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

by Simon Raven

  ‘I’ve had an invitation,’ said Sir Jacquiz Helmutt to Lady Helmutt (Marigold), ‘to attend a Memorial Luncheon that’s being got up for Gregory Stern.’

  ‘A Memorial Luncheon? I don’t think I’ve ever heard of one of those before.’

  ‘No more have I. But they’ve got to do something for the old boy pretty soon. They can’t have a Memorial Service because they haven’t even buried him.’

  ‘Why not?’ said Marigold. ‘Why not before they bury him?’

  ‘Because it just isn’t done. The form is that you bury Caesar before you praise him…otherwise there might be a nasty row, as there was in the play, if not necessarily for the same reasons.’

  ‘You mean, the corpse might get up and hit people if they didn’t say the right things.’

  ‘Something of the kind. There is a deep and atavistic fear which dictates the conventional procedure…which is, in any case,’ said Sir Jacquiz wearily, ‘to have a funeral before you have a Memorial Service. Now, a funeral they cannot have, because the body is being kept on ice by the Italian Police to assist in their investigations. Since it is the only thing that they have to assist them they’ll probably hang on to it for months.’

  ‘Do you mean…that of all the people at that service at Burano, no one can tell them anything?’

  ‘I mean exactly that. That’s why everyone was allowed to leave Italy without any fuss. Even the Italians were capable of seeing that none of us could have anything to tell them. We went to see a picture unveiled, and when the curtain opened there was a corpse on a cross. What more could anyone conceivably tell them? Even those who knew Gregory can’t add anything…except that after a time they recognised the body as his, and were rather taken aback as he was supposed to be touring round Greece. The whole thing was obviously the work of some organisation which he had displeased…the PLO or something similar, the papers say now, but I still think it may have been Jews or Israelis…and in either case the police are going to get nowhere. The people who did it left no clue and no message (rather odd that – these days terrorists are usually very keen to claim their crimes) and were no doubt hundreds of miles away before the ceremony even started. So the Italians, though impotent, are hanging on to the body as an earnest of their futile good intentions; any interment will have to wait till God knows when; and Canteloupe and the widow are arranging a Memorial Luncheon straight away instead. Do you want to come?’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Thursday.’

  ‘I’m taking the twins to the psychiatrist. The new man – very booked up, so I can’t change it.’

  ‘Do you think he’ll be able to get through to them?’

  ‘No. But we must try everything.’

  ‘I suppose so. Very well. I’ll accept for myself alone,’ Sir Jacquiz said, ‘though I very much dislike Memorial Functions. When somebody’s dead the best thing you can do, for their sake and yours, is forget about them.’

  ‘Oh, come, come. “Let us now praise famous men,” and all that.’

  ‘By all means, while they’re still alive. Why bother when they can no longer hear you?’

  Rosie Stern and Tessa Malcolm were doing their homework in Buttock’s Hotel. Fielding Gray came in to see if they needed any help, and Maisie Malcolm came in a few moments later to fetch him out again as she wanted his advice (or so she said) about the rather striking shade of crimson proposed by the decorators for the new curtains in the Dining Room.

  ‘Your Aunt Maisie,’ said Rosie to Tessa, ‘does not like it when Major Gray pays you attention.’

  ‘She never used to mind.’

  ‘She does now. That’s why she’s so pleased to have me staying – because I’m always with you and he can’t get at you alone. But even as it is, even though I am with you, she still comes and takes him away again…as she did just now.’

  ‘Major Gray,’ said Tessa, ‘never so much as touches me. He used to kiss me and occasionally pat me on my shoulder; these days he doesn’t even do that. So if Aunt Maisie thinks…anything funny about him and me…it’s all in her imagination.’

  ‘Perhaps he’s tempted. Perhaps that’s why he doesn’t pat you or kiss you any longer – because he thinks that if he did he’d be tempted even more. Perhaps your Aunt realises this and is determined to keep him away from temptation.’

  ‘If you go on talking like this,’ said Tessa in her husky little voice (huskier than usual since she was annoyed), ‘I shan’t be quite so glad that you’re staying here.’

  ‘If I went, you wouldn’t have me as chaperone,’ said Rosie, ‘and think what might happen then.’

  ‘I told you, Rosie Stern: nothing has happened and nothing ever will. Major Gray is like my father.’

  ‘But you still fancy him, don’t you?’

  Tessa went as crimson as the new curtains proposed for the Dining Room.

  ‘If your father hadn’t been murdered–’

  ‘–I’m sorry. I mustn’t take advantage. Darling Tessa, I’m sorry. I promise I’ll never talk about you and Major Gray again.’

  ‘All right. I’ll forgive you – on one condition.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That you stop making a fuss about going to your father’s Memorial Luncheon.’

  ‘I don’t want to go – but I’ll go if you’ll come with me.’

  ‘I haven’t been asked.’

  ‘You should have been. We both know how much he loved you.’

  ‘I haven’t been asked,’ Tessa said. ‘And if you want me to forgive you for what you said, you’ll go with Marius and your mother and behave as nicely as you know how.’

  ‘I wonder whether that woman friend of Mummy’s is coming?’

  ‘Of course she is. She is the wife of Jean-Marie Guiscard, whose first book is being published by your father’s firm. So he will attend, and Madame Guiscard, as his wife, will come with him.’

  Rosie smirked in an ugly manner.

  ‘Your Aunt Maisie isn’t the only one who’s glad I’m staying on here,’ she said.

  ‘Of course she’s not. I am too…if only you won’t say silly things.’

  ‘I’ve promised not to – about you.’

  ‘Silly things about anybody, Rosie. About Madame Guiscard, for example.’

  ‘I’ve said nothing about her, except to wonder if she’d come to the Memorial thing.’

  Tessa sighed.

  ‘You said it in a certain way…and with a certain kind of look.’

  ‘All right,’ said Rosie. ‘I won’t say anything like that, ever again. I’ve just been imagining things, like your Aunt Maisie must have been imagining them about you and Major Gray.’

  ‘Lord Canteloupe has written to me,’ said Theodosia Salinger to her sister.

  They were standing side by side, looking out over the Great Lawn of Lancaster from a window in Carmilla’s set in Sitwell’s Building.

  ‘First of all,’ said Theodosia, ‘he is inviting us to the Memorial Luncheon for Gregory Stern.’

  ‘Need we go? We never really knew Gregory Stern, and I’ve got such a lot of work to do. That trip to Venice has put me right behind.’

  ‘And I’ve got a Tennis Match that day anyhow. No. We won’t go to the lunch. But there’s another invitation in Canteloupe’s letter. He wants you and me to go to him in Wiltshire for Christmas. Not just Christmas, but the whole of the vacation. And to come for other vacations too.’

  ‘He likes you,’ said Carmilla. ‘Lady Canteloupe has gone off to work in that leper colony and there’s going to be a divorce, the papers say. Lord Canteloupe likes you.’

  ‘I hope so. I like him.’

  ‘What about Jeremy?’

  ‘That’s over, Carm. Strictly no good for either of us. The night after the ceremony he came to my room in that Locanda on Torcello. Because I loved him and we’d come a long way to find him I tried to do what he asked. I couldn’t. That horrible great club of his. I don’t want that inside me or anywhere near me. I never shall. Or any other man’s. So when
he couldn’t get it into me, Jeremy insisted on…making stuff all over me instead. I hated that too. Now…Canteloupe would never want to do anything like that.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘He hinted…ever so delicately…in his letter.’

  ‘Perhaps he wants you as a mother for Sarum.’

  ‘Tullius, he always calls him.’

  ‘A mother for Tullius then. Should you take that on?’

  ‘If I could finish this last year here first, and still go on playing tennis and badminton later.’

  ‘I can’t imagine Canteloupe stopping you – him of all people… You…parted friends…with Jeremy?’

  ‘Oh yes. And he’s been to see me, since we’ve been back here, to say he’ll return all that money he had. He’ll give it back to me in January, he says. His father’s making some new settlement.’

  ‘So that won’t cost him much trouble – repaying you, I mean.’

  ‘No. But it’s nice to have things straight – even though neither of us now needs the money.’

  ‘Balancing the account?’

  ‘That’s it,’ said Theodosia. ‘Balance the account, draw a couple of lines to indicate finality, and close that particular book.’

  ‘Lonely,’ said Canteloupe. ‘Do you find it lonely, Leonard? Baby gone, Jo-Jo gone, Jean-Marie gone. This morning I went into that room where Jean-Marie did his typing…and looked out on that copse where Jo-Jo and Baby used to play backgammon and read to each other. Now that winter is here the trees are bare, and you can see the pond in the middle. Jo-Jo always used to tell us how much Jean-Marie would enjoy looking out on that copse when the autumn came and the winter. But now they’re all gone. Nobody left to sit in it or look at it.’

  ‘Sarum is here.’

  ‘Tullius.’

  ‘Tullius and Daisy.’

  ‘Daisy is only a Nanny when all is said.’

  ‘You say the Salinger girls have accepted for Christmas?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘For the whole of their vacation?’

  ‘Almost. They need two days in London to talk business with Ivan Blessington. Then they’ll have till their term begins again.’

  ‘Well then,’ said Leonard, ‘you’ve got that to look forward to.’

  ‘But will they come back at Easter?’ said Canteloupe.

  ‘That’s up to you, Detterling.’

  Daisy brought Sarum in to say goodnight. The two men rose and looked at him as he snuggled happily in Daisy’s arm.

  ‘Baby agreed with Max de Freville,’ said Canteloupe at length, ‘that he has Piero’s eyes.’

  ‘He has his own eyes, my Lord,’ said Daisy.

  ‘Then let’s hope they are as sharp as Piero’s.’

  ‘Who is Piero, my Lord?’

  ‘An old friend of her Ladyship. Now an undergraduate at Cambridge.’

  ‘An old friend of her Ladyship, my Lord? When he’s still a boy at College?’

  ‘He first met my wife when they were both very young. But even then he wasn’t exactly a boy…or not at heart. I can’t really explain, my dear, except by saying that some people are born old. I wonder whether that is the case with Tullius?’

  In the end, Fielding Gray took Rosie to Gregory’s Memorial Luncheon, at which they sat with Marius and Isobel at the end of one table. Marius had special leave from school to attend, which he had not wanted to do as there was an important football match that day at Oudenarde House; but Glinter Parkes had insisted (though Isobel might have given way if pressed in the matter). ‘There are certain pieties which have to be observed,’ Glinter had said to Marius, ‘and this is one of them. It is tremendously boring and annoying for you, I know, but since boredom and annoyance make up ninety per cent of life, you must learn to put up with them.’

  Marius quoted this remark to Fielding, and was overheard by Jo-Jo Guiscard, who had come separately with her husband and had stopped, on the way to her seat, for a quick word with Isobel.

  ‘That is a very negative remark,’ Jo-Jo said. ‘There are times when life is ninety per cent happiness.’

  ‘I wish I could remember a few,’ Fielding said.

  ‘Have you never been in love?’ said Jo-Jo.

  ‘The first person with whom I was in love shot himself,’ said Fielding, ‘and the next, as I later discovered, was being paid to deceive and decoy me.’

  ‘How interesting,’ said Rosie. ‘Is it only other men you fall in love with?’

  ‘No,’ said Fielding. ‘I was just giving Madame Guiscard some examples of love affairs which have made my life rather less than ninety per cent happy.’

  ‘All very negative,’ said Jo-Jo, and went on her way to sit by Leonard Percival.

  ‘What news of Baby?’ she said to Leonard.

  ‘Nothing much, apart from what you can read in the papers. Detterling has had a wire to say that she has been accepted as a probationer and is very happy.’

  ‘What on earth is she going to do there?’

  ‘You know what St Francis is supposed to have done with lepers?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That, or something of the kind, is what she will do…if I am to judge from her conversation in the cathedral on Torcello.’

  Much to everyone’s surprise, Maisie Malcolm, who had not been invited (since no one except Fielding, who was sworn to silence, knew of any good reason for inviting her) turned up in time for the big speech, which was to be made by Gregory’s old partner, Canteloupe. At a sign from Fielding, she was given a seat and a glass between Jean-Marie Guiscard and Jeremy Morrison, who had accompanied his father to the Luncheon, and not very far from Tom Llewyllyn, who had been compelled to come by Len on the ground that Gregory had been Tom’s first publisher. Maisie arrived just as Ptolemaeos Tunne was concluding a preliminary speech, which had some witty jokes in it made up by his secretary elect, Piero Caspar. Piero, like Jeremy, had come up for the day from Lancaster and now sat between Len and the Literary Editor of the Scrutator, who made a peculiar braying noise when Canteloupe rose to make his speech and propose the toast to Gregory.

  Since Canteloupe was a bad speaker, and had indeed taken on this task only because it was an absolute duty (‘piety’ as Glinter might have said), his speech, which he read in a low monotone, fell pretty flat…or rather, it would have done, had it not been for the spectacular behaviour of Mrs Maisie Malcolm, who, as all raised their glasses at Canteloupe’s feeble behest, climbed on to the table and, ‘“A was a man,”’ she proclaimed, remembering one of Tessa’s holiday books, ‘“Take him for all in all, thou shalt not look upon his like again.”’ She drained her glass in a bumper, and then, remembering (though less precisely this time) another of Tessa’s holiday books, ‘Let his sword go to him that can get it,’ she cried and flung her glass over her shoulder, thus quite seriously wounding the Literary Editor of the Scrutator on the crown of his bald head.

  After the luncheon, while the Literary Editor of the Scrutator was being carted off by self-important ambulance men and everyone else was milling about between the tables, Jeremy came over to talk to Fielding about the trip they were planning to France for the New Year.

  When they had been talking for a few minutes, Marius tugged at Jeremy’s sleeve.

  ‘I’m sorry I was unfriendly, when you came to Birchington that day,’ he said. ‘You took me by surprise. And I didn’t want Palairet to be jealous.’

  ‘Do you like Palairet?’

  ‘Yes. But he is very stupid. I need to be with intelligent people. Ask Major Gray to take me with you over the New Year.’

  ‘But your mother–’

  ‘–Will be delighted to have me out of the way. She doesn’t need me in the way she used to. I could tell when I came up last night. She’ll happily pay to have me off her hands for most of the holidays.’

  ‘No need for that. I can pay for you,’ said Jeremy grandly.

  ‘But she’ll want to pay, so that she won’t feel guilty. Rosie told me at lunch that she insists on paying
Mrs Malcolm more than ever to keep Rosie at Buttock’s. Rather splendid what Mrs Malcolm said, didn’t you think. I intend that my father’s sword shall come to me.’

  ‘Then you must get it.’

  ‘I know. Can I come with you and Fielding?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Fielding, who had been pretending to listen to Isobel’s very boring talk about her affair with Jo-Jo but had really been overhearing the exchange between Marius and Jeremy, of which he much approved. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Of course you can come. We’ll leave the day after Boxing Day,’ he said to Jeremy. ‘You owe it to your father to spend Christmas with him, otherwise we’d go even earlier.’

  ‘But you too will be engaged for Christmas,’ said Jeremy. ‘At Buttock’s with Mrs Malcolm.’

  ‘I don’t think Mrs Malcolm will mind much when I leave.’

  ‘But Tessa–’

  ‘–We’ll leave the day after Boxing Day,’ said Fielding, abruptly settling the matter; and to Marius, ‘I should be very surprised, from what I’ve been hearing, if your mother makes any objection, but you must get her formal permission.’

  ‘I’ll tell her I want to talk with men like you to make me do well in my scholarship exam next summer.’

  ‘She won’t need to be told that. Just go and ask her now.’

  Isobel had moved off to talk with Piero and Len.

  ‘Did Tom really ask you that,’ she was saying to Piero, ‘what to do about the Dryads in his avenue?’