‘I understand,’ Balietti said smoothly, ‘that at Oxford you and Ian became friends almost upon the first day on which you met. That is extremely pleasing.’
‘It quite pleased us,’ Mungo said. ‘But why should it please you?’
‘Ah.’ Balietti was only momentarily brought to a stand by this bald question. ‘I find it much to Ian’s credit. It shows that he has a proper sense of his birth. As a Scot, I mean – simply as a Scot.’ Mungo had perhaps produced a stare which elicited this elucidation. ‘He is drawn at once to another Scottish boy. And just the same may be said of you. Don’t you think it was your both being Scottish that was a little responsible?’
‘Well, it may have been with Ian. I’ve never asked him, so I don’t know. But as for me, I’ve never managed to think of Ian as very seriously Scottish. Or not until lately. Certainly at first he struck me as being as English as he could be. I think I still see him pretty well like that. And it’s not just his having been at schools in England since he was nine or thereabouts. It’s simply that his sort of Scot—his class of Scot—stopped much bothering about being Scottish a couple of hundred years ago.’
‘That is a most interesting point of view.’ Father Balietti’s mouth seemed to be full of soup, but his voice remained like butter. ‘Would you say that there is nothing characteristically Scottish about your host?’
‘I don’t know that I would.’ Mungo glanced rather nervously towards Lord Brightmony, whom Balietti’s question seemed not designed to draw into the conversation. But Lord Brightmony was quite obviously not even listening. ‘Lord Brightmony is a bit granitic, wouldn’t you say? And that’s said to be a Scottish quality.’
‘At least the epithet is apt. But tell me something more about Ian and yourself. It is said that in every close companionship there is a leader and a led. Is this true of you two? And, if so, who is which?’ Swallowing his next spoonful, Balietti produced a smile designed to give this last enquiry an apposite lightness of air.
Mungo was suddenly aware that it was quite a question. He heard himself say what he’d said before: that it was Ian who knew all the ropes. But his eye was on Ian as he spoke, and he saw what was almost startlingly relevant. Ian was doing as he’d been told – which was to treat Leonard Sedley with decency. In a way, perhaps, it didn’t take all that effort. Ian’s upbringing had given him a more than adequate technique for making himself pleasant – either because it genuinely pleased him to be so, or just because he felt it to be part of the day’s work. Actually, Mungo thought, it was amusing to see how much it was Robert Cardower who was more or less isolated at the end of the table with Sedley: the interrogative expression which every now and then flitted across Ian’s face was no doubt the accompaniment of his begging Sedley to say just what he thought about this or that. Not that Mungo was amused, since the thing was an abrupt revelation of responsibility coming as a total surprise to him. He’d really thought of himself as toted around by Ian – this less as a matter of comparative strengths of character (or of Ian’s being by a whole nine months the older of the two) than of an entire social context. Oxford was much more naturally Ian’s context than it was Mungo’s, and so was almost everywhere that they had been together. It was as if Mungo had willingly taken on the role of an apprentice. Now he saw that this was far from being the total situation. Although it was in a tone of ingenuous irony that he’d talk about the ropes, he saw that in fact he’d greatly overestimated the purchase, the attached system of blocks and pulleys, that they represented. He saw all this, quite simply and completely, in those seconds in which he held under his observation an Ian Cardower who was obeying orders.
His discovery didn’t gratify him at all. He remembered how, in the darkness of their tent outside Perugia, Ian had suddenly granted him a kind of proxime accessit status to Lord Auldearn himself as the possessor of a sound judgement. And now, as then, Mungo doubted himself very much. He had a good opinion of himself in quite a variety of ways, and didn’t see why not; if he was really going to be a writer he’d need all the self-confidence he could muster. But he still didn’t honestly see himself as a sage. As Ian’s friend he’d give himself, so far, a fairly decent mark; but he doubted whether he could put in much of a claim as a guide and philosopher. Had it been for any responsible reason that he’d held forth on how Ian ought to behave to Sedley? Or had he grabbed at this simply as the next useful material in a verbal rough and tumble of the sort they occasionally found amusement in?
‘Sedley,’ he heard Father Balietti say, ‘is quite opening up. I sometimes fear that the serious and contemplative life which we lead at Mallachie is not wholly to his taste – or not to the taste, let us say, of the whole man. And he can talk brilliantly when stimulated. Ian is stimulating him.’
Mungo, although he didn’t fancy the tone in which Balietti employed this phrase, saw that it was true. Across Balietti’s prattle he could catch only a little of what Sedley was saying, but he was aware that it had a different pitch and pace – and probably a different quality – from the conversation he had turned on for Mungo’s benefit during those afternoons by the river. As Mungo caught this effect, he felt uneasy. And the feeling prompted him to a rush of his rash questions.
‘I suppose you’ve known Mr Sedley for a long time. Would you say he’s still the man who wrote An Autumn in Umbria? I’m sure he can be brilliant still. But do you think he still really knows about people? Or is his sensitiveness a bit in a decline? Is he likely to get his feel of a situation wrong?’
Mungo had had the sense to deliver himself of this inquisition in a lowered voice. But the result was, in fact, awkward. Lord Brightmony, who was only a couple of feet away, and who ought to have been paying him at least some attention during the meal, chose to attend to him now – and on the basis of having perfectly heard what had been said.
‘Mungo, your question is no doubt based upon a sensitiveness of your own. You are aware that Leonard, although he may have talked to you on literary matters out of a distinguished and well-stocked mind, is indeed judged not quite to have fulfilled the particular sort of promise of the famous book you have mentioned. But why should he? Why should his life have continued to run on those then predictable lines? All is flux; nothing stays still. Do you know who said that?’
‘Somebody called Heraclitus, I think.’
‘That is very good.’ So highly did Lord Brightmony approve Mungo’s passing this odd little educational test, that he actually looked at him squarely and gravely. And Mungo was reminded of Lord Auldearn, who had directed upon him just this scrutiny. It was as if his features were being studied like a passport photograph. He didn’t have any difficulty in telling himself why. ‘Nothing stays still,’ Lord Brightmony repeated, ‘and least of all in the mutable mind of man. From your point of view, which I believe to be, broadly, that of the secular artist, Leonard may have changed for the worse. But does it, perhaps, come to no more than this: that his prime concerns are no longer yours? He will meet you as he can. He is so meeting Ian now – and to Ian’s advantage, I do not doubt. You understand me?’
‘Yes, I suppose I do.’ Mungo felt prompted to add that the homily he was receiving went rather stiffly with grilled salmon and hock. But he was at least judicious enough to suppress this.
‘Leonard and I have been each other’s companion for a long time. Our first friendship formed itself, perhaps, amid some darkness of the spirit and the flesh. Our concerns are different now, as Father Balietti would explain to you were you to have some serious talk with him.’
‘I think I understand, sir.’ Mungo was quite sure he was never going to have any serious talk with Father Balietti. He was of a divided mind as to whether he wanted any more with Leonard Sedley. But Lord Auldearn’s heir was a different matter. In one way or another Cardowers tended to be arresting. And Lord Brightmony was interesting primarily because his spiritual aims weren’t in the least spurious. He mightn’t be so securely regenerate as he believed – although he did, for the matter
of that, look at you, or not look at you, in a way that suggested him as aware of retaining a hunk of his particular old Adam. But the main point about him was that some struggle went on. He might be torn, but he wasn’t baffled; whereas with Sedley it was perhaps the other way round. As for Balietti, Mungo felt, it was just a pity that Lord Brightmony had made such a bad buy.
‘We shall take these matters up again after dinner,’ Lord
Brightmony said. ‘I have one or two questions to put to you which would be out of place now. They arise out of something that Leonard told me when he came back from your cottage this afternoon. I hope, by the way, that the cottage is comfortable? Is there anything that I could tell my people to supply, or do?’
‘Oh, no – nothing at all. Ian and I like it very much.’ Mungo found it easier to say this, which was perfectly true, than to find an appropriate response to the earlier part of his host’s speech. He thought he could make a fair guess as to what Sedley had come back to Mallachie with: it was the Vera affair as it had been sketchily communicated to him. At Mallachie such a topic would probably turn out rather more than mildly embarrassing.
Chapter Eighteen
After dinner they went into a room called the saloon. It wasn’t in the least the sort of place that sometimes gets that name in a great house. It was long and low and about as bleak as could be, with nothing much more than high-backed chairs and bare tables dotted here and there. The only token of comfort was a bright fire in a big grate, and as the late summer night was keeping very reasonably warm off its own bat there really wasn’t much point in that. Ian had nicknamed this apartment the public bar. It would, he said, be possible to keep up your spirits in it only if there were a chap behind a counter, ready to draw you unlimited pints of bitter or mild.
‘Ian,’ Lord Brightmony said, ‘I don’t know if you remember – but on your last visit, which was unhappily some time ago, Father Balietti challenged you to a game of chess, and you defeated him. I suggest that you give him the chance of having his revenge now.’
‘Yes, of course.’ Ian was being as nice to his uncle as to Sedley. ‘I’ll get the board and pieces at once.’
‘And I shall look forward to presiding over the combat,’ Sedley said. ‘But I am a much better player than either of you, and shall have to resist the temptation to offer a nudge now and then.’
Mungo for some reason distrusted these amiable exchanges. Perhaps it was merely that he had been reckoning on a quick getaway. Perhaps he sensed something contrived about the proposed disposition of things. Or perhaps his interest in what Ian’s uncle was going to say to him didn’t quite match his alarm. Anyway, it happened. Ian and Balietti sat down to their game at one end of the saloon, rather like Ferdinand and Miranda in the interior of Prospero’s cave or whatever. Sedley drew up a chair between them. And Lord Brightmony, who would have made quite a good Prospero of the modern beardless sort, motioned Mungo to a seat beside him near the fire. Mungo felt like Caliban when about to be given the works.
‘I think you know,’ Lord Brightmony began, ‘that I am my father’s heir, that my brother Robert is mine, and that Ian is his?’
‘Yes. I’ve come to understand that quite well.’
‘I mention the circumstance only as in part explaining the solicitude for Ian which must excuse what I am about to say. You may think me impertinent, Mungo. If you do, say so – and that will be the end of the matter.’
‘I think I can promise you not to feel it anything of the sort.’
‘You encourage me to venture the remark that I judge you a straightforward young man.’ There was a pause, during which Mungo was conscious of having no urge to make gratified noises. ‘What I have heard from Leonard is that you and Ian had a quarrel over a woman. Is that correct?’
‘Yes, it is. We had a bit of a row over a girl.’ Mungo felt that this was a more accurate way to describe the matter. ‘But I thought I was speaking to Mr Sedley more or less in confidence. He oughtn’t really to have passed on to you something about Ian which he’d had only at second-hand.’
‘Leonard shares my anxieties. Was this incident occasioned by one or the other of you committing an act of fornication?’
‘Of fornication?’ This outrageous demand for information had bobbed up so suddenly that Mungo was at a loss. He had to tell himself, for one thing, just what was meant by a word which he vaguely regarded as biblical or technical. You were a fornicator if you were unmarried, and went to bed with somebody else who was unmarried. That was it.
‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘Both of us, actually.’ He wondered whether this ready admission had a displeasingly jaunty sound. ‘We’re not at all inclined to boast about it, and I don’t know why I told Mr Sedley at all.’ Mungo wondered whether this was quite true. ‘Ian and I ended up not a bit pleased with ourselves, as a matter of fact.’
‘I would be glad to think that you had repented such a sin. For a grievous sin it is, however the worldly may judge.’ Lord Brightmony’s gaze was on the floor. ‘Yet perhaps there is a certain reassurance in it. I can see that you and Ian have become close friends, and have remained so in spite of this reprehensible episode into the nature of which I will not further enquire. So tell me, please. Is yours and his a virtuous attachment?’
‘Yes, it is.’
Mungo’s answer, flat and pat, came without effort. He found he hadn’t the slightest impulse either to stand on his dignity or be vulgarly amused. He wondered how Ian would have reacted, if the queer question had been pitched at him. As it ought to have been, for that matter, if it was to be pitched at anybody at all. The morbid imaginings of the Cardowers ought to be kept on the closed circuit of the family. But perhaps that was wrong. Perhaps Ian’s uncle-eclipse, at least on one of its sides, had been generated by his Uncle David’s having fired off such obsessional questions at him in his vulnerable years. Whereas Mungo was going to experience nothing traumatic in anything, however bizarre, that the poor gentleman found to say.
This thought made Mungo glance at Ian down the length of the saloon. The chess seemed well launched, and both players were concentrating on their play. Sedley had risen, and was wandering restlessly to and fro at the far end of the room. Mungo tried to remember how long a stubborn game of chess could take. Until this one was over, there was no chance of a getaway from the Castle. Meanwhile, Lord Brightmony was conducting an ordered retreat from what might have been called an exposed position.
‘Leonard and I live much out of this world,’ he was saying. ‘We are all the more subject to what a young man like yourself may consider irrational – or even pathological – anxieties. And I fear our manner of life bears more hardly on him than on me. Glance at him now. Is there not something thwarted about him? But perhaps you will say that a sick imagination is again running away with me.’
‘I wouldn’t say anything so impertinent.’ Mungo paused. ‘And I think I see what you mean. Oughtn’t he to be having a shot at the world, sir, even if he does live out of it? Publishing something, I mean. Or have you persuaded him that anything of the sort is frivolous and wrong?’
‘It is a question I have to ask myself, Mungo.’ Lord Brightmony had accepted without displeasure Mungo’s going over to the attack in this way. ‘Would you agree with me that all art ought to be dedicated to the glory of God, since it is only a pale shadow of the divine abundance?’
‘I’m afraid that’s not quite my language.’ Mungo was ceasing to find himself embarrassed. ‘But I can see myself wishing that it was.’
‘I can only say that Leonard’s art has fallen back, baffled, from anything of the sort. You and I have agreed that An Autumn in Umbria is a remarkable book. Yet, at the same time, there is a spirit of negation in it. There is no love.’
Mungo had no reply to this, except for a cautious and wondering glance. It wasn’t necessary to believe Lord Brightmony quite mad just because he spent hours wandering around his house muttering prayers, or a sex-maniac because he was troubled by images of sexual transgressio
n. Lord Auldearn’s mad doctors had been right in refusing to lock him up – and equally right in saying he was worth listening to. For here he was, an unbalanced and eccentric person whom Mungo couldn’t conceive himself as living with, nevertheless saying something very serious which Mungo felt to be true.
‘The created universe, Mungo, is a labour of love. All its minute particularities – such as the infinity of wildly strange creatures at the bottom of the deepest seas – are just that. And a man can only create, can only truly create, those imagined beings whom he loves for their uniqueness. Everything else is only cleverness and sterility.’
‘Are you saying that Mr Sedley realises the truth of that – a truth which perhaps you have taught him – and accounts himself an outsider in terms of it?’
‘It would be a great evil in me to make Leonard feel an outcast. His talents, could he continue to exert them, would doubtless afford harmless pleasure to many. But something has laid a spell upon them, has frozen them at their source. Have I been the cause of this? You are an artist too. Perhaps you can tell me.’
Mungo shook his head and kept his mouth shut. The challenge was an extravagant one which it was not for him to take up. And again he glanced across the room. The game had progressed, but in whose favour he couldn’t tell. Sedley had come to a halt behind Ian’s chair, and was studying the board. It was a peaceful tableau, with no stress or strain to it at all. Mungo turned back to Lord Brightmony, resolved to continue this conversation, but on a different tack.
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