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

by Simon Raven

  ‘When did he come?’

  ‘Thursday evening, sir.’

  Soon after…what had occurred.

  ‘He stayed the night?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  So he had now been on the road, as one must suppose, for nearly a week.

  ‘However, sir, he made a telephone call which I chanced to overhear. He rang up Lancaster College, the Porters’ Lodge, I should say, addressed a person called Wilfred, and asked for Miss Theodosia Salinger. “It’s very urgent, Wilfred,” he said, “please make her come to the telephone, I know you’re a favourite of hers and Miss Carmilla’s, please make her come.” Then there was a very long interval, a very long interval indeed, Major Gray, sir, let me say twenty minutes, at the end of which the young lady in question did indeed seem to have come to the other end. And as I gathered, sir, Master Jeremy persuaded her to meet him at what he called “the old place” in Saffron Walden the next morning for luncheon.’

  The old place in Saffron Walden? Well, never mind where that might be: what mattered now was what words had been spoken there.

  ‘After which Master Jeremy, who would not stay for dinner here,’ said the Chamberlain sadly, ‘motored away into the dark.’

  ‘Have you told his father any of this?’

  ‘No, sir. As I say, Master Jeremy swore me to silence; and I think it better, at least for this time, to respect the oath in regard to his father although I have now broken it in regard to you. Res Unius, Res Omnium, Major Gray. You will find him for me, if you can? Now his brother has gone away, for ever as they tell me, this would be a sad place without Master Jeremy’s visits…rare though they be.’

  And so now, Fielding supposed, the hunt was on. Tom, Len, Isobel, Ptolemaeos, Jo-Jo and the Chamberlain – they all seemed to assume that it was his duty to search for Jeremy. He himself thought so too. If Jeremy was running (and it looked like it) he was running from something which must, in the last resort, be blamed on Fielding: for it was Jeremy’s affection for Piero that had taken him to the Fens (where he had encountered whatever he was now fleeing), and it was through Fielding’s doing, however indirectly, that Jeremy had first met Piero on Torcello. If you interfere in somebody’s life, thought Fielding, if you take him on expeditions, then you are responsible for the results of that interference or those expeditions, however fortuitous, however impossible to foresee.

  His goodbyes to Maisie and Tessa could be deferred until he had made enquiries of Theodosia in Cambridge. While there he would check with Len in Lancaster and Ptoly in Tunne Hall, in case anything further had come to light since he had last been there.

  Since the first person he saw on coming through the Great Gate of Lancaster was Len, he applied to him instanter. Len walked him in a wide circle round the statue of the Founder in the Great Court and talked in a circle as well. The truth was that for once Len knew no more than anyone else did, no more about Jeremy’s whereabouts or what had caused him to vanish, and was taking refuge in speculation in order to disguise the ignorance which he would not, in his vanity (his only vanity but a very exigent one), plainly confess.

  ‘Hissing,’ said Len. ‘What does that suggest?’

  ‘Almost anything you care to make it suggest.’

  ‘Japanese audiences hiss in applause.’

  ‘English audiences hiss in abuse. So what?’

  ‘Split personality. She hissed through a mask-like face – according to all the accounts I’ve heard – suggesting Japanese theatre and therefore applause. But her posture made it plain she was doing so in fear and hatred. Like Catullus, she both hates and loves, but does not know why.’

  And so on. The only hard and possibly useful fact which Len told Fielding was that the College (like the Chamberlain) had decided not to inform Peter Morrison of his son’s departure from Cambridge.

  ‘Although Jerermy is in statu pupillari,’ said Len, ‘he is also over eighteen and adult in the eyes of the Law. That the Law is “a fool and an ass” in this respect is another matter. As, being of age, Jeremy is entitled to judge for himself what to tell his father about all this and about anything else it is not for us to interfere or delate.’

  Fielding, having spitefully decided not to tell Len about Jeremy’s telephone call to Theodosia (who must have persuaded Wilfred the Porter to hold his peace if Jeremy had not) now went in search of her. She had rooms, the Head Porter told him, out of College, but was often to be found in her sister Carmilla’s set in Sitwell’s Building. As he went up the steps to the doorway of Carmilla’s staircase, someone came scuffling along the path below.

  ‘Major Gray.’

  ‘Nicos.’

  ‘I saw you from the sitting room of the Kyrios Barraclough. He has gone to bed for an afternoon nap. Where is Yeramy, Major Gray?’

  ‘I am trying to find him. I am looking now for Theodosia Salinger, whom he spoke with, I think, after he disappeared. They tell me she may be with her sister.’

  ‘I know where she is. Come with me. I saw her setting off along this path, and from what she was carrying I know where she has gone.’

  ‘Then tell me and I will follow her,’ said Fielding, who had neither inclination nor energy for Nicos just then.

  ‘No. You are impatient and annoyed that you have met me, just that bloody Greek boy, you think, to pester you when you have much to think of. You want to be rid of me, but I shall not tell you where she is – I shall only take you there. And you must hear me as we go.’

  ‘Why not? I’m sorry if I appeared irritable, but–’

  ‘–But you do not care for “penniless foreigners”. Yeramy told me that. It made him laugh. Come.’

  Ivor Winstanley, the celebrated Ciceronian, was watching an unusual lesson which was in progress in the Cambridge University Tennis Court. In all his years of frequenting the Court, for many of them as a player, more recently as an onlooker and aficionado (President of the CU Tennis Club), in all the thousands of hours which Winstanley had spent umpiring by the Post or loitering in the spectators’ gallery behind the Dedans (hours which should more properly have been dedicated to his promised edition of the Poems of Cicero, now ten years behindhand in its preparation for the Press), in all this time, never had he observed a scene so bizarre and disquieting as the present one.

  The Professional was instructing a tall and well set-up young pupil, who moved gracefully, had mastered the basic stroke, both forehand and backhand, served a powerful railroader, and was cleanly and sensibly dressed in white flannel (real flannel) trousers and a rather loose cricket shirt. Everything as it should be, one would have thought, very much so – except that on a split second’s inspection the pupil turned out to be a woman: Miss Theodosia Salinger, of Ivor Winstanley’s own College, famous in the University for her badminton (now there was a suitable game for girls) but now trespassing in a strictly masculine precinct, for no female in Cambridge (or elsewhere, as far as Ivor knew) had ever presumed to play Tennis. The fact that Theodosia promised to be, within weeks, a better player than any of the male contestants for a half-Blue next summer was naught for Ivor’s comfort.

  There was, of course, nothing in the Laws of the Game or the Regulations of the CU Tennis Club to forbid Theodosia from playing – if only because such an aberration had never been conceived of. To try to get up prohibitory rules at this stage would be discourteous to Theodosia (whom Ivor, on slight acquaintance, very much liked) and would in any case bring a swarm of feminist blowflies round his ears. No; there was nothing to be done; the thing was fait accompli, thought Ivor, perverse but irreversible, as unseemly and now inexorable as that wretched affair of Joan of Arc. He only hoped that Theodosia would not come to a similarly disagreeable end.

  The lesson concluded. The luscious movements of Theodosia’s fesses ceased. Ivor Winstanley, a realist, one who made the best of what was given and knew when it was good in its kind, looked at the list to see when Theodosia was due for her next lesson and the luscious movements (perhaps she would come in shorts?) would be re
sumed. As he was about to depart, thinking that with a bit of bustle he would have half an hour to spare on Cicero before going to drink sherry with Balbo Blakeney, he passed another member of his College, Nicos Pandouros, as he came into the Tennis Court Building with that one-eyed friend of the Provost, the novelist Fielding Gray. What did they want? Pandouros was far too poor to keep racquet here, while Fielding Gray, though a frequent visitor to Cambridge, had never before shown interest in the game…of which, in any case, there would be no more that day. Ivor Winstanley lingered long enough to watch this unlikely pair accost Theodosia in the corridor outside the Court, and then, being too well-bred to eavesdrop and realising that already he had wasted nearly five minutes of the scanty period (the first since the day before yesterday) which he had allotted to Cicero, he shuffled and snuffled his way out and set his nose for the New Court of Clare and so to the Postern Gate of Lancaster and home.

  In the corridor beside the Tennis Court Fielding Gray said to Theodosia Salinger, ‘The servant at Luffham says that Jeremy Morrison arranged to have lunch with you in Saffron Walden, the day after he vanished.’

  The Professional called from the end of the corridor, ‘I’ll start the shower up for you, Miss Theodosia. Give it three minutes to get warm.’

  ‘Right you be,’ called Theodosia to the Professional. To Fielding she said, ‘Yes. I had lunch that day with Jeremy in Saffron Walden.’

  ‘I’ve been asked to look for him.’

  ‘By his father?’

  ‘His father doesn’t know yet. It’s thought better that he shouldn’t. I’ve been asked by his friends. Just what was the matter with him?’

  ‘He didn’t say. He said he had urgent personal reasons for going away. He had done nothing wrong, he said, but he had been present when something occurred…’

  ‘…Go on, please…’

  ‘…He had been present when something occurred which had deeply distressed him…in such a way that he could not remain at Lancaster – or not for the time being – and wished to leave England altogether.’

  ‘To leave England and Lancaster altogether?’ said Nicos. ‘My friend, my new friend, gone. Why?’

  ‘I just don’t know,’ Theodosia said. ‘He kept repeating that although much might be imputed against him by those who knew roughly but not exactly what had happened, he had nothing whatever to be ashamed of. He was leaving, not to escape punishment, but because he could only come to an understanding of what had happened, and of the mysterious reasons or forces which must lie behind it, if he returned to a certain place where a similar mystery was lurking, or so it now seemed to him when he recalled his tour with you last summer.’

  ‘So he is going back…to one of fifty places. He didn’t say where it was?’

  ‘No. He simply asked for the money to take him there. Since I love him,’ said Theodosia, ‘despite all the beastly things he’s done and the slimy way in which he has already treated me since I love him almost more than I can bear, I did exactly what he asked – though for all I know this may be just another of his confidence tricks – and wrote him out a very large cheque. I can afford it now, you see, as he well knows.’

  ‘Was he telling the truth?’ said Nicos. ‘About this place to which he must return?’

  ‘I should have given him the money anyway, because I can no longer bear to deny him anything. Not speaking to him this term has been horrible. I don’t know how I endured it, but Carmilla said I must, as I did. Then came this telephone call, and I answered, although Carmilla begged me not to, and I went to Saffron Walden and gave him the cheque.’

  ‘But was he telling the truth,’ Fielding insisted, ‘when he said he must return to this unnamed place?’

  ‘I think so.’ The Professional waved down the corridor and Theodosia waved back. ‘I must go before I get stiff. I think he was telling the truth. And so now, where shall you follow him?’

  ‘Miss Theodosia,’ the Professional called.

  ‘To places which we visited together,’ Fielding said, ‘and which have something of the kind of mystery he seems to be hinting at.’

  ‘But you say there are so many of them?’

  ‘Miss Theodosia,’ called the Professional in the shrewish voice of a trainer or a nanny who is being officious for his charge’s ‘own good’.

  ‘But two or three are outstanding in their quality of mystery of the numinous or the arcane. Or the retributive,’ Fielding said. ‘I shall try them first.’

  ‘Miss Theodosia.’

  ‘Coming,’ she called, and went.

  Nicos and Fielding took the same route as Ivor Winstanley had taken ten minutes before. They passed the University Library, suburban-cum-institutional-cum-phallic, and turned into the New Court of Clare College. As they did so, Nicos said, ‘Take me with you. I know something of Yeramy and a lot about some of the places – those in Greece – which you must now visit. As for the expense, I do not mind discomfort.’

  ‘I do,’ said Fielding. ‘Sleeping in comfort myself, I should be discomfited by your discomfort.’

  And yet, he thought, and yet. Obviously this journey would make nonsense of all his recent resolutions of economy, to say nothing of wrecking progress on his next novel, vital source of fresh revenue. All of this meant that some of his reserve must now go in any case: why not a little more, enough to maintain Nicos in the same style as himself (which should not be too difficult if he sought out slightly, though not painfully, more modest quarters than usual) and thus procure a knowledgeable and personable companion. For Nicos was quite right: he knew something of ‘Yeramy’ and more of Greece, particularly the Southern Peloponnesus, which could turn out to be an important area in his search. Nicos could be useful; it was, in any case, ‘more friendly with two’.

  ‘I think,’ Fielding said to Nicos as they walked down the steps from the New Court of Clare and into the Queen’s Road, ‘that I might consider it after all. But what about your studies here?’

  ‘What of them? I do not have time for them, as the Kyrios requires my constant attention. In any case I doubt whether I am fitted for them. For ancient Greek, perhaps, but what am I to make of Latin? My results in the examination last summer were very dreadful. It took all of the Kyrios’ friendship with the Provost to prevail on him to let me stay.’

  ‘What of the Kyrios then? You are bound to him by many ties, not least that of gratitude. Can you bring yourself to leave him?’

  ‘If it will help Yeramy. You know the Jews have a law whereby all the other laws and obligations are suspended if one is engaged in saving human life?’

  ‘So I have heard.’

  ‘That is my feeling about Yeramy. All oaths, all other ties must now be as nothing, I feel because Yeramy, who offered me his friendship, Major Gray, and, I think, his love, who at any rate trusted me with his secrets – this Yeramy is in trouble. Do you not think he is in trouble?’

  ‘Anyone who runs from a place like Lancaster is in trouble.’

  ‘Well then.’

  ‘You can drive?’

  ‘Oh yes. I have driven the Kyrios on many journeys.’

  ‘Then come with me on this one, if you will. I shall leave London for Dover tomorrow evening. Come to Buttock’s Hotel in the Cromwell Road not later than–’

  ‘–THERE you are,’ said Greco Barraclough, who had emerged, unseen by Fielding and Nicos, from the Postern Gate of Lancaster and was now advancing on them along the Queen’s Road. ‘Tea at four-thirty, I told you. No sign of you or of it. Luckily, while I was going to the Senior Common Room, where the tea is very nasty, Nico, luckily I met Ivor Winstanley, who told me he had just seen you and where. So I have come to fetch you and demand of you how you dare leave me without my permission and neglect to attend me at teatime as ordered.’

  ‘I am sorry. I had important business with Major Gray. We are going to Europe together.’

  ‘Going where?’

  ‘To Europe, Kyrie, to look for my friend Yeramy Morrison, who is lost. I had known him – p
roperly – for only a few days, and now he is troubled and lost. Major Gray and I must find him.’

  ‘What rubbish is this, Gray?’

  ‘He wants to come and for what I care he is welcome.’

  ‘So he will leave me? Desert his guardian and benefactor?’

  ‘He has been blackmailed by that sort of talk long enough. I made your case to him – the gratitude he owes you – as well as I could. He thinks – though he did not say so in so many words – that the debt has been worked out. So do I.’

  ‘His oath?’

  ‘There is a stronger claim, a prior loyalty.’

  ‘“Yeramy,”’ mimicked Barraclough nastily, ‘Jeremy Morrison. In so far as there is a bond between them, it is new. The prior loyalty must be to me.’

  ‘Must it?’ said Fielding. ‘Can new loyalties never take precedence over the old?’

  ‘In any case,’ said Nicos to the Greco, ‘I am going with Major Gray.’

  ‘Then go. Break your oath and absolve me from mine. Gray will be generous – for as long as your excursion lasts. And when you return, he may even persuade the Provost, who is his friend as well as mine, to have you back in the College. But he will not keep you from starving there. He will have sworn no oath, as I have: he chooses to live his own life, a life of independence, that knows of no obligations to the likes of you.’