Before The Cock Crow (First Born of Egypt)

by Simon Raven

  ‘Poor Jo-Jo,’ said Fielding. ‘Such entertaining plans – and she had to go and have a girl.’

  ‘But perhaps the oddest thing,’ said Percival, ‘was what wasn’t said. There was very little talk about the baby Sarum. Tully. Tullius. Plenty of talk about how he came to be born, but none, or almost none, about the finished product. Baby told Jo-Jo the full tale of how you were chosen as father, how reluctant you were at first, how versatile and amusing you were in bed after you’d at last consented…though you weren’t too hot on straight fucking, she said, which was rather a worry–’

  ‘–I remember. She handled that very cleverly–’

  ‘–Oh yes indeed, and now here was little Tully to prove it. Here he was, with the right number of limbs and eyes and balls, all set up with his pram and his Nanny – here he was, and not a damned thing was said about him. She didn’t want to talk about him, even when Jo-Jo encouraged her. She didn’t hate him, she didn’t dislike him, not particularly, she just didn’t want to know about him. You see, she’d spotted, or so I think now, that something was wrong. And her response to this? Just cut your losses, girl, and forget the whole damn thing.’

  ‘Yet she fed the child herself.’

  ‘Yes. Because she knew it pleased Detterling, and she knew that Jo-Jo liked watching her. And she liked being watched. They were very happy together that summer; they adored each other, took care of each other, entertained and gambled with each other. They didn’t want it to end.’

  ‘But of course it had to.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Leonard Percival: ‘with Jo-Jo giving birth to a girl she didn’t want, and Baby left lumbered with a boy she didn’t want–’

  ‘–What a pity,’ said Fielding, ‘that my one excursion into parenthood turned out such a disastrous flop. I knew no good would come of it, and so I said both loud and clear, but neither Baby nor Canteloupe would listen.’

  ‘Never mind that now,’ said Leonard. ‘Whatever had happened, Baby would have got bored in the end…bored with her silly title, and with her pantaloon of a husband, and with rearing the little heir – the teething and the wet knickers and the chicken pox and the prep school carol service and the best friend from Worthing or Sunningdale coming to stay for the summer holidays – she’d have got bored with all that, though she might just have put up with it for a time if Tully had been beautiful or clever. But Tully wasn’t. He was just a moron. Not all there. Twelve annas in the rupee. “Backward” at best. And she knew what was going to happen. The special tutors, the special school, the sickening pretence. So she took the first good excuse that offered and went her ways. Good riddance. Let her not come back,’ Percival called across the pool, in the manner, half propitiatory and half denunciatory, of an unconfident exorcist.

  ‘Why should she come back?’

  ‘Because this is where she was happy. There is a smell here, a smell particularly appetising to revenants, of decayed happiness. Glastonbury caught a sudden whiff of it just now and didn’t like it. That’s why he left in such bad order.’

  ‘But why “decayed” happiness, Leonard? It came to an end, as it had to, but nothing happened to turn it sour at any stage. After a time, after quite a long time, it simply ceased in the natural and necessary and long foreseen progression of events. While it lasted it was unspoiled – or so you seemed to be telling me just now. So I repeat, Leonard: why “decayed” happiness?’

  The platinum sky had changed to dirty copper. There was a second and rather thicker descent of whirling snowflakes, which stopped as suddenly as the first.

  ‘Time to go in,’ said Fielding Gray.

  ‘No. Stay here with me and I shall answer your question. I’ll tell you what poisoned Baby’s happiness that summer and also helped, with several other factors, to send her packing. You know that Baby used to have…special perceptions…to dream dreams and hear voices.’

  ‘Like her Aunt Isobel. I thought all that went for good when she bore Tullius.’

  ‘So she said, and so she wished. But one afternoon by this pool, Fielding, one afternoon of that summer two and a half years ago, I was listening among the birches, and this is what I heard…

  “Some few years ago now,” Baby had said to Jo-Jo in the summer’s afternoon by their pool, “when I was about thirteen or fourteen, I went one September with Poppa to Venice.

  “It was a happy time in some ways; the first time I’d ever really had Poppa to myself, the first time I really got to know Canty – for he was there too, in fact it was while we were all in Venice that he heard he’d inherited his title. And Fielding Gray was there, very successful at that time and being rather cross and funny about it, and even funnier about the PEN Club, which was meeting in Venice just then, and all those huge tipsy cupidinous ladies who belong to it. All very entertaining. But there was a lot of sadness too. Poppa was looking for lodgings in which to spend the winter with his friend, Daniel Mond, who was probably going to die. Eventually Poppa found a little tower, a sort of two-storeyed summer-house, a casino they call it in Italy, in the garden of a place called the Palazzo Albani, which was being hired by an old friend of Canty’s. Well, that was right enough: it was a pretty tower in a pretty garden (and of course gardens are rather special in Venice) and they had people they knew in the Palazzo if they wanted anything.

  “But there were other things in the Palazzo too. To start with, this friend of Canty’s – Max de Freville, it was – had a Greek partner called Lykiadopoulos, and Lykiadopoulos had a little Sicilian boy called Piero, a dear little boy with a club foot, whom and which I fancied like all get out – but that’s by the way. One evening when I was dining there, just before I had to go back to school in England, Piero showed me some rooms up on the roof, in a kind of penthouse. There was a very curious shrine, and also an old nursery with some lovely eighteenth-century rocking-horses. At the time I didn’t think too much about these because I was thinking of delicious Piero, but it came to me afterwards that there was some terrible sadness about the nursery, about the rocking-horses and the little uniforms hanging there and the children who had once been playing in it, about what had happened to them and their parents later on – there was some really horrible secret which had poisoned the whole past, which was still infecting the house, even the garden and the casino, though no one seemed to have noticed this except me, and come to that I’d only noticed it long after I got home, when I dreamed one night at school about the nursery.

  “Anyway, the years went on and I forgot about all this, more or less – though there was some novel of Fielding’s which Poppa said was based on something he had found out about the Albani family and their Palazzo. I never read it, because Fielding’s stuff bores me stupid, but I remember thinking to myself, ‘So there was something peculiar about the Albani, I must ask Fielding when I see him’, but when at last I got round to asking, which was while we were in bed in San Tropez one morning trying to make Tully, he brushed it all aside and said, ‘All that’s best forgotten now, let sleeping dogs lie’, and not a word more would he say. So then I started to be even more inquisitive and tried to reach back to that nursery, but I couldn’t, I couldn’t see anything, so I gave up – rather thankfully in a way – until suddenly, just a few days after I’d had Tully, there it all was again, as clear as morning, the nursery and the two rocking-horses with a sabretache hanging from one of them…and a tremendous feeling of anguish over all of it, anguish and hatred and, unmistakeably, lust, not just the straightforward kind but tormented and twisted lust, the skilled and deliberate corruption of trust and affection, the smooth mockery of deep taboo.”

  “Don’t get too heavy about all that stuff, darling,” Jo-Jo had said, tapping her belly; “remember what I’m planning in that line.”

  “Are you?” said Baby shortly. “In this case it ended in the most macabre misery for several people. I could feel that. But somehow this mattered less than another element which was beginning to come through: an element of straight physical violence, far less sinister b
ut very powerful, not unconnected with sex but connected with it only at two or three removes. A revenge killing. A lynching perhaps. Not in Venice any more. The scene had shifted. There were marshes. An eighteenth-century church. Sudden death and speedy burial. And a figure, slowly emerging from the coffin as it was carried by shambling peasants toward the church. A figure, not the corpse of the murdered man, that was still in the coffin, but a bright and beautiful boy of sixteen or seventeen, who came up out of the coffin and stood on top of it, naked, then fondled his tool, went back on his hunkers, and pissed a great swooshing arc into the air, right between my eyes–”

  “–Christ, darling. Talk about twisted lust–”

  “–Right at my forehead,” Baby had said, “bang between my eyes…in accusation. There was no lust in any of this. There was arraignment, and it was me – me and mine – that were being arraigned.”

  ‘And of course,’ said Percival to Fielding Gray, as they lingered by the pool among the birches, ‘we know where all that came from. Somehow she’d slipped into a net with the Albani children, just as she had done, briefly, years before, after that September in Venice; and through the Albani she’d got on to fitzAvon, the special envoy to Venice…the stranger who was befriended by the Albani family, and whose real name was Lord Rollesden-in-Silvis, only son and heir apparent of the first Marquess Canteloupe–’

  ‘–Who had managed to have him sent abroad,’ Fielding took up the tale, ‘with a specially contrived mission and under an alias, to escape the results of a murderous little frolic in a London bordello…’

  ‘…Lord Rollesden-in-Silvis,’ mused Percival, ‘who married a peasant girl in the marshes near Oriago and started an unknown and virtually undiscovered but absolutely legitimate line of Sarums, which continues to this day and offers, as its latest male issue, Paolo Filavoni, the rightful Marquess Canteloupe… Filavoni, an Italian version of fitzAvon, licitly and officially adopted by the family… Paolo Filavoni, direct descendant of the first Lord Canteloupe’s only son, and thus himself Lord Canteloupe by right of primogeniture, who lives a bare, dank, distressful life with his only surviving relative in the swamps near the Laguna Veneta–’

  ‘–And is much given, understandably perhaps, to pissing at passers by…or that’s what he did when I last saw him. For Baby’s benefit too,’ Fielding said, ‘in this dream of hers or whatever.’

  ‘And then at last,’ said Percival, ‘and then at last, she told Jo- Jo as they sat by this pool that summer, Baby remembered something else. Now, you probably recall that she came out to Venice for Daniel Mond’s funeral. Tom hadn’t wanted her there, it was all Detterling’s idea. I expect he just wanted an excuse to see her. Anyway, out she came and very soon after she’d overheard, as she told Jo-Jo, overheard on one of the boats which followed the barge carrying Daniel’s coffin, a lot of sudden and violent talk about Detterling’s new title being false or fraudulently assumed. Something about some wretched child whom he had unjustly superceded, about some recent discovery which by rights ought forever to unseat him. For any number of reasons she was highly wrought up and in great confusion at the time; the circumstances were highly peculiar and the talk, from her point of view, fragmentary; and so she subsequently muddled or jumbled or thought she must have imagined what she’d seen or heard, until it all seemed too indefinite, too dreamlike, in the end too distant, to be worth heeding. Everything had reverted to normal and was going along quite happily: why bother about nightmares which had come – and gone – at time of stress? So she thought no more of it and married Canteloupe, became ‘my lady’ and courted Fielding Gray…’

  ‘With what results we know,’ said Fielding Gray.

  ‘But now,’ said Percival, ‘now that she’d borne Sarum and was sitting by this pool with Jo-Jo…now that she’d had her vision of the boy from the coffin who pissed his accusation at her…she began to think again of the angry discussion on the way to Daniel’s funeral service, of the peasant child in the marshes who was being denied the wealth and splendour that was his by right. She knew…or thought she knew…that she and Canteloupe and even Tully, were somehow inculpated: that they had done somebody, the naked boy on the coffin perhaps, a dreadful injury.’

  ‘But she had no knowledge of the details necessary to support such a belief…and now she’ll never know them. Why bring this up again, Leonard?’

  Suddenly the grove flared white with snowflakes.

  ‘Because although Baby will not be making trouble on this account, I have a feeling that somebody else is about to.’

  ‘Very few people know of it. All of them, good friends of Canteloupe.’

  ‘Wasn’t there an Englishman on the spot when you went to that village in the marshes? Name of Holbrook?’

  ‘I don’t think he knows much. We did our best not to let on to what we were up to when we went there – pretended we were doing academic research into social conditions in Italy in the late eighteenth century.’

  ‘He must have thought your researches were very specialised. He may well have smelt something peculiar.’

  ‘But he wouldn’t dare show his face,’ said Fielding, ‘anywhere where he might do damage. After what he’s been up to – drug running and protection rackets and God knows what else – he’s stuck in those marshes forever.’

  Already the snow had made a halo of Fielding’s hair and a Hebrew cap on Percival’s pate.

  ‘There is,’ said Percival, ‘in practice at any rate, a statute of limitations in situations such as Holbrook’s. After a certain time, his type of misdemeanour becomes – well – of academic interest only. Organisations like the police or my own former Department in Jermyn Street, are happy to extend truce in return for confession.’

  ‘Is there any reason to suppose this has been done in Holbrook’s case?’

  ‘None that I know of. I am only indulging a little general but educated speculation…in order to convey to you that this Mr Holbrook may not be quite so strictly and conveniently exiled as you appear to think.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Theodosia,’ said Giles Glastonbury; ‘but I must leave tomorrow.’

  ‘Boxing Day?’ said Canteloupe sadly. ‘I thought you’d stay at least till the thirty-first. There’ll be a little shooting later…racing at Wincanton and Taunton – Cheltenham, too, if you stay on into the New Year. And if the bloody snow doesn’t hang about.’

  ‘Sorry, Canteloupe. I… I had a message earlier this afternoon. I must go.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Canteloupe petulantly, and helped himself to a muffin. ‘Where’s Nurse with Tully?’ he snapped at Theodosia.

  ‘Tully has indigestion after his Christmas dinner. He won’t be down this evening. I’m sorry you must go, Giles,’ Theodosia said to Glastonbury. ‘But if you must…?’

  ‘I must.’

  So you really were put out by what you felt in that copse, thought Fielding Gray, and exchanged a split-second glance with Leonard Percival: a hard-bitten old soldier like you, torturer and executioner at the Viceregal Court (though unofficial of course) in the last days of the Raj; swordsman and blackmailer; the man who shot one of his troopers out of hand for sleeping on sentry duty; who poisoned statesmen and assassinated princes – you, of all people, to get upset by a breeze in the birch trees.

  ‘At least,’ said Theodosia to Fielding, ‘I hope that you won’t desert us so quickly.’

  ‘I’d like to stay as long as you’ll have me. Twelfth Night…?’

  ‘Or What You Will. More tea? But won’t they be wanting you in London? Mrs Malcolm and those girls?’

  ‘Not Maisie Malcolm. Maisie wants me out of the way,’ said Fielding, ‘until her niece Tessa is back at school. She thinks…that Tessa has an adolescent crush on me which I encourage.’

  ‘And do you?’

  ‘The whole thing’s chimerical. There’s no crush to encourage. Trouble with Maisie is, she’s having the change of life – for the third or fourth time at that – and it’s making her crabby and jealous. If she could on
ly see straight, she’d know that Tessa has eyes only for Master Marius Stern.’

  Which should be quite enough to keep her from worrying about anything else of the kind, he thought. Perhaps that’s why she refuses to see it. Easier to face up to the image of an old goat (me) than the Great God Pan in person.

  ‘Then how nice,’ Theodosia was saying, ‘for Tessa to be at school with Marius.’

  ‘God knows what the bloody place is like now,’ grumbled Canteloupe. ‘Little girls of thirteen prinking about.’

  ‘Most public schools have girls these days,’ said Theodosia.

  ‘Yes. Big ones in the Sixth Form being coached for the Universities. Not troops of Brownies. I wonder his mother sent Marius there – wasn’t he entered for Eton?’

  ‘His mother had second thoughts,’ said Fielding. ‘Besides, Marius wanted to go where he’s gone because Jeremy Morrison went there. His hero.’

  ‘And yours, they tell me,’ said Canteloupe nastily, still riled by Glastonbury’s defection. ‘I thought,’ he went on, ‘that you and young Jeremy were going on some trip just after Christmas. His father mentioned it when I last saw him in the House. Now,’ said Lord Canteloupe, ‘I shall be delighted, my dear Fielding, if you choose to stay here not only for Cheltenham at the New Year but right through to the Gold Cup in March. We have, after all, plenty of room, and with your studious habits you are not a difficult guest. But,’ said Canteloupe, ‘I don’t quite see how you can both be here with us and abroad with Jeremy Morrison at the same time…if you take me.’