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

by Simon Raven

  ‘You didn’t see him when he was christened,’ Max said, ‘so you can’t know how he’s changed since.’ He arched his back and spat, then seemed to relax. ‘He was normal enough when he was christened, you see; but two months after, it was as though a changeling had been put in the pram, a little gnome, with slit eyes, whore’s eyes, like Lyki’s whore Piero in Venice. I intended to love that child and give him a fortune, but you can’t give your gold to a changeling, a gnome, something which the fairies have put in the pram. I wonder that nobody has noticed, Angie. Neither Canteloupe nor that girl-wife of his nor that brute Fielding Gray – though he’s the other Godfather – nobody but me has noticed that the real Sarum has been taken away and a changeling put in his place. There’s nothing really left now – there would have been Canteloupe as well as the boy, but what do you make of a father who doesn’t know his own son from a shrivelled little gnome? So there’s nothing left now, and I’m through.’

  He rose from the bed, fought off La Soeur and the four attendant females, made for the window (which wasn’t barred, being on the ground floor), flung it open, and then, after powerfully resisting further attempts from La Soeur and the women, at last kicked them off, scrabbled his way under the sash (still kicking) and fell forward, screaming ‘Angie’.

  ‘Never mind,’ said La Soeur. ‘He’ll simply land on the flower bed. Staff Nurse, Nurse, go and get help and have him brought back.’

  ‘He’s in a very funny position, doctor,’ said Sister, who was looking through the window.

  ‘I dare say. I’ve just had the results of some tests from the laboratories. I had a hunch about Mr Max de Freville,’ La Soeur said to Matron, ‘and it’s come up en plein.’

  ‘En plein, doctor?’

  ‘Straight win on a single number. You know what he’s got? What we used to call GPI – General Paralysis of the Insane. He must have caught the pox many years ago – long before penicillin – then been skilfully but, as was inevitable in those days, incompletely cured, and now the dormant disease has come back to fetch him away. Despair, violence, delusions – all part of the pattern. A classic instance, this perverted vision of little Lord Sarum. Flawed sight and a brain part eaten by spirochaetes has caused him to see a nightmare in place of a child who is suffering from nothing worse than rather close-set eyes and a snub nose. As I said, I’ve examined him myself. Socrates or Silenus, if you like, but not the Faery Fellow’s work.’

  Socrates or Silenus, it was all one to Matron and Sister, who now started browbeating the Staff Nurse as she reappeared, looking rather woozy, in the doorway, for not attending her charge while he was carried back to his room by the porters.

  ‘Not my fault,’ said Staff, disrespectful and truculent, waving away rebuke with a weird circular movement of both hands, ‘he won’t be coming back in here. That notice saying DON’T PICK THE FLOWERS – he swallowed the stake as he fell.’

  ‘It seems,’ said Canteloupe to Baby shortly after his return from California, ‘that Max had prepared considerable sums as gifts for me and Sarum, to be made over on his death or whenever ordered by him. Obviously he hadn’t the time to change anything – or simply didn’t get round to it – between that day he took against Sarum – Tullius – down here and actually going off his rocker in the Club. And after that, of course, it was too late.’

  ‘You’ve no hesitation in accepting the money?’ Baby said.

  ‘None. I contributed quite generously some years back to a fund which Max got up to save parts of the Jewish Ghetto in Venice. So you might say that Max owed me…and I’m happy to tell you that the sums he’d got together for me and Tully were substantially larger than anything I ever sent to his fund. Anyway, he’s got no one else to will it to: why not us?’

  ‘Sarum’s will go into trust, I suppose?’

  ‘Tully’s will go into trust. All of it’s in America, so we should be able to keep it quiet and not pay any gift tax or whatever they have the impertinence to call it. So what with the dollars I was paid for the Canzoni watercolours while I was in California, we’ve got a nice little pile on the safe side of the water. I’d better put some in Ptoly Tunne’s account over there – you remember he lent me a bit when my pocket money ran low a few years back. As for the rest – at least some of it – I thought it was time I gave you a present. Come to think of it, I promised you one before I left for America. Celebration of Tully’s first birthday, which isn’t very far off.’

  ‘How sweet, Canty. Whatever will it be?’

  ‘Wait and see, girl,’ Canteloupe said.

  ‘Well, I’ll be needing something to cheer me up. Jo-Jo and Jean-Marie will be off any minute, now she’s had Oenone.’

  ‘Where shall they go?’

  ‘She’s being a bit mysterious about that. Sly. In fact I don’t at all like the look of things, Canty. When Oenone first came, Jean-Marie somehow persuaded her that it was really all right – that Oenone was a girl, I mean. But it didn’t help that Oenone wouldn’t take Jo’s milk…and in one way and the other there’s been a lot of backsliding. Jo keeps looking at Oenone …you know…there…as if she was hoping for a miraculous change.’

  ‘But she hasn’t done anything frightful?’

  ‘No. But I’m worried. And so is Jean-Marie. And now all this…obscurity…about where they’re going…’

  ‘Surely Jean-Marie will decide that.’

  ‘It’s her money. She’s always said it’s his as much as hers, but when one really gets down to brass tacks, Canty, I don’t think she quite means it.’

  Jeremy Morrison fell into a beneficial and agreeable routine whereby he would work hard one day and drive over to the Fens the next. It was just as well he had good reason to do this, as otherwise he would have been lonely. The Salinger girls, formerly his greatest friends in Lancaster, continued to ignore him utterly; and most of his other friends, who had heard of his long journey with Fielding Gray during the vacation, seemed to shun him slightly, to sidle away from him at parties, and when they spoke with him to manipulate the conversation through a series of spiteful references to young men who battened on older and more distinguished ones. The only people who were not thoroughly unpleasant on the topic were Len and Nicos.

  ‘You stick to senior men,’ Len said. ‘They’re ten times as interesting and a hundred times as rich. If it came to a show down, Ptoly Tunne would be better value than Fielding Gray, but I see no reason why you shouldn’t have ‘em both.’

  As for Nicos Pandouros, ‘I know how one becomes attached,’ he said. ‘The great thing is to make sure they don’t have a rope to haul you in. By all means come to them when they call politely, but don’t let them keep a leash on you.’

  Greco Barraclough had a leash on Nicos, he said, because (leave money out of it) he had sworn on oath when the Greco adopted him. Now, Barraclough did not mind Nicos’ friendship for Jeremy, but he did object to the visits which Nicos made to the Fens in Jeremy’s company.

  ‘He’s worried about Mr Tunne,’ said Nicos. ‘Although they’re old friends, he thinks Mr Tunne may tell me that my oath, made in the Mani, need not bind me here. I think he mistrusts your friend, Major Gray, for the same reason.’

  ‘A lot of people are going to say that about your oath before very long,’ said Jeremy, ‘not just Ptoly Tunne and Fielding.’

  They were driving out to the Fens. Jeremy decided he had had enough of Nicos’ oath for the time being, and started to talk of the Truth Game in the marble sarcophagus, to which Nicos was now to be introduced.

  ‘It is obligatory to tell the truth?’ Nicos enquired.

  ‘In the circumstances,’ said Jeremy, ‘if you really lie back and relax, it is almost impossible not to.’

  ‘I do not relax easily. Is it essential to be entirely nude in the sarcophagus?’

  ‘It is much more convenient.’

  ‘I am shy…just about the one thing. Poor Greek boys often are, as they are very strictly brought up…over certain matters.’

  ‘So are po
or Italian boys. Piero seems to have got over it.’

  ‘We are not the same,’ said Nicos sharply. ‘I like him, but I despise him. No, not despise, disapprove of him. I could not behave the same as he. If I lay in the water nude, what would the Kyrios Barraclough think?’

  ‘No one’s going to tell him.’

  ‘If you swear on oath, you behave as the person to whom you have sworn would wish you to behave – whether he will know or not.’

  ‘But why should the Kyrios Barraclough object to your bathing naked in the presence of two other men? In many schools in this country all the boys bathe naked together.’

  ‘In this country. Not in Greece, not in the Mani. The Kyrios Barraclough wishes me to behave as I was brought up there. If I once break loose from the customs of the Mani, I may break loose, he thinks, from the oath.’

  ‘That oath. Your albatross. I have mine too, you know.’

  ‘You have said something of this. The estate which must come to you?’

  ‘Yes. The difference between you and me is that your albatross will fall from your neck when you are twenty-five, whereas that, on present form, is just about when mine will finally be secured…under my nose for ever.’

  ‘Mission accomplished,’ said Lord Canteloupe to Leonard Percival. ‘No difficulties in getting the Canzonis there, thanks to you: no trouble with the sale: and here, for our most private records, is one copy of the credit note given to me by the Bank of Southern California, where I deposited the cheque.’

  ‘I may presume, Detterling,’ said Percival, ‘that you hung about long enough to make sure the cheque was cleared.’

  ‘You may. I know as well as you do that some people change their minds at the last minute.’

  ‘Very satisfactory,’ said Percival, looking along the curve of his nose and past its point to the credit note. ‘Had they heard any news of the original Asolano from Burano?’

  ‘Indeed they had. They told me that even if it were up for sale through the most dependable official channel, they wouldn’t touch it. The word is – has been for some years – that it’s a forgery. Its colours, its condition, its whole appearance is altogether wrong, too glossy, Leonard, for a picture painted when Asolano is supposed to have painted this one. That’s why it’s been taken away for “Restoration” – not because it needs it but because it doesn’t. It has now been examined, inch by inch, by experts of the Belli Arti, whose conclusion is that the painting is a copy by Canzoni, the same Canzoni who did my watercolours, and that it was made between 1790 and 1820.’

  ‘Canzoni seems to have had a penchant for copying Asolanos. I thought he was an easel man, not one for large canvasses.’

  ‘Correct. But my chums in Los Angeles said he could make pretty good shift to turn out a full-scale oil painting if the money was right. Canzoni had made a very skilful copy, it seems, though of course there were differences of technique and material which enabled the experts very easily to detect what had happened, once they’d had a proper chance to go over it.’

  ‘I see,’ said Leonard Percival. ‘So at some stage after 1790, which is the earliest date ascribed to the copy, the Asolano vanished from the church on Burano and the Canzoni appeared in its place…unnoticed, it appears, by any one at the time.’

  ‘I dare say that a few sweeteners were handed out to key personnel. As for the fisherfolk – who cared about them? And what did they care about Asolano?’

  ‘New lamps for old?’

  ‘Precisely. But as in the legend the old lamp – the Asolano – was worth a thousand times the new. Although Asolano never quite got his 1st XI colours as a Venetian painter, he was a reckonable member of the 2nd…whereas Canzoni, besides being of a much later period, when standards had sunk through the floor, was only a giggler and a flouncer selling lewd pictures behind the pavilion.’

  ‘But a very competent copyist? Competent enough to run up an Asolano that has been prominently placed over a side altar and has subsequently passed muster there for nobody knows just how long.’

  ‘The early days must have been the trickiest. Provided the swap wasn’t noticed, or at least nothing was said, for the first few months, then all might be well…indeed all was well, as you have just observed, Leonard, until the busybodies started sniffing at that side altar only a comparatively short time ago. So let us consider a possibility. What better time to effect a swap of this kind than when things were breaking up…when the enemy was at the gate, the barbarians were coming, and nobody had much time for pictures over side altars–’

  ‘–Except those with plans to steal them–’

  ‘–Steal them under cover of the fear and confusion that must have swept the Lagoon in – say – 1796, when Buonaparte the Bogeyman was coming.’

  ‘1796. Some six years after the earliest date at which the experts think the copy could have been painted. 1796,’ said Percival warily, ‘when your ancestor, son of the first Lord Canteloupe, was there, engaging Canzoni to make a pornographic series which stemmed from the original painting–’

  ‘–Not my ancestor, as he died a few months later and the line was continued, his father having remarried, through his half-brother. But let that pass. He was at that time – 1796 – the first son of the reigning peer of our house, and had been sent on his travels, on a trumped-up mission to His Majesty’s Resident Minister in Venice, in order to get him out of England, where he was in deep disgrace. He had set Canzoni to making a small, watercolour copy of that Asolano, to be the first of the pornographic sequence, so why not set him – he may have told himself – to paint a full size copy in oils as well, now that he’d got his hand in? Then exchange the two oil paintings, at a time of panic and locked churches (though not locked to our man, of course, with his diplomatic status), new lamps for old, as you put it, and despatch the old lamp, the valuable if not immediately marketable work of an acknowledged but not inconveniently famous Master, under diplomatic seal in a British Man o’ War, putting out from the Serene Republic just before it finally tottered, back to England, Home and Beauty – and so, ultimately, to this address in Wiltshire. How do you like that tune, Leonard?’

  ‘Have you seen an Asolano around the place lately, Detterling?’

  ‘No. But I shall have a good look.’

  ‘And what shall you do with it if you find it?’

  ‘My friends in California did indicate that the real Asolano of the “Ragazzi della Peste” would be of considerable interest.’

  ‘A stolen painting?’ Percival said.

  ‘A reward to the finder?’

  ‘A member of the family by which it was received and concealed?’

  ‘Apparently without their knowledge, as there’s been no sight nor sound of it. Anyway, if the Asolano doesn’t belong to us, the Canzoni does. We commissioned and paid for it. Quite a nice consolation prize. The two might be put on exhibition together. CAN YOU TELL THE REAL OLD MASTER FROM THE FAKE? WIN A FREE HULA HOOP. There’s a large supply of those round the place, as my predecessor was caught when the craze crashed. Perhaps we could revive it.’

  ‘Leave all that to the Cant-Fun Corporation men,’ said Percival, who deprecated any mention, by his employer, of the Stately Home charade which kept them both. ‘Leave it to the professionals. Which reminds me. Your friend and partner, Gregory Stern has been in touch with me – at your suggestion, I gathered – wanting my “professional” advice, as he was civil enough to call it, about those people who kidnapped him last summer. He is disposed, he says, to do what he promised them, and it is difficult to see that he has any way out.’

  ‘Is that what you told him?’

  ‘I advised him at any rate to keep the rendezvous which they have appointed for later this month. In Trieste.’

  ‘That fits. He reckons that last time he was taken to an island off the coast of Dalmatia…not so far down from Trieste. Obviously their area.’

  ‘Perhaps. He says they want a three-day meeting to discuss his arrangements for the forthcoming book – his Bumpe
r anti-Jewboy Annual for Kiddies of All Ages.’

  ‘It’s going to be a horror, that book, Leonard. Stern & Detterling can’t publish it. Nobody could.’

  ‘He knows that. But he says that his persecutors particularly want it done by Stern & Detterling – or under some similarly reputable imprint. This would be possible only if the book were moderate and responsible in tone, and here is his problem: these people refuse to be moderate, he says; they won’t let him urge a sensible and temperately argued anti-Israeli case, although there is an excellent one, as we all know, to be made. They want hate and ridicule and obscenity. At one time he thought he could just manage this – for his family’s sake – and he still thinks he could – had it not been brought home to him, by you, that the kind of book which would result simply could not be published.’

  ‘He could have it printed at his own expense and under his own name, with no actual publisher designated – if he could find a printer for it.’

  ‘Will he be able to?’

  ‘I imagine so. Somewhere.’

  ‘Some sweat-shop or other, you imply,’ said Leonard Percival. ‘The people he is dealing with have ruled that out. They want respectability. More, they want distinction.’

  Canteloupe walked to the corner of his study, took up a bat which he kept there (the one with which he had once made a double century for his School) and faced up to an imagined bowler.

  ‘It was always my ambition,’ he said to Leonard, executing his famous late cut, ‘to put the ball between the wicket-keeper and first slip. Impossible, you say; impossible to play it so fine. But is it, Leonard?’

  Percival offered no comment.

  ‘Suppose…just a touch when it is already past the wicket, just a touch on a ball going straight through…I wonder, Leonard. Too late now. But I think,’ he said, playing a leg glance off the front foot by way of a change, ‘I think, after all, that I can persuade a firm of sufficient distinction to print Gregory’s book. Not to distribute it or to publish it, he’ll have to manage all that himself. Privately. But at least we may be able to find him a high quality printer. Please lift the telephone receiver, Leonard, and get the Provost’s Secretary at Lancaster College, Cambridge.’