by Simon Raven
'Martyrdom,' observed Somerset, cutting into my reverie, 'is a powerful expression. Not to be used of those who dally with the arts and their neighbours' women.'
We all three circled the tomb warily.
'Still,' said the Headmaster, 'at this distance in time Sir Geoffery makes an attractive figure.'
'A joyous sinner in an age of faith, sir?' I suggested.
'If you like. He fits so beautifully, somehow, into his background.'
'So beautifully that he was murdered.'
'Then let us say,' said Somerset, 'that his story fits beautifully into his background. He was deservedly punished for importing heresy and vice.'
The Headmaster looked vaguely troubled at this. The sentiment did not match with his notion of Sir Geoffery as a Chaucerian sinner; it implied something altogether more sinister; it was, he might have said, unworthy.
'I think we can afford to be more tolerant than that.' he remarked, bending down creakily to examine a crack in the side of the tomb.
'We can. sir,' said Somerset, 'because it all happened so long ago. But could they?'
'Some songs and a few love affairs,' I said; 'not very injurious.'
'Scandal,' said Somerset, 'and disorder. Injurious enough.'
'So we are to equate poetry with disorder?'
'As did Plato.'
'Who has ever since been discredited for doing so.'
Our voices rose acrimoniously. The Headmaster smiled and put a finger to his lips.
'Hush,' he said, 'you will disturb the Lord Geoffery. His sins and his songs are both forgotten now. We must let him lie in peace.'
When we got back for supper, the Headmaster's wife handed him a slip of paper. He went into his study to telephone and reappeared, very grave, fifteen minutes later. He nodded apologetically to his wife.
'Supper in twenty minutes, my dear. Please come in here, Somerset, Fielding ... It's Roland,' he said, when he had closed the door. The poor boy's killed himself.'
'Oh, Christopher.' 1 said stupidly.
'Why should he do that?' said Somerset, looking ingenuously from me to the Headmaster.
The latter told him briefly of the police complaint and Christopher's confinement.
'It seems,' he added, 'that he found a pistol of his father's, also some ammunition. He put the pistol in his mouth - '
'I told you,' I interrupted angrily, 'I told you it could only do harm.'
'It had to be done,' said the Headmaster sternly. 'And what I must now say to both of you is this. So far, nothing in this wretched affair directly concerns the school: the whole sequence of disaster has begun and ended in the boy's own home and during the holidays. But questions may be asked, and so I must ask you: do either of you know of anything in the boy's activities at school which might have bearing on all this? Do you?' he said, turning to Somerset.
'I didn't know him very well, sir,' said Somerset, with a hint of smugness. 'Perhaps Fielding can be more helpful.'
'I've already told you what I know, sir. As far as I'm concerned, he was lonely and innocent. Which I suppose could explain what has happened,' I said, gulping back the tears which now threatened.
Briefly and viciously, Somerset smiled at me.
'A martyr to innocence? ' he said.
The Headmaster looked at Somerset with a curious cross between disapproval and admiration.
'It seems there is no more to be said,' he remarked flatly; 'we must not keep my wife waiting.'
The tears which had nearly overcome me had not been for Christopher. They had been tears of vexation that there should be such unseemliness in things, that a convenient pattern should have been so crudely torn. Christopher confined had been someone who could give no more trouble and was at the same time a source of pleasantly nostalgic memories. Christopher confined had been like a well loved book, to be taken down and replaced at will. But Christopher dead was something that had to be explained, by myself to myself and, perhaps, to others as well: in either case an abiding source of concern and nuisance.
'You see now,' said Somerset later that night in the bedroom we shared, 'why I am so averse to disorder. This is the kind of thing which results.'
'You're not blaming me?'
'No,' said Somerset equably, 'I'm not. Even if I did, what's past is past, and my concern, as I've already told you, is with the future. But perhaps all this will serve to remind you that I meant what I said the other day: l will have nothing like this happen while I'm in charge, and in charge I still intend to be.'
'You mean, you'd still make use of Christopher against me?'
'If you stand in my way.'
'Even now ... after this?'
'Let's not be sentimental. What you think of as Christopher Roland will soon be a mass of maggots. What survives him has gone to account elsewhere. Neither the spirit nor what's left of the flesh will worry about any use which I might make of their past.'
'I thought perhaps you might worry.'
'No more than you would,' said Somerset cheerfully, and turned out the light.
The inquest, so the Headmaster was able to tell us three days later, established that Christopher had taken his life while the balance of his mind was disturbed. There would be a funeral service in Tonbridge in two days' time, after which the body would be cremated. Gently but very firmly the Headmaster insisted that I myself, as Christopher's closest friend, should attend these ceremonies with him. This would mark the end of our little house party. Somerset would return home when the Headmaster and I left (by car) for Tonbridge; the Headmaster's wife would close the house and proceed to the school, where the Headmaster would join her after the funeral; and I would return from Tonbridge via London to Broughton Staithe.
'It's a long way to Tonbridge, sir,' I said hopelessly. 'Are you sure you'll have enough petrol?'
'I get an extra allowance. For special duties.'
'I see, sir ... I don't at all want to come with you. I've already been to one funeral these holidays.'
'It will please the boy's parents.'
'How? I mean nothing to them - or they to me.'
'Then let us say,' said the Headmaster, 'that I myself shall value your support.'
There could be no answer to that.
'But that's not until the day after tomorrow,' the Headmaster said, his eyes brightening. Tomorrow is the last day of your visit, the last of my own holiday. In the midst of death we are in life. Tomorrow, yes, tomorrow we must do something memorable. We will walk to Salisbury Cathedral, like pilgrims over the plain.'
'Somerset?' I whispered in the dark.
'Well? '
'What was ... it ... like with Angela?'
'Very pleasing,' said Somerset. 'Angela,' he added conceitedly, 'thought so too. I rather hope we'll get together again before she leaves for India.'
'You've arranged to meet?'
'We correspond.'
So Angela thought Somerset was worth keeping in touch with.
'But what,' I resumed, 'was it actually like? I mean. I always thought it was something quite incredibly different. But in fact ...'
'What do you know about it?' said Somerset crossly.
'As much as you.' Piqued by Somerset's tone. I told him of my adventure in Piccadilly. Perhaps, I thought, I was being rash, but I wanted to tell somebody, and Somerset could never use this against me any more than I could use Angela against him. We were on neutral territory, territory so remote, as Peter had put it, that nothing which happened there could count.
'But buying women,' said Somerset, 'is not at all the same thing. Besides, there's a nasty shock in store for those who consort with street-walkers.'
'Oh?'
'The Lazar of Venice,' Somerset said with relish, 'the French Worm. Otherwise known as the Raw-boned Knight of Germany, the Neapolitan Bone-Ache, the Spanish Sweat, or, tout court, the Pox. It covers you with sores, removes your nose, rots your brain—'
'—For God's sake. We used one of those rubber things. And I washed jolly carefully.'
'Some kinds of dirt cannot be washed off.' said Somerset sententiously.
'Come to that, Angela's not exactly chaste.'
'At least she's amateur.'
'I wouldn't be so sure,' I muttered spitefully.
'What's that?'
'Nothing. Get back to the point, Somerset. Did you find it ... well ... the revelation one's been led to expect?'
'Candidly,' said Somerset, 'no. But then I never expected a revelation. Did you?'
'I think I expected something rather remarkable.'
'Just like all sensualists. You expect far too much of bodily amusements, and then complain when you're disappointed. Ungrateful lot.'
'I'm not ungrateful.'
'You will be,' said Somerset happily, 'if you get the Spanish Sweat.'
'I'm merely surprised that everyone makes such a thing about it.'
'There you have a point. It needs putting in its proper place. As for me,' said Somerset complacently, 'if Angela makes herself available again, I shall be well content. If not, then at least I shall be spared the trouble of making my confession.'
We walked towards Salisbury by way of the Race Course. As we passed the empty stands, I told the Headmaster about Peter and Tiberius.
'We shall miss Peter Morrison,' the Headmaster said, his eyes lowered towards the cathedral spire beneath us. 'I must write to tell him about Christopher Roland. I'm afraid it will come at a bad time, just when he's starting his Army life, but I feel he should know.'
There was a long silence as we started to descend over the downs. The cathedral spire, always visible except when we walked among trees, pointed straight up out of the close like the finger of an Archangel. I accuse. At any moment, surely, the huge finger would point or beckon. This was my beloved son, and because of you he is now a mass of maggots. State your defence.' Please, he was so attractive. That firm body, those golden legs with the silver down ... 'What's that got to do with It? God delighteth not in any man's legs, nor in any woman's for that matter. But we'll say no more of that for the moment. Why did you desert him when he needed your love?'
'There is something,' the Headmaster broke in on this dismal fantasy, 'which I have been meaning to say to you both. A trifle awkward. The question of which of you I shall choose as Head of the School next summer.'
Somerset went poker-faced. The grey sky started to drizzle.
'I think, sir,' I said, 'that Somerset - how shall I put it? - has more appetite for the job.'
'With due respect and without prejudice, that does not necessarily make him the better man for it.'
'I shall be very busy,' I added, 'with cricket and so on.'
None of this was said to placate Somerset or from fear of his devices. Having what I already had, I did not really want more, and I was glad to make this plain. There would be quite enough, by way of business and pleasure, to occupy me next summer.
'By the beginning of May,' said the Headmaster, 'you will have been to Cambridge and either succeeded or failed in improving on your award. I cannot see that you will be as busy as all that.'
'Then let us say that I am not particularly keen.'
'That,' said the Headmaster, 'does not unfit you for the task. It might even mean that it would be very good for you. What do you think, Somerset?'
'I think, sir, that Fielding is not much concerned with whether a thing is good for him or not.'
'And does that unfit him for the position we are discussing?'
'No. I think Fielding would be a good Head of the School, if rather off-hand. I also think that I should be a better one, because I should be more ... more dedicated.'
'To the responsibilities? Or merely to the concept?'
'To both, sir.'
'Well,' said the Headmaster, 'we shall have to see. Meanwhile, I have only raised the point in order to receive your assurances that this will not make for bad blood between you.'
'Not for my part.' I said.
'I'm sure,' said Somerset, 'that I shall have no cause to show ill will.'
As we walked on in the silence imposed by increasingly heavy rain, the huge finger once more seemed about to point at me and the voice of the Archangel spoke again, the more resentfully, I thought, for having been interrupted.
'Why did you desert Christopher when he needed your love?' I didn't desert him: I was going to him, and then he told me not to. 'But you weren't going in love: you were going there to use him.' He wanted to be used. 'He wanted to be loved.' Whatever he wanted he forbade me to go to him. That wasn't my fault.
'Perhaps not; but you'd already withdrawn your love and made up your mind to exploit him; so you'd already betrayed him.' He didn't know. 'Didn't he? And what about the relief you felt when you heard he wasn't coming back to school -because that meant he couldn't be a nuisance later on? How's that for betrayal?' He certainly didn't know about that. 'Betrayal nevertheless. And another thing. When you couldn't have Christopher, you went to a whore instead. How do you answer that?' She'd starve if somebody didn't. 'No good. Fielding.' The voice had now turned into Peter Morrison's. 'I've told you before. It is foolish and dangerous (leave alone the moral side of it) to use people, to take advantage. Look where it's got you. Your mother, whom you've used all these years (don't try to deny it) as a shield against your father - your mother is getting ready to hand you over to Tuck. And what is more' -the voice was blatantly mocking now, no longer Peter's but Somerset's - 'that strumpet you picked up may well have passed on the French Worm or the Neapolitan Bone-Ache or (tout court) the Pox.'
Tired, wet, soiled, crumpled, bored, disgusted and afraid, I entered with my companions into the clammy and obscene chill of the cathedral. The organ piped a malignant miserere and the skeletal banners of vanished regiments hung in menace over my head. A gargoyle verger snickered into the ear of a raven priest. In some shadow, surely, the Furies lurked; at any moment they would proclaim my guilt, infest me with the sores of the Lazar, hurl my putrefying flesh into the pit.
Regardless of Somerset and the Headmaster. I hurried away up a side-aisle, turned right, left behind a wooden screen, walked, with a cold sweat all over me, into a deep shadow. There was something which looked like a stone altar looming in front of me (surely stone altars were forbidden?); an outcast seeking sanctuary, I lurched forward and snatched at the stone block with my hands. Looking down. I saw the figure of a knight and shivered all through my body.
'Go on,' said a low, spiteful voice just behind me: 'have a good look while you're at it.'
'There's nothing for me here.' I said without turning.
'On the contrary. You've come this far and now you must face it.'
Still shivering, I looked closer. The tips of the prayerful stone Angers pointed up to a mailed chin, above which was a full mouth, turned slightly downwards, a soft nose, and mild, beseeching eyes. Christopher. From behind me the voice laughed, amused and pitiless. I turned.
'You shouldn't have run off like that,' Somerset said. 'It was very rude.'
And now another church. Smaller than Salisbury Cathedral but having the same traditional appurtenances. The banners, the tablets in the wall. And the coffin where the transept crossed the aisle.
'When faced with untimely death.' the unctuous young clergyman declaimed, 'we do well to reflect on the role played by the unexpected in this realm below. An established way of life, worldly goods, intellectual systems and disciplines - none can stand against the blind hand of fate.'
The Headmaster sat beside me. boot-faced.
'But,' said the greasy ministrant, 'even when the careful structures of our lives are shattered, when our hopes and ambitions are laid low, there is one supreme discipline 'to which we may always turn for comfort and instruction. If, that is, we will only make ourselves humble enough to be received into it. I refer you to the knowledge and love of Jesus Christ.'
I winced and let out a long, hissing breath. The Headmaster turned his head slightly and looked at me with mild curiosity, as if he would be vaguely i
nterested (no more) to see what I did next.
'I deem it no more than my duty,' said the preacher, 'to say that the boy whose death we mourn today had strayed outside the knowledge and love of Christ. His plans and pleasures had ends which were inspired by influences hostile to true religion. He was young, suggestible; so we must hope and pray that he will be forgiven where he goes. But had others, whose duty it was. encouraged him to be stronger in the Way, then perhaps he would have lived to walk down it.'
I rose. 'I'll wait for you outside,' I whispered to the Headmaster, who nodded, agreeably, companionably, as if indeed he himself were only remaining in his seat because he wanted a few minutes more of rest.
'... Contagion and blasphemy,' the words followed me down the aisle, 'to which this unfortunate boy must have been exposed ...'
God. I thought as I reached the open air, that bloody parson's having a go at the head man. I sat down on a convenient tombstone. 'Contagion and blasphemy.' Contagion. What was that sentence of Huxley's I had read earlier in the summer? 'Somewhere in my veins creep the maggots of the pox.' No. No. Christ, that poor little coffin. Christopher inside it. the smooth thighs, the full, pretty lips. Cold now, unkissable. Cold and rotting: maggots - though kinder in their way than the maggots of the Pox.
A bell started to toll. On something which resembled an hors d'oeuvres trolley the coffin was wheeled out of the church porch and down the path towards the waiting hearse, the driver of which, having reluctantly stubbed out a cigarette and concealed the butt somewhere in his hat, busied himself with the door at the back. Christopher, oh Christopher. No knight's effigy for you. Only the consuming fire. Christopher, forgive me, for I knew not what I did. The Headmaster stood over me.