by Angus Wilson
Gerald exaggerated his exhaustion so that he might be alone with Dollie again. He closed his eyes, and after a little conversation among themselves Stokesay and Portway withdrew. Lilian Portway came in once or twice and expressed the hope that he was better.
At lunch-time Alice Barker brought a tray and Dollie went to get her own lunch. Gerald, feeling that he had annoyed the hefty parlourmaid, said, 'I hear your father was first on the scene with Mr Gilbert Stokesay.'
Alice looked at him suspiciously. 'No,' she said, 'that was that Frank.'
When Dollie returned she brought Gilbert with her. 'I have not visited you earlier, Middleton,' he said, 'because I have a wholesome dislike of pain. However, now that I understand that you are convalescent I can ask you the conventional question, "Are you better?" I shall equally conventionally not wait for your answer. It is obvious that with Dollie to wash you, or whatever these nurses do, you've had a delightful time. I shall not also tell you about "our discovery", since my father has already been here. However, it's nice to think that the undiluted milk of the Nazarene gospel was not strong enough diet for the good old Anglo-Saxon episcopal stomach. He had to have this little wooden fellow as well, and a very priapic little fellow at that, I may tell you. Alas! without the faintest aesthetic interest. The Christmas Islanders do better. This is merely primitive, and admiration of the primitive for its own sake is a Rousseauish sort of romanticism I very much dislike.'
Gerald could remember little more about the visit, except that the next day he had the pleasure of seeing Gilbert lose innumerable sets of tennis to Dollie. She was very good, it was true, but Gilbert was always very bad at games. ...
So that, he thought, was the whole of it. Suspicions engendered by the words of a drunkard and the actions of a hysterical woman. He had never dared to confront Gilbert with his words again nor face Inge with his suspicions about Kay's hand. And from these slender foundations it seemed he had woven a great web of depression and despair to convince himself that his chosen study of history was a lie and the family life he had made a deception. Even if these suspicions had proved true - and he had carefully let them lie in the hinterland of his mind until it was too late to test them - what then? An odd freak of Anglo-Saxon history was faked. What did that matter to the general study of the subject? An hysterical, unhappy woman had been guilty of an act of cruelty to a small child. It had not made the adoration of the girl and young woman for her mother any less. It seemed to him suddenly as though he had come out of a dark narrow tunnel, where movement was cramped to a feeble crawl, into the broad daylight where he could once more walk or run if he chose.
Inge's voice came to him. 'Now there is your father, who has slept all through our wonderful talk.'
'No, I hear you, my dear,' he said.
'We have been talking about truth. But you are the one who can tell us. The great scholar!' Her voice was sarcastic. He got up and, walking over to her, he kissed her on the cheek. It was an action only a little less sarcastic than her words.
'You know all about the truth, don't you, Gerald?' she asked.
'Yes, my dear, I think I do,' he answered, 'but I'm going off to bed.'
When he got upstairs to his room, he sat down and wrote to Sir Edgar, accepting the editorship of the History.
.
PART TWO
CHAPTER I
Sir Edgar Iffley lived in a large late-Victorian Italianate house near Holland Park. The manservant who opened the door to Gerald was as old as his master. The hall, though spacious, was dark and smelt of port wine and roast beef. Sir Edgar's study, into which Gerald was shown, was also a large room, but light, with french windows looking on to a trim garden, bare and grey in the feeble February afternoon sun. The study smelt of cigars and pot pourri rose-petals. Two of the high walls were covered in books, but against the third wall was a cabinet overcrowded with objects. A tenth-century ivory chessman, a twelfth-century wooden virgin, two Romano-British tiles, a stone Romanesque demon with fish-scale body, a late medieval green earthenware pot: the excellence of Sir Edgar's collection contrasted oddly with the bad Edwardian reproductions of Italian primitives - the gold too bright and the red too dull - that hung on each side of the cabinet.
'You took your time coming back from Vienna, Middleton,' said Sir Edgar gruffly, as he rose from the chair behind his long desk that filled the window recess with its card indexes and files. 'You look very well, anyway. I hope you've come back ready for some hard work, because that's what awaits you.'
'I stayed until the Exhibition closed,' said Gerald. He did not care to tell of how he had pored over every drawing, spun out every hour, like a smoker, committed to abstaining, with his last packet of cigarettes. He would not reveal with what reluctance he had returned to the task which he had promised so earnestly to perform. Seating himself in one of the deep leather armchairs, he drew out a sheet of paper from his inside pocket and handed it to Sir Edgar. 'This is a tentative list of contributors for the History,' he said. 'I wrote to them last night when I got back to London.'
The little old man seemed more than ever like some beetle, humped over the long desk, peering at the list with frowning brows.
'Well,' he said at last, 'I shan't repeat all I said to you in my letter. It's the greatest relief to me, of course, that you've agreed to take on the job. You're so essentially the only one who can do it that I never believed you would let us down.' He looked at the list again. 'You've cast your net wide,' he said. 'And rightly. Roberts, Stringwell-Anderson. I'm glad you're making good use of the young men. Do you think you can trust Lavenham not to be tendentious on the Orders in England?'
Gerald smiled. 'An English Benedictine?' he queried, 'and Lavenham is very English. A touch of nationalist schism is more to be feared, I should think.'
Sir Edgar laughed. 'Oh! We're not concerned with his relations with his spiritual directors,' he said.
The old manservant brought in a tray of tea. Anchovy toast was covered by a steaming silver cover, as it had been in Sir Edgar's undergraduate days. Two sorts of cake were by custom provided - a rich Dundee and a Genoa profuse with crystallized cherries. Gerald remembered too late that the tea was poured out according to Sir Edgar's taste - a strong russet brown.
After the old servant retired, Sir Edgar sat back, intently stirring his strong, sweet tea for a few moments, then he said, 'A lot of these people are impossible to deal with. You're in for a number of battles that'll bring you down in sorrow to the grave. But that's nothing to do with me. Anyway, you may do better than I did with the last History. That was forty years ago when the academic world prided itself more on prickliness. Besides, you use tact; I never did. You'll need all your tact with Clun, I can tell you. He wrote me a very unpleasant letter after the news of your appointment as editor appeared in the Bulletin. I don't propose to show it to you because that sort of thing doesn't do, but he's not fond of you to put it mildly. I dislike the man, you know, but I think he sincerely feels he could have done the job better.'
'Oh, as a one-man job he undoubtedly could,' said Gerald, 'but I doubt if the contributors would recognize much of their work by the time he'd done editing it.'
Sir Edgar looked up for a minute from under his bushy eyebrows. 'I hope you're not going to be too soft with them, Middleton,' he said.
Gerald ignored the remark. 'I must have Clun's contributions. I want him on the Anglo-Saxon constitutional stuff and on the growth of towns. I'm prepared to use all my charms.'
'You'll need to.'
'I've asked him to lunch at the Athenaeum on Wednesday.'
Sir Edgar laughed abruptly. 'I doubt if that'll impress him.' Then, noticing a shade of annoyance on Gerald's heavy face, he added, 'Anyway, I wish you luck. He knows that his co-operation with you will score him a good mark with me for what that's worth. There's something more important than Clun though. You haven't included Rose Lorimer in this list. It's an odd oversight, isn't it?'
This time Gerald did not control his annoyance.
'I should have thought you knew my concern and my personal fondness for Rose too well to have supposed that I'd overlooked her. It has cost me a great deal to omit her name. In my view, the History must override all personal considerations. Whatever Rose may have been, she is not now a responsible scholar.' Gerald's habitual flush had now a dark, almost black hue and his drawl a slight braying note.
Sir Edgar disregarded these things. 'Have you seen her since you came back?' he asked.
'No, of course not. How could I have done? I only arrived here last night.'
'Well, you will in about a quarter of an hour. I've asked her to come here.' Sir Edgar overrode whatever protest Gerald was about to make. 'You'll find her changed, I think,' he continued. 'One doesn't like to be dogmatic about such things, but I believe she's cured of whatever was wrong with her. Perhaps,' he added, 'it was something to do with her age.'
'Hardly that, I think,' Gerald said.
Sir Edgar detected a touch of patronage towards his bachelor state in Gerald's tone. 'Well, I don't know. I'm not a medical man,' he said irritably. 'It was probably Pforzheim's information. She seems to feel that she's been vindicated or something. At any rate she's shed all the insane fringes of her theories. She's back where she was ten years ago, and, in my opinion, that means that she's one of the best medievalists in England.' He paused for a moment and smiled to himself. 'I think,' he said slowly, 'that when she comes you should ask her to do the article on the Enghsh conversion for the History.'
Gerald's hands trembled with anger. 'I happen to have written to Wainwright already,' he said. 'And in any case I shouldn't care to take the responsibility of what you suggest.'
Sir Edgar smiled again. 'Yes, yes, my dear boy,' he said, 'I know what you're thinking. Nevertheless, I think you should ask her. I'll take the responsibility involved.'
'I hate to remind you that I'm the editor.'
Sir Edgar's little wrinkled face was set in complacent lines, his beady eyes looked at Gerald ironically. 'You do what I say, my dear fellow,' he said in his most authoritative tone.
Gerald hesitated for a moment, then he swallowed with a gulp of the throat. 'Very well,' he said, 'but please understand that I resent your interference.' The casual laugh with which he palliated the remark did not make it the less direct.
He felt increasingly resentful when Rose was announced, yet he had to admit to himself that her appearance was vastly improved. Her hair no longer straggled across her face, the powder on her cheeks was less noticeably splodgy, she was wearing a dark blue woollen dress which was neither stained nor dependent on safety-pins; only her hat with its little bouquet of pink and pale-blue woollen flowers was faintly absurd. He reflected, however, that Rose's hats had always been a slight embarrassment.
'Well!' she said brightly, 'so the prodigal's returned. I suppose you spent a huge fortune on some drawing or other.'
Gerald laughed. 'I would have had to have done so to have bought the Leonardos in Vienna,' he said. 'It was an exhibition, not a sale, Rose.'
'Oh! I don't suppose that would deter you if you were out for spoils,' she said. He remembered that this arch manner towards men had been habitual to her before her 'illness'. The little 'daring' smile with which she accepted the glass of sherry offered to her by the manservant equally recalled the past.
'Anyway,' she said, raising her glass, 'here's all success to the History. I'm so awfully glad, Gerald, that you accepted the editorship. But then I knew you would. You men always need wooing.' In a more straightforward, comradely tone, she added, 'I look forward greatly to working for you.'
Gerald blushed scarlet, then, with an exaggeration of his usual drawl that betrayed his embarrassment, he said, 'I wanted to talk to you about that. Sir Edgar was suggesting that you might do the chapter on the Conversion of England for me.' He shot a sharp look at Sir Edgar, but the old man was watching Rose intently.
She fumbled in her handbag for a moment and then spoke in a hurried, squeaky voice. 'Oh, I don't think so,' she said. 'I've given the Church far more attention than it deserves for so many years. Besides, one of these young Anglicans ought to do it. What about Jack Wainwright? I'm all in favour of hearing from the young people. I've got my own ideas, of course, but they'll come into their own in time.' She sipped at her sherry, and then looked up at Gerald with a coy look. 'You know how I told you that I was bored lecturing on Exchequer administration. And you said,' here she giggled, 'that my pupils might be equally bored with the same old lecture. Well, of course, you were quite right. I'm thoroughly ashamed of myself. I've completely neglected my later medieval studies. After all,' she said grandly, 'I was one of Professor Tout's most favoured pupils.'
Gerald frowned. It was all a little too good to be true. 'You were Stokesay's pupil for many more years than you were Tout's,' he said sharply.
'Oh, I know, but I've been rather silly lately, thrusting Lionel Stokesay's views down everyone's throat. He was far too great an historian to need my canvassing for him. Anything he did that's disputed will be vindicated sooner or later without my help.' She smiled roguishly at Sir Edgar. 'No, Gerald, I would like to do the chapter for you on the development of royal administration down to the fourteenth century. I'll limit myself to the Exchequer, if you prefer that, but I'd like to do the whole bag of tricks really - Exchequer, Chancery, Wardrobe, and all. I've got a demon in me to get down to some really hard work.' She paused for a moment and then looked at Gerald. 'I think you'll find I'll do good work for you,' she said. 'You mustn't judge by the last few years. I haven't been at all well, you know.'
It was Sir Edgar who answered her. 'It's wonderful to see you yourself again,' he said. Gerald felt that he had failed in not replying first, so he tried to make up the deficiency by the warmth with which he said, 'My dear Rose.'
Rose Lorimer fumbled again in her handbag for a moment and both men were horrified lest she should start to cry. Gerald said quickly, 'Why don't you dine with me, Rose, and discuss the details? It's far too long since you were my guest.'
'Oh dear! how I should have loved to.' She turned to Sir Edgar. 'To have to refuse one of Gerald's magnificent dinners! But I'm going to supper with the Robertses. Have you been there, Gerald? They have such a pleasant little flat in Cromwell Road. Betty Roberts has been so kind to me. They've told me to make it a second home. Of course, we've been brought together by our common interest in Pforzheim's work, and now that Jasper Stringwell-Anderson has gone over to Heligoland, I hear all the new developments through the letters he writes to Theo Roberts. ...'
Gerald interrupted her excited flow. 'I can't think what's possessed Jasper to go flying off to Heligoland of all places at this moment. In term too. I particularly wanted his help in compiling the editorial rules.'
Sir Edgar raised his eyebrows. 'The poor chap has got a Sabbatical and the work there is rather important on any grounds,' he said. 'For the English historian it must have peculiar importance because of the possible new light it throws on Melpham. By the way, Middleton, Pforzheim wants to get your first-hand account of the excavation there.'
Gerald was perplexed by all these references to the Heligoland excavations, but he had determined resolutely not to open the question of Melpham to his conscience, so he said rather grimly, 'Maybe. I don't know. I can't tell him anything anyway. My ankle was sprained.'
Rose was deterred by his expression from questioning him further; she contented herself by saying, 'Well, it doesn't really matter now. Everything's going along so nicely. I'm convinced that we're only at the beginning of even more extraordinary finds.' She, too, seemed to have agreed with herself upon censored topics, for she pulled up short and remarked with a cosy smile, 'But what's so wonderful for me is the way that it's brought me into touch with people again, especially the young people. I'd got badly cut off, you know. But they're so awfully kind, Sir Edgar. Mr Stringwell-Anderson took me to a restaurant in Soho. He knows almost as much about food as you do, Gerald. Do you know Shaslik? Well, we had that. Rather highly seasone
d, but then it's oriental. Theo Roberts said he preferred a good mince.' She laughed in reminiscence of the unwonted world of wit and sparkle in which she now lived. 'They took me to see this new Italian actress Magnani. Such a wonderful film about peasants. It took me back to my holiday in Assisi. Of course, I used to love the cinema, but I'd quite stopped going. It's all new names now and cowboys. I used not to like cowboys, but they do take one out of oneself. But this evening I'm taking the Robertses to something they've never seen - Duvivier's Joan of Arc. I do so hope they like it, because I shall certainly weep myself. Theo's coming here to fetch me in his little Austin. Is that all right, Sir Edgar?'
The old man came to suddenly from a half-sleep. He reflected that the price of Rose's return to normality was inevitably tedious. Gerald, too, was wondering, as he had so often in the past, how so childish a mind could be so accurate, so painstaking, and, yes, so intelligent when it came to the study of the Middle Ages.
A moment later the manservant announced that Gerald's car was waiting for him. 'I'm sorry to miss Theo,' Gerald said. 'Tell him to get in touch with me as soon as he can. "Why don't you lunch with me on Friday, Rose?' He had no engagement that prevented him from waiting to see Theo, yet he felt unwilling to witness the material evidence of Rose's new-found friendships. He suddenly knew envy for the easy happiness with which she had returned to life, while his own return was so lonely and uneasy.
As the Daimler was held up in a traffic block near the Brompton Oratory, Gerald saw with pleasure a tall, dark girl walking ahead of them towards Knightsbridge. He followed the curve of her hips beneath her tight black skirt, and her thighs as they rubbed their vigorous way forward.
It was only when he had put his lust aside with vexation and regret, telling himself in compensation how unattractively fat she would soon become, that he realized that it was his son John's secretary, Elvira Portway. He leaned forward and told Larwood to draw up beside her. He peered out into the cold, darkening air, 'How are you?' he asked. He enjoyed for a moment the trembling of her body as she was jostled from abstraction and the cold stare with which she evidently met cruising wolves.