by Simon Raven
‘“I’m afraid not, sir,” Marius said. “There’s a funeral on. The funeral of the last of the Senior Ushers. The whole School is there.”
‘“Oughtn’t you to be?” I said.
‘“You heard what Mr Conyngham said, sir. He excused me.”
‘Well,’ said Harbinger to Carmilla, ‘I wasn’t quite happy about that. There was something, I felt, something not quite right about it.’
‘Trust you to poke your nose in,’ mumbled Carmilla, who was being half choked with a mouthful of scrotum.
‘What was that?’
‘Nothing, Dick. Just remarking on your compulsion to explore…’
‘So I followed the thing up. “Surely Mr Conyngham is not your Housemaster?” I said. “No,” Marius said. “He teaches me Greek and Latin Verse.” “And does that entitle him to excuse you from Chapel?” “Someone had to take care of you, sir.” “I could have done very well on my own – I, of all people – and would of course not have minded being left by myself in these particular circumstances.”
‘Then there was quite a long silence, while we walked through the Headmaster’s Garden – open to all these days, apparently. At length Marius said, “You know the old tale about the ship-wrecked mariner who puts a message in a bottle and commits it to the gods of the Ocean?”
‘“Yes,” I said. “What’s that got to do with your not attending Chapel?”
‘“I’ve decided,” he said, “to put a message into a bottle, and let the gods of the Ocean manage its destination and so, quite possibly, mine. Now sir, if I had a bottle with me, the message I should write and put into it would be this: ‘I loved the Senior Usher – his marvellous Art Lectures, his soft, worldly remarks, his decency, his fairness, his kindness, his style, his wit. I wished to attend his funeral…with my friends who felt likewise. I was prevented, by another man whom I also love, but in a different way. I do not understand the other man’s motive; perhaps he is jealous of the dead man’s influence, perhaps he thought that if I attended his funeral that influence would be augmented and perhaps more seriously established than before, because of the solemnity and the melancholy of the occasion. But whatever he thought he has acted most cruelly.”
‘“Then why did you obey him?” I asked. “No man can command you to stay away from a funeral. What would you write, in your message in the bottle, about that?”
‘“I should write, sir, that I cannot disobey him. I might have done once, but no longer. I cannot disobey him without tearing away a part of my entrails.”
‘And then, Carmilla, darling Carmilla, a very funny look came into his face. A sort of adoration, but not just that. There was also a…a look of Cortes about the lad…and a look of Faust. For there was not only love here, but also wonderment, at what had been and would be discovered. And one element more: there was unease, suspicion – there was guilt. Whether this outweighed the adoration and the wonderment, I don’t know and I don’t think the boy himself knew. Probably not; probably the measure was wavering, was slowly sinking the devil’s way, and had been, I think, for some time. But there was still something, something quite substantial, in the other scale. There was still, therefore, doubt…doubt, which he has decided to cast on the waters in his bottle, that the gods of the Ocean may bring the message to whom they will.’
Carmilla crossed the Cam by Lancaster Bridge and walked down the Avenue. Nobody, since the removal of the decaying elms, had been able to decide with what to replace them or how to pay for it; and so now the Avenue had become a naked causeway between the lower-lying meadows to left and right.
Carmilla wished to speak to the Provost’s secretary, Len, who, it had been deposed to her by one of the servants in the Provost’s Lodging, had set off down the Avenue with the Provost himself, not twenty minutes before, on a visit to the Fellows’ Garden on the other side of the Queens Road. Since the Provost had a horror of the denuded Avenue, conceiving that he himself had murdered the trees and the tree nymphs by allowing them to be destroyed, it was surprising, thought Carmilla, that he had let himself be taken that way for his walk. Len must have coaxed and bullied. ‘Come along, Provost dear,’ Len would have said, ‘let’s have no more nonsense about murdering those elms. They were diseased, and they had to go, and that’s all about it.’
A surprising number of people were milling about in the Fellows’ Garden: not only the Provost and Len, but Nicos Pandouros and Greco Barraclough with them, to say nothing of Piero Caspar who was walking (prancing) backwards, lecturing the whole group about something as they advanced. Since the Provost walked on a stick, the rate of the march was very slow, and every time Piero and his club foot cavorted away from his audience by as little as three or four steps he had to return by at least two. Also present were Sir Jacquiz Helmutt and his wife, Marigold, with the Helmutt twins, a boy and a girl, fine free-limbed children, perfectly made and proportioned, impassive of face and apparently voiceless, twelve years old to judge by their features, fifteen to judge by the size and the cut of them, though in fact (as Carmilla had been frequently informed) they were not yet ten. Fussing about Sir Jacquiz was his old friend, Ivor Winstanley, the dilatory Latinist (his edition of Cicero’s Works in Verse was said to be more than a decade overdue), and mooning about Marigold was Balbo Blakeney, the delinquent biochemist and College Wine Steward.
To none of these people except Len (and perhaps Provost Llewyllyn if he were well enough) did Carmilla wish to speak. She therefore settled herself in a canvas chair in the summer house to wait until the passaggio should subside, and took out a paperback edition of Donne’s poems as defence against importunity. But she did not read; she thought.
She thought, first, of the Editor of the volume in her hand, who had recently edited and introduced a selection of Latin Verse of the Renaissance which included a more than usually hideous poem about the pox. This she had read in the interest of research: there was something very indicative about the date of the poem – the author of which had died in 1456. Now, she reasoned, if the Great American (Caribbean) pox came back to Europe with Columbus in the late 1490s, the poem in question, having been written in 1456 at the latest, must refer to a pox from some other source, e.g. from the Levant. It was germane to her thesis to prove the existence of such a pre-Caribbean pox, and this was proving unexpectedly difficult, for almost no historian, no scribe, nobody between Thucydides and Defoe had attempted descriptions of diseases and their symptoms detailed and accurate enough to invite diagnosis. In Propertius’ Elegies swish and promiscuous tarts went into a sort of consumptive decline, while on the showing of Catullus and occasionally of Horace they just seemed to deteriorate piecemeal through excessive activity and ill-judged choice: but nowhere was a proper clinical survey. (And how should there be in the work of lyricists? Though someone like Pliny might have taken on the task.) The best evidence for a pre-1490s brand of the pox was to be found in lepers’ cemeteries, where the remains often showed distinct signs of having been infected by tertiary or quaternary symptoms of the old Raw-Boned Knight, and not by leprosy. But such evidence was difficult and expensive to find, volatile and fissiparous when found. She could, of course, make some use of her immense wealth to obtain and preserve it, but this would be cheating. In the making of her dissertation she must do and make do (she often told herself) as other scholars did.
Next, she wondered what reason had brought so many people into the Fellows’ Garden in the morning of the day, a time at which they ought all to be at work; and she concluded that they had been unable to resist the glamour and enticement of the gaudy spring.
Last, and least, she thought of Richard Harbinger, who had left for London (Hail, Mary) and would not be back for four or five days. The trouble was, she reflected, that these days one was not forbidden to harbour one’s lovers in the College overnight; unofficially, indeed, this was almost encouraged, even by such reactionary (in other respects) elders as Sir Tom Llewyllyn, the Provost. Mean and predatory paramours took advantage of this. Dick Harbinger c
ould perfectly well afford to stay the night – many nights – in the Blue Boar or the Garden House; instead, he hung around after the performance was over, talking incessantly about himself, his achievements and his intentions. Oh for the old regulations, she thought: all non-members of the College to be out by midnight. But then she reflected that, in the days when such regulation obtained, she, as a woman, would never have been allowed in – not, that was to say, as an undergraduate, let alone as a Fellow. One must take the rough with the smooth, she supposed; but very soon now she would have had enough of Richard Harbinger, who was really getting very rough indeed, literally and sexually as well as metaphorically. The man had a particularly abrasive beard; he didn’t give a damn about whether she came or not, he just concentrated on what he wanted her to do to him, and positively lectured, indeed harangued, her the entire time she was doing it… making sure, as often as not, that she couldn’t answer back. Take last night: all that about Marius, on and on and bleeding on.
However, in this one instance she was rather glad he had spoken, even if he had chosen the wrong place and time, because what he had said must now be very rapidly passed on, in several quarters. While Dick might be as annoying and insistent as oestrus and the Dog-Star in the role of companion and lover, he was infallibly perspicacious in minding other people’s business. In this case, Marius’ business. And whereas Marius’ affairs had nothing to do with Dick Harbinger and not all that much to do with herself, they had plenty to do with her sister (who was carrying his child), her Provost (who was the boy’s uncle by marriage), and many of her acquaintance. ‘Res Unius, Res Omnium’, she now said to herself, quoting the motto of the regiment to which her brother-in-law and many of his old friends (now her new ones) belonged: the affair of one is the affair of all – at any rate when it came to need or peril.
Time to get going, then. The Helmutt party was drifting away down the lawn, sucking Ivor and Balbo along with it. The Provost was still being flirtily entertained by Piero, while Nicos and Greco listened in. Len had turned away from them, and was suspiciously examining the Judas tree, peering round and between its boughs at the departing Helmutts.
Carmilla came up behind him and tweaked the nape of his neck.
‘Hello, Lenikins,’ she said.
‘Darling Carmilla. Pregnant with news. I can tell by the way your eyeballs are swelling. Like balloons, darling.’
‘Come into the summer house.’
‘You know,’ he said as he followed her, ‘something will have to be done about those Helmutt twins. They’re not right, Carmilla. They’ve hardly uttered two sentences between them since they were born. They greet or recognize no one, not even their parents.’
‘They are obedient,’ Carmilla said
‘Yes. It makes it easier to get what they want from Jacquiz and Marigold. They may not converse with them but they do ask for things from time to time.’
‘Ask for what?’
‘To be taken to certain places. In Europe. Turkey. Egypt. Israel.’
‘Do they react to those places?’
‘Jacquiz doesn’t know. They just look at them through those beautiful eyes of theirs and say nothing, until in due course they ask, very politely, to be taken home again.’
‘Balbo Blakeney says they’ll just vanish one day. Quite soon, he says. But why should Balbo know?’
‘He might. He just might.’
‘How?’
‘That, my darling Carmilla, is a long and complicated story,* for which there is no time now. What is this news of yours?’
‘Marius.’
‘Christ. Him again. Well, dish it up, dear, all hot and sizzling.’
‘Dick saw him at his School. Dick says he’s asking for help. Or not so much asking, but testing Fate by making a signal. “A message in a bottle,” he called it, the bottle presumably being Dick. If no one answers or attends to it, he will resign himself to what’s coming.’
‘And what might that be?’
‘Being possessed. Body and soul, Richard thinks.’
‘By whom?’ asked Len, pretty well knowing the answer.
‘A master at his School. Raisley Conyngham. More than just a master at the School. A rich man, the owner of an estate in Somerset and a string of racehorses. A friend…or at least an established connection…of Giles Glastonbury and that lot.’
‘One of whom died in this College not many weeks ago.’
‘Yes,’ said Carmilla. ‘A young cousin, or son of a cousin, whatever that makes him. Miles. The one that used to play Royal Tennis with Theodosia.’
‘And the one that fancied you… If I remember the reports of his death correctly, he claimed that this Raisley Conyngham was somehow responsible for his affliction. Conyngham had touched him, touched him on the hair…so he told Fielding Gray just before he died.’
‘Which has to be rubbish. Since when did a laying on of hands confer death? But all that is by the way. Our problem, Len –’
‘– Your problem, darling –’
‘– is simply, what should I do now? The message in the bottle has come to shore, you might say, as Marius must have known it would. What does one do about it?’
‘One goes to that School of his,’ said Len, ‘and shakes some sense into him. If he knows he is about to be possessed – or is even already possessed – by Raisley Conyngham, and if he dislikes the notion enough to make signals about it, then he can surely fight free of Conyngham’s influence.’
‘I don’t think so. The point was, Dick said, that he probably sent his message only because Conyngham had recently upset him, had been unkind to him. He’d prevented his attending the funeral of some old man – the Senior Usher he was called – whom Marius had been fond of. So Marius was in the mood to make a protest, and because Dick was ready to hand he said his piece to him. But when this Senior Usher has been in the earth for a few weeks, and when Conyngham has smoothed Marius down and dispensed a copious dose of…of whatever kind of influence he has over him, he’ll soon slide back into the old groove. He may have said to Dick, “Please send someone to the rescue”, but if, when the rescue party arrives, he is no longer in the mood to be saved, a pretty fair old farce will ensue.’
‘So,’ said Len, ‘you suggest instant action, instant complaint, perhaps, while Marius is still in a pet with Conyngham?’
‘Not possible – neither action nor complaint – unless there is proof that something wrong is actually in train. Which there isn’t. Mere influence is nothing. Schoolmasters are meant to exercise influence over their pupils.’
‘For good.’
‘How prove this is for bad?’
‘Wasn’t there some very peculiar incident,’ said Len, ‘last April, on Bellhampton Racecourse? Some account of it dribbled through to me. Marius was acting as groom to one of Conyngham’s horses, and there was some kind of stampede? Some wretched child was killed.’
‘Marius’ friend, Palairet. Theodosia was there and told me all about it later.’
‘What do you make of all that?’
‘What can we make of it? Horses do act up dangerously from time to time, and people do get killed by them. No blame attached to anyone. In fact a lot of people behaved rather well, including Raisley Conyngham.’
‘Look,’ said Len. ‘A little while ago Marius was down here –’
‘– I saw him –’
‘– and came to the Provost’s Lodging, by invitation. But the Provost was too ill to see him. While Marius was there, Piero came in and said that what the Provost needed was entertaining company to see him through the summer. Marius said, off the top of his head, without being consulted, without even, really, being spoken to at all, that the chap we needed to amuse the Provost was a friend of his, a school friend called Milo Hedley.’
‘Milo Hedley is Conyngham’s lieutenant, or familiar. His partner in influencing Marius. I heard a lot about him from Theodosia, who had heard about him from Palairet. Milo Hedley was staying with Conyngham in the Somerset house last
Easter, at the same time as Marius was there learning to be a groom.’
‘Then Milo Hedley might provide the kind of evidence we need? To mount a rescue operation for Marius?’
‘Might,’ said Carmilla rather hopelessly. ‘Remember he is Conyngham’s apprentice – a very apt one.’
‘Nevertheless,’ said Len, ‘I think that I might follow up Marius’ suggestion and invite this Milo as company for the Provost…and see what he has to say for himself.’
‘He won’t be able to come till the end of the Quarter at his School. Ages away. Is nothing to be done meanwhile?’
‘Yes,’ said Len. ‘Go to your sister Canteloupe. I have a hunch that Theodosia, after all that has passed, will be very concerned to hear about Marius. Theodosia, of all people, could have constructive suggestions.’
‘Len is a very long time with Carmilla,’ grumbled the Provost, Sir Thomas Llewyllyn. He was now sitting on a seat under a cherry tree, bouncing his bottom with irritation. ‘What are they talking about?’
‘Those Helmutt children,’ said Nicos, who had caught a few words as Len and Carmilla had receded into the summer house.
‘The sooner they take off, the better,’ said Piero.
‘They are very beautiful,’ said the Provost, while Greco Barraclough nodded thoughtfully.
‘What makes you think they will take off?’ said Greco to Piero.
‘Just a little Sicilian hunch, dear,’ Piero said. ‘They’re poised, if you ask me.’
‘But they’re not ten years old.’
‘That won’t stop ’em,’ said Piero. ‘I must go and do some work. The Tripos is upon me.’
Len sauntered over, without Carmilla.
‘Where’s Carmilla?’ said the Provost.
‘Gone to make a telephone call.’
‘Who to?’ persisted the peevish Provost. ‘Why is everyone so restless today? Piero worrying about his exams, though he’s beastly rich and I’ll make him a Fellow anyway. People saying odd things about those delicious Helmutt children and how they’re going to run away. And now Carmilla, leaving this lovely garden to make a telephone call.’
