even ladies, love listening at doors, she longed to say: do you really think I haven’t heard any of those conversations between you and your ‘Secretary’ Leonard about that child in Italy, those conversations which happen whenever (about once a month) you need reassurance that no one can or will actually prove anything, and Leonard earns his money by reassuring you? For that matter, she thought of saying, Carmilla too knows it all or most of it – she heard it straight from the mouth of Tom Llewyllyn. She told me when she was here the other day – not that I needed telling, but it was interesting to hear it from another angle. All this, and more, Thea yearned to tell Canteloupe. But in the end she said none of it. It would do no good: it would only add one more complication to a situation already hideously complex. ‘Why could you not let the thing take its natural course?’ she had asked Canteloupe a few minutes earlier. There would have been none of this misery then, she thought, as she now repeated the question, again and again, in her head. But Canteloupe had already supplied the answer, a very ample one: if he had let the thing take its natural course it would simply have stopped altogether, whereas he wanted it to go on. Of course he did, Theodosia thought. For then he would have some point in his life, he would have occupation: like Fielding Gray, like everybody else, he needed work, something to turn his hand to, lest his life be empty and himself as good as dead.

  When Tessa arrived at Buttock’s Hotel on Saturday afternoon, Rosie said:

  ‘Well, I suppose it’s nice to see you, even if it’s not what it might have been.’

  ‘Be friends, Rosie,’ said Tessa. ‘Even if things aren’t what they were, let’s make the best of it and enjoy ourselves as much as we can.’

  ‘That’s what I meant.’

  ‘You had a very sour way of saying it.’

  Rosie put a hand into her black hair, then started to reach, with the other hand, for the fair auburn wave over Tessa’s forehead. Tessa sat quite still, neither aiding nor discouraging Rosie in this venture. Rosie hesitated a moment, then clasped both her hands together in her crutch, as if to keep them out of further mischief.

  ‘Major Gray is allowed back here again,’ said Rosie, changing the subject, ‘even when you come. Something happened to stop your Aunt Maisie being suspicious.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘That’s more than I know,’ said Rosie, lying through her teeth, out of her respect for Tessa’s respect for her aunt. ‘All I know is that one evening, when they came to say goodnight to me in my room, they were full of jolliness and jokes – the first time for many weeks that they hadn’t just snapped and snarled at each other – and your Aunt Maisie said to Major Gray, “How nice it will be for Tessa to see you next weekend, it’s been such a long time.”’

  ‘Is he here then? Major Gray?’ said Tessa, in an oddly neutral way, Rosie thought, for someone who had always been so fond of him.

  ‘Actually, no,’ Rosie said. ‘He had to go and see that Mr Tunne about something, in the Fens; then he went on to Jeremy Morrison’s house in Norfolk. From there he rang up your Auntie Maisie to say that he would definitely not be going abroad with Jeremy and thought he had better try to start a new book instead. So he was going to his house in Broughton Staithe, which is where he prefers to do his work. Your aunt said, “Oh dear, what a pity, you’ll miss Tessa, after all this time too”, but Major Gray said he must keep out of London and get down to it. Are you sorry he’s not here?’

  ‘Oh, of course,’ said Tessa; but her eyes were a long way away, thought Rosie; and when Tessa then started to smile, with great tenderness, Rosie knew that this was for somebody else, somebody alien to Buttock’s and far away from it; not for her, Rosie Stern, who was here in the room, or even for Fielding Gray, who might very well have been.

  ‘I’ve had an idea,’ said Carmilla to Theodosia, as they drove towards Ely on their way from Cambridge to Broughton Staithe, ‘about your little problem with Canteloupe. I assume he’s still pestering?’

  ‘Not exactly pestering. He’s promised to say nothing more about it until the beginning of May – provided that I promise that some time not later than May Day I shall name the lucky father.’

  ‘Quite a liberal allowance of time.’

  ‘It’ll run out fast enough.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Carmilla. ‘“Tell me with whom time gallops withal…” Do you remember,’ she said as they sighted the roof of the cathedral, ‘it seems only yesterday, Thea, but it was nearly three years ago – do you remember that afternoon we came here with Jeremy?’ And he and I fingered each other off behind a screen in Bishop Alcocke’s chantry, she reminded herself silently, before Thea joined us.

  ‘I remember,’ said Theodosia, whose memories of the occasion were less joyous. ‘What is this idea of yours?’

  ‘Well…that business I told you about when I came to Wiltshire the other day…that boy in the marshes near the Laguna Veneta, who has a claim to the marquessate.’

  ‘The one supposed to be descended from the spy who was really the heir of the first marquess.’

  ‘Right. I also told you, I think, that nobody could ever prove it without spending about a billion pounds and collating a lot of obscure and complicated documents. But for what it’s worth, well, there it is.’

  ‘For what it’s worth, Carmilla darling, I already know about it–’

  ‘–So you said. Eavesdropping–’

  ‘–Though thank you for the tip. But where does any of that get us?’

  ‘Couldn’t it be your solution? Couldn’t you tell Canteloupe straight out that if the real marquess is a boy in Italy, then that puts the kibosh on his whole endeavour – because there’s no point in rigging up an heir to a title which isn’t even his?’

  ‘No,’ said Theodosia. ‘He doesn’t
see it that way. We’ve never discussed it, because I’m not meant to know about that boy, but I just know that Canteloupe does not see the thing as you or I do. You see, Carmilla darling, Canteloupe is like an old trouper. Costume, greasepaint, trick lighting, transformation scenes – theatrical illusion, Carm – these things have become his life. All he cares about is that the show should go on, that his version of the Canteloupe Carnival should continue, regardless of effort or expense.’

  ‘I think,’ said Jakki Blessington, home for the weekend, to her sister Caroline, her mother Betty, and her father Ivan, ‘that Marius Stern and Tessa Malcolm are being spoilt. There’s an older boy, Milo Hedley–’

  ‘–Ah, that name again,’ said Caroline, remembering previous exegeses on this theme.

  ‘–Milo Hedley,’ repeated Jakki, and rattled her teeth like castanets, ‘who flatters them with his attention – he’s a School Monitor, you see – and there’s also a smart alec beak who takes the classics and has a huge private income – he’s in on it all somewhere–’

  ‘–In on what?’ said Betty with characteristic common sense. ‘Are you suggesting something sexual?’

  ‘No,’ said Jakki, after some thought. ‘Raisley Conyngham – that’s the master – has a lot of charm which he turns on and off, but it doesn’t at all suggest sex or seduction. As for Milo, he is rather sexy, but he gives me the impression that he doesn’t care about it, at least not with Tessa or Marius, because there are far more interesting things he can be doing with them.’

  ‘You seem to have studied up on this Milo all right,’ said Caroline, giving her sister a jokey nudge.

  ‘Of course I have. I want to find out what he’s doing to Marius and Tessa.’

  ‘And you conclude,’ said her father, Colonel Ivan Blessington, ‘that he is not taking them to bed?’