Our Man in Camelot

by Anthony Price

  The upshot of these minor disasters was Shirley’s frayed temper, the product of her offer to navigate (“Scenery? I’m too busy looking for signposts to see the scenery”), and a time-loss which forced them to snatch a hasty lunch in an Olde Englishe pub so ruthlessly olde Englishe that it could provide no ice to cool the tepid drinks with which they tried to wash down their bread and cheese.

  Yet with a perversity that brought Shirley’s temper to fission point, Mosby enjoyed the journey: its sheer unpleasantness, recalling the family trips of his childhood, made him feel more genuinely married to her than he had ever felt before. His innermost and most secret fantasy, that this was really simply Dr and Mrs Sheldon, two innocent American tourists on the track of Arthur, required no special effort of self-deception for a few precious hours. For that brief space of time it was more real than the reality.

  And then, with almost startling suddenness, as though the weather itself had caught his mood, the quality of their journey changed. They left the rainy country behind and drove into sunlight, with only a few puffs of high white cloud to set off the blueness of the sky. And when Shirley complained of thirst they stopped for early tea at a little roadside cafe which turned out to be closed but which nevertheless opened specially for them, with the plump little old proprietress fussing about them in a totally uncommercial manner, producing freshly-baked cakes from her oven, hot and delicious.

  The change in atmosphere seemed to confuse Shirley.

  “I don’t know what you did to get that red carpet rolled out for us,” she murmured gratefully as they took to the road again.

  “All I said was that you were tired and thirsty.”

  “I guess she thought I was pregnant or something.” She looked at herself critically.

  “Chance would be a fine thing… But it can be arranged if you like the idea.”

  She gave a discouraging snort.

  “Arthur for a boy, Guinevere for a girl.” Mosby hastened to hide himself behind a shield of flippancy.

  “That’ll be the day.”

  Indeed it would be, thought Mosby wistfully. The millennium.

  But now the excitement of journey’s end took hold of him. For some time they had been travelling in distinctively Cotswold territory, a rolling landscape of weathered slate roofs and dry-stone walls enclosing small, neat fields—slate and stone which even in its grey old age retained a hint of the pale honey colour of its youth. And as they dropped down off the ridge from the main highway (even the signposts had now become easy to see and simple to follow) he was reminded of Audley’s phrase: It’s deep in the Cotswolds. Deep was right; there was a deepness in this little wooded valley, a sense not so much of secrecy as of privacy, which had somehow survived beneath the treetops he’d glimpsed from the turn-off above.

  The only indication that the valley was occupied had been the pinnacles of a church tower partially hidden among the leaves, but there was in fact a surprising number of houses clustered around the church, all linked and interlocked by high stone walls which turned the narrow streets into miniature canyons through which Mosby nosed the big car gingerly, knowing that he’d have to back up if he met any other vehicle larger than a wheelbarrow. But there seemed to be no other vehicles to meet, no other life even; the place was as empty as a Spanish village in the depths of its siesta.

  Before he realised it they had cruised right through the place, over a tiny bridge, and on to the hillside beyond.

  “Damn it,” Mosby muttered, “he said to ask in the village, but there’s no one to ask.”

  “They’re probably all having tea,” observed Shirley unhelpfully. “Tea and cucumber sandwiches.”

  With difficulty he backed the car into a farm gateway, and after much manoeuvring between the restricting stone walls managed to get it facing downhill again towards the trees.

  This time he knew better what to expect, but there was still no sign of life anywhere until he was almost out of the village again, and then the life wasn’t human: his way was blocked by a magnificent Dalmatian sitting right in the middle of the road.

  As he slowed to a halt, the Dalmatian showing not the least inclination to move, he caught a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye.

  “Here’s someone now,” said Shirley eagerly. “Ask him quickly before he disappears.”

  The someone was evidently a native of the place, a swarthy young man with a shock of black hair and devil-slanted eyebrows, by his frayed shirt, stained corduroy trousers and enormous muddy boots most likely a farm labourer. But that at least meant that he’d know the answer to Mosby’s question and the expression of amiable curiosity on his face was encouraging.

  “Excuse me, sir—“ Mosby smiled out of the car at him. “—I’m looking for Forge Close House. Dr Anthony Handforth-Jones.”

  The farm labourer pointed away towards the dog. “Inside,Cerberus—at once!” he commanded sharply before turning back to Mosby. The dog rose lazily and ambled to one side of the road.

  “Dr Anthony Handforth-Jones,” Mosby repeated.

  “That’s me,” said the farm labourer, returning the smile. “You must be Dr Sheldon—I thought I saw you go by just now and I knew you’d be coming back, so I sent Cerberus out to hold you—get inside, you idiot—I’m sorry, but I don’t want him to think he can have the job full-time, he enjoys it too much already… Just back down the road five yards, and the gate’s open on your right.”

  Mosby backed and turned obediently into a gap in the ivy-covered walls which let on to a well-tended circle of gravel bordered on three sides by a house and its outbuildings and on the fourth by a towering beech tree under which several cars were parked. One of them, he recognised at once, was Audley’s.

  “I guess we’re rather late, but we got lost four or five times,” explained Mosby apologetically.

  “I’m not surprised. You followed one of David’s crosscountry short-cuts.” Handforth-Jones eyed Shirley with approval. “We’ve learnt by bitter experience never to take the slightest notice of them. Saves a lot of time that way—any way but his way… But we suspected you wouldn’t know that, so we haven’t been expecting you. Besides, he’s only just arrived himself.”

  “Did he try to follow his own short-cut?” asked Shirley.

  “Not if Faith was driving,” Handforth-Jones chuckled. “But actually I gather he stopped off on the way at Liddington Hill. Looking for King Arthur, I shouldn’t wonder.”

  Evidently another non-believer, thought Mosby. But what was more interesting was that Audley had taken a quick and rather surreptitious look en route at Winston Churchill’s Number One choice for Badon Hill without letting slip his intention. Except—the one thought came quickly after the other—it would be a mistake to assume that he was up to something already, it was far more likely simple proof that he was committed wholeheartedly to the project, even if it wasn’t in reality quite the one he believed it to be.

  “Don’t worry,” Handforth-Jones hastened to reassure him, clearly mistaking his expression, “he didn’t find anything— there’s absolutely nothing to find. It’s just an iron age earthwork. A perfectly good iron age hill-fort, but nothing more.” “You don’t fancy earthworks?” Mosby remembered what Audley had said about Dr Handforth-Jones: Not a Dark Ages man, but he’ll know who is. Just what else he might be remained to be seen, but that in itself was the sound of their plan getting into gear.

  “Rather depends on whose earthworks. Not yours, I’m afraid.” “Mine?”

  “Arthurian—is that the correct term?” On so short an acquaintance Handforth-Jones evidently didn’t wish to sound scornful, but the scorn was there beneath the surface all the same.

  “David’s told you?” Mosby probed.

  “Only what he said on the phone.” Handforth-Jones raised a bushy eyebrow interrogatively. “Trouble is, term’s been over for three or four weeks now and there aren’t many people around in the University. In fact, you only just caught us—we’re off to North Africa at the end of thi
s week… I’ve done the best I can at such short notice, but whether it’ll be good enough is another matter. But then you’re something of an expert yourself, David says.”

  “Me? Hell, no. I’m a seeker after knowledge.” “You are?” This time both eyebrows signalled polite disbelief. “Well, I’ve got you Sir Thomas Gracey but I wouldn’t call him an expert in your field… But then I’m afraid you’ve chosen a period in which the seekers rather outnumber the finders. In fact there are precious few finders—or even no finders at all, that might be more accurate.”

  Handforth-Jones concluded with a half-grunt, looking towards Shirley as though for confirmation of the obscurity of her husband’s obsession. But Shirley was now working hard on her well-rehearsed representation of the Little Flower of Southern Womanhood Drooping for Want of Attention and Refreshment. Mosby wasn’t sure whether it was wholly simulated in this instance, or whether the imminent prospect of meeting Sir Somebody Someone was helping to give it authenticity. But he was gratified to see that it worked as quickly on the British male as it did on the American: Handforth-Jones’s casual manner at once became solicitous, as though what he had originally noted as a pleasant piece of decoration he now recognised as a human being, and a guest as well.

  “Yes—well… well, you’d better come inside and seek some tea first. We can collect your bags later.” He pointed vaguely towards the front door. “In fact I think we’d better hurry, or we’ll be too late.”

  Mosby couldn’t help looking mystified.

  Handforth-Jones intercepted the look. “Not too late for Arthur, they’re not going to find him just yet. Besides, David refuses to discuss him until you’re present. It’s just that if we don’t get a move on he’ll have eaten all the cucumber sandwiches. He was getting through them at a fearful rate when I heard your car the second time—“

  It wasn’t the moment to catch Shirley’s eye, Mosby decided. Not because she might burst into hysterical laughter, but because she might see her own doubts reflected in his face. Dropped in a steaming Asian jungle full of communist insurgents he knew exactly what he ought to do, the Fort Dobson training had seen to that; and she was no doubt ready at a moment’s notice to mingle unobtrusively with the Saturday housewives of Novosibirsk. But the Fort Dobson familiarisation instructors had failed signally to prepare them for cucumber sandwiches in the Cotswolds with Sir Someone, in pursuit of the Once and Future King.

  Which, to be fair to Fort Dobson, was hardly surprising.

  They followed Handforth-Jones into the house. Nothing surprising there, anyway: well-heeled upper middle class English, still rubbing along in English-style comfort despite swingeing taxes, fast depreciating investments and the envious eyes of their new Trade Union masters. Rugs, maybe Persian, on the oak floorboards; pictures, maybe original, on the walls; delicate china on delicate furniture.

  The only thing out of place here was Handforth-Jones himself, clumping along in his heavy boots with the dog at his heels, both equally oblivious of their surroundings.

  But that only served to remind Mosby of what Audley had said of the man, half admiringly, half warningly, entirely without rancour: a sharp fellow, Handforth-Jones, a great raiser of funds for his archaeological projects; a sharp fellow who, wearying of raising money, had solved his problems permanently by marrying it (“David, that’s a gross, slander! It was true love”—“I didn’t say it wasn’t my dear”—“I mean Margaret, not her money”—“And I mean Margaret and her money. The two are not mutually exclusive”); above all, a sharp fellow who could add two and two and therefore must not be supplied with enough facts now to make that addition.

  They passed through an arched door, down an antique-timbered passage towards another door, with the tinkls of teacups beyond…

  And Sir Somebody beyond, too.

  Like the man said, the Fort Dobson man, the jungle, the desert, the sea, you fight ‘em and they’ll beat you every time. So Lesson One is—you don’t fight ‘em.

  But the Fort Dobson man had never come down in the Cotswolds.

  Handforth-Jones held the second door open for them, and over Shirley’s shoulder Mosby caught sight of David Audley popping the last fragment of a sandwich into his mouth. There was something about the action—maybe it was the way Audley examined his fingers in search of stray crumbs— that suggested it was also the last sandwich. But then with the relative sizes of Audley and the genteel English sandwich that figured.

  Faith Audley rose from the chair beside which her husband stood, relief at their arrival plain on her face.

  “You made it!” she exclaimed.

  “In the end we did,” Shirley admitted.

  “Margaret—“ Faith turned to a dark-haired replica of herself who had also risen at their entrance “—Captain and Mrs Sheldon—Shirley and Mosby—“

  Lesson One in Cotswold survival had to be Good Manners, but it took every last bit of his willpower to keep his eyes on his hostess and not on the mountainous figure standing behind her. It would have been easier if she’d been outstanding in some way, or at least different from his preconceived idea of what this setting ought to produce. But it was like she’d been designed to blend into the scenery.

  Shake hands and murmur-murmur.

  “I don’t believe you’ve met Sir Thomas Gracey,” she said at last.

  Blessed relief: he could look at the mountain at last.

  “No,” said Mosby. That was for sure, because once seen, never forgotten. “I don’t believe we have.”

  “Thomas is the new Master-designate of the King’s College at Oxford,” said Faith helpfully.

  Of course he was: Mosby held on to reality with the convulsive grip of a drowning man. The ringers here were only Audley and Shirley and himself, the three who looked like what they said they were, but weren’t. Or were something else very different first and last. Dr Anthony Handforth-Jones only looked like a migrant worker, and Sir Thomas Gracey only looked like he’d stepped out of the pages of Raymond Chandler.

  “Hi,” said Shirley, smiling up at an angle of sixty degrees, offering her small hand to be engulfed by Sir Thomas’s hairy paw.

  It only made things worse: Velma was meeting Moose Mulloy for the first time.

  Moose Mulloy shook him by the hand in turn.

  “Captain—“ the grip was firm and gentle “—or should it be ‘doctor’? When I was over in the States at UCLA I had the misfortune to fall into the hands of some of your colleagues, and I recall that American protocol says ‘doctor’.”

  If there was a sting there, then the smile removed it. True, it was rather like being smiled at by a gorilla, and yet it was oddly attractive and as gentle as the handshake.

  “Doctor or Captain or mister—but for choice Mosby will do… They took you for a bundle, eh?”

  “They did very good work.” The large head moved in a curious circular motion which was neither positive nor negative, but which was somehow expressive of qualified gratitude.

  “They would. They’re the best, if you like their sort of thing.”

  “What sort of thing is that?” asked Margaret Handforth-Jones.

  “West Coast dentistry? That’s where all the big techniques are—the real high-powered technical gold work, and crown-and-bridge, and precision attachments, it’s all done in the West. They think they’re the best, and they probably are—technically.”

  “You don’t sound as though you approve,” said Sir Thomas. “Yeah, well…” Mosby tailed off. It was a hell of a way-out thing to be discussing at this stage of the proceedings? and not at all what he’d expected.

  “Go on,” urged Margaret, “it sounds fascinating.” “It does?” Mosby wondered at such politeness, but maybe it was the custom here to show an interest in one’s guest’s profession, even when it was a gruesome one like dentistry. “Well, I think maybe I have a prejudice… but to my mind they ignore the underlying physiology and pathology. I mean, they take the teeth, which are solid substructures, and they build complex and beaut
iful bridge work, but they ignore the physiology of the living substances which are supporting these teeth. And I have a feeling—I’ve no real evidence, but it seems like common sense to me—that if you overload the teeth with this sort of very expensive treatment, then you could be playing tricks on your mouth and there’ll be a price to pay at the end of it.”

  “You mean the shortened life of the teeth themselves?” said Sir Thomas.

  “You’re absolutely right, that’s exactly it. And I think—“

  “Honey!” Shirley cut through his enthusiasm warningly. “You’re going to make everyone’s teeth ache before you’ve finished, you know you are—“ She smiled apologetically at the company. “He has this thing about the West Coast—he’ll talk about it obsessively for hours on end if I let him.”

  Which was true enough, reflected Mosby, aware suddenly that for one happy moment he’d forgotten who and where he was.

  “Then you really are a dentist?” said Handforth-Jones.

  Mosby looked at him in surprise. “Is there any reason why I shouldn’t be?”

  “No real reason at all. Very useful thing to be… much more useful than an archaeologist, as my wife will no doubt remind us all.” The archaeologist grinned amiably. “We just didn’t believe you were, that’s all.”

  “Why on earth not?” said Shirley.

  “Oh, your husband isn’t to blame,” Sir Thomas hastened to reassure her. “It’s more the company he keeps. We’ve learnt to have the gravest doubts about anything David puts his hand to.”

  “David?” Shirley frowned. “I don’t get you.”

  “Actually, it was King Arthur who made us suspicious, as much as David,” explained Handforth-Jones. “The idea of David wanting to help anyone research Arthurian history—we just couldn’t swallow that at all.”