Well, why shouldn’t she bestir herself and raise funds for her archaeological expeditions? It was all very well for his Jesuit neighbour to cavil about those published diaries; he had the wealth of the Catholic Church behind his own sallies into the ancient East.
The chairman of the meeting banged on the table, and launched into an interminable speech that held his audience in the grip of a quite desperate boredom. When he had finished, he called upon the guest of honour to address the members of the society, and Mrs Lestrange rose to speak. She spoke for half an hour, but it seemed like only ten minutes. She held them all, including Father Linacre, spellbound with her descriptions of treasures unearthed, ancient manuscripts found sealed in amphorae, of the opening of tombs lost for centuries, where lanterns caught the gleam of gold, and the painted eyes of mummies regarded them incuriously as they were brought to the light of day after the darkness of millennia.
Oakshott glanced around at the many faces, all holding a look of total absorption in what Mrs Lestrange was telling them. Among those faces was the man with tinted glasses. Perhaps Grigg had been right. He was probably a Syrian academic, visiting Oxford to research in the Bodleian Library or the Indian Institute.
Before sitting down to rapturous applause, the Honourable Mrs Lestrange made a brief appeal for patronage, and told her audience that a list of current patrons could be taken from a tray near the door. The chairman proposed a toast to the evergreen memory of Richard Hoare, followed by the Loyal Toast. Then the company broke up. Carriages were to be at eleven, and it was near that hour now.
In the vaulted passage leading from the dining room, Mrs Lestrange detained Oakshott by placing a hand on his arm. How handsome she looked! How vital!
‘Jeremy, have you yet spoken to your uncle about the expedition?’ she asked.
‘I have. I went out to Hazelmere Castle yesterday. But it’s hopeless. He’s not dismissive of the project, but he has refused adamantly to advance me the money. It’s not as though I’m begging him for charity; I made it clear that I was asking him for a loan.’
‘And what did he say to that?’
‘He said that to make me a loan would only encourage my improvidence.’
For the second time that evening, Jeremy Oakshott blushed.
Mrs Lestrange withdrew her hand. She looked at him with what seemed suspiciously like haughty contempt.
‘Don’t let this opportunity pass you by, Jeremy,’ she said. ‘When you return from Syria – for go you must – you will have become Europe’s foremost authority on Krak des Chevaliers. You will have interpreted the whole of the Second Crusade afresh. Find the money! Today is my birthday. Bring the money to me as a birthday present! My dear Jeremy, you are already one of the most distinguished scholars of the history of the Middle East. Now add practical experience to your many academic distinctions. “We speak from facts, not theory.” Do all in your power to keep your appointment with Destiny!’
7
Uncertainties
It was raining when Oakshott emerged into Beaumont Street. He hurried across the road and into the Broad, where he climbed into one of the many hansom cabs drawn up in the middle of the wide thoroughfare. They clattered past the Sheldonian Theatre, the decaying carved stone heads of the Roman emperors dimly discernible in the light of the gas standards lining the road. They were soon in New College Lane.
Whatever the difficulties, he would go out to Syria with Celia’s expedition next year. She was right: his destiny was beckoning him. Already a widely respected authority, the combination of his own academic research and the findings of practical investigation would possibly ensure that he was awarded a university professorship.
‘The Oxford Anomaly’… . What wondrous matters lay waiting for discovery in those ancient manuscripts that she had told him about after her lecture at Jesus College? How thrilled he had been to hear the translation of the piece of parchment in the tin box! And what an intriguing mystery was waiting to be solved concerning that ancient French text on its reverse!
Money… . He had little that he could sell, and the prospect of arranging a commercial loan at exorbitant interest filled him with terror. What was he to do?
The cabbie stopped at the entrance to Leper’s Lane, and Oakshott alighted. There would have been no space for the cab to be turned round at the Jerusalem Hall end. He gave the cabbie ninepence, and passed into the grateful shelter of the gatehouse. There was no one in the lodge, though it was lit by two spluttering gas mantles. Tonson was probably engaged on what he called ‘doing the rounds’.
The old college buildings assumed a mysterious air at night. A few lights burned in one or two windows, and the small quadrangle was dimly illumined by oil lanterns suspended at the entrance to the staircases. Lowering his head against the rain, he hurried along the path that would take him to the common room.
The old oak-panelled chamber was warm and inviting, and a small fire was burning in the grate. All the candles were still lit, though it was very late; even as he entered the room one or other of Oxford’s many clocks began to chime a quarter to twelve.
His old friend Jonathan Grigg was sitting spread-eagled in an armchair near the fire, a bottle of port beside him on the hearth. His prominent eyes were comfortably glazed, and his face even redder than usual. He raised a hand in greeting.
‘I’ve been in the Abbot’s Kitchen for most of the day. You know that Professor Oddling has given me the corner of a bench to conduct my analyses of deadly poisons? My own laboratory here in college is quite adequate, but they’ve a lot of new equipment there. I did some very satisfying work today, and I’ve been celebrating ever since. But sit down, Oakshott, and tell me about the dinner. Did the siren make a dead set at you? Have a cigar: there’s some in that box. And there’s a couple of glasses of port left in that bottle. The other fellows have retired to bed.’
He’s sozzled, to use the latest undergraduate word, thought Oakshott. But then, so am I, to some extent. The ‘Abbot’s Kitchen’ was the name given to the University chemical laboratory out in South Parks Road. It had been designed to resemble the Abbot’s Kitchen at Glastonbury. Despite his fondness for the bottle, Grigg was doing first-class research there.
Oakshott gave Grigg an account of the evening’s doings, and then rummaged in a pocket until he found a copy of the subscription list that Celia had provided for the members of the Richard Hoare Society. He handed it to Grigg, who scrutinized it, using an eyeglass to do so.
‘It’s an impressive list, I grant you,’ he said. ‘Impressive in its length, I mean. But I don’t know many of these fellows, do you? They’ve all promised £100 or more, so they must be quite well heeled. “George Jones, Esq.” – no, I’ve never heard of him. Comes from Middlesbrough, it says here. Sir Jacob Chantry – I thought he was dead. Sir Philip Margrave – I thought he was dead, too.’
He handed the list back to Oakshott.
‘So Mrs Lestrange has been making eyes at you?’ said Grigg, laughing. ‘What was it that old Sam Weller said to young Sam? “Beware of widders, Samivel.”’
‘Don’t talk such rot, Grigg,’ Oakshott replied, laughing in spite of himself. But she had given him that special glance across the table, a glance meant for him alone… . And she had all but proposed marriage to him when they had met in the Clarendon Hotel. Marriage!
His eyes filled with tears. Vivien. Oh, Vivien.
He looked out of the window, and saw Tonson snuffing out the lanterns in the quad. It was one of the irksome inconveniences of Jerusalem Hall that piped gas, the installation of which had begun in 1880, had never gone further than the porter’s lodge. Soon, Tonson would come to turn them out of the common room, extinguish the candles, and make all safe from fire. It was time to go to bed.
When the Honourable Mrs Herbert Lestrange left the Randolph, the chairman of the meeting hailed a cab for her, and told the driver to take her to Dragonfly Lane, Park Town. They set off up St Giles, and then into the Banbury Road. Within twenty minutes,
the cab stopped at a fine modern suburban house. Mrs Lestrange paid the cabbie, and rang the bell. The door was opened by an elderly woman in a black bombazine dress.
‘Good evening, ma’am,’ she said, standing back to let Mrs Lestrange enter. ‘Did you have a nice dinner?’
‘It was very nice, thank you, Mrs Benson. Is Mr Murchison still up? I might just have a word with him before I retire.’
‘Yes, ma’am, he’s still up, bless him. I think he’s better than he was – more cheerful, you know.’
Mrs Benson only took quality people as guests in her house. Mrs Lestrange was obviously a lady of quality, but her friend Mr Murchison – well, he’d seen better days, that was for sure. He was supposed to be her friend, but – well, she wasn’t one to gossip. She watched Mrs Lestrange as she knocked on Mr Murchison’s door, and then made her way down the kitchen passage to the comfort of her little parlour.
‘Any luck?’ asked Mr Murchison.
What a ruin he was! His cheeks had fallen in, and his eyes were rheumy. His right hand shook with incipient palsy. He was only forty-three years old, but opium had had its destructive way with him.
Celia Lestrange took a cigarette from a silver box on the table, and lit it. It was a long, foreign affair, with a paper tube through which to suck the aromatic Balkan smoke.
‘Any luck? Yes, quite a lot. A considerable number of people are attracted to the idea of funding what would be, in effect, a scientific expedition. I think my talks in London, and here in Oxford, should do the trick. I don’t need to go to Cambridge after all.’
‘And how was Dr Oakshott?’ His voice was feeble, but it was that of an educated gentleman.
‘He was much the same. Brilliant, but pusillanimous. I am working on him. I gave him the glad eye again this evening, and told him to apply once more to his rich uncle for the necessary funds. He will, you know!’
She crossed the room and kissed the frail man on the cheek. Then she retired to her own room.
Yes, Jeremy Oakshott was falling for her. What had he made of her marriage proposal? She could see from his eyes that he was attracted to her, and if she pretended to show contempt for his apparent weakness, that would stir him to some kind of positive action. As a scholar he was second to none, but he was a poor ornament of his sex.
That man had been there – that Jesuit priest who could read minds. What had he told Oakshott about her? Well, time would tell.
She opened the curtains, and looked out into the quiet, lamp-lit road. A tall, bearded man, a gentleman to judge by his dress, was reading a book by the light of a lamp-post. Oxford was an eccentric place, with eccentric inhabitants. She closed the curtains, blew out the bedside candle, and retired to bed.
Early on Saturday morning, Jeremy Oakshott stood in the misty cemetery at Botley, and watched as the body of Michael Sanders was lowered into a freshly dug grave. A friend of his, one of the clergy at St Lawrence, North Hinksey, had agreed to say the burial service, followed by the committal at the graveside. For old times’ sake, he had bought a fresh burial plot; Michael would not lie in a common grave. Later in the year, he would have a modest stone erected.
Later the same evening, Oakshott descended to the furnace room in the crypt beneath the chapel at Jerusalem Hall, and consigned Vivien West’s bloodstained Prayer Book to the flames. He was alone in the crypt, so no one heard his racking sobs as the golden sparks flew upwards.
‘Jeremy,’ said Jeremy’s Uncle Ambrose, ‘your Aunt Arabella has made splendid progress since you brought her back from Frampton Asylum last month. She’s now more than able to take her place as chatelaine of Hazelmere. I’ll retain the nurse and the new maid for her. At least, for a time.’
It was the Monday after Jeremy had witnessed the obsequies of the friend of his youth, Michael Sanders.
The library of Hazelmere Castle had been designed to remind its owner of the gloomy and frightening chambers encountered in the gothic novels of Mrs Radcliffe. Book cases of black oak lined the walls, but the books crammed on to their shelves had never been read. Oakshott’s architect friend told him that they had been bought from a dealer, who charged three shillings a yard. Two great chandeliers hung from a plaster ceiling writhing with fan tracery, modelled on that to be found in Gloucester Cathedral. The walls behind the panelling were of shoddy brick. The fan tracery was wrought in cracked and yellowing plaster.
‘I want you to go upstairs and visit your aunt,’ Ambrose Littlemore continued. ‘Speak to her, and let her speak to you. I can assure you that she is much improved, now that she’s her own mistress, and eating properly.’
Uncle Ambrose looked like a medieval ascetic, the type of man who would have liked to be walled up in an anchor-hold, but appearances could be deceptive. It would have been wrong to call him a recluse. He was certainly not a man who courted what people liked to call ‘society’, but he was fond of quiet gatherings with people of like mind, and when not prevented by arthritis he would ride out with the local hunt.
Hazelmere Castle, built in 1856, was a costly pile to maintain, a monument to Uncle’s father, a very successful railway promoter, who had desperately wanted to be considered one of the gentry. One day, as Uncle was fond of reminding him, it would all be his, but such a liability was a dubious legacy. Uncle was a generous man within his own determined limits – limits which did not include funding archaeological expeditions.
‘You should have received a letter from me on Saturday—’
‘I did, Uncle. I expect neither of us wants to refer to it at the moment. You have made up your mind, and I respect your decision. Now, tell me about these new charities that you want to support.’
Jeremy had been standing by the fireplace, looking at the heads of grotesques and monks adorning its marble surround. The flames from the fire made some of the heads seem to nod and grin at him as his uncle was speaking.
‘Come and sit here at the table,’ said his uncle. ‘Let me explain why I want to support these good folk.’ He added, in a more gentle, almost shamefaced tone: ‘I won’t be giving them a fortune, my boy, just a couple of hundred each per year. I’m having their secretaries here for dinner, and a couple of public figures who might want to associate themselves with these charities, and I want you to be there, too. I’d written to them, suggesting Friday the twenty-first – this Friday coming – and they have all agreed.’ With a sudden flash of humour, he added, ‘Well, they’re bound to agree, aren’t they, when there’s money in the offing!’
The smile faded, and Uncle’s serious look returned. He seemed slightly ashamed of his cynical outburst.
‘I want to do something to help women of our own class who find themselves reduced to poverty by illness or mental affliction. You’ll realize, I think, that it was the plight of your aunt, and her long confinement to an institution, that had prompted me to take this action.’
‘Admirable, Uncle!’ cried Oakshott, and the old man looked at him with scarcely concealed surprise. His nephew seemed to be genuinely enthused by his plan.
Considering the contents of the letter that the boy had received on Saturday, it was little short of a miracle that Jeremy should have shown such sympathy for his idea.
‘What are these charities, Uncle?’
‘The first one is the Establishment for Gentlewomen in Temporary Illness, which has a house at 90 Harley Street. It relieves the sick wives and daughters of professional men. And the other is the Ladies’ Samaritan Society, at 23 Queen Square, Bloomsbury. They supply the wants of ladies who have fallen into epilepsy or paralysis. I think you’ll agree, Jeremy, that they are worthy causes.’ 2
‘They are, indeed. And will you continue your grant of £50 to the Prison Visitors’ Association? That, too, is a worthy cause, and I have been an active member for over five years.’
‘Indeed, indeed, my boy. Not only will I continue it, but I will raise the sum to £75. Now, go upstairs and visit your aunt.’
Oakshott had expected to find his Aunt Arabella mewed up
in a gloomy, airless chamber, like those to be found in the pages of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey. It came as a surprise to find that her suite of rooms had been newly decorated and furnished; Uncle Ambrose had evidently prepared for Arabella Cathcart’s release from Frampton well in advance.
His aunt, too, had undergone some kind of transformation. Her long face still showed the lines of suffering that she had brought away with her from the asylum, but her complexion was now that of a healthy woman of sixty, and her eyes shone with a new interest in life. She was wearing a dress of mauve silk, complemented by a necklace of small rubies. There was nothing in her appearance or demeanour to suggest that she had just emerged from fifteen years in a mental institution.
‘Come in, Jeremy,’ said Aunt Arabella, ‘and sit down with me at the fire. You’ve been avoiding me, haven’t you? I’m afraid that I was confused and confounded when you came to fetch me away from Dr Critchley’s madhouse.’ She laughed. ‘But I know very well who you are now, nephew, so there’s no need for you to be afraid of me.’
‘I’m delighted to see you so well, and in such good spirits, Aunt Arabella,’ said Jeremy, relaxing in his chair. Surely that new wallpaper, with those stylized swans, posed among green rushes against a light cream sky, was the work of Walter Crane? Perhaps Uncle Ambrose was not as attached to the pseudo-gothic dark flocked papers to be found in the downstairs rooms as he pretended to be.
‘I have been talking about you to your uncle,’ said Aunt Arabella. ‘He has told me all about your distinguished academic career, and lent me volume one of your work on the Crusades. I must confess that I found it too heavy going, but I can see its merit.’
Jeremy watched her as she took a small bottle from a table, and unscrewed its cap. She did so rather clumsily, leaning forward, and holding the bottle with a slightly trembling hand. Was Aunt Arabella showing incipient signs of the palsy? The bottle, he saw, was made of dark blue glass, covered in a filigree of gold, with a gold cap. She poured some of its contents on to a handkerchief, and dabbed her temples with it.
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