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

by Simon Raven

  He knew where he must go to ask and be answered. So why was he dallying here? Why had he already loitered many days along the road? Why had he deliberately and even before he left England elected a route that would take him right down to the Pyrenees before he turned east for his true destination? Why was he idling in this cloister now? Well, he had been punished with a nasty pain in his gut by the unexpected appearance of brother Abel…a pain which in his case often preceded nervous diarrhoea. There was no public loo here, that he knew; but just over the square, above the crypt where the sarcophagi were, there was a nest of cabinets presided over by a beldam in black. Fielding had compared her to the old woman who kept the WCs in the Bois de Boulogne in Proust’s novel, Swann’s Way: for he had heard her greet a shuffling visitor as ‘M’sieur le Marquis’, just the kind of snobbery in which Proust’s woman had excelled, bestowing titles on all her clients unless they were obviously of the lower orders, in which case they were not admitted. I really must get on with Proust, thought Jeremy. I really must get to that woman’s loo.

  ‘One matter for concern,’ said the Chairman of the Board of Salinger & Holbrook, ‘the proposed printing of this book by Gregory Stern. Not good for our reputation; could even get us in trouble with the Race Relations people for anti-Semitism. I gather that we are to print at the request of the Misses Carmilla and Theodosia Salinger. Colonel Blessington, you are their nominee and represent their interests here: what have you to say?’

  ‘First, that they wish the book printed. Beyond any question whatever.’

  ‘And if this Board should object? What action would you or they take?’

  ‘We should go on one side and count their shares.’

  There was an ugly silence.

  ‘But I can report that there has been delay on the Gregory Stern front,’ said Ivan Blessington. ‘His book will not be coming in for printing until much later than we had thought.’

  ‘But it will still come in?’

  ‘I imagine so.’

  ‘And you cannot deter the Misses Salinger from wishing it upon us?’

  ‘It is not up to me to deter the Misses Salinger,’ said Ivan, ‘but to speak for them. They wish the book printed as soon as Mr Stern hands the typescript over.’

  ‘When will that be?’

  ‘Soon after he gets back from Europe.’

  ‘Yes, but when?’

  ‘In his good time, Mr Chairman.’

  ‘I find you offensive and unhelpful, Mister Blessington.’

  ‘So be it, Mr Chairperson.’

  ‘There you are,’ said Isobel, ‘Oedipus talking to the Sphinx on one side of the sarcophagus, and Androcles talking to the Lion on the other. A Pagan theme on the same coffin as a Christian one.’

  ‘Uncle Ptoly says it was quite common,’ said Jo-Jo, plonking Oenone down in the special seat of the Curator, who had for some reason disappeared up the spiral staircase to the entrance. ‘A form of insurance, he says, to keep in with both sides, just in case. The sarcophagus in his library is one like that. Oughtn’t we to be doing something about a hotel? I mean, if our place closes tomorrow…’

  ‘Plenty of time,’ said Isobel. ‘Plenty of room at this time of the year in the places that do stay open. Let’s just see what turns up.’

  ‘All right with me, but you seemed quite eager, earlier on, to find somewhere definite.’

  ‘All these tombs have relaxed me. Still two bedrooms, I think?’

  ‘Always two bedrooms, as long as Oenone’s around. I’m sure she listens and peeps.’

  ‘What nonsense. A perfectly nice, normal baby, minding her own business. Look at her now,’ Isobel said, ‘lying patiently on that hard seat.’

  ‘Exactly. A nice, normal baby would be making a fuss about that. Oenone’s keeping quiet so that she can overhear us. I cannot help thinking of her, you see, as somehow inquisitorial. Now, here’s a real test. With this coffin, one end and one side are blank. On the other end is a man ingratiating himself with two other men, and a rather impertinent bird above them with its beak wide open.’

  ‘–The cock crowing at Simon Peter–’

  ‘–That’s the easy one,’ Jo-Jo said. ‘On the carved side is a naked young man with a bow, which he is offering to a horrid old beggar…while a rather bossing man in armour is trying to stop him.’

  ‘Paris – your Alexander – was a great hand with a bow.’

  ‘But he wouldn’t be giving his away to anyone else, not him. Mean, he was. Ask Oenone.’

  ‘There’s a possible clue to one end. A corkscrew kind of snake, like an adder. Carved on a slant with its head down, pointing at the beggar’s right ankle.’

  ‘The young man is rather fetching, the shy way he’s handing over the bow. Certainly not my Paris/Alexander…brash, boastful brute.’

  ‘Handsome with it.’

  ‘Handsome is as handsome does. What do you say, Oenone? I wish I knew more about him – the boy on the coffin, I mean.’

  ‘Let us wait,’ said Isobel, ‘until the Curator comes down again, and then ask him. We’re really in no hurry.’

  Tessa Malcolm and Rosie Stern were walking home from Collingham’s School. They had decided to make a diversion round the Round Pond before striking south for Cromwell Road and Buttock’s.

  ‘Most of those boats,’ said Tessa, ‘are controlled by wireless from the shore. It must have been much more fun when they weren’t. In those days, Auntie Maisie told me, they ran on something called clockwork. You wound up the engine and shoved your boat off and just hoped it would get to the other side, which it sometimes didn’t. No danger like that with all this modern apparatus: no excitement.’

  ‘Daddy says they used to have aeroplanes which worked on elastic bands,’ said Rosie. ‘Sometimes they plunged into the ground, but sometimes the wind caught them, and they soared away over the Park, over the Albert Hall, and were lost for ever.’

  ‘There has been a lot of soaring away just lately,’ Tessa said. ‘Your father…your mother…Major Gray.’

  ‘Well, they all seem to enjoy it,’ said Rosie, ‘and so do we. I love Mummy and Daddy, of course, and I wouldn’t want them to vanish for ever like those toy aeroplanes with elastic bands, but I shan’t mind if they stay away for really quite a long time, as long as I can be with you.’

  ‘It might be nice, though, to have Major Gray back. I can tell Aunt Maisie misses him.’

  ‘What is he doing?’

  ‘It is something to do with that Jeremy Morrison, who he went away with last September. Aunt Maisie doesn’t approve at all. Waste of time and money, she says, when he ought to be getting on with his book.’

  ‘When Marius rang up yesterday, he said Jeremy Morrison had been to Oudenarde House to say goodbye, because he was going away somewhere. Jeremy Morrison told Marius not to believe anything bad which he heard about him.’

  ‘If it’s not anything bad, it must be something pretty important,’ said Tessa, ‘to make him leave Cambridge in the middle of the term.’

  ‘So it looks as if Major Gray must have gone after him. I expect your Aunt Maisie is jealous.’

  ‘I only said she misses him,’ said Tessa with testy loyalty.

  ‘He likes you, did you know,’ said Rosie.

  ‘Of course I did. And I like him.’

  ‘I mean, he fancies you. I saw him looking at your knees. A short look, but very intent.’

  ‘And I saw him looking the same way at your hair. I don’t think it means anything.’

  ‘Marius says that old men just like looking,’ Rosie said. ‘But sometimes they like touching too,’ said Tessa. ‘Aunt Maisie warned me. If you once let them start touching, she said, you’ll never get them to stop.’

  ‘Was she talking about Major Gray?’

  ‘She didn’t say so. In fact she said she wasn’t. Of course it’s all right for gentlemen you know like Major Gray to kiss you sometimes or hold your hand, she said. But I thought she put rather a lot of emphasis on the word “hand”, so I did s
lightly wonder.’

  ‘Do you suppose Major Gray fancies Jeremy Morrison? After all…that holiday last autumn and now chasing after him like this…’

  ‘Aunt Maisie says he is infatuated. Then she looked cross that she’d said it and told me she hadn’t meant it.’

  ‘“Infatuated” means fancying.’

  ‘Men, Aunt Maisie said, get infatuated with God knows what when they have the male menopause – the change of life.’

  ‘Is that the same in men as in women.’

  ‘I don’t know. It was all part of what I was told to forget,’ Tessa said, ‘so I didn’t like to ask questions.’

  ‘Mummy said she wanted a change of life when she went away.’

  ‘So you said. I think she just meant a change, full stop.’

  ‘I only hope it suits her,’ Rosie said, ‘then she might put off coming home. But I suppose Daddy will turn up again soon if she doesn’t.’

  ‘He wouldn’t make you go back to Chelsea if you didn’t want to,’ said Tessa, ‘It’s only a woman who’d do that. Men are far less possessive.’

  ‘Not all of them,’ said Rosie, ‘you should see Marius with Mummy.’

  ‘Chilly,’ said Tessa, as the Round Pond rippled in the breeze. ‘Home now, do you think?’

  ‘Yes. Home.’

  When Isobel and Jo-Jo heard footsteps on the spiral stairway down from the entrance, Jo-Jo moved Oenone from the Curator’s seat, thinking that this must be the Curator and he might be offended if he found a baby in his chair. But when a figure came fully into sight after the last twist of the stairs, it turned out to be Jeremy Morrison.

  ‘I thought you were the Curator,’ said Jo-Jo inanely, and put Oenone back.

  ‘The Curator’s upstairs in the loo,’ said Jeremy. ‘At least, a man in uniform came bursting in just as I was leaving and went crashing into one of the cabinets without paying the crocodile.’

  ‘The crocodile?’

  ‘The old hag that runs the place.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’ said Isobel.

  ‘Passing through,’ said Jeremy as he joined them by the sarcophagus. ‘Philoctetes,’ he said examining the side. ‘My favourite story.’

  ‘Tell,’ said Jo-Jo.

  ‘Philoctetes was the finest archer who embarked for Troy with Agamemnon’s expedition. But on the way he was bitten in the foot by a snake. The wound stank so horribly that they left him behind on an uninhabited island in the Aegaean, where he just managed to survive by shooting game with his special bow. Then the Greeks were told by an oracle that they would never take Troy unless they had Philoctetes’ bow: so they sent Odysseus and the boy Neoptolemos, Achilles’ son, to get it. Naturally Philoctetes, who was still all alone on his miserable island, refused to part with it, despite all their wheedling, and said that if they wanted it they must take him too; but his stink and his fits were so ghastly they couldn’t agree to this.’

  ‘Stalemate?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jeremy, looking steadily at the coffin as if he might have been wondering who was once inside it, ‘until, that is, Odysseus and Neoptolemos take advantage of one of Philoctetes’ fits to steal the bow. When Philoctetes wakes up and realises what has happened, he starts crying desperately, not only because his source of livelihood has gone, but also because he has grown fond of Neoptolemos, who seemed to return his affection, or at least to feel sorry for him, and now that friendship has been betrayed. Just as his grief becomes unbearable, he looks up to see Neoptolemos hurrying back with the bow to return it, unable to endure the thought of his own treachery. But of course Odysseus follows him – that officious brute in the armour – and sets about getting hold of the bow once more…because it is absolutely vital to the Greek war effort. A story of expedience versus friendship, you see.’

  ‘Like this one,’ said Jo-Jo, going round to the end of the coffin, ‘in which Peter disowns his Friend. How was it all settled – in the case of Neoptolemos and Philoctetes?’

  ‘A god came down and commanded Odysseus to let Philoctetes come to Troy – stench and all – and handle his own bow.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Isobel. ‘Only the intervention of a god can settle that sort of muddle. Much the same could be said of the story of Peter. Both tales show expedience winning in the short term and friendship loyal and victorious at the last. Wishful thinking if you ask me. It is usually the other way round. Whatever,’ she said to Jeremy, ‘did you do to my niece in Ptolemaeos house in the Fens?’

  ‘Nothing. I just mentioned that I had seen her mother in St Bede’s with my brother Nickie.’

  ‘A sensitive subject,’ said Isobel, ‘for all of us: but hardly enough to call up what came.’

  ‘That’s what I thought. I gather Lady Canteloupe is now all right?’

  ‘In a sullen way, yes. She seems – or pretends – to have forgotten exactly what happened.’

  ‘I shan’t forget. It was so foul – I’m sorry, I know you both love her – but it was so foul that I must have it…explained. More than that, I must have it purified.’

  ‘You think that is possible?’ said Isobel.

  ‘I am going to a place where I think there may be at least exoneration. Something I once saw there, something I heard there, makes me hope this. I cannot go back whence I came until I have been – well – eased, and also assured that there will be comfort, more, salvation, for your niece.’

  ‘Have you far to go to reach this place of easement?’ Isobel asked.

  ‘No. But I am afraid to arrive there in case I am wrong and there is no consolation. I am snatching at excuses to loiter. I feel dreadful.’

  ‘You don’t look it. You appear calm and confident.’

  ‘That is how I was brought up to appear. But I am afraid, Mrs Stern.’

  ‘“Isobel”, I think, from now on. For we shall render you a friendly service, if you will return it. You have a car?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then you should leave it here. I will show you where to park it safely. I shall then drive you in my own car to wherever you are going, and shall see to it that you loiter no more…though since Oenone will be with us there can be no undue haste. Also I shall try to help you find what you are looking for, if only in order to understand what happened to Baby, my niece.’

  ‘I shall be glad of company. I have been alone. And as for us,’ said Jeremy to Jo-Jo, ‘we have agreed to agree? Or at least not to differ openly? Despite your curt dismissal we agreed to a truce that afternoon by the pond?’

  ‘I shall be civil, Mr Morrison.’

  ‘And what service,’ said Jeremy to Isobel, ‘are you asking in return?’

  ‘You must ride in the back of my car with the baby. My friend likes to sit by me in the co-driver’s seat, you see, but she cannot leave the child unattended in the back nor carry it with her, as this is unsafe, in the front. Now she can have her way and you can nurse Oenone. She will love your big round face.’

  Jeremy went and stood over Oenone, who bubbled slightly.

  ‘There you are,’ said Isobel to Jo-Jo, ‘I told you something would turn up. We shall take Jeremy – for Jeremy he is to be to all three of us from now on – back to our inn for the night, leave tomorrow betimes, and stage in whatever hostelries are to be found each day at dusk.’

  In the early autumn evening Tom Llewyllyn and Len walked down the avenue of trees, which led from Lancaster Bridge to the Postern Gate on the Queen’s Road, for the last time. Tomorrow the destruction of the diseased elms would begin.

  The grandiose scheme, whereby the trees should be replaced by fully grown transplants, had been abandoned on grounds of expense. For although Lancaster might, on application, have been awarded assistance from the University Chest, it would take months of debate and lobbying before the money would be available (if ever it were) and it was the view of the College Council that if action there must be, it must be immediate and consonant in cost with immediate means. The trees must be down before the avenue became a nightmare of skeletal decay
. As Balbo Blakeney had reminded the Council, the difference between an elm that was stripped by autumn and one that was defoliated by disease was plain for all to see, and in a double rank of elms over a hundred yards long the spectacle would be horrible. ‘Flanders Fields without benefit of poppies,’ Balbo said. All this, along with a declaration by the left-wing College philistines that even if a grant were to be made by the University they would oppose its acceptance for this purpose (‘In this day and age there is no money to be spared for fancy landscape gardening’), had decided the Council simply to clear the ground at once and to postpone any discussion of further operations until the soil had settled.

  And so now the Provost and his Private Secretary walked under limbs that would be lopped tomorrow and between trunks that would all be toppled before the week was out.

  ‘When I was a young man,’ Tom Llewyllyn said to Len, ‘I spent the last few weeks before I was married on a walking tour of the West Country. One day I came to a plateau in the Quantocks, a place of most exquisite beauty, scattered with groves of willow and ladybirch. But already the bulldozers were busy; and a strident notice proclaimed that the area had recently been acquired by some Ministry which was going to develop it into a new kind of holiday or recreation camp, to be called Westward Ho!

  ‘Later on, much later on, I heard that the place had duly been butchered by the bulldozers and then smothered in caravans and Nissen huts. There had been a Royal and Ministerial opening. On the day of the opening it started to rain. It did not stop. Even when the rain let up elsewhere, it did not stop falling on Westward Ho! The site turned into a marsh. The caravans sank and the Nissen huts rotted and the kitchens swam in garbage and the ablutions became a midden. All sog and rust and mire and turd. One by one the holidaymakers slunk away, demanding but not receiving their money back. The people in the village below said that the genius of the groves, who had fashioned them as shelters and bowers of sweet love, was angry at their desecration and was taking his revenge on all who had come to exploit them in their ruin and shame. And indeed the only people known to have been happy there were a pair of lovers on the run, who were effectively hidden and comfortably sheltered in one of the sounder caravans. So perhaps the genius, who had dedicated his former groves to the uses of love, made an exception in their case; but if so, it was brief, for one of them was killed in a car accident. But then again perhaps the genius was not responsible for this death (which took place some miles away from his precinct) and was even grieved by it; for he gave the survivor a splendid marriage, with a stranger met by chance among what remained of his willow and ladybirch: a goodly husband and a rich house did he give her, and oneness of heart, which is the best gift of all.’