by Simon Raven
‘Not to Caspar or Morrison,’ said Giles Glastonbury; ‘but I’ve always had a soft spot for Fielding Gray. He was my second-in-command in the old days – when Danny Chead’s old man was Corporal-Major.’
‘I’ll bear that in mind, Giles, should I be compelled to take action.’
‘Take action…with intent to do what?’
‘I’ve just told you. It remains to be seen. Let them start the game, if they must. Danny Chead and that gelding are hating each other.’
With two furlongs to run and one hurdle to jump, Mercury was pressing to the front of the field, despite being hauled back by Danny Chead, who was straining to his work with both hands like a fisherman with a corpse on his hoo. Over the last hurdle they went, Mercury squirming in his efforts to break free. A furlong to run. Mercury swerved right, reared, twisted violently, and flung Danny over the white plastic rail to land, supine, on the first of the spiked rails beyond.
‘Pity the Corporal-Major’s not here,’ observed Giles; ‘he’d have enjoyed that. And now, Dorchester,’ he called along the Steward’s Box, ‘you’re going to have to explain why you didn’t keep your promise about removing those rails.’
‘Too costly,’ grated Dorchester from under his homme-qui-rît moustache; ‘just as simple as that. I doubt whether anyone’s going to raise much of a row about that little turd, Danny Chead. All the other jockeys hate him.’
‘To say nothing of his own father. Still…they may feel that there but for the grace of God or the Devil go they – lying on the top of that fence with two spikes between their shoulder blades.’ The two deep, dark clefts between Glastonbury’s nostrils and the corners of his mouth quivered and rippled, though whether with indignation or amusement Raisley could not tell. ‘Anyway,’ Giles went on to Dorchester, ‘there’ll be a spine-chilling shriek from the senior nannies in the Jockey Club.’
‘Don’t you believe it, Giles. Danny’s got away with hundreds of filthy jobs. They’ll be glad to see an end of him.’
‘It’s those spikes that are going to be complained of, Dorchester, not the damage to Danny Chead.’
‘Troublesome time the ambulance men are having…trying to lift him off. Good job the spikes ain’t barbed. But nobody’s going to complain of them, Giles. You know why not? Bit of local history. A couple of Hun bomber pilots, shot down on the way back from Bristol, split themselves arse to tit on those spikes in 1942.’
‘I never heard that before.’
‘Did you not? The press releases just going out will remedy your ignorance, and everybody else’s. By tonight it will be all over the West Country, and by tomorrow the whole kingdom. You couldn’t have expected us to dismantle a museum piece, hallowed by its association with the People’s War for Freedom, now could you?’
Isobel Stern and her friend, Jo-Jo Guiscard, stood on the south side of the cloister of the cathedral of St-Bertrand-de-Comminges and looked down on to a meadow below, where Jo-Jo’s husband, Jean-Marie, was picking grass and putting it into a briefcase.
‘This new theory of Jean-Marie’s,’ said Jo-Jo, ‘that Cathar “perfects” in the early period of Albigensianism fed off grass, is going to lead to tears.’
‘Why on earth should it?’
‘He’s going to ask us to try it out and see how we feel. It is our duty, he is going to say, to help him with the research for his book.’
‘Grass will be a monotonous diet,’ said Isobel, ‘but it will have the merit of economy. Perhaps he would allow us to vary it a little with a few nettles and wild flowers.’
‘Daddy says the Cathars wouldn’t eat flowers,’ said three-year-old Oenone, who was amusing herself by riding astride a chunky corbel which jutted low from the west wall of the cloister. ‘They wouldn’t eat them because they were so pretty that they were sinful. Daddy says the Cathars hated pretty things because they came from the Devil.’
‘Interesting,’ said Isobel. ‘Of course all Cathars believed that the physical world was created by the Devil as Demiurge, but to the early ones the Devil really was still the Devil and not an Alternative God. So I suppose the “perfects” or “parfaits” might have forced themselves only to eat grass – the dullest food that grows.’
‘When Daddy and I were picking grass yesterday,’ said Oenone, ‘he told me that there were different kinds of it. That is why he is putting it in his briefcase. It has things fitted into it to separate the different kinds of grass.’
‘He talks to her the whole time when they go on their expeditions,’ said Jo-Jo.
‘Very good for her education.’
‘She gets bored with it sometimes. That is why she is not down there with him now. No question of it, Isobel: if Oenone is to be properly educated, she must be sent back to England.’
‘Not just yet, I think. Let’s see now: what news from Blighty?’
Isobel plumped her splendid bum on to a closed sarcophagus and started opening the letters which she had just collected from the Poste Restante.
‘Item,’ she said: ‘I have an obscenely large sum of money which has accumulated in my Deposit Account.’
‘Why not have some fun with it? Or give some of it away?’
‘That is not how money should be used,’ Isobel said. ‘It is not to be frittered away on frivolous pleasure, neither is it to be scattered down the wind to scavengers.’
‘Then what should one do with it?’
‘Suppress it,’ said Isobel. ‘Lock it away. If it is let loose, it only makes trouble. It gives rise to envy, hatred, and violence, both physical and moral.’
‘If you have so much money,’ said Oenone to Isobel, ‘will you please buy Oenone an ice-lolly.’
‘Don’t push her too hard,’ Jo-Jo said.
‘Item,’ said Isobel: ‘Marius’ O levels are at last to take place; in March.’
‘Has Marius written?’
‘No. My son no longer writes to me. His sister Rosie has sent this news.’
‘When Rosie was here at Christmas, she said Marius had been neglecting his work,’ Oenone said. ‘She sounded quite cross.’
‘Item,’ said Isobel: ‘Fielding Gray has written to say that Maisie Malcolm is in a coma and not expected to come out of it. I wonder why Rosie didn’t remember to tell me that? She’s very fond of Maisie.’
‘Rosie does not like people to be ill,’ said Oenone. ‘She will not talk about them. Once, when I had a snuffle, she was very unkind all day long and told me not to whine about it.’
‘Quite right too,’ said Isobel. ‘All this silly fuss about health these days. What we really need is for everyone over seventy-five to be dead, instead of cluttering the place up and costing a lot of good money.’
‘Which, of course,’ said Jo-Jo, ‘should be suppressed or locked away.’
‘Item,’ said Isobel, rubbing her bum lubriciously on the lid of the sarcophagus, ‘Jeremy has written.’
‘Oenone likes Jeremy,’ Oenone said.
‘Well, you may see him before long. Apparently he and Fielding and Carmilla Salinger and that little Italian quean, Caspar, are coming out to stay at the swish hotel down the road at Barbazon. Come to think of it, there was a hint about that in Fielding’s letter. Jeremy is writing a few days later and he’s quite positive.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Jo-Jo. ‘What a lot of money is going to be let loose in that clippy hotel. Does Jeremy say why they’re coming? It can hardly be for a holiday at this time of the year.’
‘It seems that they’ve caught the Cathar bug, like Jean-Marie,’ Isobel said. ‘They are particularly interested in later Cathar doctrine and ritual, i.e. what the Cathars got up to in the later thirteenth century, well after Simon de Montfort’s anti-Cathar Crusade, and even in the fourteenth.’
‘They’ll be a little too far west just here,’ said Jo.
‘I don’t know. Jean-Marie seems quite happy working here.’
‘Jean-Marie is still reading the subject up…when not making experiments in vegetarian diet, which can be done anywher
e.’
‘You think the Carmilla contingent will be more aggressive?’ said Isobel. ‘I dare say you’re right. In that case they’ll find Foix a very easy run. Also Pamiers and Ax. And they can always move on later. Meanwhile,’ she continued, having given her bum a final scrape on the end of the lid, ‘one asks oneself how pleased one will be to see them.’
‘Oenone will be very pleased to see Jeremy,’ Oenone said. ‘Oenone wants to sit in Jeremy’s lap, like she did when she was a baby.’
‘Oenone,’ said Isobel, ‘is growing much too big to sit in people’s laps.’
‘What rubbish,’ said Jo-Jo; ‘I often sit on yours.’
She did so now. Oenone came and sat on hers.
‘Like that picture of the Virgin on her mother’s lap,’ said Isobel, ‘and Christ on the Virgin’s.’
‘Oenone hasn’t got a little banana between her legs,’ said Oenone, ‘like Christ has in all the pictures.’
‘You’re very well without it,’ said Isobel.
‘I always wished I had a banana,’ said Jo-Jo; ‘so convenient for pissing…I think, Isobel, that we shall be quite pleased to see them when they arrive. It will at least make a change. We must give them all dinner. Living as we do in a church, we have not the amenities to entertain at home. We shall have to take them out. There is an hotel with an excellent restaurant at St-Girons.’
‘Too far away.’
‘Too expensive is what you mean. Very well, Isobel, you manky old tight-twot. If you are too mingy to buy your old friends dinner, then I shall pay.’
‘It’s not just a matter of meanness –’
‘No?’
‘I honestly think that to throw so much money about is vulgar and offensive,’ Isobel said.
‘Do you want to come or not?’
‘Yes. I want to see Fielding again.’
‘Oenone wants to come. She wants to see Jeremy again. Oenone has no money,’ said Oenone, ‘so she can’t pay anything.’
‘That’s all right, precious,’ said Jo-Jo. ‘Mummy will pay in order to shame Auntie Isobel.’
‘I shan’t be in the least shamed, thank you.’
‘When are they coming?’
‘The day after tomorrow,’ Isobel said.
‘Goodie,’ said Oenone; ‘goodie, goodie. But that is the day after tomorrow. Will Auntie Isobel please buy Oenone an icelolly now?’
‘Why does she always ask me and not you?’ said Isobel. ‘You’re her mother.’
‘And you’re the one that loves her.’
‘You called her “precious” just now.’
‘A mere façon de parler,’ said Jo-Jo. ‘I do like sitting on your lap.’
‘You just said I was a manky old tight-twot.’
‘Another façon de parler. I, of all people, know how hot and juicy you really are.’
‘Time to get off,’ said Isobel; ‘this is Holy Ground, when all is said. Let us go and buy your daughter an ice-lolly. We’re going now,’ she called through the tracery (rather spare for Gothic) to Jean-Marie down in the meadow.
Jean-Marie raised a hand in farewell, but did not look up or cease gathering grass.
Raisley Conyngham invited Marius Stern to tea in his chambers, in order to check up on one thing and another.
‘Are you sure,’ Raisley began, ‘that you have done your work properly for O levels?’
‘Of course, sir.’
‘You were away for a lot of last Quarter. We can’t afford to have you mess up this exam through carelessness or complacency.’
‘I know, sir. I took several books with me to Italy when I went with Caspar, and did quite a lot of hard reading, particularly when we were hanging about in Terracina.’
‘Good. Next question: have you heard from Lady Canteloupe whether Canteloupe still wants a son? And if so, whether you are the chosen father?’
‘Is this an inquisition, sir?’
‘Don’t be insolent, boy. Answer me.’
Marius went pale.
‘There will be no more of that, sir. Theodosia and I are not on the best of terms. She has now written to say that Canteloupe is much taken by the little Lady Nausikaa and has decided, to her great relief, not to press her to become pregnant again.’
‘What else did she say?’
It was on the tip of Marius’ tongue to tell his pedagogue to mind his own business, when Raisley smiled and passed a plate of egg sandwiches.
‘Made with Heinz Salad Cream,’ Raisley said. ‘An odd taste, some would say, but it is your taste.’
‘And you have remembered it,’ said Marius, absurdly touched. His green eyes flashed at Raisley Conyngham as he piled a very greedy allowance of sandwiches on to his plate. ‘Lady Canteloupe rebuked me in her letter, sir, for not attending Jenny’s funeral. She said that I had received kindness from Jenny. I had told her, you see, what passed between me and Jenny last spring. Kindness indeed. Yet I still felt no obligation to go to the funeral.’
‘Quite right. There is never any obligation,’ said Raisley Conyngham, ‘to attend a funeral. Why should you or anybody else be obliged to follow a box full of decomposing animal matter and watch as it is put into a hole?’
‘But in this case? I had received, as Thea urged and as I admit…and as you, sir, very well know…great kindness from Jenny.’
‘All that is over,’ said Raisley Conyngham, ‘was over before ever she was dead.’
‘Kindness received can never be over, sir.’
‘Then remember it, if you must. Say a prayer for the poor ghost that wanders by Cocytus, if you will. But do not inconvenience yourself on this account. That funeral would have meant at least a day spent away from your work. There are no duties towards a corpse except to ensure its burial, and if others take care of that, as they did in this case, then there are, tout simple, no duties towards a corpse.’
‘But towards a memory, sir?’
‘I have already told you,’ said Conyngham with slight irritation, ‘that you may remember and pray as you please, provided none of this distracts you too long from more important matters. Now then; there is a story that Major Fielding Gray, and his friend and yours, Jeremy Morrison, may be going, with others, on an expedition of historical research. What do you know of any such expedition?’
‘Carmilla Salinger told me during Valentine’s Exit that she was going with them. I asked her to let me come, but she wouldn’t.’
‘A very good thing she won’t. You had enough time off before Christmas.’
‘She nearly did. She was angry about some things – that disagreement I had with her about Jeremy and his journey last autumn – but now that’s all over I think she still likes me a lot. Yet in the end she was firm that I could not go with her and the rest. I think Piero Caspar is of the party. I should have liked the chance to talk more with him.’
‘Talking with Piero Caspar is dangerous work but excellent training. More of this later. Meanwhile, what is this historical research? Did Carmilla say?’
Conyngham, of course, knew very well what was this historical research. But he wanted to hear Marius tell him, as a proof of the boy’s loyalty and as a final confirmation of the facts.
‘It’s all to do with something called the Albigensian or Cathar heresy, sir…something derived from the Manichaeans, I think. They are to start looking…for whatever they are looking for… near a place called St-Bertrand-de-Comminges, where they have found rather a decent hotel with two rosettes for its food in the Guide Michelin. Later, they may go on to Narbonne and Beziers.’
No doubt then, thought Raisley, as he passed Marius the plate of egg sandwiches: time to be off, he thought. I shall need leave of absence; I shall simply say that there are sudden and urgent reasons for checking the research for which I was given a sabbatical in 1975 and ’76. I shall also need help when I get there. It would have been amusing to take Marius and use him against his friends, but since he must stay here (I entirely agree with Carmilla) and make sure of a sound result in his wretched b
ut essential examination, I shall invite Milo Hedley. He only has his Prelims this summer – no great matter – and I can make everything all right through that flabby fellow, Dean ffoliott-Hume. Yes: Milo, decorative, devious and dedicated Milo, will be just the companion for a frolic in Cathar country.
Footnotes
1 See Friends In Low Places, by Simon Raven (Anthony Blond Ltd; 1965).
2 See The Survivors, by Simon Raven (Blond & Briggs; 1976).
3 See Sound the Retreat, by Simon Raven (Blond & Briggs; 1971).
4 See New Seed for Old, by Simon Raven (House of Stratus; 2001).
PART THREE
The Nesting Place
Quivi le brutte Arpie lor nidi fanno,
che cacciar de le Strofade i Troiani
con tristo annunzio di futuro danno.
(Hither, to roost, the loathsome Harpies fly,
who chased the Trojans from the Stophades
with dismal presage of mischief drawing nigh.)
Dante: Inferno, Canto 13, lines 10 to 12
Trans: Geoffrey L Bickersteth
As soon as his mind was made up about his forthcoming expedition to the Languedoc, Raisley Conyngham summoned Milo Hedley from Cambridge; and the following weekend Milo Hedley came.
‘I am taking you for a cure at Lourdes,’ said Raisley to Milo, as they walked by the river in the valley beneath the school.
‘I applaud your generosity, sir, but would wish it diverted to a more agreeable locality. Lourdes,’ said Milo, ‘is a pilgrim town; it is infested with the sour uses of piety and wholly without ‘une bonne table. Why – for Christ’s sake, sir – why Lourdes?’
‘I told you. For a cure. Spiritual rather than physical, Milo. I do not propose to have you submerged in a miraculous pool, but to open your bigoted mind to the possibilities of psychic visions – of many varieties.’
‘Again, sir: why Lourdes?’
‘It is well situated for our purpose. No one will look for us there. Our opponents have taken as their headquarters a luxurious and therefore prominent hotel a little way to the east: we shall practise tactful and tactical humility, Milo, in a pilgrims’ hotel.’
