by Simon Raven
‘I shall perhaps stay in Greece, when we have found Yeramy.’
‘Your people in Greece will shun you, because they will know that you have broken your oath to me. “Yeramy”, even if he is there and even if you find him, will not stay with you: he will return to this College and to his inheritance. You will have lost all this’ – the Greco waved over the meadow towards Lancaster–’ you will have lost me, you will have found nothing–’
‘–I shall have found Yeramy–’
‘–Whom, as I have just explained, you will instantly lose again. So there will be nothing except shame and low employment for you in Greece, and nothing to which you could later return here.’
‘I could return to Yeramy.’
‘If he is ever found. If he is sane when found. If he still wants anything to do with you, the little Greek whom he once took up on a whim. He, like Major Gray, has sworn no oath.’
‘But he is true.’
‘Is he? Have you heard anything of him since he vanished? Has this sterling new comrade of yours sent you so much as half a sheet of paper to explain where he is going or why?’
Nicos turned to Fielding.
‘The Kyrios is right,’ he said bleakly. ‘He is my bread and butter, as you say. He will see that I am all right, that I have decent work and am cared for, even when his oath to me has long expired. He would never plead that there was a limit, that time had released him – although it would be true. As long as I obey him, I am his man and he will stand by me. He is what is given, Major Gray. Just for a moment I thought I might take for myself, take something else, a life with you, with Yeramy, for such a life would be different, more brilliant. But now I see that it is an illusion. I could never trust you or Yeramy as I trust the Kyrios – him who is given. You understand all this?’
Fielding nodded curtly.
‘You see, I was not really acting out of loyalty to Yeramy,’ Nicos said, ‘or not entirely: it was more that I had a hankering for new things. It is as well the Kyrios has reminded me how foolish it is for poor boys from the Mani to hanker after what is not for them. Good evening…Major Gray.’
For whatever reason, Greco Barraclough did not turn back for Lancaster but continued along the Queen’s Road towards the Backs of Trinity and St John’s, followed by a despondent and submissive Nicos. Fielding was therefore spared the embarrassment of their company while walking, via the Postern Gate and the avenue of elms, toward the Provost’s Lodging.
‘What’s the matter with the elms, Len?’ he said when he arrived there.
Well, what?’
‘I noticed just now for the first time. They’re sort of wilting.’
‘Autumn, chum. Season of mists and mellow mouldiness.’
‘No. Not just autumn.’
‘All right. Since you’ve noticed, not just autumn. Blight. Dutch Elm Disease. We’re trying to keep it quiet until the College Council have decided what to do.’
‘You can’t keep it quiet. If I can see something is wrong, anybody can. And there’s only one thing you can do: destroy them.’
‘Right. But then the place would look rather naked. We’re thinking of replacing them.’
‘With saplings? They’ll take generations to cover your nakedness.’
‘With full-size transplants. Tom’s discussing the financial bit with the Bursars at this very moment.’
‘That kind of operation will cost you thousands.’
‘The University Chest will help. Our avenue is an essential part of the Backs.’
‘All right. But why try to keep it quiet?’
‘Superstition. Tom’s superstition. Deep down he’s a Welsh peasant. He is anxious, not so much that the public shouldn’t know what’s happening, but that the trees themselves, the spirits of the trees, should stay in ignorance.’
‘And he thinks that they won’t hear him talking to the Bursars?’
‘Not if they all talk low enough. Indeed, the trees must not hear. If the spirits of the trees, the nymphs or deities or whatever, know that we’re planning to uproot the elms and destroy them, then no matter how compelling our reasons, those nymphs will become angry and take vengeance on us.’
‘Surely Tom does not put it quite like that?’
‘No. But it’s what he’s thinking. Or something like it. He’s worried that the nymphs of the elms may have some inkling of our plan already. He thinks…that what happened to Baby Canteloupe out at Tunne Hall…might have been a warning to him.’
‘But Baby’s all right now.’
‘Yes. For as long as Tom heeds the tree nymphs’ warning.’
‘But that would mean not replacing the elms. Letting them rot where they are.’
‘Right. So Tom’s split in half, Fielding. One half, the rational half, says raise the money and replace the elms. The other half says, “But don’t let them know you’re planning this. They’ve been here much longer than you have, and they may turn nasty. Catch ’em by surprise and kill ’em – before they can get at Baby again.”’
‘But can you…kill the nymphs, the deities? You can destroy the trees, certainly, but then the nymphs become homeless and more vengeful than ever.’
‘That’s one story. But wood nymphs are not immortal. Some authorities give them a limit of 999 years, and the same lot says that if a tree dies or is destroyed, then the nymph associated with it dies too, regardless of her age.’
‘Supposing a tree lives more than 999 years. Is the nymph’s life prolonged?’
‘Spare me, Fielding.’
‘What you’re saying, then, is that Tom hopes to murder those elms, and the nymphs with them, before they have a chance to turn malignant.’
‘That’s about it. You might call it a metaphor. That’s what Tom would call it. Yet he will hear the nymphs, as they wail for mercy and scream for agony, all the while those trees are being destroyed.’
‘But surely,’ said Fielding lightly, ‘Tom could represent to them that it was all being done for their own good – better a quick, clean death than months or even years of festering away with this disease?’
Len took this remark with surprising seriousness.
‘Perhaps they think we ought to cure them, them and their trees,’ he said. ‘And perhaps we ought.’
‘There is no cure.’
‘But they don’t know that, and we could at least try.’
‘And when you fail they’ll blame you and turn nastier than ever.
‘There must be some means of appeasing them,’ said Len.
‘Careful, Len,’ said Fielding. ‘Much more talk like this, and we too will be thinking like peasants. May I use the telephone? I want to raise Ptolemaeos Tunne.’
Fielding Gray took a taxi through the evening to dine, by arrangement, with Ptolemaeos and Piero at Tunne Hall. He would tell Ptoly what he had learned that afternoon and would enquire whether he had any final message or information for Fielding before he went on his search.
‘So that girl Theodosia has given him money?’ Ptolemaeos said, as Piero carried plates of crispy fried fenland frogs’ legs from the range to the kitchen table.
‘A lot of money, she said.’
‘And she also said that he needs to go to some place, unspecified but which he has previously visited with you, where he thinks he has scented…some kind of mystery… which, if properly understood, may further enable him to understand whatever it was that happened upstairs in that room with the four-poster bed?’
‘My room,’ Piero said.
‘There is altogether too much movement, too much running about,’ said Ptolemaeos, his voice rustling with irritation. ‘There’s Jo-Jo and her brat gone off with Isobel, and Isobel’s husband, I’m told, gone to Trieste on some murky mission, and Jo-Jo’s husband gone to Clermont-Ferrand, of all places on earth, to nurse his own father; and now here’s you going off after Jeremy, who’s gone off God knows why or where…If only people would sit still, they would sort themselves out much quicker and easier.’
�
�That’s what I keep saying,’ said Fielding. ‘Everyone agrees on the excellence of the advice – and rejects it out of hand.’
‘“Video meliora proboque,”’ said Piero, ‘“deteriora sequor”. Ovid. I have been reading Latin in your Library, sir.’ He took Ptolemaeos’ plate to the sink with his own and Fielding’s, then started to stir an enormous pot. ‘A stew of eels, conies and freshwater crawfish,’ he announced. ‘Mrs Gurt said it must be stirred vigorously for five minutes before serving. “Video meliora pro boque,”’ he repeated, working with his wooden spoon, ‘“I see the better course and I approve it. Deteriora sequor – I follow the worse.” The sensible, the better course for me,’ he said, ‘is clearly to stay here with my wise and munificent patron, for whom I have only gratitude and esteem, and who will almost certainly procure me a place in one of the most famous Colleges in Europe. The worse course, almost insane you may think it, is to accompany Major Gray on his search for Jeremy Morrison.’
‘I have not invited you to come with me,’ said Fielding.
‘But you will, or, so I pray, when you have heard me speak. There is love here, and there is guilt. Love for Jeremy, of which I choose to say no more just now: guilt for what I have done, either to him or to that girl, or to both.’
‘Come, come,’ said Ptolemaeos, ‘I thought we’d been over that. You were in no way to blame for what happened.’
‘I was and am to blame for what I intended.’
‘You did not intend anything very terrible,’ Ptolemaeos said.
‘But it seems that I have done something very terrible. And I should have realised that I might before I did it. My plan, to make that girl angry or jealous, was rooted in malice. Not exactly in personal malice directed against her, but in thinking of a malicious kind. I should have known that once one deploys thoughts or forces of that kind, there is no limit to the evil which may result, even if the original intentions are strictly limited. Some great evil did indeed result, and I must bear my part in discovering what it was and how it may be quelled or cured – and in quelling and curing it myself if possible. And so,’ said Piero, ‘I beg you, Fielding, to take me with you and let me help you. And I beg you, sir’ – he turned, still stirring, to Ptolemaeos – to let me go and give me money and tell me that I may return to your service when this matter is done.’
‘Rather a long order,’ said Ptolemaeos, ‘just as I was getting used to you.’
‘If you say to me, sir, that you will give me no money if I go and will not take me back when I return, I shall be sad but I shall still go. With Major Gray, if he will take me; alone, begging my way in my Friar’s habit, if he will not. And then, when I have done whatever I can, I shall go back to my brothers in the Dead Lagoon – where else? – and throw myself on their mercy.’
‘I shall give you money,’ said Ptolemaeos, ‘enough to go with Fielding, if he will have you, or alone and in comfort if he will not. I shall also give you something equally essential – this passport in the name of PIERO JOHANNES CASPAR.’ He threw a new passport on to the table. ‘Passably quick work,’ he said, ‘but then I have friends who have friends, as I once told you. Just as well for you, Piero Johannes Caspar, or you could not have gone – or not in safety – for a good while yet.’
‘Then you approve my going?’ said Piero. ‘“Deteriora probas?”’
‘I did not say that. I have said I shall give you money, because I have an idea that Fielding may need a friend with money just now. I said I should give you this passport, because it would be a pity that such pretty work should be wasted. What I did not say,’ said Ptolemaeos, ‘is that I shall necessarily take you back when you come. I may, but then again I may not. In fact, your absence will give me a good chance to assess your probable value to me as weighed against the annoyance of such ellipsis in your function as this present. Only when you return shall I let you know which scale has kicked the beam. “But there, my blessing with thee…” A blessing given in farewell, which, pray remember, is no necessary guarantee of welcome home. The choice is yours: stay and be cherished; or go, well furnished, indeed, but possibly to be damned.’
‘I shall go,’ Piero said. And to Fielding, ‘I may come with you?’
‘If you wish. If we find Jeremy,’ said Fielding, ‘how are we to share him?’
‘No doubt,’ said Ptolemaeos with some amusement, ‘he will make his own preference plain.’
And now, completing the last leg of a long day, Fielding Gray was riding to London in a night train from Ely. Tomorrow evening Piero (who was not to come to Buttock’s, as Nicos would have done) would meet him at The White Cliffs in Dover, and the morning after they would take the Hovercraft to Boulogne. Why, thought Fielding, did I not wish Piero to meet Maisie – or vice versa? Difficult to answer the question precisely; the best I can do, he thought, is to reply, in a very general way, that Maisie somehow has to do with life and having it more abundantly, whereas Piero has to do with death and the Inferno.
Item: thought Fielding: Could Piero drive? He thought not. Pity. It would have been convenient to have somebody to drive him, as Jeremy had driven him last summer and Nicos could have done now.
Item: At least Piero will be well provided, Fielding thought, with money. Ptolemaeos had later in the evening been specific and very generous here. This would mean that the inroads on his precious reserve need not be as damaging as he had thought, for Piero could obviously pay his share of the petrol, the Hoverticket, garaging, etcetera, and perhaps the odd hotel bill for Fielding, in gratitude (why not?) for being driven all the weary day long.
Item: Other thoughts about money were less alleviative. What would his accountant do, Fielding wondered, if he finally convinced himself that the Inland Revenue’s accusation, that Fielding had under-declared his income, was well founded? Fielding decided to send the man a note, that night from Buttock’s, saying that he had been called away on urgent affairs and could be reached, at a need, c/o The American Express at Cannes, Venice, Dubrovnik, Corfu and Athens, through all of which he would probably pass, though not necessarily, in the case of the last three, in that order. Let the accountant telegraph the result of his investigation, and if money were urgently needed to pacify the tax-gatherers then he himself would telephone his publishers, Stern & Detterling, throw himself on his knees through the mouthpiece (so to speak) and clasp theirs as a petitioner in the approved Homeric fashion. Fielding now remembered that Gregory was away: presumably Canteloupe would have to authorise the payment: would he do so? Fielding was owed no money by Stern & Detterling except for a pittance on the current six-monthly account, and he would be asking Canteloupe to remit several thousands – many thousands – to the Inland Revenue on his behalf. Rather a long order, as Ptoly had said of something else earlier in the evening. But then again, Res Unius, Res Omnium, as the Chamberlain had remembered: the affair of one Light Dragoon was the affair of all, and since Captain Detterling/Canteloupe of all people, if half the rumours one heard were true, had received the full benefit of this maxim, he must surely be prepared to confer benefits in his turn.
Item: What did he really want of Jeremy, should he find him? His love? His salvation, from whatever powers were now gathering to harm, goad or undo him? Proof of his innocence? The opportunity to tend and comfort him in his guilt? A place by his (Jeremy’s) hearth in his (Fielding’s) dotage? Oh, bloody hell. Next question, please. Would Piero sleep with him if he asked him to? Yes; Out of sheer kindness. Therefore he would not, must not ask. Luckily he did not very much want to ask. Funny, that he should credit Piero with such warmth and humanity when only a few minutes ago he had been associating him with death, the Inferno, with Cocytus and with Styx…Are you there, old boatman? Piero has been given many an obol to pay the passages of the dead, of those who cannot afford to pay their own, whose relatives did not place the last offering, the Ephodios, between their lips. No more can you refuse the pitiful voices (like the squeaking of bats) now that Piero will pay for the tickets; no more can you be a niggar
d of your barge: crowded as a Thames steamer on Whit Monday it will sway across the river, delivering the poor, wandering souls to the pastures of the legitimate dead. Are you there, ferryman? I come with Piero, that cunning whore of Sicily and Venice, to pursue the friend of his heart (and mine?) into whatever hell the Furies have appointed for his exile. Come, ply your oar in earnest, grey Gondolier, and Piero will pay you with the red gold of courtesans to bring us to the other bank; meanwhile let the black waters lap about the gunwales, bringing sweet sleep.
Part Three
Avernus
Hos iuxta falso damnati crimine mortis
Near them were those condemned to die on false charges.
VIRGIL: Aeneid VI 430
‘You could so easily do it here,’ said Isobel to Jo-Jo. She looked up at the jagged mass of grey rock scattered with outposts of pine. ‘Pagan country. Desolate. Caves, clefts, grottoes all over the place. They wouldn’t find her in months. Years. Decades…’
‘There was a time, before the child was born,’ said Jo-Jo, ‘when I determined that if it should be female, I’d do just that. Expose it in the ancient Greek fashion. I’d thought of the Peloponnese. Of Taygetus. Of this part of the world too. Pagan country, as you say. But as you well know, I no longer want to murder her, or even to reject her.’
‘But you cannot accept her?’
‘Nor she me. She does not want my breast. Although she listens when I read to her, it is only because she cannot remove herself out of earshot and cannot, even at her age, be forever asleep. So she is tolerant…perforce and politely tolerant. But she does not want to be encumbered with me any more than I wish to be encumbered with her.’
Isobel began to talk towards her Lagonda, which was parked in a corner of the dusty courtyard, near the foot of a stone stairway that led up to an arcaded loggia in which, when the summer came again, the guests at the inn would lunch and dine off the inferior specialities of the region.
