The Rebel Angels tct-1

by Robertson Davies

  “—Why was I known there? I don’t want to embarrass you, my dears, but you were so unrelentingly stingy towards me that I had to pick up a little money by telling curious friends—policemen, I believe they were—who was selling Aunt Mary, and Aunt Hazel, and even jollybeans. I suppose in my own small way I was a double agent in the drug world, which is not pretty but can be modestly rewarding. Every time I dropped into a Dutch Mill I had a tiny frisson lest the boys should have rumbled me, which could have been embarrassing and indeed dangerous, because those boys were very irritable. But they never found me out, and now they never will.

  “—Where was Urky, while I was so busy in his kitchen? Lunching sparely but elegantly at his club, going to a foreign film, and finally having a jolly good sweat at a sauna. L’apres-midi d’un gentleman-scholar.

  “—I saw nothing of him until he returned in time to dress for dinner. I had laid out his clothes, including his silk socks turned halfway inside out, so that he could put them on with the greatest ease, and his evening shoes which had to be gleaming, and the insteps polished as highly as the toes. (Urky said you knew a gentleman that way; no decent valet would allow his master to have soiled insteps.) By this time I had changed into my own first costume, which was a houseman’s outfit, with a snowy shirt and a mess-jacket starched till it was almost like the icing on a wedding-cake. (I did the washing on Wednesdays, when he was busy teaching the impressionable young, like you, Maria.)

  “—Sherry before dinner set things going. Sherry is a good drink, but the way Urky sucked it was more like fellatio than drinking; he smacked and relished it with his beautifully shined shoes stuck towards the fire, which I had laid, and which it was my job to keep burning brightly during the evening.

  “—‘The McVarish is served,’ I said, and Urky strolled to the table and set about the fish. He would never hear of soup; low, for some reason. I said. ‘The McVarish is served’ with a Highland accent. I don’t know quite what character in Urky’s imagination I was bodying forth, but I think it may have been some faithful clansman who had followed Urky to the wars as his personal servant, and was now back with the laird in private life.

  “—He never spoke to me. Nodded when he wanted a plate removed, nodded when I offered the decanter of claret for his inspection, nodded when he had gobbled up as much as he wanted of the gâteau and it was time for the walnuts and port. Nodded when I brought the coffee and fine old whisky in a quaich. I played the self-effacing servant pretty well; stood behind his chair as he ate, so that he couldn’t see me munching mouthfuls I had snatched of the food he had not eaten—though that was little enough. Urky was close about food; not much in the way of crumbs from the rich man’s table.

  “—This was the first part of the evening, after which Urky retired to his bedroom and I cleared away and washed up and set the stage for the second act.

  “—By half past nine or thereabout I had washed up, changed into my second costume, and made things ready. I tiptoed into Urky’s bedroom, drew back the covers and exposed Urky, stark naked and a pretty pink from his sauna, lying on his turn. Very carefully I parted his buttocks and—aha! are you expecting something spicy to happen? A bit of the old Brown Eye? You think I may be about to give Urky the keister-stab? No such low jailbird tricks for the fastidious Urky, I assure you. No; I gently and carefully inserted into his rectum what I thought of as ‘the deck’, because it looked rather like a small pack of cards; it was a piece of pink velvet ribbon, two inches wide and ten feet long, folded back and forth on itself so that it formed a package about two inches square, and four inches thick; a length of two or three inches was left hanging out. Urky did not move or seem to notice, as I tiptoed out again.

  “—I had rearranged the living-room so that two chairs were before the fire; for Urky, one of those old-fashioned deck-chairs made of teak that used to be seen on CPR liners, which I had filled with cushions and a steamer-rug in the McVarish tartan; for me a low chair of the sort that used to be called a ‘lady’s chair’, without arms; between the chairs I placed a low tea-table with cups and saucers, and the marijuana tea in a pot covered with a knitted cosy, made in the shape of a comical old woman. I set the record-player going and put on Urky’s entrance music; it was a precious old seventy-eight of Sir Harry Lauder singing ‘Roamin’ in the Gloamin’. I wore a baggy old woman’s dress (bad style that, but I really did look like an old bag, so let it stand) and a straggly grey wig. I must have looked like one of the witches in Macbeth. When Urky came in, wearing a long silk dressing-gown and slippers, I was ready to make my curtsy.

  “—This was the build-up for the ceremony that Urky called The Two Old Edinburgh Ladies.

  “—Innocent fun, in comparison with some parties at which I have assisted, but kinky in the naughty-nursery style that appealed to Urky. We assumed Edinburgh accents for this game; I hadn’t much notion what an Edinburgh accent was, but I copied Urky, and screwed up my mouth and spoke as if I were sucking a peppermint, and he seemed satisfied with my efforts.

  “—We assumed names, too, and here it becomes rather complicated, for the names were Mistress Masham (that was me) and Mistress Morley. You get it? Probably not. Know then that Masham was the name of the Queen Anne’s confidante, and Morley was the name the Queen assumed when she chatted informally with her toady, and drank brandy out of a china cup, calling it her ‘cold tea’. What this pair had to with Edinburgh or with Urky you must not ask, because I don’t know, but in the world of fantasy the greatest freedom is allowed.”

  Darcourt’s eye had run ahead of his reading, and he was embarrassed. “Do you really want me to go on?” he said. Of course we did.

  “—It was his fantasy, not mine, and it wasn’t easy to improvise conversation to puff it out, and the burden was on me. What Urky liked was scandalous University gossip, offered on my part as if unwillingly and prudishly, as we sipped the marijuana tea and nibbled the marijuana cookies (I tried once or twice to get Urky to advance towards something a little more adventurous—a little acid on a sugar cube, or the teeniest jab with the monkey-pump—but he is what we call a chipper, flirting with drugs but scared to go very far. A Laodicean of vice.) So what kind of thing did I provide for him? Here is a sample that may interest you.

  MRS. MORELY: And what do you hear of that sweet girl Miss Theotoky, Mistress Masham, my dear?

  MRS MASHAM: Och, she keeps up with her studies, the poor lamb.

  MRS. MORELY: The poor lamb—and why the poor lamb, Mistress Masham?

  MRS MASHAM: Heaven defend us, Mistress Morley, my dear, how you take a poor body up! I meant nothing—nothing at all. Only that I hope she may not be falling into dissolute ways.

  MRS. MORELY: But how could that be, when she has good Brother John to give her advice? Brother John, that best of holy men. Put aside your knitting, dear friend, and speak plainly.

  MRS MASHAM: I fear good Brother John has lost all influence with her, Mistress Morley. If she has an adviser I doubt but it’s that fat priest Father Darcourt, may Heaven stand between her and his great belly.

  MRS. MORELY: Preserve us, Mistress Masham, what do you mean by such hints?

  MRS MASHAM: God send I suspect nobody wrongfully, Mistress Morley, but I have seen him looking after her with a verra moist eye, almost like a man enchanted.

  MRS. MORELY: You make me tremble, ma’am! Does not her good mentor, Professor Hollier, do anything to keep her from harm?

  MRS MASHAM: Och, Mistress Morley, ma’am, how should anyone of your known goodness understand the wickedness of men! I fear that same Hollier—!

  MRS. MORELY: You are not going to speak any evil of him?

  MRS MASHAM: Not unless the truth be evil, ma’am. But I fear he has—

  MRS. MORELY: Another cup of tea!—Go on, I can bear the worst.

  MRS MASHAM: I never said whoremaster! Mind, I never said it! Who’s to say he was not tempted? The girl—the Theotoky girl—I blush to say it—she’s no better than a wee besom! She can entice the finest of th
em! Have ye looked at her likeness lately? That bronze figure now, that you had from poor Mr. Cornish—

  “—Then Urky looked at the bronze and—nothing personal, you understand, Molly, but simply in aid of Urky’s little game and in the line of duty as a parasite—I had previously put a dab of salad oil on the cleft of the mons, which is such a charming feature of that work, so that it seemed moist and inviting. An imaginative stroke, don’t you think? It threw Urky into a regular spasm, so that it was touch and go whether or not he might anticipate his Little Xmas, which was supposed to be held back for the topper of the evening.

  “—That was the object of this elaborate masquerade; to bring Urky very slowly to the boil. Dirty gossip and plenty of tea and cookies did the trick—the gossip to excite, the Mary Jane to hold back—with the pink ribbon as the fuse to his rocket.

  “—You two were not the only ones to cut a figure in these fantasies, but you were regular favourites. Urky had a weak hankering after you, Molly, and as for Clem, I liked to toy with him to please Urky, because though I fully understand and forgive, I was well aware that Clem felt he couldn’t drag me after his splendid career more than so much; one does what one can for old friends, but of course some must drop by the way. Clem did what he felt he could for me, but he was damn certain I wasn’t going to be allowed to be too much of a nuisance. So I had some fun with you two, but as you will discover, I have recompensed your real kindness in fullest measure, pressed down and running over.

  “—Another favourite figure in the ceremonies was Ozy Froats—always good for a giggle. There were lots of others; Urky’s vast spite could embrace them all. But it was only play, you know. The popular sex-manuals urge their readers to give spice to the old familiar act by building fantasies around it. Who would grudge Urky his pleasure, or blame me for ministering to it, when the role of parasite was the only one left to me? Not you, dear friends; certainly not you.

  “—Urky liked a good hour and a half of this sort of thing, during which his pleasure mounted, his laughter became harder to conceal under the role of Mrs. Morley. The lewd gossip pricked him on, while the Old Mary Jane held him back. As he talked and listened he worked his legs up in the deck-chair and his dressing-gown fell apart so that his bare bottom was to be seen. That was the cue for my culminating sequence, thus:

  MRS MASHAM: Mistress Morley, ma’am, forgive the freedom in an old, though humble, friend, but your gown is disordered, ma’am.

  MRS. MORELY: No, no, I’m sure.

  MRS MASHAM: Yes, yes, I’m sure.

  MRS. MORELY: It’s nothing. Don’t distress yourself, ma’am.

  MRS MASHAM: But for your own good, ma’am, as a friend, ma’am, I shall be compelled to bind you, ma’am. Indeed I shall.

  MRS. MORELY: Nay, nay, my good creature, you don’t know what you’re doing.

  MRS MASHAM: That I do. It’s the Urquhart blood declaring itself. See—there’s old Sir Thomas himself looking down at you and laughing, the sly old Rabelaisian. He knows your nature may declare itself, and it’s for me to act to preserve you from shame before him. Bound you must be.

  “—Then I would produce some nice white sash-cord and bind Urky into the chair, just tight enough to give him the thrill of being under constraint, but not enough to hurt him. By this time he was well and truly sexually aroused. Not a pretty sight, but I was not supposed to notice. Instead—

  MRS MASHAM: You must forgive me, ma’am. It’s a deeply personal thing, but I cannot help observing, ma’am—because of the disorder of your dress—that you have a wee thing

  MRS. MORELY: A wee thing? You are bold, ma’am.

  MRS MASHAM: Aye, a wee thing. I’ll go further—a wee pink tail. Yes, a wee pink tailie—I can see it, I can see it, I can see it—

  MRS. MORELY: You must not peep!

  MRS MASHAM: Aye, but I will peep! And I’ll—how my fingers itch—I’ll pull it—

  MRS. MORELY: Creature, you dare not!

  MRS MASHAM: I dare all! I’ll pull it, I’ll pull it, I’ll pull it—

  “—And when the tease was almost at its climax, I did pull it. Pulled Urky’s little tag of ribbon, and ran with it across the room so that it unfolded rapidly and softly and ticklishly inside him, and he reached what he called his Little Xmas.

  “—Then I ran to the kitchen and kept out of the way until Urky had freed himself from the easy bonds and retired to his bedroom. I cleaned up, put everything in order, and left, having picked up the envelope which he had left for me on the table by the door.

  “—It contained twenty-five dollars. Twenty-five measly bucks for a day that had started at six in the morning and never ended before one! Twenty-five lousy bucks for a man of my attainments to serve as cook, butler, drug supplier, coosie-packer, character actor, sex-tease, and scholarly parasite for nineteen hours! Once, when I hinted to Urky that it was sweated labour, he looked hurt, and said he had supposed I got as much fun out of it as he did! All that delicious exciting pretence! His egotism was phenomenal in my experience, which has been great. If he hadn’t nosed out a few things I preferred not to have known, I would have squealed on him long ago. Now I no longer have to dread blackmail, for I speak from the threshold of eternity, my dears. Pray for Brother John. Necessity, not my will, consented. Until tonight, when I decided I had had enough. Even a buzzard sometimes gags.

  “—Not that my decision was a sudden one; I do not make up my mind about important things in an instant. It is at least three weeks since I decided that the time had come for me to disappear as Brother John, the joke-monk, and to re-emerge as John Parlabane, author of one of the few unquestionably great novels of our time. For that is what Be Not Another is: the greatest and in time the most influential roman philosophique written by anyone since Goethe. And when I am not around to be punished and patronized and belittled by my inferiors that is how it will be seen. It is jealousy—yours, Clem, God forgive you, and that of many others—that stands in the way of the book; you know me and you know me in my inferior guise as a needy friend who has taken some wrong turnings in his life, and so has not made his way to the scholar’s safe harbour. You refuse to see me as what I truly am—a man of strongly individual nature, richly perceptive and an original moralist of the first order. I should not have been this if I had refused to get my shoes muddy, as you have done.

  “—As an original moralist I value a truly fine work of art above human life, including my own. To ensure the publication of my book and its recognition for what it is, I am ready to give my own life, but I recognize that such an act would attract little attention. In the eyes of the world I am nobody; if I am to get the attention that is my due, I must become somebody. What easier way than by taking another into the shadows with me? All the world loves a murderer.

  “—Few murders have been undertaken to ensure the publication of a book; offhand, I can’t think of one, but as there may be some other instances I must speak with caution. People murder for other sorts of gain, or in passion. I do not even admit that I have polished off Urky for gain, because I shall reap no direct advantage—the advantage will all be the world’s, which will be persuaded by this rough means to give fair consideration to my book, and in the course of time the world will see how enormously it is the gainer. Which would you rather have, Maria—the great romance of François Rabelais, or a living, breathing, sniggering Urquhart McVarish? Indeed, I am providing Urky with a kind of immortality he could not aspire to if he died by what are called natural causes. (Not, of course, that I write in Rabelais’s vein, which I have always considered needlessly gross, but as a work of humanist learning my book is measurably finer than his.)

  “—Why Urky? Well, why not Urky? I need someone and he fills the bill because his taking-off will cause a stir, especially in the way I have managed it, without in any serious way depriving the world of a useful human creature. Besides, I have become impatient with his hoity-toity ways with me, as well as his stinginess. It is an oddity of people with unusual sexual tastes that they m
ust enjoy them in the company of somebody whom they can patronize and look down on; I think Oscar Wilde really liked his grooms and messenger boys better than he ever liked aristocratic Bosie. There are men who like vulgar women, as well as women who prefer vulgar men; snobbery in sex has never been carefully investigated. But I, to whom Urky was what a dog is to a man, have grown tired of playing the gossiping old Edinburgh wifie, to be snubbed and put down by The McVarish. The worm turns: the parasite punishes.

  “—So, a few hours ago when the tedious charade of the Two Old Edinburgh Ladies had sniggered towards its close, I made a change in the script, which Urky at first saw as an ingenious variation designed for his pleasure. Oh, invaluable parasite!

  “—Imagine him, tied up and giggling like a schoolgirl as I lean closer and closer.

  MRS MASHAM: Mistress Morley, my dear, you do giggle so! It can’t be good for you. I shall have to punish you, you naughty girlie. Look how you’ve disturbed your frock! I shall have to tie you up tight, my wee lassie, verra tight indeed.—But och! what a foolish giggler! Can ye not laugh a guid hearty laugh! Here, let me show you how. See, I am going to put this record on the machine; it’s Sir Harry Lauder singing ‘Stop Your Tickling, Jock’.—Now, listen how Sir Harry laughs; that’s a laugh, eh? A guid, hearty laugh? Come on, Mistress Morley, sing with me and Sir Harry:

  I’m courtin’ a fairmer’s dochter,

  She’s one o’ the fairest ever seen;

  Her cheeks they are a rosy red,

  And her age is just sweet seventeen—

  I’ll just turn up the volume a bit to encourage you. And I’ll tickle you! Yes, I will! See, I’m coming at you to tickle you!—Och, do ye call that a laugh? I know what! Ordinary tickling will never do the job. Now watch: ye see I have here my knitting needles. If I juist insert this one up your great red nose, Mistress Morley, and wiggle it a wee bit to tickle the hairs, eh? Ticklish, eh? But still not enough; let’s put the other needle up the other hole in yer neb. See, when I wiggle them both how easy it is to laugh? Laugh right along with Sir Harry? Och, that’s not laughin’. That’s more like shriekin’. I’ll just push them in a wee bit further. No, no, it’s no good rollin’ yer een and greeting, Mistress Morley, my dear.—D’ye know, a great idea occurs to me! Juist suppose now—I’ll need some sort of a hammer—so juist suppose I take off my shoe, so. Then wi’ the heel o’t I gie the ends o’ the needles a sharp tap—one, two: But Mistress Morley, ye’re no longer laughin’. Only Sir Harry is laughin’.