The Troubadour

by Simon Raven

  ‘No surprise, sir. It is a very easy examination.’

  ‘Don’t be arrogant. God might be listening.’

  ‘God knows that I am right…about the papers being easy. Tessa was rather worried about the ancient history, but that was because the questions were too woolly to permit of a succinct answer.’

  ‘How did you deal with that?’

  ‘I gave a woolly answer, sir, since this was obviously what they wanted.’

  ‘But how did you impart distinction to your woolly answers, as you clearly must have done?’

  ‘The distinction must have lain in the quality of the wool I used. Fine, clean and smooth, sir.’

  ‘Sheer conceit.’

  ‘Piero said, sir, that in the spring there would be asphodel in this meadow. I see none, though early April must surely be spring.’

  ‘I surmise that the flowers have been destroyed by polluted air from Naples.’

  ‘This is far down the coast from Naples, sir. You don’t think…that they withered when Piero died?’

  Marius turned away again towards the wilderness and the salt marsh.

  ‘There are some fine cypress trees here, sir, to remind us of mortality. Was Piero killed by a curse which lay on Ullacote?’

  ‘No. I have told you. Piero was unlucky, like the rest. He was a victim of a long, unlucky run of coincidence, that is to say, of a long run of fortuitous deaths of those that had recently visited Ullacote.’

  ‘You promise me, sir? There is no malignance here, only bad luck?’

  ‘Turn and face me.’

  Marius turned.

  ‘You know very well, Marius, that malignance can kill nobody unless it is translated into deliberate action of a homicidal kind. No such action was observed or reported. Besides, no one bore malignant thoughts towards any of those that have perished.’

  ‘Some of them were your enemies, sir. Or let us say that they were nuisances. You might have wanted them…merely as a matter of convenience, without necessarily hating them or bearing malignant thoughts towards them…you might, sir, have wanted them out of the way.’

  ‘Let us stop this silly prevarication, Marius. People die when they die. For most of them, though this is not generally acknowledged, death is the greatest possible good fortune. It saves them, almost certainly, from adversity, age, humiliation, from neglect, decay, and ugly, lingering disease. Those whom the gods love, Marius, die young: that is just about all that need be said of death.’

  When Fielding, Jeremy and Milo reached the remains of Troy, Jeremy said to Milo:

  ‘When are they expecting you back in Trinity?’

  ‘Mid-April,’ Milo said.

  ‘In which case,’ said Fielding, ‘you had better take a bus to the nearest airport and fly home. You must not neglect your education. Here is a tourist office: let us enquire of your best route.’

  It transpired that if Milo boarded a bus that was leaving for Ankara there and then, he would probably be able to catch an aeroplane to England in time to be punctually back at Cambridge.

  ‘I do not fancy the bus trip to Ankara,’ Milo said.

  Fielding and Jeremy made sympathetic noises. ‘If you have to spend a night or two in Ankara, you will find it even nastier than the bus,’ they averred solicitiously.

  ‘Please, can’t I go on with you?’ Milo prayed.

  ‘You can’t afford it,’ said Jeremy. ‘I’m not going to pay for you forever: it is bad for your character and my pocket.’

  ‘Your pocket could not possibly suffer.’

  ‘Your character could,’ Jeremy said. ‘And as Fielding says, you must not neglect your education.’

  ‘If I get this bus,’ wheedled Milo, ‘I shan’t have time to go round Troy with you. How’s that for neglecting my education?’

  ‘We must take the longer and broader view,’ said Jeremy.

  ‘There is nothing of excitement or interest to be seen here,’ said Fielding, ‘unless you happen to be a highly trained archaeologist. If you want the best value out of Troy, Milo, go home and read the poets.’

  They got Milo’s kit out of the boot of the hired car, and the three of them trailed to the point from which the bus was about to leave.

  ‘What shall you two do now?’ said Milo, almost crying.

  ‘We shall go on to Xanthos,’ said Fielding, ‘unless we are summoned home by Carmilla. At Xanthos – well, we’ll see.’

  ‘Does Carmilla know your route?’ asked Milo. ‘And your dates?’

  ‘I sent her a wire from Alexandroupolis,’ Jeremy said, ‘just before we crossed into Turkey. However ghastly the Greek telegraph, I thought, it must be more efficient than the Turkish. When you get back to Cambridge, you can tell it to her again, just in case.’

  Jeremy wrote a quick list of the places which he and Fielding planned to pass through during the next three weeks. Milo glanced at it and put it in his pocket, then shook hands manfully and climbed on to the bus, which departed vibrantly, making an unusually rancid stench even for an Osmanli vehicle.

  ‘Here’s a newspaper stall,’ said Jeremy. He swayed grandly and blandly towards it and levered his moon face on his pneumatic torso down over the counter. ‘It has a Telegraph five days old.’

  ‘Leave it there,’ said Fielding. ‘We’ve done very well without papers since we left France. Why should we want one now? It’ll only be dripping with unction and cant.’

  ‘And imbecility,’ Jeremy said. ‘But suppose somebody’s dead or something of the kind? My father, for instance?’

  ‘Your knowledge of it would not bring him back to life, but might well nag at your conscience, to the vexation of both of us. Give me easeful ignorance any day,’ Fielding said. ‘If anything really exigent crops up, Milo will let us know.’

  ‘As I was just saying, my dear, I do not have the slightest confidence in Turkish systems of communication.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ Fielding said. ‘You talk as if the Sublime Porte was still running the place. Let us now have a look at Troy.’

  ‘You said it wasn’t worth looking at, unless one was an archaeologist.’

  ‘Now we are here,’ said Fielding, ‘we had better see the bloody thing. It would be rather ill mannered not to.’

  They started at the bottom of a hill which was little more than a mound, going round it anti-clockwise like Virgil and Dante on Mount Purgatory. Marigold Helmutt, who had also gone round it anti-clockwise, went out at the place where they had come in some minutes after they had disappeared round the flank of the hill. This was a pity, because Marigold was feeling very lonely and would have been grateful for the diversions which Fielding and Jeremy could have offered her.

  Tessa and Rosie had a lovely time at Canteloupe’s house. Whenever Lady Canteloupe took Tessa away to her bedroom, Canteloupe took Rosie up the Campanile.

  They also did other things.

  Canteloupe and Rosie went for long walks with Dobrila and Nausikaa, whom Dobrila always insisted on carrying.

  Lady Canteloupe and Teresa went to visit ‘Aunt Flo’ at Burnham-on-Sea. Aunt Flo had been the aunt of Marius’ dead friend, Galahad Palairet, and now considered herself to be an honorary aunt to Marius. She was hurt because Marius had not come to see her these holidays; but Tessa explained that he had been working at his Classics with Raisley Conyngham and had then gone with him to Paestum. She had had a postcard of the Temple of Hera, she told them.

  ‘You should not have allowed this,’ said Aunt Flo to Theodosia Canteloupe; ‘your sister Carmilla would not have allowed it.’

  ‘Carmilla is dead,’ said Theodosia. ‘Nothing has been proved to the disgrace or even to the mild discredit of Mr Conyngham. Doubtless Marius was glad of his tuition, which is the finest to be had in that line, and delighted to accompany him to Paestum. What could I or should I have done about any of that?’

  ‘Surely, Thea, there are still several of you who are determined to shield Marius from Raisley Coyngham’s attentions?’

  ‘What attentio
ns?’ said Theodosia. ‘The whole thing – this idea of a sinister threat to Marius – is now fizzling out. What do you think, Teresa?’

  ‘I think Marius is old enough to take care of himself,’ Tessa said.

  ‘What about you?’Aunt Flo said to Tessa. ‘You are to be that man’s ward. Does the prospect trouble you?’

  ‘Not all that much,’ Tessa said, ‘not now I’ve had time to think it over. I find him physically nauseating, but I do not suppose that he will touch me. For the rest, how can he bother me?’

  ‘His house at Ullacote is under his own curse,’ said Aunt Flo. ‘Carmilla and Piero came there with me before they went to France. We saw the curse in action: the place was like Golgotha. Since then Carmilla and Piero have died. You too have been in that house, Teresa, and so has Marius.’

  ‘And so have you,’Tessa said.

  ‘It does not matter what happens to me because I am a bankrupt old woman who only gets by because of the generosity of my darling Thea here. It does matter what happens to you and Marius.’

  ‘A lot of people have been at Ullacote,’Tessa said: ‘some have died, for one reason or another, and some have not, and that is all any rational person can say about it.’

  Being young, Tessa had forgotten all the noxious things that had happened to her while she was a guest at Ullacote a year before.

  ‘What shall you do,’ said Aunt Flo, ‘if, despite all your bold talk, that man begins to frighten you?’

  ‘I shall come to Thea,’ said Tessa, as Theodosia touched her gently on the right shoulder blade.

  ‘You shall of course go to Lady Canteloupe,’ said Raisley Conyngham to Tessa Malcolm on the first afternoon of the new (the cricket) quarter, ‘whenever you wish and whenever she invites you…though I think perhaps I should be told in future. But in general my guardianship of you will make no difference, Teresa, to your day-to-day life.’

  They were in Raisley Conyngham’s chambers, where an ample tea had just been spread by a severely clad housekeeper.

  ‘Tea?’ said Raisley. ‘Scones? Egg sandwiches? Marius is particularly fond of my housekeeper’s egg sandwiches.’

  ‘I never eat, or drink, anything at teatime,’ said Tessa.

  ‘As you wish, my dear,’ said the schoolmaster, helping himself to plain bread and butter. ‘Now then. As to money and all that, Colonel Blessington and I will arrange things for the best on your behalf – in consultation, I need hardly add, with yourself. There is only one problem at the moment: what is to be done with Buttock’s Hotel?’

  ‘Major Gray and I must keep it, sir. Old Mrs Buttock said in her will that it must not be sold.’

  ‘Her will…is hardly binding in the matter. Modern circumstances alter old-fashioned cases.’

  ‘Her will is binding in honour,’Tessa said.

  ‘Major Gray…might be glad of some ready money.’

  ‘So might I. Nevertheless, Mrs Buttock’s wish is mandatory.’

  ‘We do not have to take any decisions just now, Teresa.’

  ‘Nor, indeed, until I am of age, sir, when I shall make them for myself.’

  Raisley Conyngham smiled.

  ‘If no decisions are required before then,’ he said, ‘none need be taken. At the moment, there is only one thing I must impress upon you. Although, as I have said, I shall not use my authority as your guardian to impose any rules upon you from day to day, I shall make one definite request for your co-operation, in one specific matter, before many weeks have elapsed. In this one case I shall require your absolute obedience. Shall I have it?’

  ‘How can I say, sir, before I know what your request will be?’

  ‘I can tell you that it will be simple, reasonable, and easy to comply with.’

  ‘Some people’s notions of what is simple, reasonable and easy to comply with,’ said Tessa, ‘are not necessarily those of others.’

  ‘It is all that I shall ask of you, Teresa.’

  ‘And if I refuse you, sir, when you ask?’

  ‘It might then occur to me that Lady Canteloupe was, after all, a dangerous and corrupting companion for you, that her influence had rendered you disobliging to those set over you, and that Lord Canteloupe’s house was, in any case, no place for a respectable young lady to frequent.’

  ‘As to that, sir,’ Teresa told him, ‘we had better wait and see what happens when and if you make your request.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Raisley Conyngham in an easy voice, ‘we had better do precisely that. By the way, Teresa: your O level results –’

  ‘– Oh, sir. Are they out already?’

  ‘Not already, Tessa. Not officially. But I am in a position to assure you that they are admirable. Particularly your ancient history paper. A starred distinction. Even Marius did not achieve one of those.’

  As soon as he was back in his rooms in Trinity and had unpacked in his usual methodical fashion, Milo Hedley walked round to Lancaster in order to deliver to Carmilla Salinger the Turkish itinerary which Jeremy had written out at Troy.

  When he came to Carmilla Salinger’s door in Sitwell’s Building, he found that somebody else’s name was over it; he therefore went to Piero Caspar’s set of rooms, near the river, where he found that the oak was sported and that there was a black blank above it where Piero’s name should have been in white.

  On his way back to the porters’ lodge at the entrance of Lancaster, Milo met Len, the Provost’s private secretary, who remembered Milo from his visit to the previous Provost during the previous summer.

  ‘I have important news for Carmilla Salinger and Piero Caspar,’ said Milo, when their perfunctory greetings were done, ‘but they seem to have gone.’

  ‘Gone to earth,’ said Len.

  ‘Dead?’

  ‘Dead.’

  ‘How…dead?’ asked Milo.

  ‘Poisoned…in one form or another. Most unhelpful, or so the Provost felt – the press and so on, don’t you see? So he used his powers as coroner – sovereign coroner by royal grant within the college boundaries – to pronounce death by misadventure. They are buried in our crypt and no power on earth can get them out of it. So although your news can be of no interest to them, it might be of interest to me, as I am interested in news of any kind, particularly news intended for others.’

  ‘It is simply a list of places which Fielding Gray and Jeremy Morrison will be visiting in Turkey during the next few weeks…in case Carmilla should want them.’

  ‘Well she won’t,’ said Len, ‘will she? Neither will anyone else that I know of. They may just as well go drifting on through the Levant for ever and ever, amen. They might meet Marigold Helmutt, who is thought to be in that area. Then they could have dinner together, for what good it would do them.’

  ‘You seem rather morose this afternoon,’ Milo said.

  ‘So would you be if you lived in a college like this. With the exception of the Provost, there is nobody left in it who is remotely conversable. All the pleasant or amusing people are either dead, like Carmilla, away, like Marigold, or dying, like Balbo Blakeney. The rest are inorganic chemists, vegetarians or Maoists, or all three.’

  ‘Thank God I was warned not to come to Lancaster.’

  ‘By Raisley Conyngham, I suppose? As usual, he was right. I do not understand why Carmilla and the rest got into such a taking about his supposed influence over his pretty little moll, Marius Stern. His advice, from what I hear, is infallibly excellent.’

  ‘Raisley is not really a very agreeable man.’

  ‘At least – from what little I know of him – he is more entertaining than inorganic chemists or Maoists.’

  ‘He is undeniably that,’ said Milo. ‘As crafty and poisonous as a viper, of course, but no one can say that either trait is dull.’

  Musing on what to do, Milo decided that he would send a telegram to Jeremy c/o poste restante at Ephesus, where Jeremy and Fielding should arrive on the next day but three. He would tell them that Carmilla and Piero were dead, and that they should come home pretty
soon to look after Marius’ interests, since serious attention to the boy’s plight seemed to be fading rapidly with the demise or absence of his supporters. The truth was, Milo suspected, that people were bored with the topic. As Marius grew, he was inclining to gawkiness, and there was even a hint of a pustule here and there. Whereas gawkiness could be seen as ranginess and so pass as not unattractive, there was nothing quite like pustules to diminish prior regard.

  Nevertheless, thought Milo loyally, there is a duty here. He therefore did a sharp right turn at the Senate House, and walked across the Market Square and on towards the central post office, where he wrote a foreign cable:

  CARMILLA AND PIERO HAVE BID THIS

  WORLD GOODNIGHT STOP INTEREST IN

  MARIUS FAST EVAPORATING STOP MUCH

  LOVE FROM MILO STOP

  He would have saved a lot of money if he had been less pedantic about punctuation and had substituted DEAD for the half line from Richard III, but he felt that Carmilla and Piero would have enjoyed this, to say nothing of Jeremy and Fielding.

  Not that they were to have any pleasure from it. The cable, by predictable inadvertency, was relayed from Smyrna to the post of tourist information (instead of the poste restante) which was a kiosk just outside the ruins at Ephesus. The man in charge of the kiosk consulted friends, who could make nothing of any word save MARIUS, which they misconstrued as MARIA. They therefore opined that there was some import of infidels in all this; and the kiosqueur, though not a very enthusiastic Moslem, felt that here was a safe and easy chance of securing favour with Allah and used the cable as rear bumph (a rare commodity in Ephesus), conscientously improving the occasion by applying Milo’s message strictly with his left hand.

  ‘Dearest Mummy,’ wrote Rosie to Isobel, who read the letter to herself while sitting in the Café Albigeois in the main place of St-Bertrant-de-Comminges,

  Tessa and I had a very happy stay in Canteloupe’s palace (for it is no less) in Wiltshire. Tessa played Eton Fives a lot with Lady Canteloupe. At first they played against two boys from Harrow, who lived nearby, but later on they taught some of Canteloupe’s peasants’ sons to play with them instead, as the two boys from Harrow turned out to be very common and cheated rather a lot. Canteloupe said that most boys from Harrow behave like that so it was silly to invite them in the first place.