The Complete Symphonies of Adolf Hitler

by Oliver, Reggie

  Perhaps, in being very different from most other boys I knew, Tristram was deliberately making a bid to establish an identity beyond his father’s shadow, but there was more to him than that. Tristram had a naturally individual approach to life.

  I remember it was in my second Summer Half, as terms were called at Eton, that I first visited him at his house. The decor of his room immediately marked him out as an original. The walls were not adorned with the usual team photographs and posters of The Beatles, Raquel Welch in a fur bikini, or a youthful Marlon Brando sitting morosely astride a motorcycle. There was a row of severely framed lithographic prints by David Roberts of Egypt, and numerous photographs framed in passe partout, probably taken by Tristram himself, of Egyptian deities and objets d’art. On his ‘burry’ (the Etonian for desk) was a skull. The lid of his ottoman was up and Tristram himself was engaged in throwing a dagger at it. The ottoman was situated just below the window which was open. It looked out onto a narrow pedestrian thoroughfare called Judy’s Passage.

  ‘Suppose you miss and the knife goes sailing through the window and kills someone in Judy’s Passage,’ I said.

  ‘I’d rather risk that than break a window,’ said Tristram. ‘I’ve already broken two this half and my Tutor is getting pee’d off. Here’s the book you wanted to borrow.’

  He tossed me the volume in question, D.P. Simpson’s Funerary Rites of Ancient Egypt.

  ‘I’m fed up with this. Shall we go for a walk? You can sock me a Brown Cow at Rowlands afterwards.’

  I soon discovered that Tristram had inherited at least some of his father’s intrepid genes, as his idea of a walk was to explore areas of Eton which were out of bounds. This afternoon, brilliantly sunny and breezy, he had set his heart on Luxmoore’s Garden, a slender eyot, attached to the Eton side of the Thames by a wooden Chinese bridge. This sequestered spot was allowed only to the most senior boys, but Tristram was determined to visit it. I was marginally more afraid of being thought a coward by Tristram than being caught so I went along with him.

  Luckily, everyone else seemed to be out on the river that afternoon or playing cricket so we had the place to ourselves. With its shady walks, exotic vegetation, and little emerald lawns, the place seemed to us like a secret paradise, all the more delicious for being forbidden.

  In the heart of the garden is an oval lawn at one apex of which stands a bronze bust of Luxmoore himself and below it a bench. We were approaching this, shielded by a screen of trees, when I stopped and restrained Tristram. I could see that someone was sitting on the bench, a large man, who, despite the mildness of the weather, wore a heavy overcoat.

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ I said. Tristram consented to withdraw a little into the undergrowth.

  ‘Who was that?’ he asked.

  ‘Bloody Bill. He’s—’

  ‘God! Bloody Bill! I know who Bloody Bill is. He was my pa’s Tutor.’

  ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  ‘No. Wait!’ Tristram seemed strangely excited. ‘I want to have a word with him.’

  ‘Good Grief! Why?’

  ‘Because my pa says he’s the only person he’s ever been afraid of.’

  That seemed to me a poor reason for approaching Bloody Bill, but I knew I could do nothing to stop him. So I remained concealed in the undergrowth while Tristram walked towards the old man sitting on the bench. Though I moved as close as I could to them without allowing myself to be seen, I could still not hear clearly what they said to each other. The only words I caught were Tristram’s first. He said: ‘Are you Bloody Bill?’

  As the old man looked up I saw those pale sapphire eyes blaze with anger, but Tristram stood his ground. They talked for about five minutes, Bloody Bill seated, Tristram standing in front of him, and it seemed an age to me. Eventually Tristram extended his hand which Bloody Bill took and shook reluctantly; then Tristram turned and walked away from the old man.

  We left Luxmoore’s Garden in silence, and I could tell that Tristram was full of repressed excitement. I asked him what they had talked about, but all he would say was: ‘He remembered my pa.’ Even when I socked him a Brown Cow (a glass of coca cola with vanilla ice cream in it) in Rowlands he still refused to give me any further details.

  Nothing more of significance happened that half. Tristram and I remained friends but our efforts to set up an Egyptological society did not progress. In the summer holidays I read that Tristram’s father had died suddenly of a heart attack in the Sudan. When we returned for the Michaelmas Half I wondered how he would be, but he seemed much the same as ever, though perhaps a little more withdrawn. I heard rumours that he had an air pistol in his room, but I never saw it myself.

  November came again and I remember that one afternoon I was going for a run. It was my preferred form of exercise, not because I liked it but because it was a solitary pursuit requiring no skill, in which one was not being perpetually urged to demonstrate keenness. It had been prescribed by the authorities that this run should be to a place called Easy Bridge by a path which took one through an unattractive landscape of flat, featureless grassland, a kind of steppe, that bordered the Thames. Windsor Castle loomed in the far distance on the opposite bank; nearer at hand the way led past gas works and under railway arches. That day the chilling mists had come up from the river so thickly that I could barely see my way in front of me. I felt unusually isolated. Other runners, out to perform the same dull task as myself, either overtaking me, or coming in the opposite direction from the goal of Easy Bridge, would suddenly appear out of the thick white vapour and with almost equal suddenness disappear, pounding and puffing like steam engines, seeming about as human.

  As I was approaching Easy Bridge the mist began to clear slightly so that I found I could now see about a hundred or so yards in front of me. Ahead of me on the track, and barely visible, two people were walking in the same direction as myself, their backs to me. Poor runner that I was, I was overtaking them rapidly and was almost upon them before I realised who they were. A huge bareheaded, white haired old man in a thick black overcoat was walking beside a slim, dark, curly-haired boy in school dress. It was Bloody Bill and Tristram. I stopped running, not wanting to overtake them and risk being recognised. The sight of them together filled me with perplexity and fear. It was bad enough that they should be together, but the horror of it was, they were holding hands.

  Even now I cannot fully explain to myself the revulsion I felt. Let me state quite clearly that I did not believe then, nor do I now, that anything like a physical intimacy existed between them. No, what shocked me, I think, was simply the sheer strangeness, the unlikelihood of it all: that this monstrous old man should hold hands with anyone, let alone a fourteen-year-old boy, and that the boy should consent to be held. It sickened me then and, sad to say, it still does.

  I cannot exactly remember what I did then, but I know that I turned aside and ran back the way I had come. That day I offended my small, conscientious, unadventurous spirit by ticking a box against my name on the house notice board to declare that I had reached Easy Bridge when I had not.

  The following Sunday Bloody Bill came to lunch at my house, joining R.F.N. and the senior boys on the top table. From my lowly vantage point I kept my eye on him throughout the meal, and I think that once he noticed my doing so. He did not appear to say much, but I noticed that he ate and drank voraciously. Later that day I found myself in a position to ask one of those who had lunched at the top table, a boy called Dennis, about the occasion.

  ‘It was rather unexciting, I’m afraid,’ said Dennis. ‘No famous flogging anecdotes. The one thing that seems to interest Bloody Bill is rowing, so of course Straker, being in the Eight and our resident rowing hero, got his full attention. I can’t say I envied him being subjected to those famous X-ray eyes. Straker of course thinks that Bloody Bill was after his body. Typical Straker vanity. I can’t really see why My Tutor wanted to have him to lunch. Mrs My Tutor says it’s because he feels sorry for Bloody Bill, but I can�
��t say that’s the impression I got. My Tutor was terribly nervy and jumpy with the old bugger.’

  ‘Perhaps Bloody Bill knows some frightful secret in My Tutor’s past and is blackmailing him,’ I suggested light-heartedly.

  ‘You keep your ideas to yourself, please,’ said Dennis, suddenly recollecting his seniority.

  About a week later I returned from a run to Easy Bridge to find my room occupied by three boys from my house, Ker, Bullard and Pemberton-Pigott. These three were only a year ahead of me but they were good games players and had set themselves up as arbiters of all that was right and proper in the house. You were either with them or you were an outsider, as a result of which they exerted a kind of unofficial jurisdiction over the manners and morals of anyone junior to them. From the way they were seated on my furniture, I could tell that I was about to be the victim of a tribunal, probably on the subject of my lack of ‘keenness’ at games.

  ‘What’s this about?’ I said with an attempt at defiance. The answer I received was quite unexpected.

  ‘We saw your friend Ronaldson having a queer-up with Bloody Bill,’ said Bullard.

  ‘What!’

  ‘Yes. They were holding hands on Sheep’s Bridge.’

  ‘Holding hands is not having a queer-up,’ I countered.

  ‘Are you the expert on queer-ups then?’ said Ker who had a kind of subtlety that his beefy appearance belied.

  ‘Bloody Bill is an old man.’

  ‘That’s what makes it even more disgusting. God! A queer-up with an old man! Ugh! So you approve of queer-ups so long as it’s with old men, do you? God! What kind of a perv are you?’

  This was clearly going to be one of those arguments you could never win, so I grabbed a towel and left my own room, to much jeering and laughter from the tribunal. By the time I had returned from a shower, Ker, Bullard and Pemberton-Pigott had gone, but their suspicion and disapproval remained behind like a miasma.

  I decided to see Tristram at once. I knew how rumours could spread in the school, and how easy it was to be tarnished with guilt by association. My motives were cowardly and dishonourable, but I told myself that I was going to warn Tristram to curtail his association with Bloody Bill for his own good.

  I found him in his room. He was engaged in rolling a pair of dice and writing down the result of each throw in a notebook. I cannot recall what I said to him exactly, I suspect that it was feeble, but he listened patiently as he continued to throw his dice. There was a silence when I had finished, then Tristram said, with apparent inconsequentiality:

  ‘My pa was afraid of him, but I’m not.’

  By now I was ashamed of what I had said so I asked him:

  ‘Was your father beaten up by him, then?’

  ‘Oh yes, but it wasn’t just that. Apparently the reason why Bloody Bill was such a holy terror was that he always seemed to know exactly what you were up to. People actually began to think he had some sort of psychic power. Of course that was all bollocks. My father started to get suspicious when he found that his copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray, which naturally he kept hidden, was missing—a signed limited edition on handmade paper too! Would be worth a bomb today. Bloody Bill was a terrible prude about that sort of thing, you see. Anyway, pa began to suspect that Bloody Bill was poking about in chaps’ rooms when they were out. So he used to fix hairs across the lid of his burry to see if Bloody Bill had been prying. The hairs were often broken but of course there was nothing he could prove. Would you like to have tea with him by the way?’

  ‘What! Bloody Bill?’

  ‘Of course. He lives a couple of miles away in a little house in Dorney Wick. We could bicycle out there next half holiday. He’s promised to help us out with the Egyptological society.’

  My astonishment had not robbed me of all sense. I knew that Tristram had issued a challenge and that if I refused to take it up he would despise me and I would lose his friendship altogether. Reluctantly I agreed to accompany him, but I had no heart for the adventure.

  The following Thursday, I went to My Tutor and obtained permission to visit Dorney Wick by bicycle. When I told him where we were going R.F.N. scrutinised me wordlessly for a while, putting his head only a few inches from mine, a habit of his which I found disconcerting rather than alarming as the proximity of his face was due more to acute myopia than a desire to intimidate. Finally he simply nodded and dismissed me.

  It was raining when Tristram and I set out, a slight drizzle only, but enough to lower my spirits and expectations still further. Dorney Wick, a few miles from Eton, is a dull, desultory hamlet that trails along a winding road in the flat meadows of the Thames Valley. The houses were all of brick the colour of dried blood and built at the turn of the last century. Bloody Bill’s house was an isolated detached villa with narrow Gothic windows. It reminded me of an elaborate Victorian mausoleum. There was a short gravel drive up to a front door which had a wooden gabled porch painted dark green. The little front garden was dominated by laurels and other shiny-leaved shrubs which glistened and dripped with the recently abated rain.

  Tristram hauled on a bell pull in the porch and I heard a faint clanking from the bowels of the house. Presently the door was opened by a small, bony old woman in an overall whom I took to be Bloody Bill’s housekeeper but later discovered was his wife. Without a word she showed us into the front parlour where Bloody Bill was seated upright in a tall wing chair facing the door.

  I had the impression that he had been awaiting our arrival for some time, like a cat at a mouse hole. Tristram began to be very voluble and cheerful, a little more than was quite natural, presenting me to Bloody Bill with elaborate and jocular formality. Bloody Bill made no move but nodded and said: ‘Ah, yes. I have heard a great deal about you,’ words that have always made me feel uneasy.

  It was as if Tristram were putting the old man on display for my benefit. He rallied Bloody Bill and eventually persuaded him to show me the many curiosities he had in the room. Besides shelves full of books, mostly Oxford Classical Texts and the occasional Loeb, there were several glass-fronted cabinets full of meticulously arranged objects. Bloody Bill was an eclectic rather than a monomaniacal collector. There were trays of bird’s eggs, impaled butterflies and the bleached skulls of small mammals and reptiles; there were a dozen or so late Imperial Roman coins embedded in dark blue velvet; there was a case of fossils and coprolites. Bloody Bill had something to say on all of these items, but he seemed chiefly interested in interrogating us, gauging the extent of our ignorance and commenting upon it with a kind of sour humour. Tristram showed a very creditable range of knowledge; I was a dunce by comparison.

  Presently I noticed that Tristram was becoming restless. Finally he burst out with the words: ‘Come on, sir. Show us your Egyptian stuff. You promised you would, sir, last time I was here.’ I saw a look of pure rage pass across Bloody Bill’s face. He stood for a few moments motionless staring at Tristram, evidently trying to intimidate him, but he did not succeed. For some reason unknown to me Tristram’s will prevailed. Bloody Bill moved towards a black lacquer cabinet which stood against one wall, then opened it with a key from his watch chain. Within the cabinet were two deep shelves lined with pale yellow velvet.

  On the lower shelf were four Canopic jars in which, according to the customs of Ancient Egypt, after embalming, the viscera of the deceased were placed, their tops made in the shape of the heads of the four sons of Horus. Bloody Bill had the complete set, one each for the liver, intestines, stomach and lungs. These were impressive enough, but it was the two items on the top shelf which attracted our greatest admiration.

  The first was a black bronze statuette, no more than eight inches high, of the jackal-headed god Anubis. He was standing, the left foot extended stiffly in front of the right, in the conventional marching pose. Yet there was something about the set of the god’s bestial head which was thrust unusually far forward, that gave the statue a disturbing, aggressive dynamism.

  ‘Anubis, the psychopomp,’
said Bloody Bill. Then, turning to us, he said. ‘Do you know what that means?’

  ‘Conductor of souls to the land of the dead,’ said Tristram as if irritated to be asked such a simple question.

  Bloody Bill nodded and took down the second object with great tenderness. It was an ancient terracotta model of a boat, almost a foot long with flakes of paint still clinging to its surface. It was a marvellous object and must have been, like his other Egyptian curios, perhaps as much as three thousand years old. Prow and stern were fashioned in the form of the cow-headed Hathor, guardian of cemeteries. The boat was populated with about twenty figures in all: in the prow eight of them were in the posture of rowers though their oars were missing. Under a canopy in the centre of the boat three or four persons of indeterminate sex reclined and appeared to be playing some kind of board game. In the stern in front of the steersman a half-human creature knelt with arms raised aloft, making a supplicating gesture.

  ‘Presented to me by the Boat Club when I retired as their coach,’ said Bloody Bill. ‘It was very generous of them, but I doubt if they knew what they were giving me. Do you?’

  ‘It’s a Neshmet boat, of course,’ said Tristram almost contemptuously.

  ‘It is a Neshmet boat, as you say. A boat in which the souls of the dead are conducted to the infernal regions. Perhaps Boats did know the significance and were wishing me a speedy journey to the nether world. If that is the case they have been sorely disappointed. It is over twenty years since I was presented with it. Now then, shall we have a dish of tea and play a hand or two of cards?’