The Once and Future Con

by Peter Guttridge

  Only Nanny and I remained in the house and I scarcely saw her. Neville seemed to be around the house more than before-I'd scarcely seen him since my arrival until the night of the banquet. Occasionally I caught him looking at me speculatively.

  I lay in bed in a darkened room and listened to the radio a lot. On the Today program one morning they reported that a group of Scottish art students had come upon scores of bodies of sixth-century warriors in a mass grave thought to be the site of Arthur's last battle, the Battle of Camlann. Strong claims had often been made in the past that Arthur's kingdom was in Scotland.

  On the next morning's program, however, a solemn-voiced man from the Scottish Archaeology Society reported from the site that there were not scores of bodies, there were six. And that given the fact they were made of plastic they were most likely not sixth-century warriors. They were more likely to be a group of Action Men dressed in tiny kilts. When the art students protested that the wounds on one Action Man's skull was consistent with him having been in a battle, the archaeologist responded that in fact the "wounds' were consistent with the plastic head having been gnawed at by a dog.

  There was a report about the two messiahs and King Arthur, too. The Wiltshire Christ was now being investigated for child abuse but was nevertheless going ahead with plans to open a number of therapy centers around the country.

  The next item reported that the East End Messiah and King Arthur had met for secret talks that had ended in violence. The East End Messiah had links to various far-right nationalist groups. They included those paradoxical ones who express a fervent loyalty to England and hatred of foreigners while worshipping Adolf Hitler, whom they presumably believe came from Leytonstone.

  Those nationalist forces brought him into contact with the Welsh King Arthur, who was backed by Little Englanders. They met secretly in a motorway eatery off the M6 to discuss a merger, maybe using Joseph of Arimathea and the Grail as the glue.

  But soon the Son of God and the Once and Future King were at loggerheads, each claiming the other was stealing part of their message. The reporter speculated that the problem was that they were competing for the same market of credulous idiots.

  The ensuing dust-up was broken up by police, called by the manager of the soft-drinks-only eatery because the messiah had been caught swigging alcohol with his burger and fries. The messiah's claim that it was a miracle because the alcohol had started out as water didn't impress anybody. Police made thirty arrests and charges were pending.

  Later that day, the day before I was due to fly to Venice, I went looking for John Crow. Again without success. He wasn't at home and he hadn't been seen at Glastonbury Abbey or Wookey Hole.

  "He has a brother over in Herefordshire-Hergest Ridge," the man at Wookey Hole said. "Happen he's gone there."

  I called in at the police station to report Crow missing. The desk-sergeant, a bulky man with kind eyes behind hornrinmied glasses, took the details briskly enough but obviously thought the old chap was going to turn up. When I suggested breaking into Crow's house he demurred.

  "Expensive business that, when you get down to repairs," he said gnomically.

  When I referred him to the attack that had been made on Crow and me, he paused and took his spectacles off.

  "Now funnily enough we've got some news on that. You're Mr. Madrid I take it?" I nodded. "We were going to call you today. Your Japanese gentleman has turned up."

  "Where?"

  "We tracked him to a hotel in Salisbury." The sergeant looked stern. "His version of events is that he was visiting Wookey Hole Mill when he was attacked by a madman who looked like he'd had a shower fully clothed. He said this madman, who was trailing various bits of marine life off his hair, waved a stick, shouted at him in a threatening manner, and chased him into the hall of mirrors, making strenuous efforts to do him an injury. Is that true?"

  "Sort of," I mumbled. "But did he say why he'd been in Tintagel and Glastonbury Abbey when I was there?"

  "There was no reason why he should-it's a free country. But in fact he's an academic with an interest in the Arthurian legends and has been visiting all the sites. Are you saying he was following you?"

  "I thought he might have been," I said quietly, picturing in my head how the events in Wookey Hole Mill could bear this other interpretation.

  "And he hadn't seen me before?"

  "I asked him that. He said we all look the same to him."

  The sergeant put his spectacles back on.

  "Fortunately for you, he doesn't want to press charges."

  I took the train to Gatwick the next morning and was in Venice just after lunch. I hadn't been there for years. On the plane I recited to my neighbor my two favorite witticisms connected to the city. When Robert Benchley visited he sent back a telegram to Dorothy Parker and the Algonquin set that read: "Streets full of water, please advise." And Woody Allen used to tell a one-liner about a streetwalker who went to Venice-and drowned. My neighbor excused herself and went to sit somewhere else.

  Venice stunned me. It was cold but bright when I came out of the airport and got into the water taxi Rex had sent for me. I sat in the rear, baggage piled at my feet. Within twenty minutes the taxi had crossed the lagoon and entered the canal system. With tired eyes I surveyed the wash, rushing the walls of the ancient buildings and flopping back toward the boat.

  We passed beneath the Rialto Bridge, past vaporettos edging into their landing stages, the filthy water churning madly behind them. People waved from the bridge, tourists sipped drinks outside the restaurants on the waterfront. Wandering among them in a surreal manner were a number of people already in carnival costume. They were dressed as harlequin.

  Res had rented a grand old palace call the Ca' Dario that had been empty since the early nineties. The Gothic palace had belonged to Giovanni Dario, the Venetian Chancery secretary who negotiated peace with the Turks in 1479. In the twentieth century it had had a flamboyant history.

  A colorful US owner in the sixties had held outrageous homosexual orgies there and had been expelled from the city. Kit Lambert, the manager of The Who, had owned it for a time but sold it in the early 1970s. He was murdered in a dispute with a drug dealer not long afterwards and the superstition grew that the palace was somehow bad luck. In the nineties Woody Allen had apparently considered buying it.

  The Ca' Dario was only a couple of hundred yards up the Grand Canal from the Rialto. It was a beautiful Gothic structure, its facade intricately patterned with roundels, plaques of marble and porphyry, and bits of oriental tracery. It was tall, with living quarters on three floors.

  The taxi pulled into its watergate and nudged to a halt against tall, blue mooring posts with golden caps. A porter was waiting at the bottom of a flight of steps. He took my luggage and led me up two flights of stairs to a wood-panelled room. It had a large, four-poster bed and a terrific view over the Grand Canal.

  There was a note on top of my chest of drawers. "We're attending a carnival ball in the Ca' Rezzonico tonight. Cocktails at six, in costume (look in wardrobe)." It was signed Genevra with a couple of kisses and there was a postscript. "Out shopping."

  I looked in the wardrobe. Hanging there was a silk shirt with ruffles down the front, knee-length black trousers, long white stockings, a full-length black cloak, a white papiermache face-mask, and a three-cornered hat. In the bottom of the wardrobe were a pair of buckled, black shoes.

  Of course I wanted to try it on, but I thought I'd have a look around the house first. I made my way down into a silk-hung drawing room. It had a coffered ceiling with several ornate chandeliers of Murano glass suspended from it. I was looking up so much I didn't at first notice Faye sitting by the window gazing out at the Grand Canal. I could see her in profile. She looked inexpressibly sad.

  "Faye?" I called gently.

  She turned her head, a sudden expectant look on her face. Her disappointment when she saw who it was stabbed at me, although she quickly covered it with a warm smile.

 
"Nick," she said, getting to her feet and coming over to me. "You made it."

  She offered her cheeks to kiss. I looked down at her. Her small, conical breasts were draped in silk, a clinging, fulllength skirt of some velvet material outlining the smooth curve of her hips.

  "We need to talk," I said.

  She looked wary.

  "Nick, not-"

  "Yes, now."

  She looked up into my eyes for a moment then glanced toward the door.

  "Alright, but not here. Let's go for a drink."

  The water taxi's engine made too much noise to be able to talk on our journey. It dropped us at a mooring a few hundred yards from St. Mark's Square and Faye led me down a narrow alley into a chic bar once frequented by Ernest Hemingwayone of the many.

  "Yes?" the barman said peremptorily, in English.

  "I think you mean "Yes, please," I said, amiably enough.

  He looked down his nose.

  "I'm very busy."

  "I'm your job," I said. "Don't forget that."

  Don't tell me I can't be assertive.

  He walked off down the bar and started polishing glasses.

  We got drinks eventually-well, Faye did-and took a table on a narrow mezzanine gallery with a view over the lagoon.

  "What do you want to talk about," she said quietly.

  "Where to start? Why don't we start with the son I didn't know you had."

  She leaned back and ran her fingers through her hair.

  "First, there's something else I have to tell you. About the letter."

  "Letter?"

  "The letter from the university to Lucy about the carbondating of the bones."

  "Go on."

  "I have it. I took it from her body."

  "But why?"

  "Not for any suspicious reasons-'

  "It sounds pretty suspicious to me."

  "I didn't know about any third set of bones!" she protested. "I just wanted to see what the letter was about."

  "How did you know about it?"

  Faye looked down.

  "She had called that morning to talk either to Rex or Buckhalter. Rex hadn't been taking her calls since they'd stopped having sex. She'd been quite bitter about that. I remember her saying, `Tell him he'd better take this call. I've got a letter that makes very interesting reading."'

  "And did he?"

  "What?"

  "Take the call."

  "No, he wasn't around. I phoned him on his mobile to tell him Lucy had phoned."

  I recalled Genevra saying that their lunch had come to an abrupt end when Rex got a call on his mobile.

  "What time did you call him?" I said casually.

  "About ten thirty. Why?"

  Oh well.

  "What was his reaction?"

  "The phone was switched off. I left a message on the voicemail."

  "And what about Buckhalter?"

  "He was in the office. I told him."

  "And what did he do?"

  "I-I don't know. I think he said he would call her back."

  I had an image of Buckhalter calling Lucy and arranging to meet her in the chapel, then strangling her when she turned up. But why the Lady of Astolet bit? And why didn't he take the letter?

  "Do you still have the letter?"

  "Yes, I realized it was a stupid thing to do but I needed to know what it said. I thought it might be about ... other things. And having got it I didn't know what to do with it."

  "What other things? Your brother?"

  She looked away.

  "I've heard from him," she almost whispered. "He's here. In Venice."

  "Heard from him how?"

  "He wrote to me at the gatehouse. He's been living in Tangiers for the past fifteen years-it's a good place for gays." She grimaced. "He comes over to Venice regularly. He's staying at the Daniell."

  "He must have done well for himself."

  Faye didn't respond. We suddenly heard in the distance the wailing of a siren, like an air-raid warning. We looked at each other. Faye shrugged.

  "So was it Ralph you saw in Wells?"

  "Rafe. Oh I don't know. I don't care. What's important is that my brother is alive and I'm going to see him."

  "When?"

  "He's going to be at the carnival ball in Ca' Rezzonica this evening.

  "Everyone will be masked-how on earth will you recognize him? Why don't you go to see him at the Daniell?"

  She shook her head.

  "He doesn't want me to. He said I'd know him when I saw him at the ball."

  She looked at her watch.

  "Nick, I need to be getting back. I've still got things to do before this evening."

  "Ten more minutes. I must say, seeing your brother doesn't seem to have filled you with unalloyed joy."

  "When someone you care about let's you think they've been dead for fifteen years, it's a little difficult to cope with the discovery that they're alive and well."

  "Faye, why exactly did Rafe leave so abruptly?"

  "I can't-"

  "Could it be anything to do with Bernard Frome's death?"

  She looked out at the lagoon.

  "It's raining again," she said. "We've had terrible rain these past couple of day."

  "Faye! For God's sake just tell me. You can trust me."

  "Can I?" she said, adding, but without real force. "I trusted you before."

  She was referring to my infidelity.

  "It was just sex. Christ, I was only twenty. I got horny if the wind changed direction. And you wouldn't, couldn't. Except that once, that crazy night we finished."

  "Why didn't you tell me you'd been unfaithful before you slept with me? Or is that a male thing? You knew that if you did I wouldn't let you."

  "You didn't exactly let me then."

  She laughed, despite herself.

  "Oh god," she said. "That was so awful. I'd just heard my brother had disappeared after Frome's death. He left me a note."

  "Saying?"

  "That he couldn't handle things. He was off, don't try to find him, he'd be in trouble." She looked at me anxiously. "Nick, there's a lot you don't understand. Your view of those days ... you don't know the full story."

  "I'd like to," I said gently. "Tell me what happened."

  "Ralph was having an affair with Bernard. That afternoon they got into a drunken squabble-you know how much Ralph used to put away and Bernard was never sober. Ralph started to leave. Bernard tried to stop him. They were standing at the top of the stairs ..." She shook her head. "I'm sure it was an accident. But Ralph ran off anyway." There were tears in her voice now. "He was never very good at facing up to his responsibilities."

  She spent a couple of minutes looking for a handkerchief in her bag and blowing her nose.

  "I've got to ask you about us," I said. "You finish with me. Next thing, I now discover, you're marrying Askwith. Had you been having an affair with him while you were with me?"

  "Come on, Nick, this is old history."

  "There's a lot of it about at the moment."

  "No, I wasn't having an affair with him. He was just part of that crowd-Reggie and Rex and the others-that my brother hung out with."

  "So why'd you marry him? And have his baby so fast?"

  She was wringing the handkerchief in her hands. I felt inclined to do the same because now we were coming to it.

  "Except you implied that Askwith couldn't do it. Were you already pregnant?"

  She continued to look at her hands.

  "We never used any precautions that night." I blushed. "In the circumstance I didn't orgasm but, I was thinking, maybe ... . Faye, whose baby was it?" I squeezed her arm. "Was it mine?"

  There, I'd said it. W. C. Fields was once asked: "Do you like children?" He replied: "I do if they're properly cooked." Though not quite so extreme, I'm essentially in his camp when it comes to the little brats. But something about them quite intrigued me.

  "Nick, I wasn't thinking straight. I'd wanted to be fair to you, you'd been so patient. B
ut with my brother in all this trouble and then you telling me about that girl and then when we did make love-"

  "I know, I know." I turned her face to mine. Inhaled her perfume. "But why Askwith?"

  "Alright. Askwith saw what happened. He witnessed Frome's death. He agreed to keep quiet. When he asked me to marry him, I was pregnant, I'd been abandoned by my brother and you, my parents were emigrating to Australia-"

  "But why didn't you tell me? I'd have-"

  Well, what would I have done? I was full of plans to write the great novel. I didn't want to settle down. The last thing I wanted was a steady job. And the very last thing I wanted was some mewling kid.

  "Whose son is it Faye?"

  She smiled. An odd smile.

  "If you saw him you wouldn't even need to ask."

  She left a few minutes later. Leaning over she pecked me on the cheek, then sighed, and looked at her watch.

  "I really have to go."

  "I'm going to stay here," I said. "Be on my own for a little while."

  When the barman came to clear the table I ordered another drink. Then another. When I tried to leave the bar, my initial instinct was to blame the drink for the fact that I was about to step into a canal.

  I was standing at the door I thought I'd come in at except there was a plank some two-feet wide wedged lengthways across the bottom of the doorway. And milky green water was lapping against it. I looked back into the room to see if there was another door. The barman was still ignoring me. I looked back down at the water and could see paving stones some two feet beneath it. I recalled the siren like an air-raid warning.

  Shit. Venice was flooding.

  Apparently, in winter, it happens all the time. The lagoon rises and for a few hours Venice is under two or three feet of water. Once I'd waded down the alley-trousers rolled up to my knees, overcoat tucked round my waist, shoes and socks in my handand entered a main thoroughfare, I could see the Venetians were well used to it. It was time for the early evening promenade when the locals put on their furs and wander the streets greeting friends. A bit of flooding wasn't going to stop that.