Before The Cock Crow (First Born of Egypt)

by Simon Raven

  ‘You say Jeremy Morrison repelled her,’ said Len. ‘She didn’t start loving him.’

  ‘No. But she forgave him, and then went out to Africa in order to bring love, to give pleasure, to beings infinitely more repulsive than Jeremy could ever have been. All sorts and conditions of men, black and white, who were dying…of leprosy, yaws, vilharzia, elephantiasis…of anything, no matter how horrible…these she loved and comforted. And she did so, we are clearly told by a missionary who knew and admired her, by giving whatever sexual pleasure she could to anyone who was still capable of response. It was, she said, her only gift.’

  ‘Thank you, Piero…for being so accurate about my daughter,’ said Tom, turning back towards the garden. ‘It was, I suppose, high time I learned the exact truth. How did she die? Of a rare tropical disease, they told me. Presumably contracted in the course of her charitable works.’

  ‘No,’ said Ptolemaeos. ‘Canteloupe told me that was a cover-up. She was murdered on the order of a powerful African official who was jealous of her exclusive preference for the diseased.’

  ‘And so now my sister is wife and Marchioness to Canteloupe,’ said Carmilla, ‘and has care of Baby’s son.’

  ‘How’s all that going on?’ said Len, in case there were some hot item which he hadn’t yet heard.

  ‘Thea seems very contented,’ said her sister lightly. (Too lightly, thought Len.) ‘She always had a sort of uncle-worship thing about Canteloupe.’

  ‘And the baby?’ said Len. ‘Tullius?’

  Carmilla turned her head and pretended not to hear.

  ‘Sarum of Old Sarum?’ persisted Len. ‘Canteloupe’s heir?’

  ‘Not right,’ said Carmilla.

  ‘In what respect wrong?’ said Ptolemaeos Tunne.

  ‘Mentally. Extent of damage as yet uncertain, but abnormality, of some kind, definite.’

  ‘Not a good thing,’ said Len, ‘that an important peerage should pass to someone who is…mentally deficient.’

  How can they all be so unkind? thought Tom. How can they talk about Tullia’s son like this, in front of me, in my own Lodging? But I suppose they know I can no longer defend myself, have been unable to stand up like a man for these two years now, ever since the elms in the Avenue died.

  ‘What does it matter,’ he now said aloud, ‘what does it matter who inherits this peerage?’ His bitterness and grief that his grandson, all he had left of Tullia, should be spoiled, sent him to seek release in despair and destruction. ‘At least two of us in this room know that the whole thing is a fraud. The real heir belongs to a line got out of a peasant girl, a raped peasant girl just old enough to be fertile, one hundred and eighty odd years ago, in a marsh village near Oriago. Samuele, the village is called. I was there, when we proved it, proved it from the Church Register. So was Piero.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Piero, ‘you and I and Fielding. A long time ago. Before I went to my convent.’

  ‘And who else,’ said Len, ‘got to hear about this?’

  ‘Canteloupe and his secretary, Leonard Percival,’ said Piero.

  ‘Both safe, one would have thought.’

  ‘My old master, Lykiadopoulos, and his partner, Max de Freville.’

  ‘Both dead, beyond dispute.’

  ‘Baby Canteloupe.’

  ‘Also dead.’

  ‘She may well have told her friend, Jo-Jo Guiscard, who keeps very little from her husband, Jean-Marie, or her lover, Mrs Isobel Stern.’

  ‘My niece, Jo-Jo, and her ménage, now live very remotely,’ said Ptolemaeos Tunne, ‘but these days easy communications corrupt good security. And even though several privy to the secret are now dead, it does leave a disquieting number who are quick.’

  ‘What you have to remember, Ptolemaeos,’ said Tom Llewyllyn, who was now rather calmer, ‘is this: although the thing was proved to my satisfaction, and Fielding’s and Piero’s, the actual process of proving it in law would be tantamount, these days, to impossible. The expenses would be cosmic, and there are certain necessary documents – quite apart from the Church Register at Samuele – which are extremely difficult to interpret and may in any case by now be unobtainable.’

  ‘But if we take the proof for granted,’ said Ptolemaeos, ‘who is this rightful heir now dwelling in Samuele?’

  ‘He is an orphan from the floods of sixty-six,’ Piero said. ‘He lives – or did live, in 1973 – with his spinster aunt, apparently his only relation. In return for a small sum of money, she consented to introduce us.

  ‘I can still see it,’ he said, ‘there he is in his aunt’s garden, digging; a handsome little boy of about ten, strong and broad-shouldered for his age, wearing shorts which show classically formed bare legs. Paolo Filavoni, legitimate heir to Rollesden-in-Silvis in the direct line, and so now the rightful Marquess Canteloupe. Look at him, all of you. He stops digging. He sticks his spade in the mud. He smiles at us all, pleasantly enough… and then down with his shorts, skipping and cackling for glee, he waves his already quite sizeable penis at his audience. “Paolo,” shouts his aunt, as well she may, and rushes into the vegetable patch to put a stop to these goings on…whereupon, believe it or not, he flexes his knees, points his piece, and pisses up most powerfully into her flustered face.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Ptolemaeos, after a short silence. ‘And that was the scene in 1973?’

  ‘It was,’ said Piero, and turned for confirmation to Tom, who nodded.

  ‘And this engaging imbecile is now a ripe seventeen or more,’ said Ptolemaeos. ‘Are there any brothers or male cousins? Or uncles, perhaps?’

  ‘I think not,’ said Tom: ‘though of course we were not at leisure to spend as long as we might have wished with the Register.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘A crooked Englishman who lives in the place was hanging about and sniffing. Name of Holbrook. A chum of your Dad’s,’ said Tom to Carmilla, ‘the original Holbrook of Salinger & Holbrook.’

  ‘But he disappeared many years ago, Da told us.’

  ‘Yes. To Samuele in the marshes, where he took refuge from his iniquities with his ageing mother. Not the sort of chap we wanted to let in on this affair,’ said Tom, ‘so we tried to keep him from knowing what we were up to.’

  ‘Luckily, he had some kind of an attack,’ said Piero, ‘and lost interest. Though it may have revived after we had gone…’

  ‘But such a fascinating field for investigation,’ Ptolemaeos said. ‘From an academic, a genealogical, an historical or humanist point of view – from any point of view you like, except of course with any practical intention of upsetting poor old Canteloupe. That would never do, and in any case, as Tom says, could probably never be done. But as a story to be studied and cherished it has everything. The events leading up to the rape; all those generations between the rape and the discovery of Paolo of the penis; even that wretched Englishman, Holbrook, lurking in the village. Fascination. An interest for my old age.’

  ‘I dare say,’ said Carmilla. ‘But if you do anything, anything at all to upset Canteloupe–’

  ‘–I’ve just said I shouldn’t dream of it–’

  ‘–If you do anything, even by accident or inadvertence, to upset Canteloupe, Theodosia and I will come to your lair in your Fenland kingdom, cut off your balls and throw them to those two old witches you employ in your kitchen.’

  ‘Darling Carmilla,’ said Ptolemaeos; and to Piero: ‘where do we begin?’

  ‘Goodbye, Jeremy,’ said Marius.

  ‘Goodbye, old thing. Don’t worry about this business of Fielding Gray. I’ll handle it myself.’

  ‘I’ve no doubt you will.’

  Jeremy’s Alfa Romeo was parked just off the Cromwell Road, more or less licitly provided he didn’t linger more than thirty seconds, a stone’s throw from Buttock’s Hotel. Marius got out, bent his seat forward and hoicked his suitcase (rather a large and elaborate one, thought Jeremy, for a boy not yet fifteen) out of the back.

  ‘I’ll miss you,’ said Jeremy.

>   ‘Don’t.’

  ‘Don’t what? Don’t miss you?’

  ‘You know I always want to cry when you say that. So don’t.’

  ‘All right. How soon is your plane?’

  ‘Five o’clock. Rosie and I will have to go straight to the airport.’

  ‘Then I’ll run you there.’

  ‘No. You’d have to come in and see Mrs Malcolm first. Neither of you would care for that.’

  ‘Nor we would. How thoughtful of you. You’d better run along then. Go well to Navarre, Marius – or is it Béarn?’

  ‘I’m not sure. It might even be Gascony.’

  ‘Navarre sounds the grandest of the three. Henry of Navarre, and all that. So go well to Navarre, Marius, and go with God.’

  ‘Did Fielding Gray teach you that?’

  ‘No. My father. He had it from some Indian he knew.’

  ‘Go well to Luffham, Jeremy; and go with God.’

  At the same time as Marius and Jeremy were exchanging this ancient courtesy, Piero and Len were walking down the Avenue of Lancaster College.

  ‘I still can’t get used to it without the elms,’ said Len.

  ‘They were removed very shortly after I came, so it’s not the same for me. I wish it were, in a way.’

  ‘Look,’ said Len, warmed by this remark, ‘you like the place, and the place likes you. You did brilliantly in your Tripos last summer. You are expected to do brilliantly again next. We want you here. Stay.’

  ‘I might not do so brilliantly next summer.’

  ‘We shall still want you. Lancaster has never made too big a thing of exam results. Even if you did pee your pants a bit, the College would still fix you up with a Research Studentship. As Tom’s Secretary, I’d see to that.’

  They crossed the Queen’s Road and went into the Fellows’ Garden.

  ‘I know you would,’ said Piero. ‘You are one of the least moral people I have ever met but you keep absolutely to your spoken word. You could fix it, and you would.’

  ‘And then a Fellowship. Unfortunately they don’t give ’em out for life any more, but we could manage quite ample tenure.’

  ‘From the gutters of Syracuse to the High Table of Lancaster College. A very happy issue, I must say. Unfortunately I must also say “no”.’

  ‘Why?’

  As always when crossed, Len began to walk faster.

  ‘Wait for me, Len. My foot–’

  ‘–Sorry. Forgot. Why are you saying “no”?’

  ‘I have given my word that when my third and last year as an undergraduate is over next June, I shall go back, as full time secretary and companion, to Ptolemaeos Tunne.’

  ‘God, how dreary. Doing things like investigating Canteloupe’s marquessate.’

  ‘I think,’ said Piero, as he limped over the croquet lawn, ‘that the matter of Canteloupe’s marquessate is rather intriguing. I was in on the ground floor, remember – and I have no reason at all to suppose that this particular histoire is finished yet. But even if I were bored stiff by it, my dear Len, the fact remains that I have given my word to Ptolemaeos. He found me a new and much needed identity and sent me here to Lancaster. “Nay, more and more of all,”’ quoted Piero, ‘it was he, a stranger, who took me in when I arrived, a ratty, runty, lame little friar in his filthy habit.’

  ‘We took you in too.’

  ‘Only after Ptolemaeos had – and at his persuasion.’

  ‘You must not sacrifice a splendid future to that fat old fucker in the Fens.’

  ‘Mustn’t I? Were it not dark, Len, I should be able to point to the Judas Tree. It grows near here, I think.’

  ‘You are not made to spend your life looking after old men.’

  ‘Perhaps that’s exactly what I am made for. It seems I have a taste for it. I served, remember, a very long apprenticeship. At least I shall now be a secretary and no longer a whore. Not that Lykiadopoulos ever touched me, but I was still his whore…’

  ‘Expand.’

  ‘That is another story for another day. For today, Len, you have my best thanks for a most civil offer, which I must refuse for reasons which you understand as well as any man living.’

  ‘Your whole life wasted – on a point of honour.’

  ‘You yourself, as I have just remarked, always keep to your word. So must I, in this matter at least. Besides, it will not be my whole life. Ptolemaeos Tunne will not live forever, and he will leave me a lot of money.’

  ‘In a pig’s arse. How much did Lykiadopoulos leave you?’

  ‘He gave much money, at my request, to the Good Brothers of San Francesco del Deserto, so that I might retire among them.’

  ‘That’ll be about all you’re fit to do when you’ve finished running errands for Ptolemaeos Tunne.’

  ‘Please, Len, my friend,’ said Piero, ‘do not be so ill-tempered. I shall stay here with you until June, and then go back to my patron in the Fens. But the Fens are not far from here, if we should want each other’s company and love, and I do not think that Ptolemaeos will ever again move from the Fens for long.’

  Fielding Gray and Leonard Percival walked by a river which formed the southern border of Canteloupe’s demesne.

  ‘Still no word from Jeremy Morrison,’ said Fielding. ‘If he were serious about this expedition of ours, he’d have been in touch by now.’

  ‘You were going to Italy?’

  ‘En route for Greece and Turkey.’

  ‘Though the Veneto and Yugoslavia?’

  ‘Perhaps. It was one of the things,’ said Fielding, ‘that we were to discuss.’

  ‘I was going to ask a favour of you, if you went that way. I was going to ask you,’ said Leonard Percival, ‘to go to Samuele by the Laguna Veneta…and inspect Paolo Filavoni.’

  ‘You seem to have that child on the brain.’

  ‘A child no longer.’

  ‘He was a simpleton, Leonard. Well made, physically, but otherwise – merely the village idiot.’

  ‘Might he not be of more…import…now that he’s grown up?’

  ‘Why should he be?’

  ‘I never saw him myself,’ said Leonard. ‘But from all accounts he was not only well made, as you have just observed, but very handsome. Now, idiots who are habitually engaged in simple manual tasks – which must surely be his lot – grow up to be of prodigious size and strength. If one adds to this that he is also handsome and well proportioned, one might find something – somebody, I suppose I should say – really rather remarkable.’

  ‘But what…so to speak…would one do with him?’

  ‘Ah, that I can’t say. All I know is that the whole story haunts me, and that I should like to hear some account of the anti-marquess–’

  ‘–Of the real marquess–’

  ‘–Of Paolo Filavoni, now he is a man. Indeed, I should very much like to see him for myself, only to make a special journey for the purpose would seem somehow disloyal to Detterling. I was in the area about two years ago, but there were too many preoccupations for a visit to Paolo.’

  Fielding gave a short laugh out of his pinched little mouth and directed his round red eye straight between Percival’s.

  ‘What is this yearning,’ he said, ‘to see a mindless hulk?’

  ‘A sight of him would make the story live for me. As I say, I am fascinated by it, but I shall not feel it is quite real until I have actually seen Paolo.’

  ‘Did you ever read that novel which I based on the business?’

  ‘I did, and much enjoyed it,’ said Leonard quite sincerely. ‘But I need flesh and blood, for once in a way, not shadows.’

  ‘Shadows they may have been, but very profitable. I haven’t made money like I made from that book for a good many years now. Shadows, yes, but they had their own vitality. There’s been nothing like them since. That’s my trouble, Leonard. I’ve lost my vitality. My work is stale. Now Gregory Stern is dead, there’s no one in the firm to write for.’

  ‘Surely Detterling takes an interest?’

&nb
sp; ‘Not any more. He used to, very much so, but now he’s so obsessed with his estate and its transmission that the whole thing is left to the Managing Director. Ashley Dexterside. When Gregory died and Canteloupe fixed up this amalgamation with Salinger & Holbrook, Ashley came with S. & H. as a production man, a bloody good one too. But somehow…everything else has got pushed on to him, so that he’s now in charge of the literary side as well. He doesn’t understand writing, Leonard: it’s no pleasure to work for him. The only man there now who does partly understand what I’m trying to do is Ivan Blessington, who also came with Salinger & Holbrook. Ivan may be the girls’ nominee but he has nothing to do with editing.’

  ‘I wonder those Salinger twins don’t take an interest. Carmilla and her ladyship.’

  ‘If only they would,’ said Fielding. ‘The trouble is, they were brought up simply as shareholders of Salinger & Holbrook, and firmly discouraged from having anything to do with it. Don’t interfere, their father Donald would have said, when lucid. Don’t you worry your pretty little heads, the Board would have told them when he wasn’t – and after his death. So they didn’t, on the whole, except to beg the occasional favour for a chum; and now it’s become a habit of mind with them – “leave the firm alone, it’s a boring old business at best” – even though the whole thing has changed and might now, since the addition of the publishing side, be of considerable interest to them.’

  ‘Can’t they see that for themselves?’ Leonard said.

  ‘Childhood habits die hard. All I know,’ said Fielding, ‘is that they don’t take an interest, and neither does anyone else, not an intelligent one, and all I seem to be writing for Ashley Dexterside is absolute slop, and my royalty cheques for the last eighteen months have been merely squalid. So perhaps it’ll be as well if Jeremy does back out of this trip. I can’t really afford it anyhow.’