by Simon Raven
‘For I remember a service that was held in this chapel very soon after the war in Europe ended. The Senior Usher read out the names of the fallen. (Alastair Edward Farquar Morrison, Victoria Cross, the Norfolk Yeomanry: elder brother of Peter Morrison, that is now called Luffham of Whereham.) And then the headmaster of the day gave a very striking sermon, not popular at the time, but which I have remembered, ever since, for its charity and truth. Not, you understand, that charity and truth are necessarily much in my line, but they are qualities which, one way or the other, impress. The headmaster said that there was no going back to the old life which we had led before the war because the enormity of what had occurred was too great to be ignored, and henceforth all our efforts would be required for its purification. (Lancelot Sassoon-Warburton, Ninth Lancers: I rather think he won the Grand Military, just before the war, up on his own horse, Lauderdale.)
‘We were angry with the headmaster that afternoon, myself and others, because we knew that the evil, the enormity of which he spoke, was none of our making, and we wanted – we were surely entitled to – reparations for the misery of the last five years, reparations from those that were guilty…rightful bounty, to us, as rightful conquerors. So although I always remembered and theoretically admired the head man’s moral sermon, given on the Sunday just after the war, I also thought, as we all thought over the years, that I had been cheated: I had not been accorded a warrior’s prizes; I had been blamed, or at least harassed and discommoded without restitution, because of an evil which others – the Germans – had set in motion. (The Honourable Andrew Usquebaugh, Midshipman, the Royal Navy.)
‘So what in the end had we been fighting for? Not for ourselves, nor for our country as we wanted it to be, but for somebody else’s conception of our country as his conception of duty would order it. We had been fighting, in a word, for the headmaster, that he might survive in safety to hector and lecture us in the name of morality. So we ceased to play a straight and open game, as we had used to play, because those that did so were from now on and forever to be sanctimoniously pestered, by the headmaster and others far worse. We began to play little private games instead…out of the way, where the headmaster and the rest could not get at us or at our gains. Disallowed the rewards we had won honestly, we recouped by dishonesty: by fraud or deceit or sharp practice we made for ourselves little glades or oases of private wealth and pleasure…only to find, of course, that even here we were interfered with, by ill chance or the malice of God. (Geoffrey Alaric Williams, the King’s Shropshire Light Infantry.) I myself, granted a great inheritance, could not, of course, render it entirely private. But I was able to indulge certain private plans for it, who should have it after me and how he should enjoy it. I was able to defy (up to a point) regulation and prohibition, the interference of the headmaster and his agents, until I had the thing shaped as I liked it.
‘That’s the kind of thing that I had been fighting for,’ said Canteloupe, slapping the palm of his right hand on to the marble of the 1939-45 Memorial Screen.
‘You never fought at all,’ said Glastonbury. ‘You never heard a shot fired closer than three miles away.’
‘I helped you with your dirty work in Delhi,’ said Canteloupe, ‘dirty work that had to be done for King and Emperor. That was contribution enough.’
‘Gentlemen, gentlemen,’ said Raisley Conyngham. ‘You were saying,’ he said to Canteloupe, ‘that despite the moral pronouncement and striving of the former “headmaster” and his like, you had managed to proceed effectively in private, “until you had the thing shaped as you liked it”. Am I to understand that this state of affairs still obtains – or not?’
‘The general shape is still well enough. One particular element is faulty. It will be replaced, but there will still be a problem.’
‘Be plain,’ said Glastonbury. ‘Conyngham is a man of the world, as you are. He will pardon your long exordium’ – Glastonbury pointed at the 1939-45 Memorial Screen – ‘if only for its historical interest, but the time has come to declare yourself. This boy,’ Glastonbury said to Raisley Conyngham and pointed at Milo Hedley, ‘you’re sure he’s to be trusted? He was slinking about in rather a sinister way at that race meeting at Bellhampton.’
‘He was obeying the orders I had given him.’
‘Very well,’ said Glastonbury. ‘What Canteloupe wants to tell you is that his heir, Lord Sarum of Old Sarum, is unsound. He can see his way to procuring a new one –’
‘– Ah,’ interrupted Raisley, ‘my surmise was correct. That was what was wanted from Marius. Has he done his duty?’
‘I think so,’ said Canteloupe, thinking of what Thea had said, heedless of Leonard Percival, when she had come to them in the Rose Garden. ‘I think so,’ he said, ‘unless Lady Canteloupe is much mistaken. Is Marius anywhere around, by the way? I have an unwise desire to thank him. Perhaps a tip would be in order.’
‘Marius is playing cricket for the School Under Sixteen XI,’ said Milo Hedley, ‘at Christ’s Hospital.’
‘Not available, then. Just as well, I dare say. Though it is some time since I have seen him, and I should have liked another look at his father’s son.’
‘And at your own son’s father?’ said Milo Hedley.
‘Tut, Milo,’ said Raisley Conyngham. ‘But if things come about as Milo indicates,’ he said to Canteloupe, ‘if Lady Canteloupe is with child, and if the child is male, and if there are no unfortunate complications of the kind that have affected Lord Sarum, then your problem is well on the way to being solved.’
‘A lot of “ifs”,’ said Canteloupe. ‘And even if they all run my way, there is still a problem.’
‘Oh yes?’ said Raisley.
‘You must know what it is.’
‘I must hear you say it, if only in order to be certain.’
Canteloupe turned to the 1939-45 Memorial.
‘“Alastair Edward Farquar Morrison”,’ he read. ‘He was killed outright, leaving his younger brother, Peter, undisputed heir to the family estates. No problem there. Peter himself has two sons: Jeremy, the younger, who is quick; Nickie, the elder, who is as good as dead. But not quite dead. Mad, in St Bede’s Asylum. Luckily, in the case of the Morrisons the entail provides that if the eldest son is a lunatic or similarly incapacitated he can be set aside, while the rights under the entail escheat to the next in line. So there is no real problem there either. But there would be, if Peter’s barony were a proper and heritable one instead of a squalid life peerage. If the barony could be inherited at Peter’s death, it would be inherited by poor Nickie in St Bede’s, whose brain has rotted in his head. Now, my title, my Marquisate, can be inherited and must go to the first-born son. Do I make myself plain now?’
‘Yes,’ said Raisley, ‘but pray be direct. If, as I apprehend, you want my assistance, you must say the thing direct.’
‘Very well. Tullius, whom Glastonbury calls Sarum of Old Sarum, must soon be gone, in order to give his place, all of his place, to the new heir. He must not be put under care at St Bede’s or in La Soeur’s Nursing Home –’
‘– Ah,’ said Raisley, ‘I wondered how soon his name would crop up –’
‘– He must be gone, quite gone. He must have, of course, a kindly going of it…if possible one worthy of his present situation. He must have a going which can be suitably recorded by a noble or at least distinguished monument. Have I said what you wish to hear?’
‘Yes,’ said Raisley Conyngham. ‘There is a neat and ironic solution. Tell them, Milo.’
‘Marius,’ Milo said. ‘Marius giveth, and Marius taketh away.’
‘We had a rule in India,’ said Glastonbury, ‘that we didn’t use children.’
‘Things have moved on since then,’ Milo said.
‘But why is Marius particularly suitable for this task?’
‘Because Marius is under an oath, or at any rate a bond, of obedience,’ Raisley Conyngham said. ‘He has dedicated himself, and has had that dedication confirmed by a laying on
of hands.’
‘What sort of talk is this?’ said Glastonbury.
‘The truth,’ said Milo. ‘We had the two of them, Tessa Malcolm and Marius Stern. Tessa, Teresa, escaped us, partly because of my clumsiness. But with Marius we did not fail. He is, as Mr Conyngham observes, dedicated – dedicated beyond any possible apostasy.’
‘I think it most damnably repulsive,’ said Glastonbury, like an old prostitute righteously railing against child molesters, ‘that a mere boy should be involved.’
‘Yet you can countenance the removal of a mere infant?’
‘The infant is spoiled, tainted, mentally deformed.’
‘It is at least possible,’ said Raisley, ‘that Marius is spoilt, tainted, mentally deformed. Otherwise we might not have been able to hold him. Teresa Malcolm got away from us easily enough: when she smelt something wrong, she walked straight out. A healthy, normal girl. Now, I agree that Marius looks healthy and normal enough, indeed outstandingly so. Why, then, did he stay with us, after he had had revealed to him just such things as put Teresa instantly to flight? Well, let us not forget that he has a very dubious mental heritage, and that he nearly killed one of his schoolfellows in a fit of fury. And so, my dear Glastonbury, we can plausibly claim that we are not sowing evil in the breast of an innocent child, but merely evoking what is already there…conjuring the demon in the demi-god, Marius the Egyptian.’
‘Canteloupe says he wants a kindly end for Sarum. Can this “demon” provide it?’
‘If so instructed,’ said Raisley Conyngham. ‘Certain types of demon – incubi and succubi, for example – are notorious for their kindness.’
‘I wonder how Marius is getting on with the Under Sixteen at Christ’s Hospital,’ said Jakki to Tessa, as they stood on the terrace watching the First Xl bat against I Zingari.
‘I wish they hadn’t cancelled the Girls’ Under Sixteen against Benenden,’ said Tessa. ‘My big chance, with Hattie Rogers out of the way in Big San. Twenty or thirty runs, or a couple of wickets, and I’d have been in the side for good.’
‘Why did they cancel?’ said Jakki.
‘Someone’s disgusting junkie brother fell down dead on a visit. The day before yesterday. Proper respect must be paid, they said – after all, he was called Lord Ferdinand something. God, how right Milo Hedley always was about all that – junkies are nothing but a boring bloody nuisance.’
‘So are all ill people, come to that,’ said Jakki.
They both considered this indisputable comment in silence. A shambling figure, which for some time had been making its way round the ground from the pavilion, started up the steps on to the Terrace.
‘The Senior Usher,’ Jakki said. ‘I hope he’ll do his Art Lectures again this winter.’
The figure tripped, stumbled and fell sprawled across the steps.
‘Come on, girl,’ said Tessa.
They ran to the old man on the steps, and after considerable effort got him to his feet.
‘Thank you, ladies,’ muttered the Senior Usher, his mouth oddly twisted. ‘Pray bring me to the Chapel.’
‘It’s a good hundred yards along the Terrace, sir. Hadn’t we better –’
‘– Bring me to the Narthex of the Chapel.’
‘The Narthex?’ said Tessa.
‘West end,’ said Jakki, ‘the bit before the Nave begins.’
‘You see,’ mumbled the Senior Usher, ‘I must read the names once more.’
But now, the girls were thankful to see, he made no effort to move further up the steps or on to the Terrace.
‘“Connaught la Poeur Beresford,”’ he said, ‘“the Irish Guards. Michael John Blood, the Royal Corps of Signals. Tobias Ainsworth Jackson, the Royal Army Ordnance Corps.”’
The old man took a deep breath. ‘“Alastair Edward Farquar Morrison, Victoria Cross, the Norfolk Yeomanry.”’
Slowly the Senior Usher sank to his knees, while the two girls contrived to support him on either side.
‘“Morgan Waldo, Seventeenth Earl of Nonsuch, the Parachute Regiment. Philip James Nettleship, the Army Dental Corps.”’
And now both cricketers and spectators had realized that something peculiar was happening. A crowd began to gather round the two girls and the old man who was kneeling. An officious man came forward.
‘I am a doctor –’ he began.
‘Leave him alone,’ said Tessa.
Such was her tone that the man slunk back, while the crowd gabbled, some in his favour, some in Tessa’s.
‘“Hilary James Royce, the Royal Fusiliers. Percival Nicholas de Courcy Sangster, the Rajputana Rifles. Lancelot Sassoon-Warburton, the Ninth Lancers. Cyprian Jordan Clement Willard Wyndham Trefusis, Tenth and last Baron Trefoil of Truro, the Sixtieth Rifles. The Honourable Andrew Usquebaugh, Midshipman, the Royal Navy.”’
The voice, which had begun to falter, now gained in strength.
‘“Richard Valence, the Royal Scots Greys. Andrew Pergamon Vallis, the Coldstream Guards. Allan George Williams, the Sixth Gurkhas. Derek Williams, the Royal Horse Artillery. Geoffrey Alaric Williams, the King’s Shropshire Light Infantry. Jonah Zaccarias, the Royal Air Force. Emanuel Zyn, the Pioneer Corps.” These, and so many more, that old and feeble and unworthy, I have now forgotten. The chivalry of England, all perished to save their country for touts and rabble.’
An angry chattering came from the group around, as they gathered the old man’s drift. The young fiercely repudiated such undemocratic attitudes; the old, whose attitudes these had once been, were reminded that they had been too feeble to sustain them, that they had lost their stomachs for the fight and been unmanned by egalitarian aggression and sanctimonious drivel; the middle-aged, who were approaching the peaks of prosperity and success, were anxious that no utterance be made that might cause question or disruption. All were against the Senior Usher, except for the two girls, whom chance had made his champions as he knelt on the steps and told his litany of vanished honour. By being the first to come upon him and so having heard his dirge from the beginning, they had, in a manner, eaten his salt, and they could never leave him now.
‘Touts and rabble,’ the Senior Usher repeated in a high clear voice, and fell forward on to the steps above him and into the dark.
PART TWO
The Bower of Bliss
The while some one did chaunt this lovely lay:
Ah! see, whoso fayre thing doest fain to see,
In springing flowre the image of thy day.
Ah! see the Virgin Rose, how sweetly shee
Dost first peep forth with bashful modestee,
That fairer seemes the lesse ye see her may.
Lo! see soone after how more bold and free
Her bared bosome she doth broad display;
Lo! see soone after how she fades and falls away.
So passeth, in the passing of a day,
Of mortall life the leafe, the bud, the flowre;
Ne more doth florish after first decay,
That earst was sought to deck both bed and bowre
Of many a lady, and many a Paramowre.
Gather therefore the Rose whilest yet is prime,
For soone comes age that will her pride deflowre;
Gather the Rose of love whilest yet is time,
Whilest loving thou mayst loved be with equall crime.
Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Book II, Canto xii, stanzas 74 and 75
I saw that little partner of yours yesterday,’ said Richard Harbinger to Carmilla Salinger in her bedroom and her bed in Lancaster College, Cambridge, ‘at that School of his.’
‘I thought we weren’t talking about him.’
‘Oh, I’ve stopped being jealous in that quarter. I’m only sorry that I was so stupid the other day.’
He raised a stout, stubby, hairy leg perpendicular above them both, then slowly lowered it.
‘You see,’ said Harbinger, ‘I’ve seen something since then. I’ve seen young Marius Stern – down at his School.’
; ‘So you have just remarked.’
‘I was there to give a lecture. He came to it.’
‘He would. He knows a good thing when it’s going.’
‘He seemed to enjoy it. He asked me a very pertinent question at the end.’
‘What did he ask?’
Harbinger paddled four fingers on Carmilla’s breasts. Carmilla wished he would go off exploring again. He was quite fun, but only in short bursts. (Perhaps he had reason to be jealous after all.)
‘He asked,’ Harbinger was saying, ‘about the areas that still remained to be explored. Where could I go next, he wanted to know, and actually explore as opposed to merely traversing and confirming?’
‘And where could you go next?’ said Carmilla, trying to keep the eagerness out of her voice.
‘The Planets, I told him. But they were too expensive just now. Under the Ocean – expensive too, but just feasible.’
‘Oh,’ said Carmilla, briefly envisaging Harbinger as Captain Nautilus saluting in farewell (thank God) from the conning tower of a 1914 submarine. ‘When shall you start?’
‘Not till I’ve finished my book. You needn’t worry, darling. I shall be around for months yet.’ (CHRIST.) ‘But what I’m really getting on to is this. After my lecture, Marius came up to me on the dais, to pay the courtesy due to someone with whom he had acquaintance, however slight, and who was now visiting his terrain as a guest. I was wrong about his manners, you see. They are exquisite.’
‘Have a care,’ said Carmilla; ‘it would be unwise in you to fall for Marius.’
‘I shall do nothing of the kind, I assure you. When he came up, the master in charge of the lecture, a man called Raisley Conyngham –’
‘– Aha,’ said Carmilla, ‘the Demon King –’
He seemed civil enough just then. Later, I began to wonder. Anyway, this Raisley Conyngham said that Marius would be given the afternoon off to take me round the School, if I would like that. Which I would. So off we went, Marius and I, to some of the new Social and Medical Centres – bloody silly, those boys will grow up as soft as turds – and also the New Laboratories and the new Music School and the New Christ knows what. So at last I asked, could we go to see the Chapel, the Memorial Chapel, which I had heard was an interesting example of early thirties ecclesiastical.
