by Simon Raven
‘No.’
‘That’s because he thinks you’re unsympathetic. You’re not fully in his confidence.’
‘Thank you very much. Then why did he come here?’
‘Because yours is the only address he knows – the Lancaster College of Cambridge, as he calls it. What does Len say?’
‘Len says he’s adorable,’ said Tom crossly, ‘and means nothing but trouble. Out with him, Len says: out with him tomorrow, or we’ll have another Nicos Pandouros on our hands.’
‘Come to that, I should think Piero would make an altogether admirable undergraduate…once you gave him something decent to wear instead of that pitiful habit. He’s only about twenty even now, you know.’
‘I do know,’ said Tom. There was a brief pause, then, ‘Beware of pity,’ Tom said. ‘See you tomorrow about noon.’
Canteloupe looked down at Max de Freville, who lay on his back, rigidly at attention, under coverings that might have been the carved draperies on a tomb.
‘Max,’ said Canteloupe. ‘Max. It’s Canteloupe. Detterling.’
He was totally ignored.
‘Since his eyes are open,’ said Canteloupe to Doctor La Soeur, ‘he must be awake.’
‘That doesn’t necessarily follow. Or again, he could be awake, but not to you.’
‘Then to what?’
‘Despair,’ said Doctor La Soeur. ‘I’ve tried several treatments to snap him out of this, drugs and shocks of one kind and another. Sometimes I’ve got him muttering. It seems that he had just one thing left that he believed in, that made him want to go on breathing. His mistress is dead, his partner is dead, but he had just this one thing going for him – or rather two: an old friend, and the friend’s son. You want me to go on?’
‘If you please.’
‘Something he has seen or imagined he has seen in the son has made him mad. First it made him violent, then reduced him to total inertia, as you see. Despair.’
‘My son,’ said Canteloupe. ‘Sarum, I mean. That is, Tullius.’
‘I know.’
‘He seemed to like him when he first saw him, at his Christening. Then he came to see him down in Wiltshire a couple of months later, and said…said that he had funny eyes. He ran straight out of my place and got a lift in the dairy truck to the station at Warminster. Apparently he kept babbling about Sarum…that is, Tullius…the whole way, so the dairyman put two and two together and told me about it later. We had to send his luggage on. And then, a few days afterwards, they rang me up from his club – also one of mine – and said he was breaking the place up. The rest you know.’
‘What sort of things did he say when he was babbling in the dairy truck?’
‘He was still on about Tully’s eyes. He said they were a whore’s eyes – as if one could possibly tell in a child of that age. He said they were the eyes of a boy we all once knew, in Venice years ago, called Piero, who was the kept boy of Max’s partner, one Lykiadopoulos. Oddly enough my wife says that Tullius eyes are like Piero’s, though I can’t see it myself. Anyhow, what difference would it make? Piero was a perfectly decent lad who was making his way as best he could…very polite, as I remember, and highly intelligent. Or perhaps “quick” would be a better word. He did have rather a creepy smile – perhaps that was what Max was thinking of in some curious way. But what had any of that to do with little Tullius? Do you suppose he’s listening to all this?’ asked Canteloupe, nodding down at Max de Freville.
‘No. He’s ceased to care.’
‘But why?’
‘Some people do. It simply means they’ve gone on long enough. They just can’t be bothered any more; they can’t see any possible point. That could be what we have here – a terminal sense of futility apparently brought on by disappointment in your son–’
‘–Tullius. But that’s ridiculous. How could anyone be disappointed in a child of that age…unless it were a monster?’
‘Perhaps, Canteloupe, Max saw something in – or near – your son–’
‘–Tullius–’
‘–Which reminded him, in a purely subjective way, nothing to do with the boy himself, that is, but by some obscure process of association…reminded him of some person or occurrence the memory of which reduced him to despair…something or somebody of which he hadn’t thought for many years, perhaps, but which now rose up to make him wish he were dead. If he were predisposed for that kind of thing to happen, then almost anything could have set him off – the shape or colour of the pram, the tilt of the nurse’s nose, or a chance smell in the room–’
‘–It happened in the rose garden–’
‘–A chance smell of roses…or grass. Anything.’
‘Then why, if it was really something else that upset him, was he carrying on about Sarum – Tullius – all the way to the station – and, they say, when he went beserk in the Club?’
‘I simply don’t know, Canteloupe,’ said Doctor La Soeur, ‘and if he keeps it up like this, none of us ever will.’
‘Now let’s get this straight,’ said Fielding Gray to Piero, ‘I saw Jeremy Morrison give you a lot of money on Torcello; did you use it to come to England?’
Fielding Gray, Brother Piero (still in his habit, sandal and surgical boot), Sir Thomas Llewyllyn (Provost of Lancaster College, Cambridge), and the Secretary to the Provost, commonly called Len, were all in the morning room of the Provost’s Lodging.
‘No,’ said Piero. ‘“A gift for the good brothers,” Mr Morrison said. My brothers. So that’s where his money went – into our communal chest.’
‘But he whispered to you, after he gave you the money.’
‘Yes. He asked me to smile. I hadn’t yet smiled, not since we met, he said: please would I smile as I said goodbye.’
‘And as both Tom and I remember,’ said Fielding, ‘you prefer not to smile?’
‘I used to smile all day long when I was a child in Syracuse. A beggar’s smile. Then one day somebody pushed me aside, and I was still smiling as my foot went under the iron wheel of the refuse cart. You understand?’
‘So you turned away from us – on Torcello, I mean – to excuse yourself from smiling and in the pretence that you must attend urgently to the boat.’
‘I suppose so. I should have smiled for Jeremy – for both of you – if I could.’
‘But in none of this,’ said Tom Llewyllyn, ‘was there any indication that Morrison was hoping or suggesting that you should come to England?’
‘No. But I think, all the same, that he may be pleased to see me. Others too. Anyhow, I could stay no longer with my brothers. Some of them stink. Others bully me…sometimes try to touch me with their grey hands. They are good men, really, who will cure the seabird I was collecting for them from Torcello, if it is to be cured. But they are old and bored and they have seen through God. Men say that to lead the religious life one should be free from the distractions of the world. But if there are no distractions, if one is left alone with God all day long, as we were on that island, then one very soon realises how cruel and monstrous he is, how much misery and horror he has to answer for. Which of us has asked – would ever have asked – to live this life of pain? How dare God make such a life possible – and threaten to damn us if we seek solace from it in sin? That is the sort of thing which one asks if one is long alone with Him. So either one comes to hate Him, or, better perhaps, one ceases to believe in Him. Either way that island is a bad place to be and my brothers, though good men in themselves, are bad men to be with.’
‘Yet you left Jeremy’s money with them?’ said Len.
‘My honour told me so.’
‘Then how did you manage the journey?’
Piero looked at Len, then at Tom and Fielding, then back to Len, then once more at Tom and Fielding.
‘Both of you I know,’ he said to Tom and Fielding, ‘but this man, not. Is he your friend?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then I shall tell you how I managed the journey. Once a whore,’ said Piero, ‘always a w
hore. This habit helped, and in some cases my foot. There are people who hanker for such things.’
The door opened without a knock. Eighteen stones’ worth of Ptolemaeos Tunne moved in.
‘My word,’ he said to Piero, ‘what a little beauty you are. That tonsure has made my day.’ And to Tom, ‘I came to ask your permission to take Chromios Iason’s De Animis Animalium from the special section of the college library. I will leave Hermes Chrysorrapis’ De Aquis Reducendi as a hostage. A fair exchange, I think. Chrysorrapis will teach you how to distil liquors to revive the dead, while the volume which I shall be taking is merely an elementary dissertation on the psychology of brute beasts.’
‘And very misleading,’ Piero added. ‘We had it in my monastery to help us treat the animals. Chromios Iason, though an observant man, was without love. Therefore he totally misunderstood the sounds and movements with which animals seek to indicate their needs to us and to each other. The whimpering of a hungry dog he interprets as adoration of its master, and so on and so forth.’
‘Ah,’ said Ptolemaeos, ‘a man of learning, come from one cloister to visit fellow scholars in another.’ He bowed to Piero. ‘Salve, eruditissime doctor,’ he said, ‘what is the news from our brothers in Palermo?’
‘My cloister is in Venezia, egregi domine.’
‘But you yourself – you are from Sicilia – non è vero?’
‘Si. Ma da Siracusa.’
‘Ah. I should have realised. A boy of your age from Palermo would long since have gone right off – hairy legs, blue chin, a sort of distortion between the nostrils and the corners of the mouth, to say nothing of other indigenous deformities, result of a low strain, much intermarried. But you…you are a typical open-bred Syracusan – product of strong and various outside strains which came early and lingered long. Achaean, Dorian, Vandal, Jute, Norman…they all flocked through Syracuse…to say nothing of the German and later the British occupation during the Second World War. You owe your looks to the brutal and licentious soldiery down the millennia, you cute little mongrel, you. What are you doing here – in that ridiculous outfit?’
‘I have left my convent in the Laguna Morta to come back to my friends.’
‘But you went into that convent to get away from us,’ said Tom, ‘you wanted to leave the world and all that therein is.’
‘I have explained,’ said Piero patiently, ‘it is not possible to live in isolation with God. Had I stayed, I should have become like those whom I left behind – a skilful maker of splints and special cages for maimed birds, growing old at thirty on a diet of muttered liturgy and rank vegetables.’
‘So you’ve come to knock on the gilded gate of Lancaster College,’ said Ptolemaeos, looking at Tom and Len, ‘and to ask for admission to the enchanted garden. House and garden full, dear boy. These aren’t the old days, when only gentlemen or scholars were allowed in and there’d be plenty of room left over for a promising number like you on sheer curiosity value: these days they pack the place with any old rubbish years in advance in case the equality artists at Westminster go into a tantrum and confiscate all their lovely lolly.’
‘At least, Ptoly,’ said Tom, ‘I found room for Nicos Pandouros. It wasn’t easy – and the less easy as he was sponsored by a Fellow of the College. You know the sort of Council I have to deal with. If they had their way they’d fill the College with Borstal boys.’
‘The fact remains,’ said Ptolemaeos, ‘that you, as Provost, retain an absolute right to nominate whom you please to places in this College.’
‘In theory,’ Tom shuddered. ‘If I exercise my right,’ he said, ‘the left wing of the Council nearly tears my cassock off…particularly if my nominee has had a relative in Lancaster or a public school education.’
‘Our friend here has had neither.’
‘I am not asking to be nominated to anything,’ Piero said, ‘but merely to meet some old friends again – the only friends I ever really had since I was first taken from Sicily – and find out if there is any place for me among them. And there is one new friend, or may be–’
‘–If you mean Jeremy Morrison,’ said Fielding, ‘remember that Cambridge is a very long way from Torcello. Now he’s back here again, Jeremy will have other things to do than pursue a chance acquaintance with you.’
‘Ah, take heed,’ said Ptolemaeos Tunne to Piero. ‘Fielding Gray thinks you’re just a common gatecrasher, another bloody time-wasting nuisance.’
‘I’ve come all the way from London–’
‘To keep your conscience in good nick. You’ll sail smoothly with Tom and Len through all the arguments for turning this little wretch into the street, and then glide off home, congratulating yourself on having played a compassionate but practical part in the dialogue – and never caring that the answer was a small, sour lemon for Brother – Brother what’s your name?’ he barked at Piero.
‘Piero.’
‘That can’t be all.’ Piero shrugged. ‘What does it say on your passport?’ Ptolemaeos asked.
‘They took that from me when I came to the Convent. With my watch and my fountain pen.’
‘Well then, Piero…how did you get into France and England?’
‘There was a busload of English pilgrims who were coming home from Monte Gargano. One of them was ill and had been left behind in a hospital, and the priest in charge had forgotten to leave his passport behind with him. On condition that I made myself useful, he let me take the sick man’s place in the charabanc and ride in it to England. With parties like that the men at the borders just count the heads then the passports to make sure there is the same number of both, and the same at Dover. Or so it happened this time. So there was no difficulty.’
Ptolemaeos chuckled.
‘I suppose not. One dear little Friar in the Padre Pio party – what could be more natural? But tell me did the nice kind priest let you keep the extra passport?’
‘No. It had to be sent back to Italy, for the man that was ill.’
‘So it will be an interesting problem fitting you up with an identity,’ Ptolemaeos said, ‘it’s always been an ambition of mine – to find an officially non-existent person and construct a new identity for him; so if you’ve got nothing better to do – and you haven’t – you’ll come along with me. My name is Ptolemaeos Tunne,’ he said, ‘I am an old member of this College and a most respectable person, as all the gentlemen present will vouch. I live in an ample house in the middle of the Fens. Although they are not far from here, they sometimes seem lonely to the uninitiated; but since we both know Jeremy Morrison we can ask him to come and see us – at the risk of incurring Major Gray’s displeasure – and as time goes on we can invite all the rest of your English friends…who will be rather proud when they hear,’ said Ptolemaeos, taking Piero’s left hand in his, ‘what you have been through in order to see them again. And so now, Provost Llewyllyn,’ he said to Sir Thomas, ‘you may care to consider this young gentleman’s future while I take care of his present. Here is Hermes Chrysorrapis: Piero and I will collect Chromios Iason on our way out, if you will have the goodness to telephone the Librarian and warn him that we shall be passing.’
‘I’m glad to have this chance to talk to you,’ Peter Morrison said to his son, Jeremy. ‘In fact I came here with that in mind. It occurred to me that you might find it convenient to spend a few days here before returning to Cambridge, after your costly foreign travels.’
They were sitting in the dining-room in the Manor House at Luffham by Whereham. Peter Morrison was at the head of the table, under a portrait of his father: Jeremy was sitting some way down on his father’s right, opposite a portrait of his dead mother, Helen. The Chamberlain of the Household (as he liked to be called) took post, when not actually serving, beneath the portrait of Helen, as neither Peter nor Jeremy was comfortable with a servant at his back.
‘It wasn’t all that expensive,’ said Jeremy defensively, ‘Major Gray paid for the car and so on.’
‘You know, of all my old frie
nds,’ said Peter Morrison, ‘I think the very last one I should have chosen as a companion for you would have been Fielding Gray.’
‘He speaks of you with great affection, father.’
‘And I think of him with great affection. Nevertheless, he is the last man whom I would wish you to have as a friend. Why not someone of your own age.’
‘So insipid, most of them.’
‘I thought you had two particular girl friends at Lancaster – Donald Salinger’s daughters.’
Jeremy did not say that when his father had last seen him with the Salinger twins, on an occasion in Lancaster, he had shown clear signs, not of approval, but of being bitterly peeved and jealous at the favour which Jeremy enjoyed in that quarter. He merely remarked, ‘I saw a lot of them at the beginning of the vacation. One needs a rest from people, you know. Anyway, they had to accompany their father to America – and then take care of everything when he died.’
‘They must be immensely rich.’
‘Where did the money come from?’ Jeremy asked, very much wanting to know.
‘Donald inherited a lot from his parents, a little in land, most of it money in the funds. He used it well. He made a fortune by providing an accurate printing service, which started with commercial rubbish (as his partner at that time was a cheap-jack) but ultimately included almost every language and script in the civilised world, as well as all major mathematical and scientific notations…and this at a time when the printing trade was rapidly going downhill. He then founded several technical magazines which, because of the reliability of their matter and presentation, were in heavy demand all over the world, particularly behind the Iron Curtain, and so attracted a large volume of highly paid advertising. In the end, he could afford to distribute the magazines without charge, so high were his revenues from advertisements…which, in consequence of the free and thus ever wider distribution, became even higher.’
