by Simon Raven
‘And when did the bubble burst?’
‘When many of the products advertised proved worthless and went unpaid for. If you sell a large quantity of tractors to China, you’re going to find it hard enough to get paid, in any currency worth having, at the best of times. If the tractors start falling apart and you have neglected to ensure a proper supply of spare parts, then you are not going to get paid at all…or certainly not more than once. Donald, being the man he was, had foreseen all that. He sold up his magazines at their peak period, in 1964, just before the introduction of Capital Gains Tax. The printing firm he kept – and gave sound and honourable service to the new owners of the magazines which he had sold, until one by one they went bankrupt, Donald having carefully discounted the money they owed him in all his calculations. He was left with a printing firm of huge prestige – which from then on handled works of science and learning only, Donald’s hobby, you might say, and still a very profitable one; and he was also left with an enormous sum in ready money which was most prudently laid out and invested.’
‘After which,’ said Jeremy with zest, ‘he had a series of ulcers and allergies and mental breakdowns, and got no joy of any of it. And now he is dead. Carmilla once told me that for the last ten years or so the only pleasure he ever had was from occasional days at Lord’s…the only place, she said, in which he was at peace. I asked why he didn’t go there more often – after all, he must have been his own boss – and do you know what she said?’
‘No,’ said Peter, rather huffily, for this had started as his story, not Jeremy’s.
‘She said, father, that he had an old-fashioned Yorkshire conscience about attendance at his place of business, he liked to keep the same hours as his employees…and when, eventually, his doctor ordered him to take more time off and go to Lord’s, his wife, knowing how much he loved it, spoilt it all for him by ringing up every half hour with fake messages about her own health, and having him called to the telephone over the loudspeaker.’
‘I’m told,’ said Peter, ‘that they’re very reluctant to page anyone on that loudspeaker – that they soon spot troublemakers and ignore them.’
‘That’s what I said to Carmilla. She said that her mother – adoptive mother – was the most poisonous and persistent woman in England, more than a match for the officials at Lord’s. It’s a wonder, if you come to think of it, father, how jolly those two girls have grown up.’
‘And prodigiously rich with it,’ his father said. ‘Why don’t you marry one of them?’
‘A very good idea, gentlemen,’ said the Chamberlain. ‘There is nothing like pounds sterling, Master Jeremy, to enhance and support strawberry leaves.’
‘Strawberry leaves, Chamberlain?’
‘I have been advising your father for some time, Master Jeremy, that he should procure entrance to the Upper House by accepting a peerage as Earl or Marquess.’
‘Oh, I see…’
‘I think, Chamberlain,’ said Peter, ‘that you may place the decanters and withdraw. I wish to discuss your advice with my son.’
‘Indeed, sir… So good night to you, gentlemen both, and God bless you.’
‘God bless you, Chamberlain…’
‘When he came from Canteloupe,’ said Peter after the Chamberlain had gone, ‘Canteloupe swore that he had never touched a drop of drink from the day he had first known him as a recruit in Hamilton’s Horse. He became Canteloupe’s servant at some stage in Egypt; went everywhere with him – you could still arrange that kind of thing in those days, at any rate in a proper regiment – came out of the Army when Canteloupe sent his papers in, still being, if we’re to believe Canteloupe, an absolute teetotaller and never left Canteloupe, not even for a holiday, until the day he came here to take care of your brother. It was thought, you see, that since they were both going mad and knew each other well from Canteloupe’s frequent visits down here, they might provide good company for each other.’
‘And so they did, father.’
‘Yes. Only of course Nicholas was being destroyed by some virus in the brain, whereas the Chamberlain was merely going mildly potty. Why did I start all this? Ah, I know; potty the Chamberlain may be, Jeremy; but this idea of his that I could be ennobled at will sometimes makes me think, despite all Canteloupe’s oaths about his abstinence, that he must be drunk as well. He gets oddly unctuous when he talks of it, and unctuousness is the brand of drunken servants.’
‘His idea isn’t all that odd, father: you could have a Life Barony for the asking tomorrow – whichever party were in power.’
‘Possibly. But not the Earldom or the Marquessate which the Chamberlain suggests.’
‘Pure affection on his part. Affection for the family and a mistaken idea of its grandeur.’
‘Ah,’ said Peter, passing the port, ‘but in one respect he is not mistaken. Never mind that rubbish about strawberry leaves; what he was quick to see was that a fortune like that which would come with one of the Salinger girls could do great things for the estate. Modernisation, enlargement, security–’
‘I see, sir,’ said Jeremy, who often called his father ‘sir’ in bad moments, being off and on a reader of Trollope, ‘you would like me to marry one of those girls and devote her money and my energies to improving and increasing the estate?’
‘Yes. I can think of few more satisfactory occupations.’
Jeremy downed his glass for strength and poured another.
‘I can, sir,’ Jeremy said.
‘What, for example?’
‘Almost anything. Why should I sit here in the Norfolk mud for the rest of my life, doing what bores me stiff? What bores you stiff too, father, and don’t try to deny it. Fielding Gray says you loved this land when you were a boy, but gradually politics and power and the rest took over, and so now you want to sling the whole bloody albatross round my neck, to leave yourself free for your nasty game in Westminster.’
‘The estate would descend to you at my death in any case,’ Peter said. ‘Sooner or later you will be responsible for it. Best accept that with a good grace.’
‘That’s what Fielding Gray says.’
‘I’m much obliged to Major Gray. It’s only common sense; accept the responsibility, then make proper arrangements, a process which some Salinger money would certainly facilitate. That done, you need not trouble to spend too much time here…three months a year would probably be enough.’
‘Oh no, they wouldn’t be,’ said Jeremy fiercely. ‘If a man once takes on this sort of thing, then he must do it with his might – Chamberlains, tenants, turnips, cows and curates, milkmaids seduced and made pregnant by the factor, the village idiot and the village cricket team, the whole ridiculous rural lot. He has to care, sir. You have got away with not caring, first because people remember that once you did care, and secondly because since then you have been in Parliament – have even been in the Government – which just makes your position respectable… that of the landed magnate who is slightly negligent because he has higher duties. But if I am to do this thing, I must do it fully and honourably; and I’m telling you flat, sir, I don’t want to do it at all. Surely…there are some cousins somewhere who could have it – cousins on my mother’s side.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Peter, ‘but they’d have to have all the money too, wouldn’t they? They might even start asking for some sort of guarantee immediately, which would mean that there’d be none for you, not even enough to keep you at Cambridge.’ He stood up and came to attention. Jeremy did the same. ‘Good night, my dear boy,’ Peter said. ‘Tomorrow I leave for London, very early, so I shall not see you. Enjoy yourself here until you go back to Cambridge, where you should make my best compliments to my old friend, your Provost. As for this evening’s discussion, we shall talk of these matters again at our meeting here for Christmas, when I shall hope to find you more inclined to make the very easy compromises which must be effected to ensure the future welfare of the estate…and of yourself. Good night to you: make free with the decanter: and t
omorrow, Jeremy, when I am gone, stay well and stay with God.’
It was just as well that Jeremy Morrison, despite his father’s encouragement, contemplated no immediate courtship of the Salinger girls, either one. On the day he returned to Lancaster he saw them as they were walking together in the Great Court; he waved and hurried to meet them, only to find that as he came near to them they simply moved apart from each other by a couple of yards and marched firmly past on either side while he went lurching through the gap.
‘What on earth can I have done to them?’ he later and rather disingenuously said to Len, who combined his role as Provost’s Secretary with that of College confessor, know-all and fix-it.
‘You’ve upset them both by sleeping with that little Marius Stern.’
‘But there was nothing wrong in that, Len. Ptoly Tunne as good as ordered me to. It was to stop his being frightened in the night.’
‘Nevertheless, the Salinger sisters don’t think men of twenty ought to share their beds with boys of twelve. Silly, isn’t it? And then I suspect, Jeremy baby, though I can’t actually prove, that you’ve been putting your hot little handies in their money box.’
‘In Theodosia’s money box.’
‘In Theodosia’s money box – and in Carmilla’s honey pot. So now, I dare say, they’ve swapped confidences, and you’ve been consigned to the kennels.’
‘How do I get back into the house…and into the bedroom?’
‘Start looking miserable about something. Women love misery; it never fails to excite them.’
‘How very odd.’
‘Not at all odd. It’s serious, you see – or so they think. If there’s one thing gets a woman into bed, it’s thinking the man is serious. Which means marriage or misery. On the very lowest level, you could say that the man’s unhappiness literally bores the knickers off her. Let’s have a good healthy whoop of lust, she tells herself, anything instead of these squeals of self pity.’
‘I might have something to squeal about at that. My father’s coming it heavy about my taking over the estate. He really is a most cynical man, Len. When I said it would bore me, he suggested that I needn’t bother about the place very much, just go through the occasional motions. He can’t understand that if one takes on people in that way one must do the thing one hundred per cent.’
‘Nor can I, baby. Those peasants will be as right as the rum ration without you, don’t you kid yourself. Just take the thing as it comes.’
‘I can’t, Len. Either I must be – well – the Squire, ready to help all my people every minute of the year…or I don’t want to touch it. Since I don’t see myself as Squire in the full and demanding sense, I don’t want to touch it. So I suggested there might be a cousin somewhere who could fill the part.’
‘And what did Daddy say to that?’
‘That if it went to someone else, the someone else would have to have the family money – the lot, Len – to keep it going.’
‘Leaving little Jeremy in rags and bare tootsies? Now since we’re thinking feudal, darling, wouldn’t it be just as disloyal to your villeins to refuse the job – thus leaving them in the care of someone who may be a real turd for all you know – as to take it on and be a bit floppy about it. After all, you’re the one they look to see succeed your father, and even if you were a bit slack and away most of the winter, at least they’ve watched you growing up for twenty years and remember when you wet your velvet knickers at the village concert…and when you sang Drake’s Drum a few years later.’
‘How funny of you to have guessed that.’
Len sighed.
‘Anyway, wet knickers and Drake’s Drum is all they want, darling – to know your heart’s in the right place. They don’t need you telling them about manure or birth control or Granny’s arthritis – you pay other people to do that with your taxes.’
‘Perhaps you’re right, but I feel very wretched about it all.’
‘No, you don’t,’ said Len, ‘you’re just trying to draw attention to yourself. It’s all so bloody got up, Jeremy doll, so fucking voulu as the Frogs say, that it wouldn’t get a self-respecting nymphomaniac into bed with you, let alone Miss Carmilla. Now, if you just stop being the Week’s Man of Sorrows, I’ve got two things to tell you. First, if you’re a good boy and work hard, Tom will deal with your old man – that’s if he shows any sign of landing you with that estate too early and messing up your career in this College.’
‘Thank you, Len – but how can I be sure?’
‘Because I tell you, and I’m not talking just to give myself a nice feeling in the throat. And second, listen good to this: if you want to be in everybody’s good books, darling, ride your bike out to the Milton Road and climb into that Morris 1000 which both University and College regulations forbid you to keep there – don’t worry, sweetheart, Uncle Len won’t sneak so long as you toe his line – and drive your lovely carcass cautiously to Ptolemaeos Tunne’s house in the Fens, where you will find little Master Lonelyheart longing to see you again.’
‘You can’t mean…Marius Stern?’
‘No, darling. He’s gone back to his school, we hear, after Gregory has promised to present them with a new stadium or something, and is sitting there as pie as Tom Brown himself, not playing with his nice new circumcised penis.’
‘Then who?’
‘Brother Pixie.’
‘PIERO. How did he get here?’
‘Ask him. You should enjoy listening to the answer. Now look, lover boy. Piero means problems. While those problems are being sorted out by your elders and betters, Ptoly will have him in the Fens, reconstructing him and his data so that he can take some sort of place over here. Everyone seems to reckon, you see, that Piero is somehow owed. Now, you’re being appointed to keep him amused – and to keep him strictly inside the Parish, because he’s got no passport or anything and we don’t want any Nosy Parkers asking questions. You can bring him into the College for the odd day – the poor little bugger must have a change from time to time – but he is not to be taken round other Colleges or into public restaurants or anywhere outside the precincts of Tunne Hall in the Fens or those of this College.’
‘Can I introduce him to anyone here?’
‘Yes. I think he might have a fellow-feeling for Nicos Pandouros, who’s a decent boy and knows how to keep his mouth shut.’
‘Good. I like Nicos.’
‘That old ninny, Barraclough, won’t like it when you take Nicos out to the Fens, but Nicos and you can fix him between you. Incidentally, if we can only get Ptoly interested in Nicos as well as Piero, there might be an end of Greco Barraclough’s hold over Nicos, and high time too.’
‘Nicos says he’s sworn an oath to the Greco. He doesn’t take such things lightly.’
‘Well, we’ll see about all that later. Your real baby right now is Piero. The trouble is, you’ll find, that he’s hoping to see more of his old friends – like Canteloupe and Baby, and even Max de Freville, all of whom knew him in Venice. Well, Max is in a state of autistic retreat, and Canteloupe is in Los Angeles, and as for Baby – tush, tush–’
‘–Tush, tush what, for Christ’s sake?’
‘Tom doesn’t want her to see anything of Piero. He’s scared lest she regress into her childhood – into the less wholesome regions of it at that. You see, Baby was only fourteen when she last knew Piero, and their relations were curious and even weird. It seems he showed her some very unsavoury things which she should not have seen in the Palazzo he lived in, and that they later corresponded about the ghosts in the place. So all ways round, the Provost doesn’t want Piero hanging round Baby, and since we aim to keep the Provost happy, we say Amen to that. But it does mean that for the time being you’re the one who’ll have to do all the Piero-sitting.’
‘Fielding Gray might help.’
‘Fielding Gray doesn’t live within ten miles of Ptoly.’
‘Point taken. I’ll do my best, Len. There’s something very strange about Piero. On that one time I me
t him in Torcello he enormously excited me. Not in the obvious way. I don’t really know how to describe it. I felt almost as if I were talking with an angel or a devil, with some totally unfamiliar kind of being who might change shape at any moment, might humble or exalt me, might present me with untold gifts or bewitch me with–’
‘–Just stop right there, honey,’ said Len. ‘Piero’s a Sicilian tart with quick wits and a club foot. That’ll do to be going on with.’
Early in October, Baby Canteloupe came to Cambridge to see her father, Tom Llewyllyn.
‘Jo-Jo,’ she said to Tom as they strolled back and forth on the rear lawn of Lancaster, ‘is getting bigger and bigger and more and more peculiar. It’s almost like one of those Greek legends – you know, when the girl has been cursed by a goddess and the baby just can’t get out.’
‘You came all the way from Wiltshire to tell me this?’
‘She made me promise to come to you – not just telephone but come to you – and persuade you to agree that Alexandre – that’s the son she thinks she’s going to have – that Alexandre can be christened in Lancaster College, just like Sarum. It’s her latest craze – and less embarrassing, I must say, than some of the others she’s been having lately.’
‘I shouldn’t have thought that either she or that French husband of hers would have been in the least bit bothered about christening.’
‘Nor should I. But she’s not exactly herself, as I’ve explained to you, blown up like a Zeppelin, with all this waiting. Anyhow, that’s what she’s made me promise: to obtain your permission, from you in person, for Alexandre to be christened in your Chapel. She keeps saying that he must be christened in the same place as Sarum was.’
‘That’s all very well, Tullia,’ said Tom Llewyllyn, surveying his daughter with some disquiet. ‘I think you’re running to fat,’ he said.
‘If so, it’s in sympathy with poor Jo. Now, Poppa, can she have Alexandre done here?’
‘I was about to say…that the College Chapel is only available, for purposes of this kind, to connections of the College. You, my daughter, were Sarum’s mother: that’s the only reason he ever got in here.’
