The Face of the Waters (First Born of Egypt Series)

by Simon Raven

  Table of Contents

  Copyright & Information

  About the Author

  Characters in Order of Appearance

  Part One

  Part Two

  Part Three

  First Born of Egypt Series

  Novels

  Stories/Collections

  Synopses of Simon Raven Titles

  Copyright & Information

  The Face of the Waters

  First published in 1985

  © Estate of Simon Raven; House of Stratus 1985-2012

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  The right of Simon Raven to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

  This edition published in 2012 by House of Stratus, an imprint of

  Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,

  Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.

  Typeset by House of Stratus.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.

  EAN ISBN Edition

  1842321838 9781842321836 Print

  0755129792 9780755129799 Kindle

  0755129954 9780755129959 Epub

  This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author's imagination.

  Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.

  www.houseofstratus.com

  About the Author

  Born in 1927 into a middle class household, Simon Raven became both an outrageous figure and an acclaimed writer and novelist. His father inherited a hosiery business and did not have to work, his mother was an internationally successful athlete. The young Simon, however, viewed the household as 'respectable, prying, puritanical, penny-pinching, and joyless'.

  Initial education was through attending Cordwalles Preparatory School, near Camberley, Surrey, where he later claimed to have been 'deftly and very agreeably' seduced by the games master. From there he went on to Charterhouse, but was eventually expelled in 1945 for serial homosexuality. Nonetheless, he still managed to wangle his way into King's College, Cambridge, to read classics, after a two year gap to complete his national service in the Parachute Regiment.

  Raven had loved classics from an early age and read daily in the original, often translating from Latin to Greek to English, or any combination thereof.

  At Cambridge, he probably felt completely at home for the first time in his life. In his own words, 'nobody minded what you did in bed, or what you said about God'. This was civilised to his mind and he was also later to write, in a somewhat fatalistic manner: 'we aren't here for long, and when we do go, that's that. Finish. So, for God's sake, enjoy yourself now - and sod anyone who tries to stop you.' Despite revelling in Cambridge life, or perhaps because of it, Raven fell heavily into debt for the first time whilst there and also faced his first real responsibility. Susan Kilner, a fellow undergraduate was expecting his child and in 1951 they married. He took little interest in the marriage, however, and they were divorced some six years later.

  He also failed to submit a thesis needed to support an offered fellowship, so fled both Cambridge and his marriage for the army, where he was commissioned into the King's Own Shropshire Light Infantry. After service in Germany and Kenya, during which time he set up a brothel for his men to use, he was posted to regimental headquarters in Shropshire. It was here that debt once again forced a change in direction after he lost considerable sums at the local racetrack.

  Resigning his commission so as to avoid being court-martialled, he turned to writing having won over a publisher who agreed to pay him weekly in cash, and also pick up bills for sustenance and drink. Moving to Deal in Kent he embarked upon producing a prodigious array of works which over the years included novels, essays, reviews; film scripts, radio and television plays and the scripts for television series, notably The Pallisers and Edward and Mrs Simpson. He lived in modest surroundings within rented accommodation and confined many of his excesses to London visits where his earning were dissipated quickly on food, drink and gambling – not forgetting sex which continued to feature as a major indulgence. He once wrote that the major advantage of belonging to the Reform Club in London was the presence opposite of a first class massage parlour.

  In all, Simon Raven produced over twenty five novels and hundreds of other pieces, his finest achievements being reckoned to be a ten volume saga of English upper-class life, entitled Alms for Oblivion, from 1959-76 and the First Born of Egypt Series from 1984-92.

  He was a conundrum; being both sophisticated and reckless; talented in the extreme yet regarding himself as not being particularly creative; but not applying this modesty (if that's what it was) to his general behaviour, which was sometimes immodest beyond all reasonable bounds. He was exceedingly generous towards his friends; yet didn't think twice about the position of creditors when getting into debt; was jovial, loyal and good company, but was unable to sustain a family life. He would drink like an advanced alcoholic in the evenings, but was ready to resume work promptly the following morning. He was sexually indiscriminate, but generally preferred the company of men. As a youth he possessed good looks, but a general abuse of his body in adulthood soon saw that wain.

  Simon Raven died in 2001, his legacy being his writing which during his lifetime received high praise from critics and readers alike. He was a 'one-off', whose works will continue to delight readers for generations to come.

  Characters in Order of Appearance

  Fielding Gray

  a novelist

  Jeremy Morrison

  an undergraduate of Lancaster College, Cambridge

  Brother Piero

  a Franciscan Friar

  Captain the Most Honourable Marquess Canteloupe of the Aestuary of the Severn

  Leonard Percival

  his secretary, a Jermyn Street man

  Balbo Blakeney

  art historian, of Lancaster College

  The Marchioness Canteloupe (Baby)

  née Llewyllyn; niece to Isobel Stern

  Jo-Jo Guiscard

  her friend

  Gregory Stern

  a publisher

  Marius Stern

  his son

  ‘Glinter’ Parkes

  headmaster of Oudenarde House

  Palairet

  a school boy

  ‘Mrs’ Maisie Malcolm

  Proprietress (with Fielding Gray) of Buttock’s Hotel

  Teresa (Tessa) Malcolm

  her ‘niece’

  Max de Freville

  a sick man

  Doctor La Soeur

  of La Soeur’s Nursing Home

  Sir Thomas Llewyllyn

  Provost of Lancaster College, father to ‘Baby’ Canteloupe

  Len

  his secretary

  Ptolemaeos Tunne

  an amateur scholar, uncle to Jo-Jo Guiscard

  Peter Morrison, MP

  Squire of Luffham by Whereham, father to Jeremy

  Nicos Pandouros

  an undergraduate of Lancaster College, and page to Greco Barraclough after the Maniot custom

  Jean-Marie Guiscard

  an antiquarian, husband to Jo-Jo

  Matron, Sister and Staff Nurse

  of La Soeur’s Nursing Home

  Carmilla S
alinger

  an undergraduate of Lancaster College

  Theodosia Salinger (Thea)

  an undergraduate of Lancaster College, Carmilla’s twin

  Rosie Stern

  school friend of Tessa Malcolm, and daughter to Isobel Stern, wife of Gregory Stern, and sister-in-law to Sir Thomas Llewyllyn

  Mrs Gurt and Mrs Statch

  servants to Ptolemaeos Tunne

  Colonel Ivan Blessington

  a stockbroker and honest soldier

  Ivor Winstanley

  Fellow of Lancaster College, a Ciceronian

  Ivan ‘Greco’ Barraclough

  Fellow of Lancaster College, an anthropologist

  Shamshuddin; 'Artemis'; 'Pontos'

  Conspirators

  Sir Jacquiz Helmutt

  an art baron

  Lady Helmutt (Marigold)

  his wife

  Mungo Avallon

  Bishop of Glastonbury

  Part One

  Laguna Morta

  Dreams out of the ivory gate, and visions before midnight.

  SIR THOMAS BROWNE: On Dreams

  ‘Massorbo,’ said Fielding Gray, ‘a corruption of Maxima Urbs, i.e. The Greatest City. You will hardly credit it, but there was a time when this hamlet on an islet was the most powerful and populous community in the whole archipelago.’

  The Vaporetto throbbed out of the grey lagoon and into a greasy canal. On the left a rank of small, crimson villas straggled along an embankment of mud and yellow reeds, which stood fragile but rigid in the September stillness. On the right a café and a sub-sub-post office stood sponsors, as it were, to a public landing stage which, agitated by the approach of the vaporetto, seemed to clutch at the jagged quayside for reassurance. The vaporetto closed on and clamped the landing stage, emitted six passengers and accepted three.

  ‘Massorbo, Massorbo,’ shouted a vaguely nautical personage who handled the gangplank; ‘Massorbo e Burano.’

  ‘If you walked down the quay to that church,’ said Fielding Gray, ‘and walked across a mournful meadow and a crooked bridge, you’d come to Burano.’

  ‘And what,’ said Jeremy Morrison, ‘would you find there?’

  ‘Some fishermen, closely related, and a kind of dotty, maternal church – once of cathedral status, I rather think – with an Asolano over one of the side altars: a group of succulent juveniles, showing the plague buboes in their groins to a neurotic and gesticulating Virgin.’

  Jeremy’s large, smooth, round face puckered in annoyance.

  ‘You know how fascinated I am by Asolano,’ he said. ‘Why didn’t we get off and go to see the bloody thing?’

  ‘Patience, sweetheart. The church in Burano closes at noon and won’t be open again till four p.m.’ Fielding Gray’s tight little mouth twisted in anticipation of his next announcement. ‘On Torcello the cathedral is open now, exhibiting a very different kind of virgin. A colossal mosaic, universally and icily compassionate. So let us have pain before pleasure, and leave Asolano for the journey home…on which, incidentally, the boat stops actually at Burano itself, not two minutes from the masterpiece which you yearn to visit.’

  The boat edged past the last of the blind crimson villas and turned left, out of the canal and into a channel, for Torcello.

  ‘When was Massorbo so important?’ Jeremy asked.

  ‘After Torcello was stripped by ague and malaria. Torcello was the first stop for the fugitives from the mainland. The Roman Empire of the West had collapsed, the Roman Empire of the East had not yet established itself in this area. Along the coast were only the Huns, and anything was better than the Huns, even an island of mud in a sea marsh.’ Fielding Gray paused. The young, he knew, disliked being lectured; but on the whole Jeremy Morrison had shown himself amenable to instruction during their journey, and since this was nearly done, he (Fielding) might surely risk one more brief discourse. After all, his friendship with Jeremy had begun (last summer) at Jeremy’s suggestion and on Jeremy’s request for information. Worldly information he had wanted then: let him have it (in the form of history) now. ‘So they built a cathedral on their mudbank,’ said Fielding, pointing at a bleak, lurching campanile which was now visible over the water, ‘to the glory of the God who had saved them from the Huns, and then found, to their gratification, that it was a great attraction to passing ships, the masters of which deduced that where there was such an edifice there might also be harbourage, shelter – and trade. The God of the Cathedral was angry at the consequent shift in priorities, and plagued the people of Torcello with all the fevers of the marsh. So they left his dismal island and went in search of others – Massorbo, Murano, the Rialto – where they prospered, or at least survived in great luxury, for the next thousand years. What is to happen now,’ said Fielding, as he crossed the gangplank on to the territory of Torcello with hesitant middle-aged tread, ‘is anybody’s guess. Will Venice continue to subsist as a despoiler of tourists who are still so dazzled by her whorish paraphernalia that they empty their whole purses to enjoy a bare pretence of her favours? Or will the old courtesan lose her cunning and pass into the Lazar House…like Corinth or Monemvasia?’

  ‘I liked Monemvasia,’ Jeremy said. ‘It reminded me of those ruined gun emplacements near your house on the Norfolk coast. Power, crumbling into a heap of nostalgia and broken masonry.’

  ‘You liked Monemvasia,’ said Fielding grouchily, ‘because Nicos Pandouros was there, showing himself off in his Y-fronts.’

  As they walked along the canal that wound through the reeds to the cathedral, Fielding recalled the scene, first silently, to remind himself of the details, then orally, hoping to provoke reaction or comment from Jeremy.

  ‘It was near the first church on the way up to the Castle, in the little courtyard just beyond and above the apse. There was Greco Barraclough poking about and looking silly, when he saw us, because he hadn’t kept his promise to meet us at Gythaion – why not, one wonders now?–’

  ‘–That I can tell you,’ said Jeremy. ‘He thinks you’re a bad influence, at least potentially, on Nicos.’

  ‘That I’m a bad influence on Nicos?’

  ‘Yes. You see, he’s quite sharp, is Greco Barraclough. For all that ponderous, prosy talk, he is very quick. And so he has noticed, even though he has seen us together only once before we came out here, that you have, not just a very strong and subtle appeal for me – the charm of the indulgent Mr Worldly Wiseman, who dispenses shrewd advice and pleasurable suggestions – but also an ability, Fielding, when you are at your best, to bind and persuade and draw me after you, down paths which I should not, of myself, be man enough to tread.

  ‘Now, if you have that effect on me, he tells himself, you may well have it on other young men of my age – and among them his boy, Nicos Pandouros.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’

  ‘Nicos told me, told me on the very occasion which we are now discussing.’

  ‘I see. Or rather, I am beginning to. Let me go back to my reconstruction. There we were in the courtyard, you and I; and the Greco, embarrassed at our appearance, seemed very anxious to send us on our way. “The view from the Castle Platform is magnificent,” he said, “but you want to get up there before the charabanc party which is now going round Hagios Andreas.” Instead of taking the hint, I asked him why he’d cut our rendezvous in Gythaion; and he said, sorry, they’d had a puncture that day, and if we wanted to look at the view from the Castle Platform without being jostled by prolix tourists we should go now. At that very second, just as we were about to move off, Nicos appeared in the doorway of one of those ruined houses, wearing nothing but a pair of brief purple Y-Front pants – hardly even pants, more like a cache-sex. At this stage, while you gouped at Nicos as though you would like to lick him all over–’

  ‘–Very lickable he was. Straight, strong and smooth with that organic sheen that poor Greek boys have – and middle-class English boys don’t, because they’ve been given too many baths as children–’

&
nbsp; ‘–While you eyed and ogled–’

  ‘–I did nothing of the kind, Fielding. Nicos is not the sort of chap that allows himself to be eyed and ogled. One look of admiration, then just a friendly “hullo”, appropriate on meeting a fellow undergraduate of my College.’

  ‘Your “one look of admiration” was positively operatic. I expected the Greco to hustle Nicos away to safety at once, but all he did was hustle me away, right up to that confounded Castle Platform, leaving you alone with the quasi-naked Nicos.’

  ‘He’s not afraid of me, you see. First, because he knows that Nicos wouldn’t let me touch him, secondly because it wouldn’t matter even if he did. That sort of thing is no menace. The Greco wouldn’t mind Nicos having a little fun on the side (though on this occasion, I do assure you, there was none); what the Greco fears is that Nicos might be piped away over the hills by somebody of long experience who can play the oldest and most enticing tunes – somebody like you.’

  ‘Why would I want to entice Nicos?’

  ‘Ah. Barraclough is afraid that intentionally or otherwise you might give Nicos a few hints about how to make himself free.’

  ‘Make himself free? Is he a slave or something? Jeremy, what can you mean?’

  They passed a small bridge with no balustrades. It led across the canal and into a copse of holm oak. Under the bridge a barge was moored, brown, empty, about ten feet long.

  ‘Il Ponte del Diavolo,’ read Jeremy from a notice on the side of the bridge. ‘The Devil’s Bridge, Fielding. Which leads to the only trees on this beastly island. Perhaps we should cross it?’

  ‘The way to the cathedral is along this path. What do you mean…about Barraclough’s being afraid I might entice Nicos…might give him hints about how to make himself free?’

  ‘He explained it all to me that afternoon in Monemvasia, after Greco Barraclough had marched you off up the hill. He’d had a row with Greco about the kit he was wearing – a light blue sleeveless vest and boxer’s shorts. The row had gone drizzling on the whole morning, with Greco saying such a costume was unsuitable for his attendant–’