The Cunning Man

by Robertson Davies

  “Whatever for?”

  “For people who want to know. How shallow you are, Jon. You think those things are just splendid get-togethers of artists of all kinds and friends of the arts, where we restore our souls with music and gossip. Haven’t you noticed how many Jews are there?”

  “So what?”

  “There are a lot of people who would swear uphill and down that they are not anti-Semitic, but who have a tiny sliver of the Hitler glass sticking in their hearts. They wouldn’t lift a finger to hurt a Jew, but perhaps they would not be over-zealous in defending a Jew if somebody else took a swipe at him. Jews, you see, are foreigners. Very obvious foreigners. And there is an ancient tribal suspicion of those who are not like ourselves hidden deep in most of us. Why the Jews? Why not Macedonians or Laplanders? Because the Jews tend to stick out. Their own fault, really. They simply do not assimilate and it’s because they have an echo of Moses still ringing in their ears, assuring them that they are a Chosen Race. Maybe they are, though certainly God appears to have forgotten his deal with them, many and many a time. You ought to know what I’m talking about, Jon. You deal in this sort of thing in your consulting-room all the time—the hatreds and grievances that seem buried in the mythic past, but which work their way to the top at the most unexpected moments. Mistrust of the Jews is only a part of that ancient heritage, though it gets very special attention at the moment because of the ghastly mess in Germany and the uproar that we see every day in the papers from Israel.”

  “Darcy, these Jews we met at The Ladies’ are friends. Not all of them dear friends, but friends. And in this God-forsaken northern hole they bring a breath from a warmer world and a richer heritage. They are an emollient in the structure of a raw society that needs an emollient.”

  “True, my dear fellow, but they are also human beings, and therefore not all white-winged angels. Talk to Jews about it, and they will be the first to tell you that some of their co-religionists are not entirely kosher in business affairs, and that the charming, sophisticated, fine-feathered men and women, and the artists of splendid achievement, are not the entire Jewish people. Many are as crass as any knuckleheaded Aryan you can find out in the boondocks. The thing about the Jews is that even on the simplest level, they tend to have style, and to have style in this, our fair land, is to be a somewhat suspicious character. They bring style to whatever they do; the Jewish lecher, the Jewish drunk (not a very common type), the Jewish con-man, is just as likely to have style as the Jewish artist or his Jewish patron. Beware of style, Jon. You show signs of developing it, and it could be your downfall.”

  “So that miserable little fellow is spying on the Jews?”

  “No, he’s spying on another bugaboo of the frightened classes—the radicals, the Reds, the threateners of Things As They Are.”

  “But you mentioned Cuthbert Wagstaff and Maude Yarde. What in the name of God is there to fear about them?”

  “Wagstaff, editor of Canada’s best political and literary weekly and a brilliant polemicist. Maude Yarde, wife of a professor of history and a member of an old Loyalist family of unblemished repute. But both members of the recently founded Civil Liberties Association, and thus objects of suspicion to the frightened classes.”

  “So they get the police to track them and see where they go and who they know.”

  “Oh, not the police, Pyke. The banks.”

  “What!”

  “Yes, the banks love information and need it. The police—the police have very few spies and they pay badly and grudgingly for what they call ‘information,’ and of course they know quite a bit, but probably not all, of the Civil Liberties Association, because they wouldn’t understand what such people were concerned about. They deal in law, not opinion. But the banks—the banks need spies, and pay them quite well. Not spies in the tradition of the Italian Comedy, of course, no flamboyance, no super-subtlety, not even much brains. Just patient gumshoe work. Joe, there, will report to—never mind who—that Cuthbert Wagstaff and Maude Yarde were at Glebe House this afternoon, where there was a gathering of all sorts of people, many of them Jews and that it appeared to be a musical party although of course that could have been a cover-up. This information will eventually find itself to me, among a few others. And—understand this, my lad—I shall let Cuthbert and Maude know all about it, and they’ll have a good laugh.”

  “This is a complication of duplicity that has my mind swimming. So you are in on this spy stuff, too?”

  “I am a banker, Jon. I need to know a lot of things I can’t find in the telephone directory. Wagstaff and Yarde don’t interest me in that way. But there are friendships, and confidential visits, and of course unusual deposits or withdrawals from banks that do interest me very much. Me, and all the other banks, and some departments of government as well. Suicides and sudden long journeys that astonish people who are not in the financial world do not cause me to raise an eyebrow. It seems to me, my friend, that you have a very simple notion of what business really is.”

  “Probably. Thank God I’m not in that world.”

  “You are in another world, just as complex, and in some ways just as murky. There is no simplicity in any sort of significant life. I rest my spirit in the apparent complexity and actual simplicity of St. Aidan’s; in that splendid ritual much of the grime and slime of daily life is washed away. That’s why I give so much of my time to it. You seem to divert yourself with music and that brings you to St. Aidan’s too. We complicated people must find our repose of spirit in further complexities. We cannot retreat to blockish simplicities.”

  “But this spy business—it shocks me. Really, Darcy, it does!”

  “Then don’t call it ‘this spy business.’ Call it the complex exchange of confidential information in the world of business and government. It is part of the growing-up process in a society and in a city. Toronto is becoming a big place financially. It is backing Montreal into second position. And it is developing the culture appropriate to a large city, as well. I don’t suppose The Ladies have any idea how vital a part they play in that. In its official histories the city will probably never mention them, but in the reality of a great city’s culture their names will be enshrined forevermore.”

  (12)

  Glebe House

  Cockcroft Street

  Toronto, Ontario

  Canada

  Dearest Barb:

  You simply won’t believe it! Our luck has turned, but in such a way—not so much turned as gone topsy-turvy!1 I have always known that life is a damned rum thing, but this is positively the rummest!!!

  You know, I suppose, that the government in Canada is headed by a very big ceremonial wig called Governor-General. But I don’t suppose you know that this time—last time—well, whenever the most recent one was appointed, it was decided that he should be a Canadian. And so he is, and all the stuffed shirts are trembling for fear he won’t be completely kosher, or will lick his plate and eat peas with his knife or be in some way inferior to the grandees that have come out from home to hold the job, ever since there was a job. But not so! He is going great guns, and exerting himself more than GGs usually do, and takes to all the pomp and ceremony like a duck to water—which I suppose is not very surprising as he has been an ambassador and whatnot all his life. But the great news is that some nationalist group wants to have a head of him done in bronze for the National Gallery and he has chosen Dear One to do it! The very first real important recognition she has had.

  But no sunshine without some rain. We had expected that she would be asked to go to Ottawa and set up a pro tem studio at Government House, but no—it seems His Nibs comes to Toronto often—it is where his home is or was until all this grandeur—and he will come to her when he can, and working with photographs and the measurements she can take it should all be done in about four actual sittings, with him posing. So far so good.

  BUT—comes the great day and he is to arrive in time for tea. And so he does. Dear One and I have fussed for three days abou
t how to receive him. She says we must curtsy at first meeting. I say that for an Englishwoman to curtsy to any Canadian, however highly placed, is against Nature and is indeed a kind of ceremonial sodomy and nothing will make me do it. She says, all right, blow my great chance, Chips, don’t let any considerations of friendship or long association stand in your way, principle before everything—and then she weeps piteously and stabs seven swords straight through my heart. But anyhow the day comes and there is no question of curtsying because His Ex walks right into the house and seizes me by the hand and says What a pleasure Miss Raven-Hart, and I couldn’t curtsy even if I had a mind to. Then we have to get it straightened out who is who but the whole thing is put into utter chaos because His Excellency proceeds to introduce his secretary who is also his son, and then his aide-de-camp and guess who that is? You wouldn’t, not in a thousand years. It’s Gussie Gryll!!!!!2

  It seems that Gussie who should have gone back home with the former GG, whom he had served as aide for two years, had put in to the people in Whitehall to stay another two years with the new man—the Canadian man. Why? I strongly suspect that Gussie may have blotted his copy-book at home and wants to lie low for a bit. Can you make discreet enquiries? Is there some ruined maiden somewhere in the Home Counties whose father is looking for Gussie with a horsewhip?

  But anyway, there’s Gussie reaching out his hand to Dear One, smooth as a kitten’s wrist and saying, Emily Raven-Hart as I live! How are you?

  None the better for seeing him, that’s for certain. Dear One goes white as a sheet, but keeps her composure, and we settle down for tea and a talk about how the great piece of work is to be done. But Gussie!—Gussie who created a situation where we had to make a run for it!

  I don’t suppose you ever heard. The Raven-Harts kept it very quiet. But it was like this. Dear One was never really keen to marry Gussie though both families had planned it for years—long friendship and money on his side and good family on hers. But after Dear One and I met in the MTC it was clear that the whole Gussie thing was a ghastly mistake, and that our life together was more important than anything. More important to me, that’s to say, because my poor darling had been so brainwashed by her parents and the awful Home Counties gang they knew that she thought she must marry Gussie and simply couldn’t see any way out of it. But she’s so sensitive, and he’s such a crass lout that it would have been total disaster, and after we had met, she knew it but still thought she had to go through with it. You know how strong conventional ideas are in families like that. Heart-breaking! (My heart among others.)

  It came to a head when the marriage was getting close, and I was staying down at Colney Abbey because I was to be a bridesmaid. Can you imagine it? Me in one of those bloody outfits, taller and tougher than any of the dewy saps who made up the other five? And I was supposed to be Friend of the Family, helping with arrangements because I was so clever with my hands and wonderful at arranging things. Well, it was a couple of nights before the actual wedding day and Gussie had taken Dear One out into the garden for a romantic cuddle I suppose and the old folks smirked and leered and thought it was all simply divine and romantic.

  They were togged up, because on impulse we’d decided to have a fancy-dress dinner and then a hop to the phonograph afterward. Dear One was wearing an Edwardian day-dress of her Gran’s (because everything we wore came out of the Dressing-Up Box in the nursery) and she looked an absolute Dream, with a big hat to top it off. Gussie was a Pirate—he would—easy—just a hanky around the head and a black patch over one eye. I was furious because I had rigged up as a pirate myself, very much the same.3

  Dear One has told me that Gussie was great on kissing and hugging but had never tried anything more adventurous until this night, when he had been getting a bit too heavily into Papa Raven-Hart’s cognac, and they were sitting on a seat in an arbour—very romantic—and he kissed her a few times and then began to sort of snort and hugged her very close and she suddenly realized that he had his hand up her skirt and was trying to get into her panties!

  Can you imagine what that must have been like for a girl like that, so sweet in every respect and I don’t think she had any idea of what men are like or even how they’re made—just the utterly uninformative stuff they dish out in Biology in school. No brothers, like mine, three Oxford Blues stamping around the house making dirty jokes all the time and going to the bath starkers and showing everything and laughing if I averted my maidenly eyes. But instinct is a great thing. Quick as a wink she whipped the long hatpin out of her Edwardian hat and gave Gussie a good jab with it—don’t know where but I think it was in the arm. But that just egged him on. Some men adore resistance and he thought she was just being flirtatious, I suppose, so he kept on with the hand, and then Dear One seized the dagger he had stuck in his sash and let him have it bang in the buzzem, aiming for his heart! But poor darling she doesn’t really know where the heart is, and so she just gashed him a bit and bent a rib.4 I don’t know the medical details. And lucky for Gussie the dagger was as dull as a hoe, so he was really more bruised than wounded. But he gave a howl—outraged male lust, I suppose, and Dear One was able to break away and get back to the house, with Gussie in hot pursuit shouting, “Wait, Em! Hold on a minute! You’ve stabbed me!”

  Figure to yourself, my old one (as the French say), the scene in the drawing-room. Bridesmaids shrieking, groomsmen saying, “What the hell—?”, Ma Raven-Hart trying to find out what had happened, and the Colonel shouting louder than anybody, “Shut up, all of you. A chap’s been wounded! Stretcher-bearers here! Call a doctor at once! By God, Gussie, you need a stiff drink—hold on a sec. Em, you’re under close arrest! Don’t anyone budge till I’ve had a chance to get the situation in hand, do you hear?”5

  Oh, the awfulness of the scene that followed! A doctor turned up, after a while, and gave Gussie some anti-tetanus because the old dagger was green, my dear, with generations of nursery use, and if Darkest Africa has anything more germ-ridden than a well-used nursery, God help us all! And Dear One was in hysterics, so I simply had to Doff the Mask and comfort her as only I can, and I think that astonished some of the young men—Gussie’s friends—who were hanging about with their mouths open and probably deciding that marriage wasn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

  When all the shouting and hoo-ha had died down a bit one of the bridesmaids said, in a mouse’s voice, “I suppose this means the marriage is off, then?6 And you should have seen Ma Raven-Hart! She swelled to about twice her size and roared, “It most decidedly is not off! Everything will go forward as planned. People must come to their senses. Gussie isn’t really hurt, and Emily must apologise here and now, and then off to bed, everybody, and not a word of this beyond these walls.”7

  But Emily didn’t apologise. She wept pitifully and I took her in charge. I must say Gussie said, “Oh, apology be blowed,” which was decent.

  That was it. That really put the lid on it. When everybody had gone to bed we sneaked out the garden door, found my little MG and were off, and in less than forty-eight hours we had taken ship for Canada, because it was the first booking we could get. And that’s it. The Great Elopement.

  And here was Gussie, large as life, behaving as though nothing at all had happened.

  It’s water over the dam now. No turning back. Apparently there’s still no Mrs. Gussie or he wouldn’t be doing this sort of duty. But I hated him worse than ever as he sat in one of our chairs, being terribly polite and deferential to His Nibs. Dear One was able to keep command of herself while she discussed how the head was to be done—a bronze job, none but the best because the Canadian Clubs of Canada are paying for it. It took just under an hour—I suppose these people work in fifty-minute hours, like psychoanalysts, and when they left, the secretary produced a uniform coat of the GG’s so that the collar could be copied for the head. Gussie was all smiles and took leave of me as if he didn’t hate my guts, as I’m sure he does. But Dear One had one of the very worst of her headaches and I had to put her
to bed. And would you believe it, as I brought her a glass of milk she actually said, He’s still very handsome, isn’t he? As if it had all taken place fifty years ago, instead of five! Poor kiddie, she has such a tender heart!

  And it never rains but it pours. No sooner had the GG’s head been ordered than our tenant, Dr. Hullah, decided he wanted something called a caduceus in latten, of all things, made to fit on the wall in the entrance to his clinic. Wants it four feet tall! It’ll cost the earth, sez I, ever practical. Perhaps not quite that, sez he, cool as the proverbial cuke. And he has given Dear One carte blanche about treatment, which means she can really do something in the modern manner. Hip, hip hurray! I am screaming out loud all the time I write, as Miss Fanny Squeers says in her famous letter.

  All our love,

  CHIPS

  VIGNETTES

  1. A smiling sun rising above the horizon, and evil-faced black clouds fleeing.

  2. Gussie, even in Chips’ caricature, looks quite a decent fellow. Her artist’s eye disciplines her lover’s prejudice.

  3. Gussie and Chips—both younger—looking at each other, he with phlegmatic disapproval and she with fury. Both wear a black eye-patch, the conventional mark of a pirate.

  4. Emily stabbing Gussie; she is weeping, he looks like an astonished sheep.

  5. The Colonel, purple in the face, mouth stretched for parade-ground roars. What a moustache!

  6. The Bridesmaid, a mouse in very truth.

  7. Ma Raven-Hart, roaring but without losing a particle of upper-class hauteur.

  (13)

  “What’s latten?”

  “Well, Darcy, I’m delighted to inform you, because it’s so rarely I know something that you don’t know. Latten is an alloy of copper with zinc, lead, and tin mixed in so that when it is finished it takes on a beautiful colour which is like the softest and butteriest brass. Lighter in colour than bronze; not so aggressive as brass.”