by Raven, Simon
He walked into the pantry on the staircase outside, still in his pyjamas, and put a kettle on to boil.
“We’ll have a little Nescafé to prepare us for the day’s entertainments. Why don’t you stay a day or two longer, Anthony?”
The sun was shining through the window on to an expensive fur rug which was in front of the fire place. Piers now lay down on this. His pyjamas were of light-blue silk and several times more expensive than he could possibly afford.
“Why don’t you stay and join in the fun?” he said.
“Because unlike you I have responsibilities to attend to. Aren’t you feeling cold?”
“No. And I like to show off these beautiful pyjamas. After all, they have not been paid for, and the man may come to take them back. Carpe diem, as Walter might say. You’ve seen him?”
“Yes.”
“Did he complain about me?”
“We had better things to discuss,” I said. “But I gather from Marc that your behaviour has been just tolerable, and that you’ve done quite well in the Tripos. So accept my congratulations on having survived another year here and pay attention to what I am going to say.”
He smiled slightly, and then got up and went out to the pantry. I heard him talking for a moment with the bedmaker; then he reappeared with two cups of Nescafé.
“All right, Anthony,” he said: “begin.”
He lay down on the rug again, then turned comfortably over on his belly.
“Begin, begin.”
“Have you heard from Richard?” I asked.
“Not since February.”
“What did he say then?”
“He suggested that I should join him in Greece during the Long Vac.”
“And that was all?”
“More or less. As you know, Richard only writes letters in order to make arrangements. He suggested I should join him early in July, and went on to say where I could write to him meanwhile. He would be in or near Athens till late April, he said, then a week or two at Delphi, and after that in Corinth unless he wrote otherwise.”
“So he’s in Corinth now?”
Piers shrugged and rolled over on his back again.
“He certainly hasn’t written to say he’s not.”
“And are you going to join him?”
“I don’t know. It rather depends on whether I can find any money. I wrote to Richard about a month ago saying that if I could fix that I’d be with him by July tenth, and would he still be in Corinth then? Because when he wrote in February he seemed to have some sort of idea that we might meet in Crete and go on a tour of the islands.”
“And he hasn’t answered?”
“No… You’re being very inquisitive, Anthony.”
“I’m sorry, Piers. I’ll try and explain in a minute. Did he suggest he might come back to England with you at the end of the Long Vac?”
“No. He said nothing about that. I assumed he was going to stay away a second year in any case. Walter keeps saying that to everyone. And this, I thought, was probably why he was keen to see something of me this summer.”
“Ah,” I said. “You’ll forgive me asking, Piers, but just why should it be so imperative for him to see you at all?”
He stretched himself full length on the rug, raising his head and laughing straight into my eyes.
“I thought we’d get on to that sooner or later,” he said, relaxing once more, “so I’d better make the position entirely plain. During my first year, Anthony, I went to Richard for supervisions. As you well know, we took a liking to one another, began to go for walks and have meals and so on, and by this time last year we were very firm friends indeed. Now, I know what a lot of people started thinking about this, and I know it looked jolly awkward when he stopped seeing much of Penelope. But whatever anybody may have thought or said, we were, as they say in the papers, just very good friends and nothing more.”
“I always knew it,” I said.
“Did you now, Anthony? Well, here is something which perhaps you didn’t know. It is true that neither Richard nor I am queer. But there’s an important difference. I have slept with a lot of people, even while I was still at school, and in no sense whatever can I be called a virgin. Richard, on the other hand, is a virgin all ways round. He’s never slept with anyone at all.”
“I knew that too,” I said.
“Let me finish, Anthony. When I discovered this, I was surprised – and rather shocked. It seemed positively…immoral that someone should have reached the age of twenty-six and still not have slept with anyone. And later on I began to feel downright sorry for him. So I thought to myself that I might not be queer, but if, if, Anthony, Richard were to show the slightest sign of wanting me, then such was my affection for him, such was the loyalty I owed him as my friend, I would do anything he asked me and be proud to. And so time went on, and he said nothing, and I began to realise that it wasn’t a boy he wanted in any case. But even then, I thought I might be able to help him. And one evening, when we were talking about some girl I’d been seeing and he seemed rather upset about it, I said to him, ‘Look, Richard, you’ve no call to worry about this. Girls come and girls go, and very nice too, but if ever you want me,’ I said, ‘in any way whatever, then tell me so and I’ll be happy, happy, Richard, to do anything you ask’.”
He paused for a moment and reached out for his cup.
“And then…?” I prompted him.
“Well, then he looked a bit dazed for a time. But he soon recovered; he smiled and took hold of my arm and said he appreciated my concern, but that wasn’t what he wanted from me. But he still went on being edgy and tiresome, so I wondered whether he might not have been offended by what I’d said. So I asked him straight out, and he said no, that wasn’t it, it was something quite different and nothing that need trouble me. However, I kept on at him and wouldn’t leave it alone, so finally he told me what it was. He sat up very straight, Anthony, and his face was like stone, and his voice was so cold it might have been coming from the other side of the universe. Have you any idea what he said?”
“None.”
“He said…he said he thought he was impotent. I shall never forget it as long as I live. Him sitting so straight and that terrible cold voice. ‘I think I’m impotent, Piers,’ he said. Well, I pulled myself together as best I could and asked him how he could possibly know if he hadn’t tried. He said he didn’t know but he was pretty sure and this was one of the reasons he hadn’t tried. I said no one could be sure until they’d tried and that the longer he put it off the worse his doubts would become. He said it was hardly even a question of doubt… And so we went on, round and round in a silly and vicious circle, until he got up and said we were never to speak of this again and marched straight out of the room.”
For a while we were both silent. Piers lay flat on his back looking straight up at the ceiling, his right hand cushioning his head, his left arm stretched out for his fingers to fiddle with his teaspoon. Then I said: “Did he seem to have any idea why he should be impotent?”
“There was just one brief hint. He broke away from it almost immediately. But I think he blames Walter Goodrich.”
“Blames Walter Goodrich?”
“Not so much Walter himself as what he stands for. He gabbled something about a wrong way of life, about schools and institutions which first castrated you and then sucked your blood. It was very quick and difficult to hear, and he stopped almost at once. Then he said, ‘Need alien gods’ – something like that – and started to laugh rather hysterically. After that he went absolutely silent for about five minutes, until he suddenly said we weren’t to discuss this again and went out like I told you.”
“If he’s prepared to tell you all this,” I said slowly, “it’s not surprising he wants to see you again. But whether you find the money or not, Piers, there are going to be complications. For one thing, Richard’s days in Greece are numbered.”
“What can you mean?”
And then, as clearly as I could, I t
old Piers Clarence the lot. If anyone had a right to know, he did. Tyrrel could like it or lump it, I thought. Because if there was one person, except possibly for Penelope, who could help Richard, it was going to be Piers Clarence.
“So,” he said when I’d finished, “he doesn’t seem to have found it.”
“Found what?”
“What he hoped – I hoped – he would. It looks as if he found something though. Not the right something.”
“Be plain, Piers.”
“He went to Greece,” said Piers wearily, “to get away from Penelope and Walter and, most of all perhaps, from Walter’s schemes. He liked Walter’s schemes and he detested Walter’s schemes, and he couldn’t make up his mind which he did most, so he went away.”
“So I surmised.”
“But he also went because he thought that Greece might have something to offer him – something Walter and Penelope and this place couldn’t give him, but which you gave him for a time, and then the Army gave him, and I gave him most recently of all. Only since none of us had given him enough of it, he wanted more. And he thought he might find it in Greece. The only trouble was that there were two things he was after, one of them the wrong one, and if he found that first, he’ll have stuck with it.”
“One of these things being love? Or sex? His manhood?”
“Not exactly,” said Piers. “One of these things, the right one, is abundance of life. This includes love and sex, his manhood if you like, but it also means truth and liberty, with a strong flavour of adventure and even heroism. You’ll have noticed something heroic about him?”
“Certainly.”
“But the other of these things,” Piers went on, “is something that he himself doesn’t know about, because it’s something that no one could admit to himself and it is, in any case, quite easy to confuse and even equate with heroism and liberty – and still more easy to confuse with love.”
“And what might that be?”
“He is looking for hatred,” said Piers calmly, “because he is, by nature, a great hater. You don’t need me to tell you that he can be, for example, very cruel. Now we know that love and hate, and sex and hate, are very much interwoven. As for liberty – well, it implies hatred of tyranny; and heroism necessarily permits one to hate one’s adversary. In Richard’s case there are plenty of targets – this impotence, real or imagined; Walter (whom he sees as the symbol and cause of it), all of what he calls ‘the wrong way of life’… So you see, Anthony, it is quite easy for Richard to confuse the good side of his quest with the bad one: to pursue hatred with ferocity while thinking all the time that he is only looking for abundance and love. And from what you say, it is beginning to seem all too likely that he is doing exactly that.”
Piers spoke with such confidence, his thesis was so consistent with all I knew of Richard, that I found myself accepting it immediately and without any critical effort, accepting it as something I must always, in a manner, have known for myself. Time and circumstance might give cause for revision, I reflected; but even this, in the face of Piers’ cool authority, seemed only the most remote of possibilities.
“Leaving us with the nice little question,” I said at last, “of what we ought to do about it.”
“Perhaps Inspector Tyrrel will tell you,” he said mockingly: “you seem to think highly of him.”
“I do. And so will you when you meet him.”
“I? Meet Tyrrel?”
“Soon,” I said.
“And meanwhile?”
“Stay in Cambridge,” I said, “and amuse yourself. And don’t leave Cambridge till I tell you. We may want you in a hurry.”
“How very bossing you are, Anthony. My poor mother expects me home in four days’ time. And as I hope to spend most of the summer away–”
“–Never mind your mother, Piers. Do as I say.”
I rose to go.
“If you say so, Major Seymour,” he said, crossing his legs and looking down with pleasure along the silken length of his pyjamas. “But there’s just one thing more you ought to know before you leave.”
“And that is?”
“Why do you suppose, Anthony, that I’ve chosen this particular time to tell you about Richard being impotent? When I’ve known for more than a year?”
“Because I asked you what held you both so close.”
“Not a bit of it, my sweet. I told you because it no longer matters – to Richard or to anyone else. Because he’s going to die, Anthony. I’ve seen him three times these last few nights, and each time he was dead.”
V
My only real gains in Cambridge had come from listening to Piers Clarence. For Piers at least had offered a theory, a fantasy and one concrete fact. His theory, as to the nature of Richard’s real business in Greece – his quest and its possible perversion – was helpful in that it summed up and gave form to my own disconnected speculations. His fantasy – that Richard was doomed to die – was of interest for the light it cast on his own mental character, though it could scarcely be taken very seriously, I thought, as an indication of Richard’s prospects. (But for all this his words had left a chill.) As for the fact, it was established that Richard was keen to see Piers in Greece and thought of visiting the islands with him. Or rather, that was how matters had stood in February. Since Richard presumably knew now that he must leave Greece by the Autumn, he might have reason to change his plans; but yet again, he had said nothing of this to Piers.
All of which still left one with the question of what ought to be done. If Piers was right about the pattern of Richard’s behaviour in Greece, then clearly the sooner he was got out of Greece the better. People who think they are looking for abundance of life, and who are not too certain or too scrupulous as to the best method of finding it, should not be left alone in distant countries. If Richard was left alone in Greece, he might do almost anything between now and the Autumn – and indeed it looked very possible that he had done more than enough already. But how did one go about retrieving him? Would he let himself be retrieved – by Piers or others? And where, in any case, did one find him?
Well, the last question at least might not be too hard to answer. Piers had said that Richard proposed to leave Athens in late April, to spend a fortnight at Delphi and then go down to Corinth. (An unattractive town, I remembered, except for Acro-Corinth: what could be keeping him there?) In Corinth he would remain, and would hope to be joined by Piers, though possibly the meeting was to be in Crete, in early July. So that when one looked at it, this information was not really so helpful after all; because by intention or otherwise it was quite vague enough to ensure that no one would be able to get hold of Richard unless he wanted to be got hold of. Still, he evidently wanted Piers to find him, in which case, I thought, there will at least be a pilot… But further speculation was futile: the next step, as Piers had so sarcastically indicated, was to ring up Inspector Tyrrel, tell him what little I had found out, and then, as I had determined in Cambridge the previous night, to leave the matter in his hands where indeed it belonged. Loyal to Richard I might wish to be, but this affair was far too serious and too complex for prolonged amateur meddling.
And so I reached my flat, intending to ring up Tyrrel within the hour – only to find that the situation had altered beyond recognition in my absence. The new factor in the case – a factor which was by no means going to exclude Tyrrel but from now on placed a definite and compelling onus upon myself – was a long letter from Richard. It was the first I had had from him for many weeks. I opened it with an apprehension which was to be amply justified by its contents, and I now give it in full here.
Hotel Grande Bretagne,
Athens.
June 7, 1957.
My dear Anthony,
I’m sorry not to have written for so long. But I have been rather occupied with one thing and another, and as you know I’m not one of the world’s letter writers – unless there is something to be explained or arranged. At the moment there is probably both, but I am
tired tonight, so I shall just attend to arrangements. We shall have the rest of our lives for explanations.
I am leaving Athens by boat tomorrow and going to Crete. Accompanied? Perhaps. But what I want you to do is make ready to come yourself and pass the word on to Piers at Cambridge. You see, I wrote to Piers last Feb., and asked him to join me here during the Long Vac. I gave him a Poste Restante address in Corinth, but if he writes there now it probably won’t reach me. So you tell him, Anthony, that the RV is now to be in Crete, and save me writing to him as well. See that he has enough money and everything (I will guarantee anything you have to lend him), gather the pair of yourselves up (and anyone else who might like to come), and meet me in Crete any time after July 1 – I shall be very busy there until then, and anyhow you’ll need a few days to get yourselves on the road. And where in Crete do we meet? Well, I’m not quite sure, so I will send you a letter or a wire soon after I get there telling you where I shall be between July 1 and 14. It will be several different places, but I’ll be as exact as I can be about which days I shall be at each one.
It would be nice if you could come by car and leave the car either in Venice, Brindisi or Athens – from any of which you can easily get boats to Crete. Then we could drive a lot of the way home. I’ve always wanted to drive from Athens to Calais, and one can easily get visas for Yugoslavia.
So Richard is coming home? you’ll say. Yes, Anthony, Richard is coming home. And the reason he wants you and other friends to come and collect him is that he needs reassurance – one may as well call it that as anything else. Because I’ve been in rather a muddle, Anthony. So do come, you and Piers and someone else perhaps (not Penelope or Walter), do come, and then you can tell me all the news from England and put me right about everything there, we can have a look at Crete and some of the islands and a bit of the mainland, and then drive home. This will be very pleasant. Anthony, you and Piers at least must come. Please see to this. So much for the arrangements. I’ll wire/write to you when I get to Crete, and shall expect to see you some time between July 1 and 14 (the sooner the better) at one of the places I shall mention. It might be Cnossos. I shall be there a lot before you come, as I have things to look at, but whether I shall want to go again… Ah well, we’ll see. And of course, I might already have company. But it would be interesting company, and need not deter you in any case…