The Roses of Picardie

by Simon Raven

  ‘There are one or two things,’ said Jones, S, ‘that we’d all very much like to know first. Like about that girl Balbo and I saw. And in Doctor Helmut’s case there seems to have been a boy –’

  ‘– A nephew of yours somebody said he was –’

  ‘– And lots of other little matters,’ said Jacquiz, ‘which patently require elucidation.’

  ‘All in good time, lady and gentlemen. Such questions must wait. I must retire to rest myself for what lies before me.’ The Canon rose. How upright he stands, Marigold thought. ‘Let all attend,’ he said, ‘at the Church of Saint Honorat in the Fields of Alyssum at the last stroke of midnight. Attend me there or stay away for ever.’

  ‘The Fields of Alyssum?’ said Syd Jones.

  ‘Otherwise called the Fields of Elysium, in either case Les Alyscamps.’

  ‘But they’re closed,’ said Balbo, ‘at dusk. Fenced in and the gate locked.’

  ‘So that you frightful Frogs can charge admission, I suppose,’ said Marigold; ‘whatever one’s being admitted to,’ she added doubtfully.

  ‘You will see what you are being admitted to, madame, in due course. Be worthy of it. As for you, Mr Blakeney, know this: the gates will indeed be locked but they will be opened on the password.’

  The Canon now stalked to and fro among them, murmuring:

  ‘Dans Arles, où sont Les Aliscams

  Quand l’ombre est rouge, sous les roses,

  Et clair le temps,

  ‘Prende garde à la douceur des choses,

  Lorsque tu sens battre sans cause

  Ton coeur trop lourd,

  ‘Et que se taisent les colombes:

  Parle tout bas, si c’est d’amour,

  Au bord des tombes.

  ‘There is your password,’ said the Canon: ‘Au bord des tombes.’

  After the Canon had issued his invitation, he ushered his guests down the rows of statues to the door of his great chamber and remarked that they would know their own way out of the cloister. There was no sign of the girl who had shown them all in, nor of the ‘nephew’.

  When they reached the street, Balbo offered to accompany Jacquiz and Marigold to their car and help them install themselves in the Jules César. The offer was well received, and everyone was glad that Balbo and Jacquiz were making intelligent efforts to turn what might have been an embarrassing encounter into a pleasant if unsought reunion. Presumably, thought Sydney Jones, Helmut and his wife will now ask Balbo for some explanation of myself. In all the circumstances, he felt that Balbo might as well tell the exact truth, and to this effect, in a brief aside, he instructed him; after which he announced to the party at large that he had an urgent telephone call to make, and then immediately went back to his bedroom in the Jules César to make it.

  Theta took Jones’ call when it came through from Arles. Having questioned Sydney very closely about the faint new furrows that had now appeared on Balbo’s brow, and having conferred awhile with Lambda, he told Sydney that it must now be taken as certain that the Godhead had deserted Balbo. He then repeated the instructions which he had given the previous evening. Balbo might now go wherever and do whatever he pleased, Theta said, but Sydney must accompany him closely throughout the day, insist on a bedroom adjacent to Balbo’s at night, and telephone in to Jermyn Street every day around noon and seven p.m.

  After he had given these orders to Jones over the telephone, Theta left Lambda and Q in his office and went to a small waiting room, where Ivor Winstanley was sitting with Len.

  ‘Let’s get this clear,’ Theta said: ‘what do you want with Blakeney?’

  ‘As Temporary Collator of the Manuscripts of Lancaster College,’ said Ivor truthfully enough, ‘I need information from Mr Blakeney about the present whereabouts and past provenance of certain important documents.’

  ‘Important documents?’ Theta’s voice rattled like a bag of plastic draughtsmen. ‘Scientific documents?’

  ‘Yes. Rough notes on experiments.’

  Theta thought very carefully. He looked at Ivor and he looked at Len and then he said: ‘If you found out where these papers were, you would be prepared to let us have a look at them? In return for our assistance?’

  ‘You haven’t been of any assistance,’ said Len.

  ‘But if we were?’

  ‘I see no reason,’ Ivor said, ‘why you shouldn’t be shown them.’

  ‘Yup,’ supplemented Len; ‘you goose us, we goose you.’

  ‘Excellent. Now, would both of you go to Blakeney? If not, which?’

  ‘Me,’ said Len. ‘Ive will be minding the shop.’

  Very well,’ said Theta. ‘Please wait a little longer.’

  Theta returned to Lambda and Q. He told them of his conversation with Ivor and Len about Balbo’s notes.

  ‘It is at least possible,’ said Lambda, ‘that they might provide a valuable extension to his thesis, which is largely a theoretical afterthought. A few hard chemical and physiological details might be very helpful.’

  ‘But surely,’ said Q, ‘Jones can find out for us about them. We don’t need to let these dons loose in Arles.’

  ‘Only one of them will go,’ said Theta, ‘the younger one, not yet a don, by the way, and he, to judge by the look of him, is just what we do need to let loose in Arles. We have, you remember, to procure a piece of Blakeney’s bodily tissue or of his clothing.’

  ‘Preferably both,’ Lambda said.

  ‘If we send one of our own men,’ said Theta, ‘Jones will probably recognize him and, with his knowledge of the affair, guess what kind of thing we’re up to. In which case, being Jones’ – a fond look flickered briefly on Theta’s face – ‘he would watch our man like a kestrel and protect Blakeney from him. But if we send someone who purports to be, who is, an emissary from Blakeney’s old College inquiring about manuscript papers, Jones will suspect nothing and the emissary can help himself to Blakeney’s hairbrush or whatnot at leisure.’

  ‘You think this man will accept the assignment? And how will you explain our request? It is…rather peculiar.’

  ‘I shan’t attempt to explain it. I shall tell him what we want and what we will pay in money down. I shall also tell him,’ said Theta, ‘that people who oblige us seldom regret it, and I shall then draw the obvious corollary. It is the kind of talk that he will understand.’

  ‘So there it is, Provost,’ said Ivor Winstanley, back in Cambridge some three hours after his visit with Len to Jermyn Street. ‘We don’t want to cause any scandal. We just want to settle things tidily.’

  ‘Let us assume,’ said Lord Constable, in the tones of a mathematician who states his data before proceeding to a formal proof, ‘let us assume that Balbo remembers the incident (which he may not) and so can confirm that the folder was tampered with. Let us further assume that the folder and the notes can still be produced, despite all that has since happened to Balbo. If, Ivor, if, I say, these assumptions hold good then there is, I should agree, a very strong case to answer. Rather than try to answer it, I could be prepared to come to terms.’ He gave the impression, Ivor thought, of being a lawyer who was representing somebody else, of being himself a man of total probity a million miles removed from any taint or sense of guilt. ‘In that event,’ Constable said, ‘what would your terms be?’

  ‘First, that the theft of the St Gilles Breviary and The Wandrille Georgics be ignored from now on and totally hushed up.’

  ‘The Third Bursar already knows of it.’

  ‘So may others, by now. But all that is necessary is for you to tell them that consultations have been made in the proper quarters, that the matter is in good hands, and that if there is to be any hope of recovering the volumes, the less noise the better. They will accept that from you without question and for a very long period, if not for ever. Your prestige, Provost, is limitless.’

  ‘Thank you, Ivor. Proceed with your terms.’

  ‘Second, that no further attempt be made to dislodge Jacquiz Helmut, either from his Collato
rship or from the College.’

  ‘I thought you yourself had long since quarrelled with Helmut.’

  ‘Correct, Provost. But I do not think it decent that he should be fouled in the fashion you propose.’

  ‘For the good of the College.’

  ‘The good of the College depends, in large part, on the decent behaviour of its members. No particular and concrete evil can be justified in the name of an abstract good.’

  ‘Politicians down the ages would disagree with you.’

  ‘I am not a politician, Provost, and be damned to those that are.’

  ‘You connive at theft yet prate of decency. People who live in crystal houses, Ivor…’

  ‘Yes indeed, Provost… Do you accept the item?’

  ‘Are there any more?’

  ‘Third: Ivor Winstanley to be re-elected a Fellow without fuss or failure. And that is all.’

  ‘Tell me, Ivor: why have you come to me with your conditions before you have finally established your charge against me? You are giving me time to prepare my case.’

  ‘If Len gets the answers we hope from Balbo, you have no case. If he doesn’t, we are done for anyway. This given, we decided to comply with the wish of your wife – that you should be impaled on the hook, as she put it, and made to squirm at the earliest possible moment – i.e. as soon as we knew where to find Balbo.’

  ‘Do I give any impression of squirming, Ivor?’

  ‘No, Provost. Nor would I myself wish you to. All I want is a beneficial settlement. It is your wife who wants you to squirm, and I depend on her too much to disregard her instructions… which, as I say, were to confront you immediately.’

  ‘How very odd of Elvira. Though I say it myself, she once adored me.’

  ‘You have exploited and humiliated her, or so she says, and I for one am strongly inclined to believe her. Perhaps you yourself hadn’t noticed.’

  ‘Do you know where she has gone?’

  ‘Yes. She asked me not to tell you. And now, Provost Constable: do you or do you not accept my terms, in return for our silence about your criminal and treacherous misappropriation of the Blakeney papers?’

  ‘Let us wait and hear – shall we, Ivor? – what Balbo has to say. Until then – an armed but static truce.’

  Through the efficient offices of Q, Len was able to get a seat on an early afternoon flight to Montpellier, within an hour of his briefing by Theta. As Theta had foretold, Len accepted his assignment without the slightest objection, fully understanding that those who play the world’s game could have no finer allies than the gentlemen of Jermyn Street. And after all, Len thought, as he paid over some of the Jermyn Street cash to the girl in the Avis office at Montpellier airport, the ‘good life’ fund could take no harm from supplementary contributions; perhaps, if he showed willing, they would employ him quite often; nice work if you could get it, though not, he supposed, for the squeamish. But then there were only two things in the world about which Len was squeamish: possible loss of or damage to The Wandrille Georgics, and possible injury, of whatever kind, to Ivor Winstanley.

  Good old Ive, he thought now, as he drove the Avis car east along the autoroute, towards Nîmes and the exit for Arles, good old Ive, a pity he couldn’t come too, but this kind of thing is best left to me. Leave aside the Jermyn Street lark of getting hold of bits of Balbo’s skin or whatever, I am rather better qualified than Ive to jolt his memory about the notes…should it turn out to need jolting. A pity the notes aren’t in the Chamber or the Library; but even if they no longer exist, Elvira and Balbo should be able to make the story stick – provided Balbo is co-operative. Well, I think I can see to that, Len thought, though the Jermyn Street guy who’s already with him may be rather a nuisance. Let’s have no botching, Lenny boy, because a lot depends on this: Ive’s fellowship; Jake’s tenure (not that I give a fuck for Jake, but if Ive wants him seen okay, then I want him seen okay); and your own secure enjoyment, little Lenny, of the money you’ve netted for the Breviary – to say nothing of the Georgics to gloat over. In time, of course, the Georgics may have to go for money; and that’s why it would be good to do more work for these Jermyn Street operators – keep farm-fresh greenbacks floating into the kitty. But as to all that, we shall see. The job just now, thought Len, as he drove past the drowsy dun farmhouses in their twilight groves of umbrella pine, the job just now is to move in like a rattlesnake on Balbo Blakeney in the Hôtel Jules César in Arles.

  ‘But what on earth is he going to do?’ said Marigold for the seventeenth time.

  Balbo, Jones, S, Marigold and Jacquiz were all about to dine together in the restaurant of the Jules César.

  ‘One thing’s certain,’ said Sydney: ‘he’s not going to produce the sparklers. They’re not here,’ he said, ‘or anywhere near here.’

  ‘Not in his immediate possession,’ said Balbo; ‘but apparently deemed to belong to him by…by whatever does the cursing and the blessing.’

  ‘If we’re to believe what he said,’ said Jacquiz, ‘he is going to conduct some kind of experiment which will finally reveal the “rightful owner” of the necklace – i.e. some descendant of the Jew of Antioch. Now, if we consider the place, the time and the rather dubious reputation of the Right Reverend Monsignor, we conclude, I think, that magic is in the air.’

  ‘Black magic?’ said Marigold, making huge eyes.

  ‘Not necessarily. Official Catholic doctrine condemns all magic, but in practice one may recognize that magic undertaken for a benevolent purpose can be classed as “white” or at least as “grey”. The Canon’s declared aim, to give the Roses back where they belong, is at any rate equitable.’

  ‘He also hopes to shift the Curse,’ said Jones.

  ‘Off himself but not on to anyone else,’ Balbo replied. ‘The rightful owner will not be subject to the Curse.’

  ‘Still, his motive is not wholly altruistic,’ pronounced Jacquiz; ‘therefore his magic will be grey.’

  ‘That,’ said Balbo balefully, ‘may well depend on his method. As Jacquiz implies, his choice of venue is – well – curious.’

  ‘What is this place, the Alyscamps?’ Marigold asked.

  ‘A pagan necropolis,’ Balbo told her, ‘which later became one of the most famous cemeteries in Christendom. Roland is supposed to have been miraculously transported and buried there. There used to be hundreds of sarcophagi, buried and unburied; but in the sixteenth century connoisseurs started picking them up cheap from the City Fathers –’

  ‘– The coffins were sold?’ protested Marigold. ‘How shocking.’

  ‘I don’t know. Better be sold off to decorate an agreeable garden than left behind while the cemetery was cut to bits by railway lines and housing estates. That’s what happened later. Small factories went up too – and they pushed through a smelly canal. All that’s left of the Alyscamps now is an avenue with sarcophagi on either side, one or two of a score or so chapels, and the ruins of Saint Honorat at the end. “A broken chancel with a broken cross”,’Balbo concluded abruptly.

  ‘And yet there was that lovely poem he said to us,’ said Marigold. ‘I don’t know much French but… I wanted to cry. Parle tout bas,’ she quoted, ‘si c’est d’amour –’

  ‘– Evening all,’ said a voice.

  Everyone turned and looked at Len, who was standing behind Marigold. Of those present, Marigold had once and briefly known Len very intimately, but never well; Jacquiz had known him well, at least on a professional level, and for quite a long time, but never intimately; Balbo vaguely recognized his face; and Jones, S, did not know him from Adam.

  ‘’llo, Marigold ducks,’ said Len, pressing her shoulder. ‘How do, Jake? Didn’t expect to see you here. No one said.’

  Marigold grinned rather desperately. Jacquiz nodded. Len turned to Balbo.

  ‘Having a fling with old chums, are we?’ Len surmised. ‘And who’s this?’ He looked at Sydney. ‘No, don’t tell me, you’re Jones, S, of Glamorgan, I once saw your pic in the paper, when you
retired.’

  ‘Clever of you to remember,’ said Syd.

  ‘I’m good at faces, that’s what it is,’ said Len, who had in fact been told all about Jones by Theta. ‘Make a hole somewhere, folks, little Lenny is hungry for his dinner.’

  Sydney and Marigold, who were next to each other at the round table, exchanged glances and shifted their chairs. Len seized a chair from a neighbouring table, rammed it into the gap, moved past Marigold with much contact of thighs, sat down, flicked his fingers at a passing waiter and smiled insolently round the table.

  ‘What in the name of God are you doing here?’ said Jacquiz.

  ‘I might ask you the same question. I was sent here to see Balbo Blakeney. College business. Your office kindly obliged with his whereabouts,’ said Len to Jones. He flicked his fingers again, and considerably to everyone’s annoyance was promptly handed a carte by the Maître in person. ‘Appropriate you should be here, though,’ said Len to Jacquiz. ‘We’re trying to raise some old papers of Balbo’s for inclusion in the Chamber…in a manner of speaking. Details after din-din, if anyone’s interested.’ He looked at the carte, then handed it across the table. ‘I expect you speak the lingo, Jake. Just tell him I’ll have the second most expensive item for each course – Ive says that’s a sound way to play it. And a bottle of his second most expensive bubbly.’

  Confronted with twice as many people as he had expected, Len decided that his business with Balbo had better be plainly stated to all four of them. After all, Jacquiz, and by extension Marigold, also stood to benefit and must surely be on his side; and as for Jones, an instinct told Len, before he was halfway through his Terrine des Poissons, that Jones would go along with whatever Balbo wanted. So if Balbo was going to be helpful, that was fine; and if he wasn’t going to be, well, things would get rough anyway and there would be no point in trying to keep anything from Jones, S, of Glam.