by Gary Newman
‘Right. There was a belief in the family that she’d supported him through his ordination course at Cambridge – paid his college fees and so on – till he’d been ordained as a clergyman and they’d got married. Highly irregular in those days.’
‘Quite a girl, by the sound of her – clearly the balls of the partnership.’
‘She had money of her own, I gather, but Grandfather was quite skint – his father’d been some sort of impoverished parson, living more or less on genteel charity towards the end of his life. As I say, we weren’t told much about that side of the family. I’ve always been fascinated by my grandfather Rolvenden’s legend – it was always an unspoken assumption that he’d been remarkable in some way in his life, but when you asked how, a sort of barrier would come up, and the subject would be changed. He was rather a hero of mine, and the fact that I was given his first name did nothing to detract from that. As a boy, I was forever weaving tales in my mind of what Grandfather’s secret life had been. I usually came to the conclusion that he’d done something heroic – usually in the North-West Frontier line – but for reasons of national honour had sworn himself and his family to secrecy. And now this . . .’
‘Did you actually know your grandparents?’
‘Grandfather Rolvenden died in 1950 – two years before I was born – but I remember Nanny Rolvenden. I recall our last meeting in particular – in the garden of their house in Malmesbury. One of the gardens that sweeps down to the river. It was a sunlit, late June day, all motes and dragonflies. Magical. She was quite tall, and pretty formidable in a nice way, with a handsome, high-boned face and her hair in – what did they call the sort of plaits in a ring round their ears?’
‘Earphones,’ Leah helped out.
‘Right, and a sort of tweed costume with a long skirt and sensible shoes. I don’t remember the exact conversation we had – what do you talk about to a six-year-old kid? But there was one remark she made that I’ll never forget. She’d stooped, then stroked my hair and cheeks with her thin, cool hands. Then a funny expression came into her eyes – sort of solemn and avid – and she grasped my shoulders quite hard, then said as if to herself or to someone over my shoulder: “The issue is good.” Just that, then she’d sprung upright again, and with an “Inside for strawberries!” the spell had been broken. Since I’ve got older I’ve had the feeling that there was something else to my grandmother’s words about the “issue being good” – something beyond mere grown-up approval of a six-year-old. She died not long after that: it’d have been 1958.’
‘This is really creepy, Seb . . .’ Leah cut across my bows.
‘Look . . .’
I went over to the window seat and sat beside her. She’d taken a bundle of letters from a linen flap on the inside cover of the family Bible she’d taken out of the Jiffy bag, and was reading one of them. I stooped over the letter, to read the signature at the end: Cecily.
‘It’s Nanny Rolvenden’s signature!’ I exclaimed. ‘Let me see the letters . . .’
Just then the doorbell rang.
‘Sugar!’ I said. ‘Saturday – that’ll be the window cleaner for his money. Be back in a sec.’
The window cleaner also doubled as a jobbing builder, and he’d been trying to persuade me to let him repoint my walls for some weeks now, so the ‘sec’ stretched to five minutes before I was able to foil his hard-sell technique, pay him and see him off at last.
‘Has he been hustling again?’ Leah said with a throaty chuckle as I returned to her and the letters.
‘Mostly Grandfather’s handwriting,’ I went on as I examined the faded ink on the stiff sheets, ‘but some with Nanny Rolvenden’s. What a find! Listen . . .’
I read out the letter Leah had been handling when she’d called my attention to the bundle. It was written from Nanny’s father’s vicarage near Malvern in the Christmas of 1893. Miss Cecily Woodruff, as she’d been then, was writing to her ‘Dearest Jack’, my grandfather’s middle name having been John. It was unremarkable banter – Parson Woodruff not at all favourable to the attentions paid to his daughter by a penniless Cambridge undergraduate, as Grandfather had then been, so no invitation down for Christmas.
In the next envelope, addressed Poste Restante, Malvern, no doubt to avoid its being intercepted by Nanny’s parents, was my grandfather’s impassioned reply, with the usual eternal vows, responded to with maidenly badinage from Nanny in the next letter in the New Year. All conventional enough, but poignantly moving to me: ‘Dearest Jack’ and ‘Dearest Cecily’ were one with the sunlight now.
‘You certainly don’t take after your grandad in looks,’ Leah remarked from the fireplace, where she was studying his fine-featured, bearded face in the silver-framed photograph on the mantelpiece. How often I’d stared into the large, unquiet eyes in that faded photograph, thinking what Leah had just said. My high-cheekboned, hatchet features had got me the nickname of ‘Ming the Mong’ at the tenth-rate public school on the south coast where Dad had dumped me.
‘I know,’ I finally replied to my companion’s observation.
‘Did he have the eyes?’
‘Mmm . . . no, or I’d surely have heard of it. I think I’m the only one in the family who has them; at least, I’ve never met any relations with one brown eye and the other bright green . . . Oh, listen to this: it’s from six years later . . .’
The letter from my grandfather to my grandmother in Malvern which had now caught my attention bore no address at its head, and was dated Good Friday, 1900.
‘My Dearest Cecily, Your finger stopped the confession that was on my lips in the train from Paris, but I feel duty-bound to let you know the worst about me, to lay before you the record of my past profligacy. In doing so, I am all too conscious of the risk I am running of my forfeiting forever what undeserved favour I may have found in your eyes. I feel, however, that I cannot in fairness withhold from you the full picture of “a man in all the truth of nature”. I have striven always to show you my poor best, and now you must judge me at my worst, weighing my qualities in the balance. But be assured that, whatever considerations may sway you, upon your verdict will hang all my hopes for happiness, now and for the future. In Chancery, Jack.’
‘That must be a sort of covering letter for the little notebook,’ Leah said, ‘with all its confessions. Written months after Julian Rawbeck’s disappearance.’
‘And Grandfather must’ve kept quiet all that time about what he knew.’
Just then, as I was handling the Bible, another envelope slipped out of it. I laid the Bible, open at the page, on the little Egyptian side table, and picked up the envelope from the floor. The address – Poste Restante, Marylebone – was in Nanny’s handwriting, and as I drew out the letter, a hank of shining auburn hair, bound in white silk ribbon, lay in the fold.
‘It was grey when I knew Nanny,’ I murmured, as, lost in a timeless moment, I brushed the lock of hair against my lips.
I felt Leah’s arms slip round me as I read on. The letter was from the same Malvern vicarage, dated Easter Monday, presumably in the same year, 1900.
‘Dearest Jack, I thought Chancery was for orphans, and you’re rather old for that, nor I must confess am I much flattered to be compared by implication to the Lord Chancellor! Thank you for the little notebook, which I’m sure is very interesting – we may read it together one day – but for now you have indeed “shown me your best”, and that best is more than good enough for me, so I return the book to you unread. As for the hopes you say repose in my “verdict”, I trust you will find in me the most lenient of judges when I affirm that I ask for nothing better than to be allowed to try to bring those hopes to pass. Ever, Your Cecily’
‘They’re wonderful letters, Seb,’ Leah murmured, giving me a squeeze.
‘I couldn’t have wished for . . . Hello . . .’
‘What is it?’
I’d happened to glance at the pages of the open Bible on the table, and was caught by the verse at the head of one of the leaves
that had enclosed Nanny’s roundabout acceptance letter of Grandfather’s confession-cum-proposal. I picked the Bible up and read: ‘He that over-cometh the same shall be clothed in white raiment; and I will not blot out his name out of the book of Life.’
‘Revelations,’ Leah remarked.
‘It sounds a bit sinister.’
‘A definite case of religious mania,’ Leah now pronounced, reverting to the psychology lecturer she was.
‘Clearly obsessional: your grandfather felt himself “unworthy” of salvation at the hands of Cecily, especially in the light of the stuff in the notebook about his unregenerate art-student phase: his lust for the music hall girl, the goings-on with magic mushrooms in the artist’s house on Camden Hill, and finally, the extraordinary passages in the notebook about the murder of the artist, Rawbeck. It’s symbolic that your grandfather should mark the page with the stuff about atonement – “overcoming” – with your grandmother’s acceptance letter. He’s overcome his worst side, and so reached a sort of salvation. Interesting.’
I reverently replaced the letters, with the hank of hair, in their respective envelopes, and slid them back into the linen flap at the back of the Bible before laying it on the table with the Jiffy bag and picking up the tatty notebook again. Leah and I then went over to the antique cane sofa that my ex-wife Reet had chosen for our last home together, but that had been a divorce and a share-out ago. My new love and I made ourselves comfortable in front of the chattering, scarlet wood fire in its arched fireplace, then Leah turned to me and seemed to take me in, as if for the first time.
‘What is it?’ I asked with a little laugh. ‘What have I done now?’
‘I’m wondering if I’ve been sleeping with the grandson of a Victorian murderer . . .’
Chapter Two
Leah’s words gave me an odd frisson – fear? Or even a shade of vicarious guilt? No – absurd! I leapt to the defence of my grandfather and hero.
‘No,’ I protested. ‘You’re jumping the gun. There are a number of possibilities: this guy Toland in the notebook, for instance, who’s at the magic mushroom bash in Rawbeck’s place on Camden Hill in 1899.’
‘The “lisping queen”, you mean, who’s bankrolling Rawbeck?’
‘Right. From the description in the notebook, Toland obviously fancies my grandfather. What if the idea is for Rawbeck to dope my grandfather, then have him taken to the seedy pub, so that Toland can have his way with him? Toland and Rawbeck fall out over the payment, there’s a fight, Rawbeck gets the worst of it, and young Sebastian’s left drugged there as the patsy. Or again, Rawbeck – an obvious toff, if a streetwise one – could’ve been rolled for his money by opportunistic local heroes from the pub downstairs. He puts up a fight – maybe he’s armed – a razor comes out, and he gets unzipped, with Grandfather left starkers upstairs for the coppers to find later on . . .’
‘But your grandad says in his notebook that he felt Rawbeck’s watch-chain on his dead body: surely lowlife thieves wouldn’t have left a watch behind?’
‘Mmm . . . you’ve got a point there, but maybe they panicked, and then again, it could all have been a mushroom-induced hallucination on my grandfather’s part.’
‘But Rawbeck disappeared right enough – that wasn’t an hallucination.’
‘God!’ I exclaimed. ‘If what we’ve just read had come out at the time, it would’ve been the scandal of the century, given Rawbeck’s notoriety.’
‘I wouldn’t mind knowing more about him,’ Leah said thoughtfully.
‘He was Anglo-Swedish, a French-trained Impressionist, reputed to have been a Diabolist. Bit of a raver, too, involved in a number of society scandals. When he disappeared in 1899, it was rumoured a masterpiece he’d been working on had disappeared, too. That’s all I know about him at the moment, but I’m certainly going to work on it!’
‘And those mysterious names in the notebook – one was an address, wasn’t it? Reuben’s Court . . .’
She got up and walked over to the bookshelves, where she took down a directory and flicked through its pages.
‘Here, Seb – in the London street plan – there is a Reuben’s Court near Gunnersbury station.’
‘That area wouldn’t have been built up in the 1890s,’ I said. ‘Don’t tell me there’s a Smoking Altars Avenue, too!’
Leah laughed and returned to the sofa while I fished out the rest of the contents of the Jiffy bag.
‘What have we here?’ I mused as I took out an ancient Crockford’s Clerical Directory and a linen-backed, 1871 street map of London.
‘And that music hall artiste, Carrie,’ Leah went on, ‘the artist Rawbeck’s model. She must’ve followed your grandad to Paris after Rawbeck had disappeared, then her fancy man, the Vickybird – sounds charming! – comes and joins them. What a nice little earner your grandad must’ve been for them – a regular meal-ticket . . .’
‘Until he finds out about the Vickybird’s pinching his drawings – I’d give a lot to know what was so incriminating about them!’
‘Why he was so scared at the prospect of the Vickybird selling them to that Paris art dealer – whatsisname?’
I put the old street map and the Crockford back in the Jiffy bag and consulted the relevant page in the notebook.
‘Carbonero,’ I said, jumping up from the sofa and pacing the room. ‘This is sensational! When I think of what my grandfather’s life was later on – when he’d married Nanny and become a vicar, the Reverend Sebastian Rolvenden DD – it’s unbelievable!’
‘I’m not so sure,’ Leah said in an even voice, the psychologist taking over again. ‘In a way, his behaviour’s all of a piece – in his rackety magic mushroom days, he’s as earnest, intense and questioning in his vices as I’m sure he was later in life in his duties as a blameless clergyman. The same integrity, the same innocence, if you like, and we do change as we get older. As I read him from this notebook, though, he’s got one serious flaw – a potentially damaging one . . .’
‘Oh, what’s that?’
‘No sense of humour: it’s the essential stabilizer in most of us, a sort of thermostat of the sense of proportion.’
‘But there’s surely not much scope for a sense of humour in the events he’s describing – he’s a virtual slave, his mind mushed up by dope . . .’
‘Mmm . . . possibly, and that stuff about Carrie’s “condition” – she’s pregnant. It looks as if you may have a set of unknown cousins, Seb! Maybe French ones, at that! And those Rawbeck drawings the Vickybird pinched from your grandfather in Paris – they must be worth quite a bit now.’
‘There’s so much I’ve got to find out . . .’
My companion looked up at me in a quizzical sort of way.
‘Well, when you do find out, I hope the truth’s to your liking.’
My query about this remark was drowned out by the bleeping of Leah’s mobile.
‘Yes, all right, Mum,’ she replied to the caller in a soothing tone, ‘I should be there about three o’clock – see you.’
One of Leah’s home visits north, more frequent now in Easter Vacation time than in her ever-more-pressurized term weekends. She switched off the mobile and faced me, then glanced down at the Jiffy bag cornucopia on the table.
‘Well, I’ll leave you with Grandad for now, then – you’ll be all right over the weekend? If you get really down, there’s the tablets, but try to lay off them as much as you can.’
I got up, drew Leah gently to me, and kissed her on the mouth, and she nodded again at the bag.
‘Give me a ring if you find out anything else – it’s interesting.’
After she’d gone I went over to the window to see her car disappear northwards along the headland, to be swallowed up in the grey Essex flatland. Leah had been wonderful after the smash – after I’d finally split from Reet and the sky had fallen in round me. I still hadn’t really come to terms with it – there’d been our son, Paul, to consider, for one thing – and now I just frankly wanted to blot it
all out of my mind. He was all right, anyway, a capable young man virtually running the smallholding at the Holt, and, if anything, he was even more committed to it than Reet. If Reet would let me blot it out, that is, but no – it was all over.
I glanced out over the mudflats, and could hear the high creaking of gulls. When Paul was five or six he’d started coming out with me gathering seaweed off Dunstanburgh – our ecological period – for the cottage potato patch. The seaweed heap was one of Reet’s wheezes. My little son had found a big whelk shell and an ancient tarred-canvas shoulder bag, which he’d donned proudly, and I’d fled in mock terror with him when we’d found an alien-looking purple jellyfish in a rock crevice. Why couldn’t it have stayed like that forever? It had been in that same holiday cottage that he’d confronted me fifteen years later during our last ghastly ‘family’ gathering together, an angry, husky young bloke with red hair spitting out his contempt at me. I didn’t know him, and he didn’t know me.
I went on gazing across the flats: it was peaceful out there, and you couldn’t see where the land ended and the sea began. What if you just set off across the flats and kept on walking – No! I must be firm. I was past the head-banging stage, I had Leah, and hadn’t I just got a parcel from my long-dead grandfather? Sort of. A message to tell me that before he’d become a clergyman of otherworldly goodness at the turn of the last century he’d been a bohemian lecher in lowlife London, a crony of the most enigmatic of English Impressionist masters, an art student in Paris and a partaker of scheduled substances. What’s more, he’d dallied with and probably fathered a child on one of the toasts of the Victorian music hall, narrowly escaped a fate worse than death at the hands of a blubber-lipped sybarite called Toland, only to wake up above a slum pub to find the corpse of his Svengali, Julian Rawbeck RA, between him and a discreet exit. To cap it all, he’d been saved by the bell in the form of my late grandmother Cecily’s majority money. You don’t get many letters like that from your grandad.