She gestured back through the doorway.
"Who's your friend with the big sword who was going out as we came in?"
"Lucy's dead," Faye said abruptly to Genevra. "Rex needs to be told. Where is he?"
Bridget and I fell silent.
Genevra put her hand to her mouth and touched her scar.
"Lucy dead? How?"
"May have been a drug overdose," I said. I described how I had found her.
"Suicide?" Genevra said. "But why?"
I glanced at Bridget. She was mouthing, `Who's Lucy?' at me.
"She was pretty keen on Rex, I understand," I said.
"Killed herself for the love of my brother?" An odd expression crossed Genevra's face. "I don't think so." She walked over to the window and stood there for a moment, hugging herself.
"Who's Lucy?" Bridget said aloud.
Faye told her tonelessly. When she'd finished Genevra turned back to face us. "I don't know where Rex is. We had lunch and then he got a call on his mobile and had to go off" She looked at her watch. "Look, we've got drinks at seven. The others will be back. We can talk about what to do then. I'm going to get changed. I suggest you all do the same."
She started to leave the room. As she passed me she paused to squeeze my arm lightly.
"Good to see you again, Nick."
I didn't follow the others upstairs. Instead I went into the library. Something had been nagging at me about the way Lucy's body had lain in the boat. Formal, almost ritualistic. I found the book I was looking for and sat down in a wingback chair with it. It had a chapter list but no chapter details on the contents page, so I had to go through the thick work page by page, looking at the chapter headings to find what I was looking for. When I found it I began to read.
Everyone else was already gathered when I went in for drinks. I'd given up the cavalry twill and blazer and was wearing instead a rather fine Hugo Boss suit with a Fred Perry underneath. Rex, in rollneck and dark blue cords, was standing by the window looking earnest while a bony-faced man with thin, grey hair plastered down on his scalp was talking insistently to him.
I looked round the room. Genevra saw me and waved me over to where Bridget, Faye, and Lord Williamson were in conversation. I started over but Rex intercepted me.
"There you are, old stick. Pleased you could make it down and sorry I wasn't here to greet you. Sorry too about your bad experience. Come over and meet Neville."
He took me over to the bony-faced man. He was about fifty with a military bearing. There was a tuft of whisker under his nose that he had missed while shaving. He wore another kind of uniform now, one that said "Countryman"-a drab, green jacket; check shirt with a soft collar; a green, knitted tie with a tiny half Windsor knot. His navy trousers were an inch too short, showing green socks. His sturdy brown shoes were highly polished.
"Neville's my estate manager. Been with the family for years. Great fellow. Don't know what I'd do without him. Nick here is a journalist, Neville."
The look of distaste that crossed Neville's face suggested somebody had broken wind.
"A dirty job but somebody has to do it," I said, grinning cheesily.
We were joined, not a moment too soon, by Faye, Genevra, and a large man in roomy trousers and a V-neck, cashmere sweater. He had an expensive haircut and smelt of some posh aftershave.
"And this man is my aide-de-camp in this project," Rex said. "Lancelot to my Arthur. A marketing genius-the man who wrote the paper on Britain as theme park, our heritage turned into an industry."
"Who's Guinevere?" I said, watching Faye. She and Genevra exchanged glances.
"Well, the parallel isn't that exact," Rex said, grinning. The large man stuck his hand out.
"Buckhalter, name and nature." He had a twangy American accent.
"Oh, I see. As in-"
"As in the buck stops here, buddy. We don't make the money, my neck is on the block." He looked around. "And believe me, they got axes here that can do the job. You can call me Buck."
"That's your nickname, eh?"
He frowned.
"No, that's my first name."
"Your name is Buck Buckhalter?"
"You have a problem with that?"
"Not at all, it just sounds like something out of fiction. You know, Milo Minderbender, Hubert Humpert."
"Never heard of them. Buck is short for Buckminster. My parents were big Buckminster Fuller fans. I got off light actually. They loved the gardens of Capability Brown, too."
Lord Williamson joined us.
"Reggie Williamson," he said, shaking my hand. He looked at me intently. "I gather you're the one who found poor Elaine. Terrible thing. Sweet girl."
"Elaine?' I thought her name was Lucy?"
"Lucy Elaine Newton," he said. "When I knew her she preferred to use her middle name."
"She used to be Reggie's researcher," Genevra said. "When he was an MP, before he moved into the Lords and became a junior minister."
"Damned good at it she was, too. Hated to lose her."
"What did she leave to do?"
"Work here, of course. Archaeology graduate, wanted to get back into it. Rex poached her. Brought her down here, told her what he was planning." He shook his head sorrowfully. "I was looking forward to seeing her today."
We went into dinner soon after. I was seated between Genevra and Faye, directly opposite Rex.
"Buck did cutting-edge stuff with nuclear power stations back in the States," Rex said.
"Really?" I said. I hadn't taken to Buckhalter. He had a laugh that showed he had no sense of humor. He wanted to engage, knew he should be laughing, knew laughing was good, but laughed in the wrong places because he didn't know what was funny. An alien, in other words.
"I came over to do the same here but you limeys are a bit more cautious," Buckhalter said.
"What did you propose?"
"I proposed we attack people's fear of radioactivity headon-you know, you familiarize people with something and they don't worry about it so much. They were willing to go so far but backed off the merchandising-glow-in-the-dark jackets and the like. They were nervous about the slogans too, said they might be misinterpreted."
"What were they?" I asked.
"Nuclear power-it's a blast and We can light up your life."
He shook his head. "So we moved on. But I like what I see here in Britain. You're just ripe for some serious marketing."
"Buck's been working with the Wiltshire Messiah. Came up with his slogans."
"I did a lot of work on him, then he ditched me, the ungrateful sonofabitch. But this heritage marketing, it has a lot of potential. You know the three golden rules of heritage marketing?"
"Location, location, location?"
"That's house-buying," Faye said, smiling slightly.
"You got me then."
"Don't give information, provide an emotional experience; stories, not histories; show, don't tell. You know, Britain is museum mad. A new museum is opening up almost every week. And they're meeting a demand, too. Do you know how many millions of people visit open quotes historical close quotes destinations in Britain?"
"What do you mean by open historical close quotes?"
He looked puzzled.
"I mean I'm putting the word historical in quote marks."
"I know that. I meant what constitutes historical?"
"Everything from a theme park to Tintag-sorry, mustn't mention the T word, bad vibes. Everything from a theme park to an ancient monument."
"So how many?"
"How many what?"
"How many millions of people?"
"Well, I don't carry those kind of figures around in my head, but it's a lot, I can tell you."
There was silence for a moment. I'd been aware that Bridget had been getting restless-I suppose it was staring up at the ceiling and tapping her fingers on the table that was the giveaway.
"Nick tells me Arthur slept with his sister, Morgan the whatsit," she suddenly said, to no one in partic
ular. "Incestvery modish. Plus you save on fares."
I noticed Rex, Genevra, and Faye all exchange swift glances.
"Morgan le Fay. The historian Geoffrey of Monmouth named her as the ruler of Avalon," Rex said. "Chretien de Troyes first identified her as Arthur's sister in his romance Erec in the middle of the twelfth century. Later stories had her stirring up trouble between Arthur and Guinevere and claiming she learned her magical powers from Merlin."
There was another silence.
"Are you involved with the Avalon project?" I asked Lord Williamson. He put down his knife and fork and turned to me.
"I'm putting money in, yes. But I'm by no means the only investor. Rex and I are friends from way back. We were at university together." He surveyed me. "And you are going to be writing the book of the find."
"Possibly-when someone tells me what exactly it is you've found."
"Has Faye not told you yet?" Rex said.
"You told me not to, Rex-you wanted to show him yourself."
"Of course. Look, why don't we give Nick the show after dinner. We need to check if it works anyway for the conference on Monday. Bridget, you'll enjoy this, too."
"History? How thrilling," Bridget said, a lopsided expression on her face. I think she was trying to smile sweetly, but sweetly had been out of her repertoire for rather a long time.
After dinner Rex and Genevra led the way into another vast room. There were desks at one end and a conference area at the other. We sat at the conference table and looked toward a large screen on the wall before us. Buckhalter sat to one side in front of a computer. He began pressing keys.
"The audience for live arts and even cinema in this country is outnumbered both by the audience for historical houses and for museums and galleries," he said. "There are almost two thousand buildings and ancient monuments open to the public. And that's not counting churches. It's a multi-million pound industry.
"But these days you've got to go one further. It's not enough to visit the past; people want to live in it. So here at Avalon Offshore Trust-we haven't got the name of the theme park itself yet that's what we intend to give them."
"If there's a Ye or a Yore in it-as in Days of Yore-I'll throw up," I whispered to Bridget.
"Sssh," she said, giving me an irate look, then directing her attempt at a sweet smile at Rex again.
"At our facility we intend to offer an authentic medieval
"Scrofula, leprosy, plague, and high infant mortality?" I said.
"Not that authentic," Genevra remarked mildly.
"Are you presenting Arthur as a genuine sixth-century war chief or as the Hollywood version?" I asked.
"Are you nuts?" Buckhalter's voice went up a register in disbelief "We give the people what they want. And they certainly want a Camelot they recognize-all that cloud-capped towers shit in Tennyson."
"I think that was Shakespeare."
"Huh?"
"The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the great globe itself-it's from The Tempest."
"Right, I meant the topless towers of Ilium."
"That was Troy. Christopher Marlowe."
"Okay, them dreaming spires then."
"Oxford."
Buckhalter reddened. Bridget dug me with her elbow. "What's got into you?" she hissed in my ear.
I didn't know why I was feeling so peevish. Maybe because a girl had died and nobody seemed to care. Buckhalter turned to face me.
"Let me educate you here. We did some market research among tourists coming to Nottingham. Eighty-five percent of them were disappointed that the castle wasn't the medieval one they'd seen in all the Robin Hood movies. We proposed the town pull down their existing castle-have you seen it? It's a pile of nineteenth-century shit-and build a medieval castle in its place."
"A fake castle?"
"Give the people what they want. The city fathers didn't go for it. Philistines. Got no vision. Especially as they're at war up there and don't even realize it."
"What kind of war?"
"There are about six different sites all competing to be known as Robin Hood country. They won't work together so they're tearing what could be a sweet scene apart. I suggested all the marketing guys should get together and settle it with an archery competition. Take turns at having an apple balanced on their heads to be shot off. The one that survived-"
"But surely that was William Tell?"
"Whatever-they got their crossbows."
"Hang on, the Merry Men wouldn't have been seen dead with crossbows. The whole thing about Robin Hood and the Saxon against the Norman thing is environmental warriors versus environmental destroyers. Robin's men used longbows because they were environmentally aware-"
"What about slaughtering the king's deer and using dye to make Lincoln Green and burning wood?" Genevra said, smiling. "Doesn't sound too environmentally conscious."
"Culling, vegetable dye and ... okay, but two out of three ain't bad. They could make longbows without needing any industrial process. The Normans though were all early industrial process-a lot of smelting needed for chain mail, helmets, and the metal bits of the crossbows."
"Smelting?" Bridget said. "Sounds like a sexual practice."
"What's your point?" Genevra said to me.
"Well, nothing really. Just thought I'd be Barthian. You know, like the meaning of haircuts in the film ji4hus Caesar."
"Barthian?" Bridget muttered. "More like barking."
"Can we keep to the text here?" Rex said; a hint of impatience in his voice.
"Sure, sorry. So what are you planning?"
Buckhalter tapped some more keys and an aerial shot of Wynn House came up on the screen. Triumphal music swelled from speakers on the floor.
"Here we go," Buckhalter said. "What we've got here is a computer model of the theme park."
As the different images came up, he talked on. And on.
"Look, Arthur is up for grabs," he said. "Nobody knows for sure where the real Arthur had his lands-in the west, in the north, or in Wales. There are so many sites in Britain traditionally linked to him it's become a joke. But it means money. Tintagel is English Heritage's fifth most visited site. You get one hundred and fifty thousand people a year down there. You get a quarter of a million visiting Glastonbury, which sells itself as the real Avalon and the resting place of the Holy Grail.
"Here we are in Somerset, officially known as the `Land of Legend and Arthurian Adventure.' But there's nothing drawing all this together. And that's where our theme park will come in. We need to come up with a name for it soon, by the way."
"You're not using Camelot?" I said, surprised.
"Aside from the fact the name has links with a lottery provider, there already is a Camelot theme park up in the north. Totally different to what we have in mind, but we want to avoid confusion.
"We have a three-phase development. Phase one you got the theme park centered round the castle we rebuild on top of the hill there and some rides linking that with the Grail Chapel. We'll have animatronics doing all kinds of shit and live actors doing their bit. There'll be jousting and sword fights and The Grail Experience. The Sword in the Stone test. And there'll be a cocktail bar."
"A cocktail bar in the Middle Ages?"
"Yeah, well, we'll make sure it blends in. And a big banqueting hall called the Tuck Inn."
"Friar Tuck's out of Robin Hood."
"Whatever-it's all history, isn't it?"
"Not the way you describe it. What's stage two?"
"Stage two, yeah. You ever see that old film Westworld?"
I nodded.
"Remember how you could live whatever life you wanted? Well, we offer the medieval experience."
"If I recall correctly, in Westworld the robots ran amok and killed everybody."
"Hey, every innovative project has teething problems. Besides, that was just a movie. And we don't need to use robots-why use robots when you can use people? We get the people who come to stay to play the medieval parts. I
t's beautiful because then we've got them in character when the day tourists cone and visit."
"Won't the people staying here want a little medieval nooky?" Bridget said.
"Well, that's something we can look at for stage three: our specialist holiday."
"You want to make it into a medieval brothel?" I said.
"Tell you the truth, we haven't finished stage three yet," Rex said, with a warning glance at Buckhalter. "We've also got a licence to have the Camelot Casino. We'll be trying that out in a week or so. That's when we plan to launch the project with a medieval banquet here."
He looked at me.
"So what do you think, Nick?"
"What do I think?" I pointed at Buckhalter, "I think he's the Anti-Christ. It won't be long before the whole country becomes one big open-air museum: you just enter it when you get off the plane at Heathrow. Fucking heritage centers are destroying our past, not preserving it. They don't tell it how it was-that might be boring. They select the most exciting bits, blank out the unpalatable bits. Heritage is bogus history."
"So what's wrong with that?" Buckhalter said, rising from his seat. "Look, heritage places are not just a UK phenomenon. They're a worldwide the US. Know why I left the Wiltshire Messiah? He didn't have the vision to realize all the possibilities of his position. Lack of vision in the Son of God is quite a handicap, wouldn't you say?"
"What couldn't he see?"
"That he could spread His word best by opening up a theme park."
I snorted. Buckhalter ignored me. He was getting pretty messianic himself.
"Think of the rides you could have. Just rifling I could see the one about the Devil taking him up to a high place, offering him the world or pitching him down-that's a roller-coaster ride from Hell, baby! Twelve Stages of the Cross-walk that Jesus walk!"
"It's grotesque," I said.
"Grotesque? You know what the third most popular tourist attraction in the US is after the Disneylands in Florida and California? An inspirational theme park. All 2,300 acres of it. Check it out-Heritage USA, in Carolina. It's the center of the Praise the Lord fundamentalist Christian television network, that's what. There's big money in religion."
"Oh man, oh man," I groaned, looking to Bridget for support. She seemed unduly interested-even for her-in the bottom of her glass.
The Once and Future Con Page 5