by Simon Raven
‘But James, all those beastly manoeuvres and exercises and things in the rain.’
‘You’ll get no wetter than you already are. For Christ’s sake. Do you expect your friends to get up a subscription of five thou a year so that you can travel round the world en prince and without lifting a finger?’
Then Marc Boxer came up, wearing his crimson velvet jacket. I introduced him to James, who eyed him with misgiving.
‘James says I’ve got to go and be a soldier,’ I said.
‘“So I said, I will ’list for a lancer,”’ camped Marc, ‘“O who would not sleep with the brave?”’
‘Thank you very much, but I shall sleep in the Officers’ Mess.’
‘You old Fascist, darling,’ said Marc. ‘I think I see something by the pavvy. Those white flannels, so rise-making. So ta-ta for now, Mummy’s poppet,’ and to James, ‘bye-bye, Jamiekins.’
With that Marc (who often joins Dickie and Nigel and me in the Pavilion at Lord’s, where his behaviour is rather more staid than it was at Fenner’s thirty years ago) went skipping on his way.
‘Who was that?’ said James.
‘I told you. Marc Boxer.’
‘I meant, what does he do? He must think himself pretty special to put on an act like that.’
‘He draws very clever cartoons.’
‘Need he be quite so…well…errrr.’
‘He tells me he’s turning normal at the beginning of next academic year. Being queer is no longer fashionable, he says, or it won’t be by Michaelmas. Heterosexuality is going to be all the rage – and so, he predicts, is Socialism.’
‘There you are. What was I telling you? You take my advice. You’ll be safe from Socialism in the Army, for as long as anyone is, and you’ll be somewhere privileged with syces and doolibearers and barra pegs and things like that.’
‘Those are all in India. We don’t go there any more – or had you forgotten?’
‘Well, there’s still Africa and Hong Kong and Singapore and God knows what. You go off with the Army and get a good look at all that. If you follow your usual form, you’ll be kicked out in four or five years, and then will be the time to come home and start writing novels.’
And so once more I went for a soldier, though I was not finally gazetted until May of 1953. My previous Commission had been in the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry (the 43rd); but they, though they accepted me as a Regular during the winter, later found that they had no room, and I was passed on to the King’s Shropshire Light Infantry (Housman’s ‘53rd’) instead. At that time this was a jolly, louche, discernibly amateur, above all bachelor sort of a Regiment which couldn’t have suited me better. But even the KSLI had occasionally to go through stern motions for the look of the thing; and a few days after I joined I was sent off to the Tactical Wing of the School of Infantry at Warminster, to undergo a ferocious refresher course in the techniques required of a junior commander of foot soldiers.
Chief Instructor at Warminster was Lieutenant-Colonel John Mogg (later CGS) of the 43rd, throughout his career a keen if light-hearted cricketer. When the Light Infantry Cricket Week came round that June he procured two days’ special leave for himself and for me, so that we might play for the Light Infantry against the Greenjackets at Oxford. The occasion was the height of the Light Infantry Social year, Field Marshals and Generals were thick as confetti, and it was rather important to me that I should make a good impression or at any rate not a bad one. But unfortunately there was a joker in the pack. Keeping for the Greenjackets was an old Cambridge chum of mine called Mark Watney, who never took the field without a flask of gin and lime juice in his hip pocket.
When John Mogg and I walked out to open the batting for the Light Infantry, ‘Hallo, darling,’ said Mark Watney, whose idiom and mannerisms, when it suited his purpose, were very similar to those of Marc Boxer, ‘and who’s that adorable cuddly old girl who’s come in with you?’
‘That,’ I said, ‘is Colonel Mogg, my Chief Instructor at Warminster. I do not want him to think that I am a poofter or that I have poofter friends.’
‘But darling, no one ever thought you were a poofter. You were quite the butchest thing on King’s Parade. If you like, I’ll tell Mrs Mogg that myself. Hey, Moggy,’ he called down the wicket.
I should explain that Mark enjoyed considerable licence as he was no longer a serving Officer and had always been considered, even when he was serving, to be a privileged jester. The Greenjackets, an extremely broadminded crowd, were therefore quite happy to put up with this sort of thing indefinitely; but I doubted whether this were true of John Mogg…who mercifully did not hear Mark’s call.
‘For Christ’s sake,’ I said, ‘do you want to get me drummed out?’
‘Oh sweetheart, you have come on heavy since you joined the Colours,’ said Mark while I was taking guard. ‘I do not think it at all kind or nice. You are no longer the Simon that Mummy loves. For all our sakes I think it is my duty to get you thrown out.’
‘PLAY,’ called the Umpire.
There was only one thing for it. With Mark in his present mood – to say nothing of the gin and lime juice in his hip pocket – I could expect no quarter. I must get off the scene as fast as I could and yield my place at the wicket to some other butt. At the first ball, which was dead straight, I swished as wildly as you like – and was rewarded with an enormous six and applause from all over the ground, applause happily loud enough to drown Mark’s comment, ‘If you go on showing off like that, you silly minx, your prick will drop right off.’
Exactly the same thing happened to the second ball. Even louder applause doused Mark’s next insult, ‘She thinks she’s Victor Trumper in drag.’
My luck couldn’t last. The third ball shattered my wicket. Which was just as well: I escaped from Mark Watney before he made any too injurious and public revelation about my Cambridge past, and at the same time I was congratulated by General Paget, Colonel-in-Chief of the 43rd, on getting the Light Infantry innings off to such an exciting start.
‘That’s what I like to see,’ he said, ‘attack, and then again attack. Some Frog chappie once said something of the kind, only he called it “audace”. Who’s that nice-looking wicketkeeper you were talking to? Friend of yours?’
‘I played cricket against him at Cambridge, sir.’
In those days I was too green to call Generals ‘General’. ‘Name of what?’
‘Watney, sir.’
‘Anything to do with the brewers?’
‘A distant relation, I think.’
‘Well he certainly enjoys the product.’
For Mark was now taking a long swig at his flask between overs.
‘He always does that when he’s keeping wicket, sir.’
‘Does he, by Jove? Damned bad manners, and so one of those Riflemen ought to tell him. Besides, they’ve only been out there ten minutes, so he oughtn’t to be needing it. That boy’s heading for a bad end.’
You would not have thought so from his performance on the field that day. For it was Mark who (between copious draughts of gin and lime) made two brilliant stumpings from the leg side; it was Mark, nimble Mark, who flung himself on his face to catch John Mogg when he was well set at 40; and it was Mark, blithe and beautiful Mark, who made 53 runs in sixteen minutes, flickering down the wicket to drive like some bright spirit among the shadows that fell across the green while the bells tolled curfew from the city. Today has been Mark’s day, everybody said amid the tinkling glasses in the marquee. What a pity he is not going the right way, said General Paget, to enjoy many more like it.
And of course the General was right, as Generals (popular opinion not withstanding) usually are. Not so many summers later Mark Watney was to be dead of drink and disappointment, shot by his own hand.
So began my time as a regular soldier, of which I have already written in these pages. It lasted until 1957 and the scenes which were described at the beginning of this book.
Apart from a brief exordium,
then, these Memoirs began with cricketing (and associated) events which took place in 1957; then went back, stage by stage, to 1938; then turned in time, and have now come forward to within easy hailing distance of 1957 once more.
1957 was to prove the great turning point in my life. It was then that I ceased at last to flit vainly and shadily from School to scandal to Army to Cambridge to Grub Street to penury and back to the Army again; it was then that I realised that I had arrived at my last chance: there was now only one thing left to do, and I must do it with my might, or perish. So I settled to my desk to write my way back into a decent and solvent existence, and for several years I had no time for cricket. No time, that is, to play; but I found time, before long, to watch occasionally, at Canterbury or at Dover or, as a special holiday from my task, at Lord’s; and always it seemed to me to be the most beautiful and intricate and thrilling of all games, just as it had beneath the Surrey pines, when I was eleven, or on some Fenland green with Dickie in the Long Vacation of 1949, or on the ludicrous afternoon at Brunswick when full CirCle only two overs were bowled.
So during those early and grinding years of my career as an author it was from watching cricket that I looked for my repose. Later, much later, I was to play once again, with what good friends and kind fortune I shall perhaps write hereafter, should any care to read of these things and if God should still lend my hand the skill to conjure them.
June, 1979 to February, 1981
Deal; Dieppe; Hove; Cannes;
La Garde Freinet.
The Works of Simon Raven
Published by House of Stratus
First Born of Egypt Series
These titles can be read as a series, or randomly as standalone novels
1. Morning Star 1984
2. The Face of the Waters 1985
3. Before the Cock Crow 1986
4. New Seed for Old 1987
5. Blood of My Bone 1989
6. In the Image of God 1990
7. Troubadour 1992
Novels
1. Brother Cain 1959
2. Doctors Wear Scarlet 1960
3. Close of Play 1962
4. The Roses of Picardie 1979
5. An Inch of Fortune 1980
6. September Castle 1982
Stories/Collections
1. The Fortunes of Fingel 1976
2. Shadows on the Grass 1981
3. A Bird of Ill Omen 1989
Synopses of Simon Raven Titles
Published by House of Stratus
Before The Cock Crow
This is the third volume in the First Born of Egypt saga. The story opens with Lord Canteloupe’s strange toast to ‘absent friends’. His wife Baby has recently died and Canteloupe has been left her retarded son, Lord Sarum of Old Sarum. This child is not his, but has been conceived by Major Fielding Gray. In Italy there is an illegitimate child with a legitimate claim to the estate, whom Canteloupe wants silenced. The plot also sees young Marius Stern and his school friend, Tessa Malcolm, drawn into Milo Hedley’s schemes and into a dramatic finale orchestrated by Raisley Conyngham, Milo’s teacher.
Bird if Ill Omen
This hilarious instalment from Simon Raven’s entertaining autobiography takes the reader to the four corners of the globe. A lifetime spent travelling – as a soldier and as a civilian – brought Raven into contact with an amazing selection of characters: Gore Vidal, Christopher Isherwood, Morgan Grenfell, plus eccentrics such as Colonel Cuthbert Smith and ‘Parafit’ Paradore. Army life, travels, meetings, dinners and calamities take place in Kenya, Bombay, the Red Sea, Greece and California, among other exotic locations. Wherever he is, Raven entertains us in typical style.
Blood of My Bone
In this fifth volume of Simon Raven’s First Born of Egypt series, the death of the Provost of Lancaster College is a catalyst for a series of disgraceful doings in the continuing saga of the Canteloupes and their circle. Marius, under-age father of the new lady Canteloupe’s dutifully produced heir to the family estate, is warned against the malign influence of Raisley Conyngham. Classics teacher at Lancaster, Conyngham is well aware of the sway he has over Marius, who has already revealed himself a keen student of ‘the refinements of hell’. With fate intervening, the stage is set for another deliciously wicked instalment.
Brother Cain
Expelled from school, advised to leave university, and forced to resign from the army, Captain Jacinth Crewe has precious few options open to him. For a man in his position, an approach to join a sinister British Government security organisation, with a training centre in Rome, is not an opportunity to be turned down. In Rome, he learns fast how to be ruthless. There is one final mission to complete his training however – to kill an American diplomat and his wife. The setting for the final test is Venice, the occasion, a New Year’s Eve costume ball. As the clock nears midnight, the choice has to be made. And there is no turning back.
Close of Play
They are young and entirely unconventional. They have finished at Cambridge and done the tour of Europe. Now the three friends need to earn a living, so they have set up a unique organisation – a very exclusive London club with high membership fees, affordable only to a select few, and where the services on offer are richly varied and exotic. The menu is sex, in every imaginable form, guaranteed to satisfy any craving and fulfil any desire. Some of the world’s most prominent people make up the clientele.
Doctors Wear Scarlet
All his life, Richard Fountain has known only success. He is handsome, with an enviable record for school, army and university. A future career as a talented archaeologist seems assured. That is, until he travels to Greece and meets Chriseis. Chriseis is beautiful, mesmerising and mysterious – also evil. A spellbound Richard is lured into her dark world of vice, vampirism and ritual, high up in the Cretan mountains. When his rescuers finally reach him, he has changed beyond all recognition and is seemingly destined for a tragic end. The final act at a double funeral provides a tumultuous climax to a shocking story.
Face of the Waters
This is the second volume of Simon Raven’s First Born of Egypt series. Marius Stern, the wayward son of Gregory Stern, has survived earlier escapades and is safely back at prep school – assisted by his father’s generous contribution to the school’s new shooting range. Fielding Gray and Jeremy Morrison are returning home via Venice, where they encounter the friar, Piero, an ex-male whore and a figure from a shared but distant past. Back in England, at the Wiltshire family home, Lord Canteloupe is restless. He finds his calm disturbed by events: the arrival of Piero; Jeremy’s father’s threat to saddle his son with the responsibility of the family estate; and the dramatic resistance of Gregory Stern to attempted blackmail.
The Fortunes of Fingel
Life with Fingel is never predictable or dull, as we discover in this collection of hilarious short stories about army life. Simon Raven, who was a regimental officer with the King’s Own Shropshire Light Infantry, writes with experience and humour. He reports on the adventures and misadventures, deeds and misdeeds, fortunes and misfortunes of the regimental rascal Fingel. We learn of Fingel’s progress from subaltern to insubstantive colonel. Although Fingel earns no glory, no awards, no commendations he has charm enough to con the brigadiers and colonels’ wives and to implicate his fellow soldiers in his schemes.
In the Image of God
The sixth in the First Born of Egypt series sees Raisley Conyngham, Classics teacher at Lancaster College exert a powerful influence over Marius Stern. His young pupil however is no defenceless victim. Marius has a ruthless streak and an ability to sidestep tests and traps that are laid for him. Which is just as well because everybody is after something from him…
An Inch of Fortune
‘Presuming even your capacity for borrowing money without qualm or security has by now lost much of its edge, it only remains that you should make some.’ The words of the Bursar ringing in his ears, Esme Sangrail Sa Foy is pushed into working i
n his summer holidays as a way of settling his college’s bills. Hired by the Honourable Mrs Sandra Fairweather, as holiday tutor to her adopted son Terence, Esme’s brief is unusual. Not expected to teach Terence anything, he is there to keep him out of trouble. Perhaps Terence’s psychiatrist Doctor MacTavish is a sign that nothing in the Fairweather household is what it seems. As the summer develops and Esme and Terence leave London for Suffolk and finally Biarritz, Esme makes his discoveries.
The Morning Star
This first volume in Simon Raven’s First Born of Egypt saga opens with the christening of the Marquess Canteloupe’s son and heir, Sarum of Old Sarum. The ceremony, attended by the godparents and the real father, Fielding Gray, is not without drama. The christening introduces a bizarre cast of eccentric characters and complicated relationships. In Morning Star we meet the brilliant but troublesome teenager Marius Stern. Marius’ increasingly outrageous behaviour has him constantly on the verge of expulsion from prep school. When his parents are kidnapped, apparently without reason, events take a turn for the worse.
New Seed for Old
The fourth in the First Born of Egypt series has Lord Canteloupe wanting a satisfactory heir so that his dynasty may continue. Unfortunately, Lord Canteloupe is impotent and his existing heir, little Tully Sarum, is not of sound mind. His wife Theodosia is prepared to do her duty when a suitable partner is found. Finding the man and the occasion proves somewhat tricky however, and it is not until Lord Canteloupe goes up to Lord’s for the first match of the season that progress is made.
The Roses of Picardie
A string of long-lost and cursed rubies gives the title to this highly imaginative tale by Simon Raven, author of the First Born of Egypt saga. Jacquiz Helmut and Balbo Blakeney, among other eccentric characters, pursue the jewels across four countries and eight centuries. Horror, intrigue and high comedy shape the story as it races towards an unforgettable climax.
