by Simon Raven
‘Not at all. It’s such a joy to see one of the family again. Miss Rosie always stays at that hotel when she’s in London, and your lady mother hasn’t been here…since I don’t know when. Talking of whom, Master Marius, I must have a quiet word in your ear – when you’ve had your dinner, of course.’
The telephone rang. Crystal answered it.
‘It’s a Mr Milo Hedley, sir, for you.’
‘How did you know I was here?’ Marius said.
‘We shall always know, Marius,’ Milo Hedley said. ‘In this case Raisley happened to telephone Lady Canteloupe to make sure you’d settled in all right, and she said you’d had to go. So I guessed where. Why did you have to go?’
‘Lady Canteloupe was worried and unhappy about something.’
‘I see. She doesn’t like her work. Did you do yours?’
‘I tried my best.’
‘Good. Then here’s Raisley for you.’
‘…Ah, Marius,’ said Raisley Conyngham in his sweet and plummy voice. ‘So how shall you fill the time before returning to School?’
‘I must see my lawyer in London, sir. Then I was thinking of a trip down to Cambridge tomorrow.’ I might as well own up straightaway, Marius thought. Mr Conyngham will find out anyway.
‘With anything particular in mind?’
‘I’d like to see Lancaster College again.’
This was only part of the truth, but it would serve.
‘Excellent. You go with my blessing. And Marius: you might do yourself a good turn by calling on Sir Tom Llewyllyn. After all, he is your uncle by marriage, one might say, and your father was one of his oldest friends. I hear Sir Tom has not been very well lately, so telephone his Lodging before you go there.’
Without further remark, or even a form of farewell, Raisley Conyngham rang off. Now I’ll have to go and see Sir Thomas, Marius thought. But perhaps he’ll be too ill to see anybody. And in any case, there’s really plenty of time both for that and the other thing.
‘How shall I approach Conyngham?’ said Canteloupe, as he and Glastonbury sat down at one of the Backgammon tables.
‘When, in the normal course of events, would you next go down to your School at Farncombe?’ Glastonbury said.
‘To see the first decent cricket match which the XI is playing at home.’
‘Right. Take me with you when you go. I’ll introduce you to Raisley Conyngham – and help with the conversation if needed. He’ll be very quick to take our meaning, as I told you at dinner. What do we play for these days?’ he said, setting up the pieces.
‘A hundred a point.’
‘Make it two,’ said Glastonbury, who was conscious of having rendered and promised important services for which, as he invariably beat Canteloupe, he would now be very well paid.
‘The thing is, Master Marius,’ said Crystal as he served Marius with coffee, ‘that my wages ain’t being paid any more. Nor haven’t been for several months.’
‘Who should pay them? The lawyer?’
‘No. Your mother. Every month she sends me a cheque from France. Or rather, she used to. There’s been nothing since Christmas.’
‘No notice of dismissal?’
‘No, sir. Just nothing.’
‘My mother,’ said Marius with a pleasurable sense of disloyalty, ‘is going through a nasty patch of meanness. She’s obviously forgetting your wages on purpose. In which case it will become harder and harder to get the arrears out of her. I have to see Mr Groves, the solicitor, tomorrow. I’ll try and arrange it all with him, so that there’ll be no more mistakes for the future. And now, Crystal, is there such a thing as a glass of port about the place?’
Theodosia Canteloupe walked across the Great Court in the moonlight and stood for a while in the Fives Court.
It was like being possessed, she thought. Mindless, like an animal; thank God I managed to hold back at the end. Please God his seed has already taken and there need be no more coupling. And yet, she thought, he was so beautiful. If Palairet was Galahad, Marius is Achilles. Achilles…to be admired, adored even, but not fondled and paddled on, nor rubbed against and frotted on, until both of us become beasts, and the two beasts become one, the beast with two backs. Never for me Achilles the panting fornicator, but Achilles the warrior. Achilles, son of Peleus, she thought; ‘Achilles his Armour’. Where did that come from? From Sir Thomas Browne, she thought. And then she remembered the old story (which Canteloupe and she had read together in the Iliad during the early days of their marriage) about the forging of that armour, how Thetis came to Hephaestus to ask it as a boon, and how Hephaestus wrought the shield: ‘“Therein he wrought the earth,”’ she quoted softly to herself, leaning against the buttress of the Fives Court, ‘“therein the heavens.”’ – she stepped out of the Fives Court and looked up at the sky (just as she had done that time with Canteloupe, as they sat reading together on the balcony in Nauplion), picking out, as she spoke the names, such of the stars as she could find above her – ‘“the Pleiades, and the Hyades (the Raining Ones) and the mighty hunter, Orion, and the Bear, that men also call the Wain, that circleth ever in its own place, and watcheth Orion the hunter, and alone has no part in the baths of Ocean.”’
‘Who,’ said Marius to ‘Young’ John Groves in his chambers in Lincoln’s Inn, ‘were my father’s executors?’
Outside, the sun was shining on grass and river: in John Groves’ chambers there was a dank gloom as if Cocytus were flowing through the room.
‘Your father’s executors,’ said ‘Young’ John Groves in a voice like the sound of a vice tightening on metal, ‘were your mother, Lord Canteloupe and myself.’
‘What’s Canteloupe got to do with it?’
‘He was your father’s partner in the publishing firm.’
‘Well, look, sir,’ said Marius. ‘My mother is being stupid and difficult. Let us charitably call it the change of life. She has become unbelievably mean with money, and excuses herself by talking socialism. We must behave just like anyone else, she says, even if it does make us miserable, in order not to take advantage or cause offence.’
‘That kind of thing is very much in the air,’ ‘Young’ John Groves ground out.
‘So, first: she can’t, I hope, reduce or cancel my allowance?’
‘No. The annual amount you are to receive, increasing as you grow older and periodically adjustable in the same ratio as inflation, is laid down in your father’s will and must be paid to you until you are twenty-one – at which time, of course, you will inherit a capital sum.’
‘And no malicious person can prevent this – not even an executor acting “in my own interest”?’
‘Your mother has already tried,’ grated ‘Young’ John Groves, ‘on the grounds that so large an allowance to so young a person was “socially and morally unacceptable”.’
‘I don’t know that it’s as large as all that,’ said Marius. ‘What did you tell her?’
‘That I am not a moralist but a lawyer.’
‘So that’s all right. Now, second: my mother has ceased to pay the cook at the London house. What’s to do about that, sir?’
‘Nothing that I know of.’
‘It’s important that the place should be kept going.’
‘I thought none of you went there?’
‘Very seldom. It is, nevertheless, a convenient pied-à-terre. And Crystal, the cook, has deserved well of the family.’
‘There is a fund available to you, on which you may draw, with my approval, for emergencies and unexpected contingencies. If your mother is so – ah – variable, you could pay her (Crystal the cook, I mean) out of this fund yourself, thus stabilizing the situation.’
‘Him.’
‘Who?’
‘Crystal the cook.’
‘Crystal is his surname, I apprehend.’
‘No. He just likes to be called Crystal. Sometimes he wears a skirt. He cooks even better when he wears a skirt, though he also cooks deliciously in trousers. Will you please write
to him, sir, pay him the arrears he’s owed since January the first, and tell him that from now on he’ll be paid by you. Don’t mention me.’
‘I must know (a) his surname and (b) the amount he has been receiving.’
‘I know neither. Ring up the house, please, and ask him.’
‘Very well, Marius. You’ll have to sign an authority. I shall give my approval, as you obviously feel strongly about this; but I warn you: if you are to continue paying – ah – Crystal’s wages, it will use up most of the interest annually generated by your emergency fund.’
(And I shall lose the interest on the interest, he thought; but this boy must be humoured he stands to be an important client later.)
‘A pity and a nuisance, but it can’t be helped,’ said Marius. ‘Last of all, sir: please write to my mother and tell her she need no longer pay the cook, as other arrangements have been made. And I hope that makes her ashamed of herself. Only nothing can. Nothing ever could,’ he said, rather gleefully.
‘Your mother’s father, Sir Edwin Turbot, now mercifully deceased,’ said ‘Young’ John Groves, ‘was reputed the most shameless man in the Lower House, with the exception of Winston Churchill.’
‘My mother sometimes speaks of him even now,’ said Marius. ‘It seems he used to cram whole crumpets or muffins into his mouth, and then swallow them unchewed, like a boa constrictor.’
‘Young’ John Groves laughed, as merry, thought Marius, as a leper’s bell. Anticipating Groves’ rising to give him his congé, he himself rose first to mark his status. This gruesome old man was his paid servant: it was for him, Marius, to indicate when the discussion was at an end.
It was now just before noon, he read from ‘Young’ John Groves’ sepulchral clock: he could have his luncheon on the train and be in Cambridge by half past two…in good time for everything.
Carmilla Salinger, Lady Canteloupe’s twin sister, was a junior history don in Lancaster and had a set of rooms in Sitwell’s Building, from one window of which she could look down, to her left, albeit at a very sharp angle (north by east), at the South Door of the Chapel. This is what Carmilla was doing, standing tall and easy at the window, when Marius knocked on her door at a quarter to three.
‘Marius Stern,’ she said, as he came in.
‘Miss Salinger.’
‘“Carmilla”, I think, now.’
‘Carmilla,’ he said with pleasure.
‘What are you doing in Cambridge?’
‘I have come to see Provost Llewyllyn.’
This, he had decided, could be trotted out as the official reason for his visit.
‘He is one of my father’s oldest friends,’ Marius went on, ‘and I have not seen him for a very long time. Not since the Christening of his grandson, Tully Sarum, in the Chapel here three years ago.’
‘You will find the Provost sadly changed.’
‘I have also found Tully Sarum sadly changed.’
‘You have been in Wiltshire? With my sister?’ she asked, knowing the answer and the reason.
‘I have been in Wiltshire with Theodosia.’
‘A pleasant visit?’
‘Marvellous. But far too short.’
‘I see,’ said Carmilla.
‘Too short,’ he said, ‘and not likely to be repeated.’
‘So having formed a taste for our…company, you have now come to me?’ She laughed. ‘You lovely little shit,’ she said; ‘you’re as bad as Jeremy Morrison.’
‘You liked Jeremy Morrison. He told me.’
‘Did he now? Well, yes, I did like Jeremy Morrison. And I could like you very well, Marius Stern, you with your green eyes and your beautiful blond hair –’
‘– Carmilla –’ he said, going towards her.
‘– Were it not for one thing.’
There was a knock on the door. Entered a short, grizzled man with a short grizzled beard, dressed in a dark grey pin-stripe suit, an Old Etonian tie and beautifully polished black brogues.
‘Richard,’ said Carmilla to this man, ‘here is Marius Stern, Gregory’s boy. This,’ she said to Marius, ‘is Richard Harbinger. Your father published his books. The firm still does,’ she said.
Richard Harbinger shook hands with Marius and kissed Carmilla sharply on the lips.
‘Marius Stern,’ he said to Marius, and ‘Darling,’ to Carmilla.
‘Richard Harbinger, the explorer,’ said Marius.
Harbinger preened, very slightly.
‘I very much wish,’ said Marius, ‘that I could stay and talk to you. But I have an appointment with the Provost. So goodbye, sir. Goodbye… Miss Salinger.’
Well, through Marius, as he walked round and behind Sitwell’s Building and towards the Provost’s Lodging, it was only a sixty-six-to-one shot, as Jeremy would say. I really had quite good value during the running; just for a moment I thought I was going to pull it off.
‘Look, sweetheart,’ said Len, the Provost’s Private Secretary, when Marius had arrived at the Lodging and been shown into the withdrawing room, ‘I know you very considerately rang up from London, and I know we agreed you could come here, but the old darling’s had one of his turns, and I wouldn’t want you to see him just now.’
‘What’s wrong with him?’ Marius said.
‘Anno Domini,’ said Len. His tongue flicked like a lizard’s between his long, thick lips.
‘He is roughly my father’s age. Not much more than fifty.’
‘It takes people different ways, darling,’ said Len. ‘To some seventy is nothing, to others fifty is more than enough. A lot depends on what has been happening.’
‘And what has been happening?’
‘The elms in the College Avenue went rotten, for a start. He had to give the order to destroy them. And then his daughter Tullia – you know about her?’
Marius nodded.
‘My cousin,’ he said. ‘Tullia, usually called Baby. Canteloupe’s first wife, mother of Tullius called Sarum.’
‘And there’s another trouble for Tom. His grandson, Tullius called Sarum. There have been…dismaying reports.’
‘I don’t wonder,’ said Marius. ‘I know all about him.’
‘One way and the other, duckie, you seem to know all about rather a lot.’
‘All these people…are my connections,’ said Marius.
Len giggled.
‘You make yourself sound like a racehorse,’ he said. ‘They have connections, you know.’
‘Yes,’ said Marius, ‘I do know. I was recently the connection of a racehorse. A very humble one, but nevertheless a connection.’
A dark and exceedingly pretty young man with a street arab’s eyes and a pronounced limp came into the withdrawing room.
‘The Provost will be all right for a while if you leave him to sleep,’ said the young man to Len.
‘How did you cope?’
‘I sang him a Sicilian song, about how the tree nymphs are resigned to die peacefully with the trees.’
‘Here is another connection for you,’ said Len to Marius. ‘Piero Caspar… Marius Stern,’ he said to Piero.
Piero looked hard at Marius and said nothing.
‘I suppose,’ said Marius with commendable savoir-faire, ‘that you were trying to comfort him about the elms in the College Avenue – singing that song? Mr Len has just been telling me about them. You must have gone to a lot of trouble to find exactly the right one.’
‘Easy,’ said Piero, who had now, it seemed, decided to accept Marius and favour him with speech. ‘I made the song up. It consoled him slightly, as I said. But other things will be less easy. No song I can make up will console him, even slightly, for his daughter. The only hope for Sir Tom,’ he said to Len, ‘will be summer and company. Lots of company.’
‘“’Tis company, villainous company, hath been his ruin,”’ said Len, ‘if one really cares to go into it.’
‘Good company may be his restoration. Temporary at least.’
‘But who is there to provide it?’ said Len.
‘Jeremy and Fielding are in the East. Gregory Stern is dead and his wife turned lesb –’
He pulled up out of respect for Marius.
‘Say it,’ said Marius. ‘Lesbian. If only that was all. She has also turned feminist, leveller and a wretched screw about money. Luckily the lawyer has been one too many for her…so far. You know,’ he said, not knowing why he said it, but obscurely feeling that Raisley Conyngham would wish him to grasp the opportunity offered, ‘I know somebody who could be very good company for Sir Thomas later this summer. I have a friend at School: he is called Milo Hedley…’
‘What was he doing here?’ said Harbinger to Carmilla.
‘Never mind him. Mind me.’
‘I think he was sniffing.’
‘What nonsense. He’s far too young. Yes. Like that, Richard. More. More.’
‘Don’t let me find him here again. Arrogant little swine. So he’d have liked to stay and talk to me, would he? – but he had an appointment with the Provost.’
Carmilla, who knew that all this was passing because Marius was tall (or soon would be) and fair, whereas Harbinger was stubby and swart, soothingly said, I haven’t seen him for three years and don’t expect to see him for another three. It’s just that because his father was Gregory Stern we are both very large shareholders in the same firm. Salinger, Stern and Detterling, as it now is. I am on the board, and he will almost certainly be when he takes full control of his shares at his majority – not so very long now. So finding himself in Cambridge, he came to call on me – as a civility.’
‘Let one civility be enough,’ Harbinger said.
A funny old afternoon, thought Marius on the train back to London. It was a pity I couldn’t see Sir Thomas; I’d tuned myself up for it. I wonder how ill he really is? That lame man, Caspar, seemed to think he was on the way out: ‘No song I can make up will console him, even, slightly, for his daughter.’ His daughter Tullia, dead in Africa (of what?); my cousin; usually known as ‘Baby’. Sir Thomas, of course, is my uncle by marriage with my mother’s sister; but people don’t refer to that very often because the poor lady is mad. I can hardly remember her, it is so long since she was put away. So Sir Tom is seldom ‘Uncle Thomas’, but usually ‘Your father’s old friend, Tom Llewyllyn’. Who is on the way out, Piero Caspar more or less said. But slowly. ‘His best hope will be summer and company’, something like that. I wonder if they’ll take up my suggestion about Milo Hedley. That secretary man, Len, seemed interested. Perhaps they’d ask me as well. Why not? Anyway, I think Milo would like it: it would be a good introduction to Cambridge for him (though he isn’t going to Lancaster), and he’d enjoy the atmosphere: he’d enjoy Len and Caspar. There’s a distinction about them both, along with an air of mystery, as if there were always some intrigue going on, simmering away in the next room. It was typical that Caspar had made his song up. Not any old song off the peg, but one tailor-made for the meeting. I think Milo would enjoy that kind of a thing, and that Mr Conyngham would wish him to enjoy it.
