by Raven, Simon
“I’m sorry, Penelope. If that is the case, then your best is simply not good enough. You know that for yourself.”
“Yes, yes. I know. There’s no point in talking any more, Anthony. I’ll do what I can. But I can’t try any harder than I am already, so for God’s sake leave me alone and stop being a bloody bully.”
And with that Miss Goodrich rang off.
“And serve you right,” said Tyrrel, when I told him of the conversation.
“But after that letter of Marc’s…”
“For the last time, Anthony. There’s three of Richard’s good friends down there, all of them in the know and all bending backwards to help him. You and I will only be justified in interfering if things get very bad indeed. So I’m telling you: mind your own business and stop this interminable nagging. All right?”
“I’ll do my best,” I said.
But then, just over a week later, came a telephone call from Piers.
“Anthony… I’m speaking from Milton Road. A call box. Richard has been out to see me tonight…only just gone. It’s very bad, Anthony. You’ve got to come and help.”
“What happened?”
“He thinks Chriseis is alive again. He’s been all right until now – even after that party of Walter’s. But tonight he came out here, and he sat for a bit saying nothing, and then suddenly he said, ‘She’s done me wrong, Piers. I’ll make her pay for it. Drain the life out of her like she did with me’.”
“You’re sure he meant Chriseis?”
“Who else? ‘Drain away her life,’ he said. ‘I’m grateful to her in a way,’ he said: ‘this power of hers has made her free and without meaning it she’s taught me the secret – the secret of freedom. My will be done. My will of people’s bodies and people’s minds. Not yours or Walter’s or Penelope’s. My will.’ He went on and on, Anthony. He said that at first he thought he’d failed to find the liberation which he’d been seeking in Greece. He thought the gods had failed him. But now he knew he’d been freed in the surest way of all – because of what Chriseis had taught him. He was grateful, he said–”
Three pips sounded. They were almost visible, like splinters of ice falling on to glass.
“I haven’t any more change,” said Piers in a note of panic. “For Christ’s sake tell them you’ll pay.”
“Time’s up, caller.” A pert, pleased voice.
“Transfer the charges to this number,” I said. “Sloane 2766.”
“Very well.” The voice now stiff with annoyance, still seeking if it might not after all prevent us. “Slough 2677?”
“No. Sloane 2766.”
“And you’re willing to pay for the rest of the call?”
“I’ve already said so.”
“No need to be impatient, I’m sure. Carry on, Cambridge.”
“Anthony… Anthony… Are you there?”
“I’m here. Go on, Piers.”
“So Richard said that in a way he was grateful to Chriseis for teaching him her secret. But he couldn’t forgive her for trying to kill him. ‘Not until I’ve found her and killed her will I really be free,’ he said: ‘the pupil must free himself of his master, of his master most of all’.”
“What did you say? What did you do?”
“What could I say, Anthony? What could I do? I couldn’t even love him while he was talking like that. You can’t love an alien spirit. That’s what’s in his body, Anthony. An alien spirit. You must come. You and Tyrrel. Soon. Now. Say you’ll come, Anthony.”
“I’ll come, Piers. I’m coming to the Feast in any case. I’ll ring Marc and ask him to get an invitation for John Tyrrel. Meantime you’ll do no one any good by being hysterical. So pull yourself together… Where’s Richard now?”
“He went back to College. I wanted to come too, but he wouldn’t let me. He seemed a bit calmer when he left, though. More himself. When shall you come?”
“As soon as we can. I’ll ring Marc and fix Tyrrel’s invitation, then I’ll get hold of Tyrrel. Don’t worry. Put down the phone and go to bed and expect us as soon as we can make it. There’s nothing to be done until then. Go to bed, Piers.”
“All right, Anthony. But be quick…be quick…”
“And now?” I said to Tyrrel an hour or so later.
“Now we must go, Anthony. But we must speak with Holmstrom first.”
“It won’t be only Chriseis that he hates,” said Holmstrom with cool satisfaction; “not for long. He’ll remember she’s dead. Or he’ll think to himself that anyway she’s in Greece.”
“Might he not try to go there?”
“Unlikely. All the time, you see, he really knows that there’s nothing he can do to her now – alive or dead. He knows, too, that he is not free; that he’s really less free than ever before. He will resent this most viciously – and will try to prove that it isn’t so. He could choose almost anybody for his purpose…to release his hatred and try to prove his freedom at one and the same time… Almost anyone would do.”
“Walter Goodrich?”
“Or Piers Clarence. Or yourself. Anyone who’s in any way involved with him. Even someone that isn’t.”
“How soon?”
“Very soon. When are you going?”
“Tomorrow morning,” I said, “the thirty-first. There’s a Feast that night. A friend of mine called Honeydew had asked me to it, and now I’ve got him to ask John as well.”
“Marc Honeydew,” said Holmstrom. “We were undergraduates together at King’s. A buzzing, waspish sort of boy, I remember… So what will happen at your feast?”
“It’s the Michaelmas Feast. To mark the safe beginning of the academic year. Among other things, the Provost always makes a speech welcoming back anyone who’s been away. This year the only such person is Richard. He will have to make a speech in reply.”
“Hm… Will any undergraduates be there? Or only Fellows?”
“All Scholars of the Foundation will be there. Also all undergraduates who are in their last year. And they let Fellows’ wives into the Minstrels’ gallery to listen to the speeches after dinner.”
“So that if anything went wrong,” said Holmstrom, “a lot of unsuitable people would know about it. Many guests?”
“A fair number – and some very distinguished ones. The guests of honour this year include an important German scientist, one of the Scandinavian Ambassadors, and a minor Royalty of our own. It’s something of an occasion. Marc had great difficulty in getting a place for John Tyrrel at such short notice.”
“You must feel very honoured, John,” said Holmstrom with a sneer.
“I look forward to it,” said Tyrrel quietly.
“But I’ll tell you both this,” said Holmstrom leaning forward intently: “if you can, you must keep Fountain away from this feast. Pretend he’s ill, anything you like. But try to keep him away. An affair like this, with him in the state he is, the excitement and the associations, a speech to welcome him, the necessity to reply… To start with, he may say absolutely anything. Not that His Royal Highness will understand much of what he hears, but even he might realise if something went badly wrong. If only to avoid embarrassment, you must try to keep Fountain from attending – and in any case from speaking. Understood?”
“Certainly. But it may not be easy.”
“I can see that. You’ll just have to use your judgement. If he seems dead set on it, then you may do more harm by keeping him out than letting him in. You must read the signs for yourselves… And another thing. He knows about you, Seymour, and he won’t think it odd that you’ve come as Honeydew’s guest. But does he know who John Tyrrel is?”
“They’ve never met. In all our discussions, we’ve avoided talk of the police and therefore of John Tyrrel.”
“Fair enough. So long as he thinks John is someone you’ve all got to know since he’s been away…so long as he doesn’t know he’s a policeman.”
“We may need your help,” I said.
“If you want me, ring me up at home.” He tos
sed a card on to the table. “I don’t come here at weekends.”
“You wouldn’t care to come with us tomorrow?”
“No. With the scope of his researches it’s quite possible that he’s read some of my stuff and knows who I am. In which case he’d smell what was in the wind the minute I appeared. If anything really bad happens, then let me know and I’ll come. But there’s little enough anyone can do, you know, unless you’re going to hit him on the head and lock him up. The only thing is, see what you can do about keeping him away from that feast. To have him there will be asking for trouble – every kind of trouble in the book…”
And so things were arranged. Holmstrom would come if called. John Tyrrel and I, equipped with tails and miniature decorations, would leave next morning to attend the Michaelmas Feast – and were bound, if we could, to keep Richard Fountain away from it. That evening I gave John his invitation, which had reached my flat by special delivery. He looked at it with interest and a kind of rueful pride.
“What is this expression?” he asked at length. “Down at the bottom…‘Doctors Wear Scarlet’?…”
“It means that all those with Doctors’ degrees will attend in their scarlet gowns.”
“A command or a generalisation?”
“A command, I suppose…”
“And Walter Goodrich will wear scarlet?”
“Most certainly. With dignity and enjoyment.”
“I see,” said Tyrrel. “‘Doctors Wear Scarlet’… What a very appropriate phrase.”
XIV
“Richard…”, said Marc Honeydew, “this, my dear, is John Tyrrel.”
We were all gathered in Marc’s rooms, Piers, Richard, Tyrrel and I, for a drink before the Feast. Any efforts to dissuade Richard from attending or speaking (“You’re still a little unsteady in some ways, Richard…the noise and the heat and the nervous strain…”) had only seemed likely, as we had thought probable in London, to provoke him to incredulity or indignation. When I had tried remarking that on the following day – November 1 – he would have to leave very early to give his first lecture at Wolverhampton and that he’d be the better for a long night’s rest, he had merely laughed in my face. Piers, briefed by Tyrrel and myself and told to do his best, had been equally ineffective.
“There’s no good saying any more,” Piers told me. “He’ll only get angry. He’s been at pains to get his speech ready…”
“What’s in it?”
“He hasn’t said – except that he thinks it very appropriate and we may find it amusing.”
“So one hopes,” remarked Tyrrel dryly.
And that had been the last of our attempt to keep Richard from the Michaelmas Feast. But now, as I surveyed Marc’s room (the decanter of sherry, the cheerful fire, Richard cool and immaculately dressed), I began to think that perhaps our apprehensions had been exaggerated. For after all, what could go wrong in Lancaster College, Cambridge? We should go from Marc’s comfortable rooms to the College Hall, with its new panelling, its quietly efficient servants, its careful seating plan; the evening would follow the same course as it had for centuries past – a sung grace, five dishes, three wines and choice of dessert wines, the speeches and the glees – ; and then the Provost would say a final grace in Latin, and we would retire to the rooms of friends to drink the night away in amity and pride. What could go wrong in such circumstances and amid such surroundings? What indeed?
And then again, I noticed with pleasure that Richard and Tyrrel had taken very well to each other. Tyrrel, like Richard, was wearing a miniature MC; and now they were quietly discussing Richard’s campaign in the East and speculating about the problems involved in the Kenya dispute.
“People won’t realise,” Richard was saying; “of course the Kikuyu had a legitimate complaint, but that does not mean to say that the Mau Mau were a lot of knights in shining armour. For the most part they were unoccupied simpletons who were lured into the forest by the promise of money and excitement and kept there by the power of the most atrocious oaths…”
A harmless enough tone, I thought, on which to start the evening.
“And then, my dear,” Marc was saying to Piers, “the Professor flew into a huff and said that as far as he was concerned they could all put the Tensor Calculus where the monkey put his nuts. Multi-Dimensional Analytic Geometry was good enough for him he said, and if they thought they could all go swooning off into Matrices and Probability Equations, they had another think coming. So then Freddy got up, and he said…”
“I often think that these oaths ought to have been more closely examined,” remarked Tyrrel. “Up to now they’ve only been used, in so far as they have been made public at all, as propaganda – as proof positive of atrocious motivation and intent. But a proper anthropological analysis…”
Tyrrel was warming to the atmosphere: he meant, so far as he could, to enjoy the evening. And that, I thought to myself, is what you’d best do as well.
“So what did the Professor say then?” asked Piers.
“‘Great shades of Eddington,’ he said, ‘what the devil does it matter if the Universe is starting to contract again? It will last out our time, I dare be sworn, and if you think you can stop it with your ridiculous equations…’”
“I agree,” said Richard, who was looking calm and happy. “But these Kikuyu are a difficult, unattractive and very litigious people…”
“…so everyone agreed, my dear, to consult Charles; because though he’s given up as a physicist, he’s still very strong about Policy…”
“…Litigious, yes. But sophisticated and even mature…”
“…And when Charles said that what they all really needed was a long course in Greek Philosophy followed by a good dose of Proust, the roof, my dear, nearly fell off and the Professor swept out with his gown billowing behind him like Count Dracula’s cloak.”
For a second there was a pause in the room. Then, overwhelmed by such absurdity, all five of us burst out laughing. And that settles it, I thought: the evening could hardly have got off to a better start: there was nothing like a bad joke for putting reality in its place.
“Time for din-din,” said Marc when the laughter had died down.
“I like your Richard Fountain,” Tyrrel whispered to me on the way to dinner. “I hope we shall see more of him later.”
“He’ll be sitting near the Provost at dinner,” I said, “in order to mark his welcome home. But after dinner we shall all drink together in people’s rooms.”
“Good,” said Tyrrel. “I look forward to this evening a lot.”
Lancaster College may be puritanically inclined but it is also a Royal Foundation. Certain of its privileges and traditions reflect this fact very adequately; and not the least of these is the Annual Michaelmas Feast.
On the last day of October, so the Royal and pious Founder had ordained, the Provost and Fellows, together with the Scholars of the Foundation and such Noblemen or Gentlemen of esteem as might be resident, must gather together to feast and also to give thanks that once again they were present under the roof of Lancaster College to pass the winter months in the pursuit of godliness and learning. As time went on the tradition altered somewhat. With the introduction of Pensioners, it was decreed by the college authorities that such newcomers might only attend the Feast when they were of reckonable standing in the place – a status which they were conceded to attain only when they were within a twelve month of taking a Bachelor’s degree. (Hence the fact that, apart from Scholars, only third year undergraduates were attending the Feast this evening.) The nature of the occasion had also changed in more subtle ways. In early days, when a piety comparable to that of the Founder was still to be remarked in the members of his Foundation, and when the coming of winter (“Farewell, summer, summer, farewell”) was still something to be dreaded, the Feast not only signified that its beneficiaries were grateful to God for their winter’s refuge but also, one imagines, provided them with occasion for reflecting that the amenities of that refuge might not,
after all, be very adequate. The architecture might be dignified, but there were many chinks and flaws through which the insistent snows and cunning draughts might make themselves felt: the Michaelmas Feast might be ample, but who should say whether war or flood might not forbid a similar abundance at Christmas? Thus those early Feasts must have been something of an insurance policy: “let us eat, drink and be merry” while yet we may. Even the songs sung were, by the same token, elegiac in kind, lamenting the death of summer rather than celebrating the approach of long months of academic felicity.
But now all that was changed. Paradoxically enough, the Fellows and Scholars could now observe the Feast in the real and grateful spirit intended by their Founder, for all that it was many years since their Founder’s faith had become the subject of bored witticisms and the social order for which he provided had been bitterly questioned and rejected. For now, although the old songs mourning summer’s decline were still sung at the Feast, all those who attended were genuinely pleasured by the prospect of the snug winter before them – of the long, warm hours in the libraries and common rooms. Lancaster might still preserve a hint of mediaeval discomfort, but it was only enough to give rise to a joke or a minor complaint. The Fellows and Scholars of Lancaster would be well provided for during this winter and many winters, well provided for with nourishing food, waterproof ceilings, sound learning and contemporary ideas. They acknowledged this truth and they relished it: so that on this occasion at least they drank deep, gave thanks (but not to the God of their Founder) with all their hearts, and basked unashamedly in the golden company and the caressing conversation of their friends.
The form and organisation of the Feast for the most part still followed the Founder’s original edict. First of all Scholars and undergraduates, along with the less important Fellows and their guests, entered the Dining Hall and stood at their appointed places at the lower tables. Five minutes later, at the triple sounding of a gong, there entered in rough file the Provost and all who were to sit at high table with him, these being the senior Fellows and their guests, and also the Guests of Honour. (Walter would sit at the high table as of right; Richard, on this occasion, as of privilege; while, as we have seen, there were three guests of honour – a Scientist, an Ambassador, and a Royal Prince.) When the Provost and all the “majores” (the title accorded to those sitting at high table) were duly standing at their places on the dais, the gong was sounded five times: after which the Provost called out the traditional blessing “In nomine beati Henrici, sit felicitas vobiscum”; whereat all present cried out together, “Nobiscum et tecum et cum spiritu beati Henrici.” The gong was then sounded seven times; and as the last stroke died away, the full choir of grown men and treble choristers broke into a wonderful choral Grace, the only one I know of that is sung in Greek, and for ten minutes all stood with heads bowed (a disagreeable obeisance, but nevertheless still performed) until the beautiful and intricate strophes and antistrophes were finally concluded. At this stage there was one mighty stroke on the gong; all sat; and the choir, with an air as of bacchantes set free after an enforced period of abstinence, swung straight into a Latin song of such extreme bawdiness that, if any journalist in the country had but a particle of scholarship, the matter would have been a national scandal these many years.