by Angus Wilson
'But where is Middleton?' cried Pforzheim, as they watched Colonel Brankscombe leaving. 'I wished so much to speak to him.'
'I'm afraid he's left,' said Professor Clun, seizing an excellent opportunity.
'What?' said Sir Edgar with annoyance, 'Middleton gone?'
'He had some rare drawing to see,' said Professor Clun, suggesting almost that it might be pornographic. 'The rich can never resist a bargain.' And he laughed, not so much at the observation, as at the pleasure in turning Gerald's words against him. Sir Edgar, however, was not favourable to malice.
'I suppose we can none of us do that, Clun,' he said shortly.
Professor Clun's dislike of Sir Edgar was very great, but he was anxious to avoid any overt disagreement. He turned to Pforzheim. 'Well,' he said, 'you gave us just the thing for the occasion. I only wish there was an opportunity to talk a bit on the more scholarly level.'
Sir Edgar frowned, but Professor Pforzheim only smiled. He estimated Professor Clun's abilities more highly perhaps than his English colleagues, and suffered less than they did from his deficiencies.
'Oh, but you are quite right, my dear man,' he said. 'My lecture was a Denkschrift. You, of course, want something more solid. Well, the discussion is yours.'
Poor Professor Clun was perplexed. It was gratifying to have his point of view taken seriously, but then, of course, it was only to be expected; Pforzheim was a good Continental scholar, and it was only in England that serious scholarship was underrated. On the other hand, the last thing he wanted was to prolong the 'discussion'. 'I hardly think Sir Edgar would care for a discussion of technicalities this evening,' he said with a confiding smile.
Sir Edgar's reply was lost, however, in another of Clarissa's gestures. 'I'm Clarissa Crane, Sir Edgar,' she said. 'I've really no right here. ...'
Sir Edgar did not exactly recognize the character of her intervention, but he could see at once from her appearance that it was a time-wasting one. 'Not at all,' he said. 'Delighted. Well, I'm afraid we must cut our conversation short. The discussion's four minutes overdue. Fire any questions you like at Pforzheim. He's told me to give you all carte blanche,' and he led the way back to the dais.
The discussion, to Professor Clun's discomfort and to Jasper's delight, went with a bang. Praed was deeply interested in Professor Pforzheim's view about the Kharkov hoard, didn't he perhaps lay a little too much emphasis on the presence of Bactrian coins? Naturally the greatest interest attached to anything from that area, but, after all ... Grayson was interested in the Carolingian decrees to Marseilles merchants, but surely this was only another instance of brilliant imperial propaganda, to talk of Roman survival seemed to ignore... Prescott gave other instances of the restrictive decrees of the Cordova Caliphate ... Drake questioned the relevance of St Gregory's attitude to the slave trade.
Jasper's purring was almost audible, Clun's terrier-barking could even be heard once or twice - 'Perhaps I may say, Mr Chairman ...' But Sir Edgar seemed deaf to such interruptions. Professor Pforzheim's survey had been broad, his replies were as rich in depth. It was not Sir Edgar's intention that such a remarkable performance should be curtailed for a lot of tiresome Association business. He equally ignored all Rose Lorimer's flustered bobs, becks, and smiles. He was convinced that the growing oddness of Rose's views was only a temporary aberration in a fine scholar due to overwork. His whole aim was to protect her from herself until he could persuade her to have a long holiday. As to Clarissa's occasional attempts to rise from her chair, he had already marked her down as a time-waster and he was not quick to change such judgments.
Now little Hilda Ferguson, fiercely Scots with her flaming red hair and shrill soap-box voice, rose to express her agreement with the lecturer's very clear exposition of the Ethiopie position, but at the risk of being theological she would like to stress the very deep mark on the whole social order of that area left by the Monophysites....
Professor Pforzheim dealt with this point also very aptly, but the introduction of religion into the discussion was too much for Rose Lorimer. She was on her feet. Clutching her old far coat around her and smiling benignly from beneath her roses, she spoke, her childish voice almost cooing the carefully enunciated syllables.
'Those of us who worked most closely with Professor Stokesay, and to whom his memory is not only most dear but always alive, have experienced this evening a quite remarkable pleasure in listening to Professor Pforzheim's wonderful lecture.'
She paused and, throwing back her fur coat from her shoulders to reveal a purple crochet jumper, she smiled vaguely round the room as a signal that she had much to say. Professor Pforzheim bowed from his chair at the compliment and smiled as to an old friend, but Rose seemed oblivious to individuals.
'I am among those who owe all that they know to Lionel Stokesay, and not only all that I know, but all that I have dreamed of what the past can yield up to us if we approach it with reverence and dedication. And not only the past but the past that lies in the present.' Here she smiled mysteriously. Sir Edgar began to look uneasy, but Jasper sat back with a smile of delight. 'I was one of those, common in my girlhood, for whom the study of history was a very dry discipline, and I well remember how, in that old hall at Manchester - now, I understand, pulled down - I went, with a certain reluctant scepticism, to hear the famous Lionel Stokesay lecture. That scepticism was soon washed away through the floodgates which his discourse opened for me.'
Jasper could not forbear giving a special smile at Professor Clun, as though including him in a bond of peculiar pleasure at Rose's reminiscences. It was more than the little man could bear, and he muttered audibly, 'It's a pity a lot of other things weren't washed away.' Theo, who was as disgusted at Clun's lack of chivalry as he was delighted at the likely length of Rose's contribution, said, 'Shame!' in his broadest Yorkshire. Rose noticed no interruptions.
'Sir Edgar has criticized Professor Stokesay's last years, he has called the writings of those last years journalism. Well, I have crossed friendly swords with our President before now and I do not hesitate to do so again.' She smiled archly at Sir Edgar, who slumped into his chair until he seemed to be no more than a black hump. 'I saw a lot of Lionel Stokesay at the end of his life, and I know how deeply, how seriously, he felt that it was his duty to bring his great historical knowledge to bear upon the troubled events of those years. Nobody, of course, likes the Nazis.' She said this as though referring to the usual antipathies to spiders or muddy boots in the house. On political matters her mind was as naïve as her voice. The embarrassment of the audience was perhaps greater than that of Professor Pforzheim, who had blushed scarlet. 'But Lionel Stokesay felt above everything that he must do all in his power to preserve peace. In his efforts to do so, I believe, he showed himself a great statesman as well as a great historian, and his sadness when all his efforts proved unavailing was tragic to see. It killed him.'
Rose was unable to continue for a moment, and then, pulling her fur coat around her, she leaned forward and, smiling through her tears, she said: 'But these are now only memories. What is important is that we have heard this evening a lecture which can, if we follow its lead, take us out of the petty lanes and alleys along which students of medieval history tend nowadays too easily to stray, to that broad road with its glorious ideal prospect upon which Lionel Stokesay trod all his life. So commanding is the scene which our lecturer laid before us this evening that it may seem churlish to ask that it should have been even wider. All the same, there is one aspect of that strange, important watershed period of the past, which has been given the foolish label of the Dark Ages, that I would like to mention. Professor Pforzheim has told us something of the continuous trade of the Northern pagan world and something of the spread of trade which went with the preaching of the Gospel, but does he not think that the division between these two worlds - the pagan and the Christian - is really rather artificial? Was there so much that finally separated them? Once there had been compromise, that is. It has always seemed to
me, and I fear I have laboured the point more than once in print' - she smiled in childish glee round the room - 'that in their eagerness to keep the saving of souls for themselves, to destroy the Church of Iona, the Roman missionaries made so many compromises.' She seemed now to be listening to two voices and her utterance became increasingly confused. 'Is there not, or perhaps I should say, was there not, a filling of the holy vessels with blood that came from more ancient sacrifices than that which we remember on Good Friday? And I would ask, perhaps, if the older force which conquered then in the realm of spirit may not also have overflowed and transformed even the material life of the time, even the trade?'
She paused, looking strangely at Professor Pforzheim. The Professor stood up deeply embarrassed.
'I'm not sure I have truly understood the meaning of Dr Lorimer's question. The interchange between the pagan and the Christian world, of course ...'
'I'm afraid, I don't speak at all well,' said Rose simply. 'I'm so familiar perhaps with these ideas, live with them so much, that ...' her voice tailed away. 'Well,' she said more brightly, 'I could give to you many examples. But to take our east coast of England, surely from the fifth century onwards an essential part of the trading world. What do you make of King Redwald's idols? What do you make of the implications of Bishop Eorpwald's tomb? These, I would remind you all, were the results of Rome's mission....'
Before Professor Pforzheim could answer, Arthur Clun was on his feet. 'Mr Chairman, I really must protest. The Association has business to do. I cannot conceive how the circumstances of Eorpwald's burial can possibly ...'
Rose Lorimer turned a bewildered, worried stare upon him. 'Perhaps Professor Clun thinks that we should not allow ourselves an imaginative leap beyond the strict barriers of fact?'
'I think,' said Professor Clun, 'that some people have made one imaginative leap too many and show little sign of being able to return to the realm of reason.'
Sir Edgar was about to protest, when Professor Pforzheim, whom years of courageous opposition to Nazi rule had made peculiarly susceptible to any sign of bullying, rose to his feet.
'I should like to speak something about this.' He looked down at the lectern and his long body pivoted uneasily from foot to foot. 'What I am going to say is an indiscretion. I had not intended to speak anything about it this evening. Indeed, I should perhaps correct that - I had intended most definitely not to speak anything about it. But Professor Clun's belittling of the importance of the Melpham tomb makes me feel that I should speak and, as the gentleman from the Press is no longer here, I hope that I can trust this great body of historians to allow my confidences to go no farther. As you know, we have been making excavations along the North Sea shores of Heligoland, an important centre of Saxon life and the scene of the conversion of King Eltheof by St Boniface's disciple Aldwin. Well, we have discovered Aldwin's tomb. The material is in very bad condition and anything I say must be regarded as very tentative. Nevertheless, there seems reason for us to think that the conditions of Aldwin's burial were the same as those of Eorpwald nearly one century earlier. There are fragments that suggest the same wooden pagan deity. I fear that most of what Dr Lorimer is saying goes beyond what I would call historical fact, but I think we should be careful before we dismiss the Melpham discovery so easily as an exceptional event.'
He sat down, with folded arms, his head buried in his waistcoat.
If for some of the audience it was Pforzheim's manner rather than what he said that was rousing, the many specialists were clearly in a state of great excitement. There was silence for some seconds, then a small clerical figure at the back of the hall rose to speak. Father Lavenham, the great Benedictine scholar, had a distinguished ascetic face which was yet strangely goat-like, his bleating voice equally had an unexpectedly diplomatic, soothing note.
'Mr Chairman,' he said, 'since Professor Pforzheim has been so good as to honour us with this remarkable confidence, I think we should repay him by refraining from discussion of it until greater certainty allows him and his distinguished colleagues to make public their more definite conclusions.'
He sat down with the air of having nipped some potentially insidious nonsense in the bud.
Once again there was silence. Rose Lorimer had the air of a martyr vindicated by a sign from Heaven which she did not quite understand; it was Professor Clun who now smiled vaguely as though there were no end to the childish folly of his colleagues. Clarissa alone had failed to realize the importance of Professor Pforzheim's statement. Holding her bag, her gloves, and her small felt cap in one hand, she rose to her feet.
'Mr Chairman,' she said, 'I don't know whether a mere visitor has any right...'
But her question remained unspoken. Sir Edgar had decided that the moment had come to put an end to the proceedings.
'I fear we have no more time for questions, and,' he added with a chuckle, for he had conceived a great dislike for Clarissa, 'little inclination to hear them, with all we have to think about.' He turned to Professor Pforzheim. 'Once again, thank you,' he said, and led the way through the door at the back of the dais to the accompaniment of the Association's applause.
CHAPTER 3
MRS SALAD came each year to get her present from Gerald before luncheon on Christmas Eve. It was always the same present - a five-pound note and a large pink cyclamen in a gilded basket tied with pink ribbon. This year, Gerald had attempted a variation by presenting her with a scarlet poinsettia, but he knew at once that he was wrong.
'Oh, it's a lovely foreign thing. Bright as blood,' Mrs Salad said in her old, croaking tremolo, and she peered at it through the haze of mascara'd moisture that always clung to her eyelashes and stuck in little beads on her black net eye-veil. 'I dare say it'll draw the flies. But lovely for them that likes bright colours. Just like the stuff the girls put on their finger-nails now. Like a lot of old birds giving the glad in the Circus, or the York Road, Waterloo, more likely. Trollopy lot.'
And Mrs Salad's black-dyed curls and fur toque with eye-veil shook in disgust, though whether against the painted nails of the modern girl or the behaviour of prostitutes was not clear. In either case, it was righteous disgust, for, despite her scabrous imagination, Mrs Salad always boasted that she had kept her body clean 'as Our Lord had given it to her', and for make-up, although her face was liberally covered with rouge and mascara and enamel, she had never used nail-varnish.
'Now the cycerlermums,' she continued, 'is as delicate as my sister-in-law's skin. Her husband wouldn't have her wear a soiled garment not a day longer than was needed. Spurgin's Tabernacle they was,' she added. Many of Mrs Salad's images were drawn from the anatomy of her family. 'Well, there it is,' she said, giving the poinsettia a final survey. 'More of a leaf, really.' For all their cloudiness, Mrs Salad's eyes were very sharp.
It was not an auspicious beginning for the visit, and this year Mrs Salad seemed more frail than ever, her agile mind more random. Her shrunken little body in its black cloth coat with a bunch of artificial Parma violets was bent with arthritis and her match-stick legs trembled on her high-heeled patent-leather boots with grey kid uppers.
'I came from 'Endon by Underground,' she said, 'and a musty, high-smelling lot they are that go by it now. My son-in-law offered to bring me in his car. But Gladys wouldn't have it. Wanted it herself for a bit of la-di-da, I dare say. Lovely chap, he is. Used to be in the Navy. Often I've seen him of a morning when he's taking his tub, stripped to the waist. Better than any boxer. But it's all for Gladys. He's not the one to give it away to any little cheap bit that comes along.'
Gerald, who was well used to Mrs Salad's reminiscences, handed her the customary glass of sweet sherry and asked her how she liked living at her daughter's.
'Oh! it's a loverly residence,' Mrs Salad said, carrying her glass with shaky hand to her smudged scarlet lips. 'Gladys isn't equal to it,' she added with dignity, 'though she's my daughter. My son-in-law saw it at once. "Mother," he said to me, "you make the place like a palace and it fits
you like a glove."' Mrs Salad here moulded one of her black kid gloves to her small, knotted hand to illustrate the point. Then she continued, 'And a beautiful class of neighbours too. Though it's a trashy lot next door. Makin' h'objections without call. My grandson Vin come at weekends and he likes to sun himself in the garden. He strips thin but very delicate, and a lovely choice of the trunks. Gold-and-white satin. They starts makin' h'objections. I didn't lose my dignity. I just said, "You filthy trollopy lot," I said. Well, you know me, dear. How's Mr John?' she asked, giving Gerald a sharp glance. 'I seen him on the Tele. Very quick he was helping the lot that won't help themselves. Poor chap. Answering a lot of silly questions from the poorest of the poor. They won't thank him for it. Vin's met him often. A la-di-da lot they move with. It doesn't do any good to ask about it. We shouldn't understand it if we did. But there you are, it doesn't do to criticize, just because their larks aren't ours, does it?' Gerald had no idea what Mrs Salad was driving at, but he agreed. 'I had a lovely powder-puff from Miss Dollie. She always remembers me. You goin' to her for Xmas?'
It was Gerald's turn to look sharply at the old woman. 'Now, Mrs Salad, you know very well that I haven't seen Mrs Stokesay for years.'
'No,' said Mrs Salad; 'more's the pity. You took what you wanted and passed on, as men will. Oh well, who can blame you?' She shrugged it off with an ancien régime worldliness. 'Nobody wants to wear an old pair of shoes. But you had lovely larks while it lasted. And very nice to work for, you both were, sin or no sin.'
Mrs Salad looked round the walls and fixed her eyes on a John drawing of a woman putting on her stockings. She gave it an approving smile as though to illustrate her broadmindedness.
'That's the trouble with Gladys, doesn't know life,' she said. 'I was talkin' about the old days at His Majesty's the other night when we had company. After they'd gone she says to me, "Can't you find nothing to talk about but lavatories?" "I've met better class in the Cloakroom than you'll ever know," I said. "Programme girl seems more refined to me," she answered. Silly cow! I could have been programme girl over and over. But, no, thank you! Save your feet's my motto.'