by Patrick Gale
‘Lunchtime, already?’ said Philby, with a glint of disapproval to his surprise and once again Evan thought of the improbable illustrations one saw of the long-eared owl.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I promised I’d drop in at my landlady’s shop soon after one.’
‘I see.’
‘Then I thought I’d go to the Tracer’s Arms for some lunch. Care to come along?’
‘Thanks awfully,’ said Philby, ‘but I’ve got to get this report done for the governing gods by six and I’ve got lunch here anyway.’ He gestured with a wing to the tray behind him where there was a teapot, a kettle, a malt loaf and some rancid-looking butter.
‘Fine. Well, I’ll leave you this, if I may.’
‘Penywern 3, isn’t it?’ asked Philby, who had gone back to his work. ‘Still want it this afternoon?’
‘Yup, and I could do with a second look at the Bentham collection at around three,’ replied Evan, no longer bothering either.
‘Leave it there, will you?’ Philby asked, looking up briefly and pointing to a filing cabinet just inside the door. ‘Help yourself if I’m not here when you get back and give me a shout when you want to be let into the stacks.’
Evan left the library and fumbled for a cigarette.
‘Time warp,’ he thought and, rare for him, entertained fleeting thoughts of ‘come the Revolution’. Then he found himself back in Scholar Street and the sun was glinting on the bay windows. A file of choirboys trotted, brightly uniformed, through an ancient doorway. Evan passed by an old trout perched fearlessly on her kitchen stool to water her hanging baskets and he was soothed back into benignity. Had he seen Barrowcester’s sour midwinter face, he told himself as he turned into the Close, his cynicism might have lasted rather longer.
Mrs Merluza found him before he found Boniface Crafts because she came flying from its door and led him in by the forearm. The only people in the shop were some members of an Austrian coach party he had seen wandering into the Tatham’s quadrangle during a cigarette break.
‘It’s so excited, I mean, exciting,’ his landlady gushed, her accent broader than usual. ‘My Madeleine has faced the press.’ One of the Austrians looked up and laughed openly.
‘How? What did she tell them?’ Evan was one attentive ear.
‘Extraordinary! She marched out at about nine-thirty. Of course they started photographing like madmen, but I’d made her do her hair properly for once and she had on a nice, simple, blue woollen dress of mine I’d lent her, so that was all right.’
‘Yes?’ urged Evan, impatient.
‘And she marched out and called them all up to the sitting room. (I’d made her ask for no photographs inside because of burglars, but they were so surprised that they were good as gold) and she sat them all down and said, “Right, gentlemen. Any questions?” No. That’s not right. “Fire away!” That’s right, she said, “Fire away!” I was so proud.’ It would be clear from the papers the next day that Madeleine had gone on to answer every question in barely printable detail. ‘And when they asked about the … er … you know.’
‘The baby.’
‘Yes. When they ask about that she said she was undecided but that it was her affair, not the Cardinal’s and not theirs.’
‘And what did she say about the Cardinal?’
‘Oh she … er,’ Mrs Merluza sought a phrase. ‘She let him have it. She said he wanted nothing more to do with her and that, now that she had had time to think, she thought she would be happier with it that way. Then she took them down to the garden to photograph her without people gawping and then they left.’
‘I should think they rushed.’
‘They did quite.’ Mrs Merluza laughed and said, in a voice not altogether hers, ‘Dreadful little men.’
‘Is she celebrating?’
‘She’s asked herself round to Dr Feltram’s – her old Latin teacher – for supper. Forgive me.’ She had to leave Evan briefly to take some cash from the Austrians. Evan noted that nothing was priced and assumed that she made a healthy profit; one price for bewildered foreigners, one for friends and one for everybody else. When they were alone, he made carefully diplomatic remarks on the trash she was selling then, none too forcefully, suggested she shut up shop for a while and join him for a drink over the road. ‘Too kind,’ she said. ‘But I can’t leave my post. You run along.’ And she fairly beamed. ‘Oh. While I remember,’ she stopped him. ‘One of our neighbours came to leave this for you. Emma Dyce-Hamilton. Such a dear girl.’ Again she was borrowing voices. ‘Sometimes we worry that she might be lonely, all alone in that great house, but she has a lovely garden and two cats for company.’
Evan waited until he was sitting on one of the pew-like seats in the pub’s dark interior with a round of Stilton sandwiches and a half-pint of Old Stoat before him, then opened the envelope. It was a whimsical detail of an illuminated bestiary in the Bodleian, showing giant rabbits striding on hind legs to hunt tiny men. The writing was unusual; small but legible, dotted with Greek Es.
‘Dear Prof. Kirby,’ he read. ‘Welcome to Heaven on Earth!’ (I don’t think). We have never met, however my late father, the Dean, was a fan of your first book and more importantly, your literary agent is a dear first cousin of mine. I feel this gives grounds enough to invite you to lunch. Would twelve forty-five on Saturday suit you? Very short notice, but I don’t know how long you’ll be with us. Unless I hear from you, I shall assume you can come. Best wishes. Emma Dyce-Hamilton.’
Given her late father’s age at his death, it was to be assumed that she was considerably older than Jeremy. He had barely discussed her beyond saying that she was a ‘sweet old thing’ and Mrs Merluza had mentioned that she lived alone so presumably she was a miss or a widow of long standing. Evan took a sip of Old Stoat (he had learnt to drink it in slow, small doses) and made a mental note to remember to keep his tongue padlocked as regarded Jeremy and James, his live-in vet. Jeremy affected abandon but with an acuteness bred of even a brief stay in Barrowcester, Evan doubted that he had enlightened elderly maiden relatives on such matters. Evan chewed on a mouthful of sandwich and gazed peaceably at the crowd around him. Through a brief clearing he saw the photograph of Madeleine still on the wall behind the bar, then his view was blocked again. On his way back to Tatham’s he would stop to buy an equally tasteful postcard to say yes please to the invitation. On the day he would take flowers or a packet of home-made fudge from the post office; ‘little somethings’ seemed to be a deep-rooted local custom.
The Bentham Collection was a typical seventeenth-century miscellany, compiled by some mercantile Croesus with more wealth than scholastic nous. Among the jumble of recipes, incomplete ballads and tracts there were pearls, though, and rooting through it all that afternoon, Evan chanced on a piece that no bibliography had suggested he consult. An Old Norse saga, it told, with the love of violence and non-sequitur that were hallmarks of its provenance, a rambling legend of a Viking saint. Narrated from the pagan viewpoint, it depicted Christianity as a pale, exotic magic. The hero was a Viking captain renowned for his bloodlust and tendency to go berserkr at the scent of gore, who sailed to an island wreathed in mist and rain where he fell under the spell of a strange cult of peace and commanded his men to destroy their weapons and carve the new god of love on their ships. The tale had little regard for the unities and there was a crude break in the chronology before the climactic chapter. This told how another fleet of warriors – whose enmity with the hero’s line was illustrated at unsavoury length – followed him to the island, slaughtered his unarmed followers and, splitting him open with their axes, skewered him to a church door in the shape of an eagle. There was a miracle, however, and he burst away from the blades that pinned him to the wood and flew into the mists on bloodstained wings. Roughly translated, his Norse name meant ‘fair of visage’. Boniface.
34
‘Why’s Jane coming with us?’ Mrs Gibson demanded.
‘She’s not Jane, she’s Dawn,’ Fergus corrected, waitin
g for the lights to change.
‘Balls. All maids are called Jane; unless she’s a Ruby.’ The old woman swung around in her seat to interrogate Dawn who was sitting behind Fergus with Lilias Gibson’s suitcase beside her and a spider plant on her lap.
‘She’s not a maid; she’s our friend, Dawn. Miss Harper,’ Fergus pursued.
‘Are you a Ruby, girl, or a Jane?’ continued Mrs Gibson, heedless. Unseen by Fergus, Dawn stuck out her tongue. This had the desired effect of stunning his mother into silence until they reached the Roman Bridge, when she asked, ‘Is it very far, this spa we’re going to?’
‘No,’ Fergus said. ‘It’s just up here on Friary Hill, but I told you, Mother, it’s not a spa. It’s just a sort of health retreat place.’
‘But this is a cemetery,’ his mother whimpered.
‘Yes,’ he countered, ‘but Brooklea is further on. Nearly there now.’
It had proved mercifully easy to lure her from the house. The mention of health resorts seemed to trigger off some long-buried yearning for regimented pampering and with it, remembered scenes of expatriate socializing which she had patently concocted from bad novels. Inevitably there was much one-sided discussion about whether there would be a resident bowel specialist, but once Fergus had crossed his fingers and said that he was sure they could find her someone if there was not, she had been a model of cooperation. She had fairly hopped out of bed and, after a brief argument with Dawn as to what she should wear for the trip, she tottered downstairs on Fergus’ arm. As they waited in the drawing room for Dawn to gather things into a suitcase, Fergus had encouraged her to select something ‘of emotional value’ to take with her.
‘Whatever should I do that for?’
‘Well … er … It’s all the rage now. People take a picture or a favourite cushion or something, to brighten up their rooms. How about a pot plant? Would you like that fuchsia there? It’s not too big and it’s going to have lots of flowers.’
‘I hate fuchsia. I always have. How about that thing in the bathroom with all the baby bits on stalks?’
‘The spider plant. I’ll bring it down.’
She had laughed as he left the room.
‘Dear me,’ he heard her chuckle, ‘I’ve forgotten all my German, but then everybody speaks French in these places as it’s altogether more chic.’
‘Here we are,’ said Fergus as cheerily as he could when the car swung up into the orange-gravelled drive of Brooklea. His nerves seemed to have transferred to his mother whose excitement was now at fever pitch.
‘Oh look!’ she exclaimed. ‘There’s Kitty von Hofmansthal and that dreadful goose of a daughter she can’t marry off. You didn’t say they’d be here. They’ll be sure to hound me all weekend.’
A lump in his throat, her son said nothing but walked round the car to open her door.
‘Thank you, darling,’ she said. She was using a sweetness of tone he had not heard in months, which made things so much worse. He wanted her to snarl and fart and be repellent, if only as a display of evidence for the nurses. Claire Telcott had opened the front door. Beaming, she now advanced and shook Fergus’s hand.
‘Hello hello,’ she said, then put on a nursery teacher voice for his mother, who was hanging on his left arm. ‘And is this Mrs Gibson? Hello, dear, How are we feeling?’
‘Bonjour, Madame. Je vais très bien, merci,’ Mrs Gibson enunciated and clutched harder at Fergus’ arm for protection. Dawn brought up the rear with the plant and the suitcase. The little procession moved slowly up the stairs to Mrs Gibson’s room on the first-floor landing.
‘I booked you one of the best rooms, Mother,’ Fergus managed to say. Claire Telcott caught his eye and smirked.
‘Got your own en suite bathroom, lovey,’ she said to the new inmate.
‘Enchantée,’ sang Mrs Gibson then muttered to Fergus, ‘Where are you going to sleep?’
‘I told you,’ he urged, helping her into her armchair as Dawn found a hook for the overcoat that no longer fitted her. ‘It’s a treat just for you. I’d love to come as well but I’ve got to work.’
‘No. No, please don’t leave me,’ wailed his mother, clutching at the collar of his jersey with her little, claw-like hands. ‘Don’t go away. Not yet. Stay to tea. Ruby will start a fire and make us some in the billy, won’t you girl?’ The lack of luxury in her new surroundings had inspired a rapid slip from Baden-Baden to the African bush.
He had to prise her hands off quite roughly.
‘I’ve got to go,’ he said. ‘Be good and take the Matron’s advice and you’ll be strong as an ox in no time. Honest.’
‘No. I hate it here. Take me away. It smells and, oh, it’s far, far too hot. I can’t breathe.’
Claire Telcott clicked her tongue at his elbow.
‘Now he doesn’t live far away, Mrs Gibson,’ she soothed. ‘I’m sure he’ll come and see you every day.’
‘Yes, of course I will,’ said Fergus, envisaging a small eternity of daily visits to this infernal place. ‘I’ll come for tea with you tomorrow and see how things are going.’
Mrs Gibson started to cry. Fergus was going to come forward to comfort her but Dawn laid a hand on his arm.
‘I think we should go,’ she mouthed and gave a quick squeeze.
‘Here I come,’ he gulped and followed her from the room without a backward glance. A junior nurse had slipped in to unpack for his mother so the Matron was able to join them briefly in the hall.
‘It’s always a wee bit hard at first,’ she assured them. ‘She’s really just confused at the change of scenery. It’s normally best not to visit for the first couple of days. That way she can get used to our little routine and she’ll have things to chat to you about when you come. But do ring up and ask how things are going if you’re worried. And by all means send her postcards.’
‘Yes, of course. What a good idea. Thank you,’ he said.
As Fergus turned the car out of the drive, Claire Telcott hurried back upstairs to see the cause of the small uproar that had broken out. While the junior nurse’s back was turned, Lilias Gibson had staked out her new territory on her bedroom carpet in the way that came most naturally.
‘I suppose you think that’s funny,’ the Matron snapped; superfluously, as it happened, because Mrs Gibson was rocking with laughter and waving her soiled skirt up and down with mirth.
35
It was soon after midnight and Crispin was breaking a school rule for the first time by being away from his bed after the master switch had been thrown to plunge all the dormitory block save the prefectural floor into darkness until soon after dawn. According to a relatively recent Tathamite custom (dating from the late nineteenth century) the youngest scholar could exempt himself from a Lingua exam if he could commit an outrage that the head of house found sufficiently diverting. Jermyn had reminded Crispin’s magister, David, of this when the latter was bemoaning the hopelessness of teaching an oik of such weak memory. Jermyn was proving to be something of a friend. Crispin had leapt at the idea, less from any hope of escaping the Lingua exam (the head of house was a notably humourless young woman called Marsden-Scott who, when not writing a book called Why God Is Not, played herself at three-dimensional chess and took notes on her technique) than from a superstitious belief that a sufficiently daring outrage might spare him and his dog the wrath of the gods. After an afternoon of mooted plans for encasing live kittens in a pie crust or painting a giant chess board on the quadrangle, the three of them had decided on something simpler. Crispin would creep into chapel late at night and change all the carefully prepared hymn boards so that they announced hymn three hundred and one although there were only three hundred hymns in the book. Feeble though the jest might seem to the average man, this was thought at once sufficiently numerical and untaxing as to appeal even to Marsden-Scott.
Crispin had had to set his alarm to wake him at twelve-fifteen. The prefects were allowed to play rock music until eleven and there were numerous traditional sayings and r
esponses requiring a loud delivery which could be heard being bandied about by those still abroad downstairs. Scholar’s House, the dormitory block, had no carpets or curtains so four or five seventeen-year-olds climbing the stairs to their bedsits in the attics was enough to wake even the heaviest-sleeping junior. As on most nights, Crispin had slept for half an hour then been kept wide awake from ten until nearly midnight. The alarm clock was therefore redundant and he had been able to turn it off, slip his scholar’s gown over his pyjamas, pull on some gym shoes and creep out of the dormitory disturbing as few people as possible.
The quadrangle was all in darkness save for the great lamp over the dining hall steps. He scurried through the gloom to the main chapel doors then let himself into the organ loft staircase through the second door immediately inside the porch. David was clattering away at the keyboard and pedals, white stick hooked on the rail behind him, practising with the power turned off.
‘Who’s that?’ he asked, hands and feet stopping at the sound of Crispin’s gym shoes on the spiral steps.
‘Ssh,’ said Crispin. ‘It’s only me. I’m doing my outrage.’
‘Splendid,’ said David. ‘Carry on.’ He should not have been there either so returned to his silent voluntary without a further word.
There were two hymn boards dangling by chains, one from the organ loft and one from the gallery, while a third, painted on the wall, faced into the gallery to inform latecomers, and a tiny fourth faced the chaplain and choir. Crispin altered the organ loft one from fifty-two to three hundred and one then bade David goodnight and went to change the choir’s board. This was the most important as it ensured that the chaplain, who was tone deaf and never bothered to find his page until midway through the first verse, played his part in the outrage by announcing the non-existent number. Then he left the chapel and made for the cloisters.