The Madonna of the Astrolabe

by J. I. M. Stewart

  ‘I don’t know. If he was, it never appeared.’

  ‘Never reared its ugly head.’

  ‘Oh, God!’ Thus exclaiming, Gender glanced at me, unoffended. ‘It’s odd, isn’t it, how we go on invocating the dead deity?’

  ‘The whole history of a place like this is bound up with institutional religion.’

  ‘And we go on trooping into chapel from time to time. Yet we are—most of us—as we are. What do you think Edward makes of it all?’

  ‘I don’t recall his ever discussing it. Jimmy, do you think any action is called for about this pious boy?’

  ‘No, no—I just thought I’d tell you. Keep you in the picture. You served him well.’

  ‘He may do marvellously.’

  ‘Or decently, anyway.’

  We looked at each other for a moment discontentedly, but with understanding. And then we said good-night, and went our ways.

  X

  Parked cars cannot have been welcome in St James’s, since at just that time anything of the kind was liable to harbour an infernal machine designed to incommode the class of society supposed to frequent the thoroughfare – Tony Mumford’s class, one might fairly say. Nevertheless, there was an empty car casually drawn up by the kerb outside Tony’s club. For some reason I glanced back at it as I climbed the steps, and it may be that it conveyed an obscure message to me. If so, the message had nothing to do with what the police were still circumspectly describing as incendiary devices.

  It was already one o’clock. But Tony – not uncharacteristically, it must be said – hadn’t yet turned up. Even out of office, he was, of course, a much occupied man. I resigned myself to that kind of wait under semi-surveillance by a porter in a small glass box which is the fate of those who arrive in clubs before their host. There was a deep narrow hall, comfortably furnished with leathery sofas and easy chairs, but it seemed to me that these lay beyond an invisible line past which it would be presuming to advance. Feeling rather like a mesmerised hen confined within its circle of chalk, I studied my more immediate environment. There was at least a wooden bench. I was moving over to this when I saw that it was already in part occupied by a young man, and that the young man was Ivo Mumford.

  The car, then, had been an Aston Martin, and it was this and its possible significance that I had vaguely registered. Ivo jumped to his feet, and I remembered that in matters of minor comportment the manners of the tiresome boy were seldom to be faulted. They could scarcely have been picked up from his grandfather. Perhaps drastic measures had been taken to inculcate them at school.

  ‘Hullo, Ivo,’ I said. ‘Are you lunching with your father too?’

  ‘Well, yes, sir. I am.’ Ivo’s ‘sir’ hadn’t been, as it could be, insolent and distancing. Rather it had been sheepish – and he was looking sheepish as well. ‘As a matter of fact, I’ve never been in here before.’

  ‘No doubt you’ll be a member one day.’ I was determined not to treat Ivo as a pariah, and I exercised my seniority by at once shaking hands with him. But I was angry with Tony. Had I allowed my mind to dwell on the obscene prominence accorded to Arnold Lempriere in Priapus, I’d have been very angry indeed. It was no doubt proper that Tony should be concerned to rehabilitate his son, who shouldn’t be thought of as cast out for all time from decent society. But this encounter bore the stamp of Mumford humour in one of its less appealing aspects – and Tony was quite capable of having made himself late for his appointment in order to contrive its happening in just this way. Not for the first time, I reflected that there was something freakish about the Mumford mind. The fact was to receive further exemplification quite soon.

  I was meeting Tony in order to discuss a matter with which his son had nothing to do. It seemed likely, therefore, that it wouldn’t be broached at table, and that Ivo would be packed off before we got down to it. I took another look at the boy before resigning myself to the wooden bench, and had to decide that he was exactly a boy no longer. All undergraduates suffer mysterious and immediate change as soon as they leave Oxford, whether in discreditable circumstances or not. Ivo had changed, and I was without reason to suppose it was for the worse. Indeed, I felt him to have matured, or at least to have got on better terms with himself. Perhaps he had found an environment more congenial than Surrey Four. His mere attire suggested settling down; he wore the kind of dark suit which had lately superseded the black above and stripes below effect previously prescriptive in the City of London. Presumably he had somewhere hung up a bowler hat and furled umbrella.

  ‘What are you doing now, Ivo?’ I asked.

  ‘Doing? Oh, I’m in a Discount House. It seems to be one of my grandfather’s concerns.’

  ‘I’m sure it is. What happens in a Discount House?’

  ‘I don’t really know. We advance the value of bills before they’re due. There seems to be a lot of money in it, although I can’t think why. Not that much of it comes to me. I’d say I’m a kind of remittance man who stays put. And they don’t bother to explain anything to me. What’s a bill, for example? It seems a pretty central point. But I just don’t know.’

  I felt willing to credit Ivo Mumford with a glimmer of divine discontent. Incongruously, moreover, his former neighbour, Nicolas Junkin came into my head. Ivo’s mind seemed to be taking on something of the groping quality which distinguished Junkin’s intellectual progress.

  ‘Is there anything you’d rather do,’ I asked, ‘than discount bills?’

  ‘Well, I have thought a bit. You see—’ Ivo broke off, startled at finding himself on the verge of confidence. ‘But I don’t know. Everybody’s very nice, of course. A lot of little men with one foot in the grave, and quite prepared to accept me as in the nature of things. Not that that isn’t rather uncomfortable. There are girls too. Most of them just think I’m good for a meal at Le Gavroche or Le Grand Vefour. They couldn’t get it wronger than that, could they? But not all of them. One or two are quite game for a lay, if you ask me.’

  This interesting approach to Ivo’s social life was cut short by the arrival of his father. Tony made no apologies, his note being one of hurrying hospitality. Ivo and I might alike have been badly in need of a square meal, which was an improbable supposition in either case.

  ‘Take your time, of course,’ he said to me as I was handed an unsurprising bill of fare. ‘Don’t think I have to hurry off.’ He must have judged he had overdone the bustle. ‘The turbot’s reckoned the thing, you’ll remember; they bring the whole of it on a lordly dish. It’s just that my father may be dropping in round about coffee time.’ It struck me as a point of grace that, in his son’s presence, Tony refrained from referring to Cedric Mumford by an unfilial periphrasis. ‘I think he’ll be able to tell us he has the whole thing tied up. Some say he’s past it – but you damn-well have to give it to him. He has those chaps right under his thumb.’

  ‘Have they told you so?’ I asked.

  ‘I expect my grandfather has,’ Ivo said, speaking for the first time. His father’s arrival had produced something of a regressive effect; he was again the wary and defensive youth who had once come to lunch with me in college.

  ‘He naturally keeps me informed,’ Tony said, comfortably. ‘Mind you, I admit that his idea may seem a little odd. It invites the trustees to go a shade out of their way, without a doubt. But, you see, there was a connection between the Mumfords and the Blundervilles—’

  ‘A family connection?’ Ivo asked. ‘It’s the first I’ve heard of it – and all balls at that. In the Blunderville heyday, the Mumfords were the next thing to proles.’

  This was a rude speech, but somehow I didn’t altogether dislike it. And Tony seemed unoffended.

  ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘Of course not a family connection. But a good deal of political association, which the trustees may perfectly properly recognise.’

  ‘Are you talking about the conditions you mentioned on the telephone?’ I asked. It seemed that our business was to be discussed in Ivo’s presence.

&n
bsp; ‘Yes, I am. And it turns on something that I’m sure will gratify the college very much – and particularly that pompous old donkey Pococke.’

  ‘He may be pompous,’ Ivo said. ‘And I didn’t like him a bit – not any more than I did the rest of the silly crowd. But I wouldn’t call him a donkey.’

  ‘Quite right,’ I said. And I reflected that Ivo, although he would never be clever, might well hold his own in a boardroom one day. ‘But let your father go on. Tony, just what is going to delight the college?’

  ‘My father has decided to make it a substantial gift on his own account.’ Tony was looking at me wickedly and with extreme enjoyment. ‘Not a legacy or a bequest, mark you. Hard cash now.’

  ‘I simply don’t believe it. It’s difficult enough to believe that you’ve persuaded him to back the college’s interest with those confounded trustees. But that he wants to give us money off his own bat just doesn’t make sense. He detests the place.’

  ‘Yes, he does,’ Ivo said. ‘Do you know? I think he detests it a lot more than I do. I had some quite good times, really. And I got into the Uffington earlier than he did.’

  ‘So you did,’ Tony said humorously. ‘Well, as I was saying, my father proposes to found a scholarship.’

  ‘A scholarship!’ It is probable that I stared at Tony blankly. ‘Your father—-found a scholarship?’

  ‘On condition that the trustees stipulate that a small part of their benefaction be allocated to founding another one. The two things are to be tied up.’

  ‘Do you mean that the trustees giving the college money is to be made conditional upon its accepting your father’s money too?’

  ‘It might be put that way, I suppose.’ I thought that for a moment Tony’s confidence had faltered. ‘Yes, that’s about it.’

  ‘What absolute nonsense!’ Whether my incredulity was wavering or not, I don’t know. At least I fell back upon rather feeble sarcasm. ‘Does your father propose to favour some branch of learning especially near his heart?’

  ‘Oh, no—nothing of the kind. The scholar will be free to read any School the college approves. But the scholarship will have a name. It will be the Ivo Mumford Memorial Scholarship.’

  ‘I see.’ I realised that I wasn’t listening to Tony Mumford cooking up an impromptu fantasy. For here was something authentic, at least. An Ivo Mumford Memorial Scholarship was a conception which could have been minted only in Cedric Mumford’s brain. I glanced at Ivo, from whom I believe I expected an explosive laugh. To my surprise, he had gone very pale.

  ‘I say!’ he said. ‘It’s damned funny, of course. But I don’t think it’s really on. Name in vain. That’s impertinent – even if he is my grandfather. Have to live with it. Like Christopher Robin.’

  ‘My dear Ivo, don’t get it wrong.’ I believe Tony was more surprised than I was by his son’s discomposure, but he managed to speak easily enough. ‘Your great-grandfather was an Ivo, you know, and quite an ornament of the college. Anybody who likes to think it’s his scholarship is free to do so.’

  ‘Ivo? He was nothing of the kind. My great-grandfather was Richard something-or-other – I don’t know what, but it wasn’t Ivo.’ Ivo was now furious. ‘You’re planning to make a fool of me.’

  ‘It was a pet name,’ Tony said, hastily. He now appeared astonished and at sea before his son’s reaction. ‘Everybody had a pet name in those days. It was used by a man’s friends as well as by his family.’

  ‘Where’s the loo?’ Ivo had jumped to his feet, knocking over a wine-glass. ‘Where’s the loo?’ he repeated. ‘I want a shit.’

  ‘Off the hall, to the left of the staircase.’ Tony had gone very pale too. I was abruptly in the middle of a first-rate parent and child row.

  ‘Mr Pattullo’s coming as well,’ Ivo said. This time he almost shouted, so that several of Tony’s fellow-members glanced discreetly round at us. ‘He’s going to be sick.’

  With this unveracious announcement, Ivo stormed out of the room. I glanced at Tony, from whom it seemed reasonable to take instructions in his family contretemps.

  ‘Yes, do go,’ he muttered. ‘And wring his neck.’

  I found Ivo standing in the middle of a large marble- sheathed wash-place. He didn’t seem to be proposing any further retreat.

  ‘I won’t have it!’ he burst out as soon as he saw me. ‘It’s quite beastly of my grandfather. It’s a stupid, stupid gaga joke.’

  ‘It’s certainly that.’ I think I was more interested in the oddity of Ivo’s mind and the manner in which his uneasy self-regard had been pricked than I was indignant about his bad behaviour. It was his bad behaviour that I had to tackle, all the same. ‘It’s certainly that. It’s also, I think, a piece of very great nonsense you’ll soon be able to forget about. But remember this: you and your grandfather aided and abetted each other in getting out your disgusting rag. And that was designed as a piece of stupid insult and insolence to people you were indebted to. Now you’ve come very near to making a most improper scene while a guest in your father’s club. You’ll return to the dining-room at once, Ivo, and apologise to him.’

  I was surprising myself; I must have sounded like an adjutant telling off a subaltern for some near-impertinence to his commanding officer. The trade of playwright, after all, although hazardous, does endow one at times with something of the actor’s assurance. And I must have played my role quite well, since Ivo, although sullen, was instantly subdued. The sullenness prevented my feeling bad. I suppose I was less out of sympathy with Ivo than with his seniors. I was particularly indignant with Tony, who had promised genuine good-offices in the wretched business of the Blunderville money and then let a sadly misplaced sense of mischief lead him into joining in an atrocious charade. At the same time I wasn’t wholly insensible of its allure. There was something undeniably fanny in the vision of the Provost being offered – as it were on a plate – an Ivo Mumford Memorial Scholarship.

  I was struggling with this unregenerate stirring as we returned to the dining-room. Ivo got out his apology as we sat down. This time, our neighbours were careful not to give us a glance. A waiter had already laid a table-napkin over the mess; now he impassively poured Ivo a fresh glass of wine. Tony said something about the choice of puddings. Like his son he was subdued. I began to feel sorry for him. We concluded our meal.

  We went into a smoking room for coffee. Elderly men were reading newspapers and journals, but there was a certain amount of low-toned talk. I wondered what was going to happen next.

  What happened was the voice of the oldest of the extant Mumfords. About it there was nothing low-toned at all. Cedric, as he marched into the room, might have been described as screaming and gibbering. He was accompanied – and it seemed very necessary – by that moderating influence known to me as Jiffy Todd. Jiffy, on this occasion not attired as for the stable, contrived to look as if nothing in particular were going on. In fact, I don’t suppose there had been such a scene in this particular club since it had been London’s most fashionable gaming place in Regency times.

  ‘For heaven’s sake!’ Tony exclaimed. He had sprung to his feet, and now shoved his father into a chair. He turned to Jiffy. ‘Is the old ruffian drunk?’

  I saw Ivo’s eyes widen. Like Nicolas Junkin in relation to another chain of events, he was in a sense the original architect of what was now going on. Probably nothing of the sort occurred to him. For the moment he was simply aghast in a very conventional way. It was true that he had himself nearly created a scene. But he had inherited conventional feelings about exclusive clubs in St James’s and thereabouts.

  ‘Cedric is a little upset,’ Jiffy said pleasantly. ‘Off his balance, in fact. Very understandably. Brandy—wouldn’t you say, Marchpayne?’ Addressing Tony in this rather formal way, he sat down too. ‘Afternoon, Pattullo. Afternoon, Ivo. Some time since we met.’

  This sang-froid – insouciance, indeed – worked. Cedric Mumford fell to a mere mumbling, and brandy was obtained.

  ‘They’ve che
ated me!’ Cedric presently managed to articulate in a cracked voice. ‘Made a fool of me – curse my arse!’ Achieving this extraordinary imprecation seemed to steady him. ‘Not playing at all. Laughing at me behind their bloody mugs. That was it!’

  Glancing at this phrenetic old man, I had no doubt it was indeed that. Who his fellow-trustees were, I had no idea. Some of them may well have shared his brutality of approach to things in general. But I had been right in suspecting that they couldn’t conceivably have thought of backing his eccentric and unseemly plan. If Tony had thought they could, Tony’s customary acumen had deserted him.

  ‘It’s settled,’ Cedric said. ‘They’ve settled it on a vote, and instructed the solicitors. God damn their eyes!’

  ‘So may we ask,’ I said, ‘where the money’s to go?’

  ‘Half to Eton, and half to the Royal Society.’ Cedric glowered at me. ‘Whatever that may be!’

  I caught the next train from Paddington, having had enough, for the time, of the historic Blundervilles, the unhistoric Mumfords, and all their kind. I didn’t quite succeed, however, in turning my mind to other things. I thought of Ivo, idling in his incomprehensible Discount House, and wondered what smothered ambition he had almost disclosed to me. It was probably something exceedingly commonplace: owning a gun-shop, training race horses, becoming a top motor driver on the international circuits. It might, on the other hand, be something quite surprising. I was unlikely ever to know. I did know that he had suddenly broken adrift from what had been the least insecure of his moorings. He had been very much his grandfather’s child. The attachment hadn’t been likely to do him much good – but it had been there, and that was something. Tony had always been too busy forging himself a political career much to concern himself with a son who showed small promise in that or any other rat race: and when Tony had attempted anything with the boy it had been ineptly and on a basis of too little knowledge. Ivo and Cedric, on the other hand, had been in some sort of rapport. Now Cedric had blotted his copy-book. His absurd plan to embarrass or humiliate the college hadn’t been nearly as culpable as his encouraging his grandson to publish Priapus, but it had happened in some curious way to offend Ivo’s vanity. Yet perhaps this conclusion wasn’t wholly just to Ivo. He was maturing after a fashion – I had sensed this – and his grandfather had been revealed to him in his last escapade in a disenchanting light.