by Simon Raven
‘So he has. He is attending Maisie Malcolm,’ said Carmilla, ‘by special request. So you stay put here, young Marius. I’ll drive you back to school on the fifteenth, on my way back to Cambridge.’
The next day, 11 January, Theodosia Canteloupe was to take Nausikaa home to her official father, the Marquess Canteloupe, in his great house in Wiltshire. Jeremy was leaving too; for now that his holiday with Marius was done he must return, he said, to his estate at Luffham-by-Whereham.
‘Why?’ grizzled Marius. ‘You told me the estate runs itself.’
‘What with one thing and another, caro, I have been away, apart from odd days at Christmas, for a very long time. I must now, so to speak, sit on my throne for a while. And then, Marius (dimidia pars mei), my father is there and an old servant who likes to see me. You will be all right here with Auntie Florence…and Carmilla.’
Before Jeremy left, he went on a long drive with Carmilla. Marius, who wanted to accompany them, was told firmly by Auntie Florence that he must stay with Theodosia and their daughter.
‘You have just had two weeks of pure pleasure,’ Auntie Flo said; ‘now you can think of other people and show a little civility.’
The disgruntled Marius was not very pleasant to Theodosia. The baby partly bored and partly frightened him – that such a creature (he thought) should have sprung from his throbbing prick. With Theodosia he had little to discuss. All he could think of was the castles and temples of the Peloponnese in the grey light of January, as he drove with Jeremy by the – shore of the misty sea. Now that was over, and he was soon to return to school for the dullest Quarter of the year (having been on leave of absence ever since the previous autumn), and if all that was not enough, Jeremy and Carmilla had deserted him, had left him flat to talk to this dismal woman with the child that reminded him of Teresa…Teresa who was at the sick bed of a woman who never before had been sick.
‘Try not to look so bored and sulky,’ said Theodosia; ‘you showed me kindness and love in the spring.’
‘And then you threw me out of the house for my pains. Because I succeeded in exciting you, and you felt that was beneath your dignity, you threw me out like a dog.’
‘You made me forget myself – or very nearly. I hated you for that. But not any more.’
‘Shall you want me to come to you again, if Canteloupe asks you to try for a boy?’
‘I cannot tell what is to happen about that.’
‘I shan’t much want to come, you know, even if I am the one chosen.’
‘You are the only one I could bear. Not so much for yourself, as for your friend, Galahad.’
‘My dear friend, Galahad. God, how depressing you are. Why can’t you be like your sister? Carmilla is fun to be with in bed. Carmilla takes a delight in it all. You fight against it. Carmilla comes. You sort of…dry up instead. And then you pitch a chap out of the house…without any dinner.’
‘Perhaps I deserve this, Marius. But show kindness again.’ Marius, shamed, made an effort.
‘I wonder what is the matter with Mrs Malcolm? Surely Teresa has told you. Surely she has telephoned or written to you.’
‘Teresa has told me nothing about Mrs Malcolm. I do not think that she wishes to talk of her, even to write of her, to me.’
‘Yes. I think I can understand that. And yet you and Teresa love each other, Thea. Tessa has…borne this child of ours together with you. And now this illness of Mrs Malcolm’s is keeping you apart. Surely Teresa has told you what is the matter with her aunt, or at least how long it is likely to go on?’
‘Teresa has told me nothing.’
‘In a very few days she will be back at school with me on Farncombe Hill. Then you will not see her until the first Absit of the Quarter.’
‘I know. But Teresa owes everything to her Auntie Maisie, who has been a mother to her. Of course she must be with her now.’
‘But what can the matter be with her?’
Theodosia shrugged. ‘It is time to feed Nausikaa,’ she said. ‘Go ahead. I don’t mind.’
‘I’m afraid I do, Marius,’ said Theodosia, shrinking slightly. ‘Go away, please.’
‘God knows why I was made to stay in the house,’ said Marius, and went off to be disagreeable to Auntie Florence.
At about the same time as Theodosia offered her breast to Nausikaa, Carmilla said to Jeremy:
‘Marius was badly miffed at being left behind. But I have some questions.’
‘Ask that it may be answered.’
The Bristol Channel gleamed briefly beyond and below the brown bracken to the right of the road. Then the road turned and they were walled in, on both sides, by tall silent conifers.
‘How did you find Marius in Greece?’ Carmilla said.
‘Enchanting. And grateful.’
‘Did he talk of Brindisi?’
‘He told me he came there to betray me, but he was not sure whether he would have done. Had he arrived in time, he might, or might not, have changed his mind.’
‘And where was Raisley Conyngham in all this?’
‘Marius was anxious not to talk of Raisley – except strictly on his own terms. He obviously wants to please Raisley, but he insists that he is independent of him. In the end he obeys, he says, his own daimon.’
‘Good.’
‘Not so good. He admitted that he felt jealous because I was away with Fielding. I said that jealousy was the meanest of all emotions and that his daimon could not be healthy if it permitted him to harbour it. I suggested that his daimon could have been tainted by Raisley’s influence.’
‘His reaction?’
‘Neurotic anger. It was the only time we nearly had a scene. He managed to control himself, but only just.’
‘You know,’ said Carmilla, ‘we shall never quite know what we are up against until we have a complete understanding of Raisley Conyngham.’
‘Never mind a complete understanding,’ said Jeremy. ‘We must simply get rid of him. We understand enough, we have seen enough, to know that.’
‘So we have all been saying for some time. But how? We must know something that we can use, either to vanquish him or disgrace him. We must make detailed investigation instead of indulging in casual speculation. We must get a team together, do our research and reconnaissance, then work out an exact yet malleable plan and put it into disciplined action.’
‘Very well,’ said Jeremy; ‘let there be a team. Although I must be at Luffham quite a lot these coming weeks, I should be glad if I might be included.’
‘Oh yes. You and I are Founder Members.’
‘Whom else shall we co-opt?’
‘You will let me decide?’
‘Happily.’
‘Then I shall summon you within ten days to meet them.’
While Carmilla was driving Marius through Salisbury on their way between Burnham-on-Sea and Guildford (for Farncombe), Marius said, ‘Pity that house of Flo’s is so poky. I was longing for you while we were there. It’s been quite a time, Carmilla.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure I trust you any more, if ever I did. Why did you raise all that row about Jeremy’s journey in the autumn? Why did you try to spoil it?’
‘I spoiled nothing.’
‘Only because you came up with Jeremy too late,’ Carmilla said.
‘As I have already told Jeremy, I might have done nothing – even if I had been in time.’
‘Might. What made you think that you had to interfere at all?’
‘You know very well. You know who has my ear; you all do. You keep complaining about him and trying to crab him and saying what a rotten influence he is – not straight out to my face or his, but slyly, like old maids behind lace curtains.’
‘You are so beautiful, Marius. No one likes to offend you openly.’
‘What has he ever done except teach me the classics and how to behave in the world at large?’
‘He tried to make you kill little Tully Sarum last summer,’ said Carmilla; ‘and so you would
have done had you not been interrupted by the accident which killed him instead. He tried to make you betray Jeremy – and in so doing to betray Theodosia and me by spoiling our plans for his journey.’
‘In both cases, there were reasons. A lot depends on one’s point of view.’
‘You are too young to play the sophist. Even if you were older, the part would not become you. It becomes nobody.’
‘Anyway,’ said Marius gently, ‘none of this can be proved.’
‘Don’t be disingenuous, Marius. Lack of proof does not mean lack of blame.’
‘Legally and officially it does.’
Carmilla stopped the car by a seedy pub.
‘Get out,’ she said.
A few yards up the street from the pub was the East Gate into the Cathedral Close (as opposed to the Main Gate, at the south-west corner, near the second-hand bookshop). Carmilla and Marius walked along a road with fine, rich, peaceful houses to left and to right, and then, when the houses on the left ceased, veered left on to the Cathedral Green and made for the West Portal of the building.
‘Why are we coming here?’ Marius said.
‘Don’t you like it?’
‘I like it very much. Can we do what you and Jeremy did in Bishop Alcocke’s Chantry in the cathedral at Ely?’
‘Who told you that tale?’
‘You did.’
‘I don’t think there is anywhere suitable in this one. Anyway, we shan’t have time. We have come to look at something special. There is a tomb, and on it the effigy of an unknown knight. Fielding Gray told me about it once. He said the knight’s face closely resembled that of a boy with whom he had been in love, many years ago, at your school.’3
‘Why do you wish to see this?’ Marius asked.
‘Fielding said that the knight on the tomb, like the boy he loved at school, was a type of pure innocence. Yet the boy was later driven to kill himself by the suspicion and spite of people who should have known better.’
Carmilla took Marius by the right wrist. She led him up the south side aisle, turned right, then left behind a wooden screen and into a deep shadow. Surely Salisbury Cathedral was all light? she thought. Surely Fielding hadn’t warned her about this shadow? Too late to bother about that now. She must have followed Fielding’s directions correctly, because discernible despite the shadow was a tomb, and on the tomb a stone figure in chain armour, legs straight, prayerful fingers pointing up to a mailed chin, the face of a stripling, almost a child.
‘I can hardly see him in this light,’ Marius said.
‘Oh, but I can. I have the sharp eyes of a scholar for this kind of work. He had a full mouth, turned very slightly downwards at the corners, a soft nose, mild, beseeching eyes. The face of innocence. Not at all like your face,’ Carmilla said, ‘which is what I came here to establish. It was my last hope, you see, that I might be mistaken, that we all might be mistaken, and that I might find, in this face of innocence, at least some of the same traits as I find in yours…which would mean that your spirit had not been wholly cankered. But while this mouth is still uncertain and ready to give thanks or ask mercy, yours is firm and decided, almost scornful. While these eyes hope for love, yours demand submission. You have been told by one in whom you believe that “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law”, provided that what “thou wilt” is also what he wills for you…however monstrous, however profane.’
‘I don’t know about being told. My daimon is still my own.’
‘Is it, Marius? I think the Devil is in it. Or at least that innocence is forever out of it.’
‘Thank you,’ said Marius, ‘for the concession. Listen, Carmilla,’ he said, moving close up behind her; ‘have you ever read a French book called Montaillou? It has recently been translated into English.’
‘The book about the Cathars?’
‘Yes. Raisley Conyngham recommended it to me. You will recall that the Cathars or Albigensians believed that the Devil, acting as Demiurge, had made this world with its lusts and vanities.’ He pressed still closer behind her, till she was up against the ledge of the slab on which lay the young knight. ‘To be saved,’ Marius went on, ‘one must forswear these lusts and vanities; but one was allowed to postpone that until one was on one’s death bed, so that one might enjoy a life of pleasure right up to a few hours before death. Later on,’ said Marius, stroking her strong belly, ‘the Cathars began to believe that the Demiurge or Devil was in no way beneath God, in no way depending on his sufferance or inferior to him in might; they began to believe that there were in fact two Gods, equal and co-eternal, one of whom created and shaped the flesh and the other the spirit; and that now a man must choose between them – not abandon himself to one for life and seek sanctuary with the other by repenting just before death, but decide which God would ultimately be victorious in the struggle between the pair of them, on pain of being damned if he chose the wrong one. You understand, Carmilla? Though I think that you, the scholar, should be explaining all this to me, rather than the other way about.’
‘Your exegesis is very clear, Marius. And, I think, more or less correct. It does not follow that the doctrines of the Cathars or Albigensians are true.’
‘But you would agree,’ said Marius, rubbing himself gently against her trousered buttocks and continuing to massage her belly, ‘that if their later doctrines are true, if God and the Devil (or Demiurge) are in fact equal and co-eternal, and if they are in fact struggling with each other to decide which of them will ultimately rule the universe, then it is necessary to choose one side or the other…if one hopes to find salvation as the faithful servant of the final victor. I think you are going to come, Carmilla?’
‘Perhaps. Not just yet.’
‘Well then. Let us say, by way of variation, that God and the Devil are not struggling any longer and have agreed on a truce, a perpetual truce. Since both are rational, this would probably be the most sensible solution. In that case, Carmilla, one does not have to wager which will be the eventual victor but simply to decide which deity one finds the more congenial. One can even change sides, as neither deity is any longer prepared to fight for adherents or to punish disloyalty. So, Carmilla: my personal and independent daimon, which has a spark of both deities in it, can vacillate for as long and as often as it wishes; and to say that it is impaired, or cankered, or corrupt, or even to say that innocence has left it, is absolute nonsense – in a universe, Carmilla, in which God and the Devil have agreed to differ in tranquillity. You are going to come, Carmilla.’
‘Even if the deities are equal,’ quavered Carmilla, ‘and have sworn a truce, one is still Good and the other Evil.’
‘But in practical terms, in terms of damnation or salvation, it makes no difference. Neither deity can punish the followers of the other.’
‘There must be conscience,’ squealed Carmilla; and then, although she usually came rather gently, she jerked and heaved against the tombstone of the innocent knight, while Marius sighed and shuddered behind her.
As soon as Carmilla had dropped Marius at his school at the top of Farncombe Hill, he went to the Domus Vestalis (Vestal or Virginal House) of which Teresa Malcolm was a member. He waited politely in the Locker Hall while a famula (female duty fag) went to fetch Miss Malcolm.
‘Very efficient, your Domus,’ said Marius to Tessa as they walked on the terrace over the cricket green, ‘having a famula posted on the first afternoon of the Quarter.’
‘She was briefed on the last day of last Quarter,’ said Tessa, holding one wing of her gold-auburn hair against the January wind which blew up from the valley. ‘These things are very easy to get right if only you think a little ahead.’
She said nothing more. Although she had joined him on the walk without demur (New Year Spirit, he thought) she was clearly leaving the effort of initiating a topic to Marius, which, on the whole, suited him very well. The dusk was settling and he must be direct.
‘Tessa,’ he said, ‘what is the matter with your aunt, Mrs Malcolm?
Why could you not be present when Thea’s child was born?’
‘I did not like to remember that it was yours. I could not bear that you had done her violence to get it.’
‘I did her no violence. She herself will tell you how gentle I was.’
‘To do…what you did…at all was a violence to Theodosia.’
‘She willed it, she invited me to do it…and I had to put up with some very unkind and captious behaviour when it was done. And well done, as it turned out.’
‘She was unpleasant to you because you had violated her. You should not have done that, Marius, even if she did invite you. You should have known that she consented only because Canteloupe commanded.’
‘Men to blame, I see, as usual. Let’s drop that, Tessa. What I want to know is this: you have spent every moment you could, for many months now, comforting and caring for Theodosia in her pregnancy; and yet when it came to the climax, you were not there.’
‘She needed a good nurse, not me.’
‘She might have needed your love. You were not there, I was told, because your aunt was dangerously ill. Never in my life have I known a stronger or healthier woman than your Auntie Maisie; and then she was suddenly so ill that you could not leave her to come to Somerset?’
‘She was.’
‘And still is?’
‘She is better. Otherwise I should not be here. Doctor La Soeur has found a drug for her.’
‘When did her illness start?’
‘I was called from Canteloupe’s house in Wiltshire on New Year’s Day.’
‘And what did you find in London?’
‘I found my Auntie Maisie lying in bed and refusing to move or talk. Refusing to move or talk at all, Marius.’
‘Jesus Christ.’
‘That’s what I thought. Nursing her was…very trying. Luckily Fielding Gray had come with me to help.’
‘And you both called in Doctor La Soeur…although he has retired?’
‘No true doctor ever retires.’
‘What did Doctor La Soeur say the matter was?’ Marius pressed on.
‘Withdrawal.’
‘That was obvious. What had caused it?’
