by Simon Raven
‘I thought you cared for Marius. You have come to his aid in the past.’
‘For good reasons, responsibly presented. Not because some hysterical boy with a pash on Marius was trying to draw attention to himself.’
‘There is also Fielding’s account of what Myles Glastonbury said.’
‘Fielding is another hysteric.’
‘Carmilla believes him.’
‘All right: so let us concede that Myles Glastonbury said what Fielding alleges he said. That does not mean that any of it is true. Myles was (a) much disordered by calf love and (b) about to disappear into a terminal coma.’
’Canty. Whether the whole thing is merely imagination and hysteria, or whether it is not, will be made abundantly plain in two days’ time at Bellhampton Races. That is where it is to come to crisis. So to Bellhampton Races I shall go, with Galahad, to watch for foul play.’
‘And if you spot any? What would you do then?’ sneered Canteloupe. ‘Blow a whistle?’
‘I shall tell you all that I have done when we meet again, after you return from your grand confabulation with the lawyers.’
Giles Glastonbury was still staying with his cousin Prideau on the afternoon during which Prideau received the news of his son’s death, this having been telephoned from Lancaster by the Provost’s Secretary, Len. When Prideau gathered from Len that Fielding Gray had been the last person to talk to Myles before he fell into a coma, Prideau expressed a wish to talk with Fielding. Len told him that Fielding had now left the College. He gave Prideau the telephone number both of Fielding’s house at Broughton and of Buttock’s Hotel, but warned him that he had reason to suppose that Fielding could not be found at either. Then where could he be found? Len, who hated not knowing things, had to confess that he did not know this. Fielding, he said, had just gone off somewhere – anywhere – to brood and sulk.
When Prideau reported this to Giles, Giles said that when he and Fielding had been soldiers together, Fielding used to do his not infrequent brooding and sulking in his London club, then, as now, the Thackeray. At Prideau’s request, he rang up the Thackeray Club, found that Fielding was indeed there, and had him summoned to the telephone on a plea of extreme urgency.
‘Why are you sulking?’ said Giles as soon as Fielding came on to the line.
‘A lot of people don’t like the book I’m writing. Even those that do think it’s too hopelessly old-fashioned to have any appeal to the reading public.’
‘Well, here’s another load of trouble to take your mind off your own. Was Myles Glastonbury dead when you left Lancaster?’
‘No.’
‘He is now. My cousin Prideau, who is rather cut up, wants a word with you – about what sort of thing Myles was saying before he fell unconscious. I am appointing myself as censor before you tell him. So what did Myles say?’
Fielding told Giles what Myles had said about the scheme which was being hatched by Prideau and Raisley Conyngham. He also told him that Myles thought Conyngham was exploiting Prideau, in order to bring about something a good deal nastier than Prideau was reckoning on. Finally, he told Giles that Myles thought that Conyngham had guessed at his (Myles’) suspicions and for that reason, was bidding to kill him by his laying on of hands.
‘All of which fits very well,’ said Giles, ‘with the shifty and sinister way in which they were all of them behaving at Regis Priory the other day. Why have you kept it quiet so long?’
‘I told Carmilla Salinger.’
‘Why only her?’
‘Because I didn’t think it was anything very serious. I’d had my doubts when I heard that Marius was to spend Easter with Conyngham, so I dug out Jack Lamprey and enquired of him. He said there was some jape in hand, nothing dangerous, and solemnly promised to report to me at once if things did, after all, look like getting rough for Marius or Tessa. Then, having heard Myles’ tale but having heard nothing more from Jack, I assumed that Myles’ rigmarole was a sick man’s fantasy, a distorted version of what Jack had originally told me – and as for Myles’ idea that Raisley Conyngham had poisoned him by touching his hair, it was simply preposterous. What was more, Myles gave no details or hard facts, despite my repeated requests, he only referred to “instincts” and “feelings” and “suspicions”; so I decided, on balance, that there was no reason to do or say anything more, unless, and until, Jack got in touch again after all and corroborated Myles’ highly coloured conjectures.’
‘Jack could have had his own reasons for keeping quiet. Anyhow, you can take my word for it that the story Myles told you, however fantastic it may have seemed to you, squares with everything I’ve seen down here.’
‘So what’s to do? Surely, Prideau will take his mare out of the race now Myles is dead? That could stop the whole thing. I mean, though we don’t know exactly what part Boadicea was to play, we do know she had a part, and an important part at that. The whole thing, Myles said, depended on the horses.’
‘A very good point. Look, old thing,’ said Giles: ‘as I said just now, Prideau wanted to talk to you in person. But that don’t suit at all, not with things as they are, so I’ll tell him it’s just a waste of time, that you’ve nothing to report to him except that Myles was more or less delirious. Right?’
‘Right.’
‘And then I’ll ask him what he means to do about this race, now that Myles is dead. If he does take Boadicea out of it, then our troubles are probably over; but if he doesn’t–’
‘–Surely there can be no question. He can’t run his mare before his son is even buried.’
‘How very old-fashioned you are. Just like what they’re saying about your book.’
‘But in this case, common decency–’
‘–Common decency, my dear Fielding, died with George the Sixth. In any case, if Raisley Conyngham is up to something as serious as Myles implied, he probably won’t allow Prideau to scratch Boadicea.’
‘But how can he prevent him?’
‘For God’s sake stop asking silly questions and put the receiver down. I’ll telephone you again as soon as I possibly can.’
‘So at last I’ve got here,’ said Jeremy Morrison to Carmilla Salinger, as they walked by the River Cam, ‘and you have to go and have the curse.’
‘Sorry. I was looking forward to seeing you so much. And now you’re going away…for a long time, it seems. To India, the Far East…’
‘Australia. America – both halves. I’ve got a lot to see…if I’m to speak for all of us in the world who till the soil and tend the earth.’
‘It hasn’t taken you long…to get sick of tilling your sacred soil in Norfolk.’
Jeremy chuckled.
‘Norfolk is just a tiny bywater,’ he said, ‘compared to which the area over which I must work my mission is like the ocean.’
‘You’re a fake, Jeremy Morrison.’
‘Am I? You’d be surprised how many admiring letters I’ve had since the appearance of that article by Alfie Schroeder.’
‘From gulls. Strictly from gulls.’
‘Most of the world consists of gulls, Carm. Gulls who listen to big-mouthed politicians or revivalist preachers or quack doctors or crook fakirs. Gulls who think that here at last is something different, something to give them comfort or hope. So there will be plenty of gulls to listen to my message…and to take comfort from it.’
‘What is that message to be?’
‘If you work on or with the land, you are part of nature. If you fall in with the rhythm of the soil and the seasons, you will also be absorbed into the greater rhythms, of the solar system, of the galaxies, of the universe itself, which is God.’
‘Only you don’t believe a word of it.’
‘It’ll do as well as anything else, I think.’
‘Very impersonal. But then of course you have ceased to be interested in people.’
‘What nonsense,’ said Jeremy. ‘I have come all the way from London to see you.’
‘Only because you wanted a body to play
with.’
‘A body which I couldn’t have. But I’m still here talking.’
‘Because you have been brought up as a gentleman,’ said Carmilla. ‘You do at least have manners. But how deep does it go? Do you have any loyalties? Let us examine your record with your friends. You’ve ditched Fielding Gray, for a start.’
‘Fielding was my mentor. After a time we grow beyond our mentors.’
‘That doesn’t mean you have to ditch them. Then…you deserted this college. In particular, you deserted the Provost, who was fond of you and did his very best for you.’
‘Only in memory of my father.’
‘Well then. What about Marius? Marius Stern?’
‘Marius is all right. Quite all right. I can’t see him before I leave England because he’s down in the West Country; but I shall write him a letter, wishing him luck telling him where I’m going and when I expect to be back.’
‘Marius is not all right, Jeremy. Marius is in danger.’
‘What danger?’ scoffed Jeremy.
‘No one knows. There have been only…indications. Myles Glastonbury, before he died here, babbled to Fielding Gray of a plot. There has been a boy telephoning, wanting you, then wanting Fielding, finding neither. Finally, I don’t know how or why, he found Theodosia. The boy is called Palairet, she has told me, and he is convinced that Marius is threatened by no trivial threat. Theodosia takes the boy Palairet so seriously that she has gone to join him in Somerset.’
‘This is sheer madness.’
‘Is it? Dying men tell the truth. The instincts of adolescent boys are often sound.’
‘I’ve met this boy. He is in love with Marius and has been rejected by him. Perhaps this is some desperate attempt to force his way back into Marius’ notice.’
But even as he said this, Jeremy remembered how Palairet had run from the Junior Fives Court, determined to renounce Marius, to see him and be seen by him no more. Palairet, he remembered, was a sincere and seriously minded boy. If he had changed his policy towards Marius, if he was now in the field to save him from some danger, either the danger must be real or there must be very good reason for Palairet to think it so.
‘No,’ he said to Carmilla. ‘That was unfair. If the boy Palairet has spoken to Thea in this way, there must be a cause. An imagined cause, very likely, but a cause nevertheless.’
‘Do I glimpse a glimmer of loyalty here?’ A light wind hovered in the willow which wept nearby on the river bank. ‘There must be a cause, you say. So shall you go to your friend Marius, who may be in danger?’
‘Very probably a danger imagined by somebody else.’
‘Thea thinks not. When she telephoned me before she left for Taunton, she said the boy’s voice was the voice of truth.’
‘How could she tell?’
‘Shall you go to Somerset, Jeremy?’
‘My plane leaves tomorrow afternoon. I have a complicated schedule.’
‘You can afford to change it.’
‘I suppose so. Shall you go to Somerset, Carm?’
‘No. I have pupils who have an imminent and important examination. Their schedule is unchangeable. Theodosia, my twin, can stand for me too. Only you can stand for you.’
‘Yes… What should I do? Of course I can change my schedule, but it will mean great expense and trouble and the remaking of appointments, made only with great difficulty, with overworked and important men. All this…just for some alarm which may well be imaginary? What should I do?’
‘Ask the river,’ said Carmilla, ‘the river by which you lived so happily and for so long.’
‘Yes, the river. The kindly river. Oh, Father Cam, old Camus, tell me, what should I do?’
‘Smelly,’ said Giles Glastonbury when, after about half an hour, he telephoned Fielding at the Thackeray for the second time: ‘very smelly. I asked Prideau what he was going to do about running Boadicea in the Hamilton, and he asked me to ring up Raisley Conyngham and tell him that in the circumstances, Boadicea would have to be withdrawn. “What’s it got to do with Raisley Conyngham?” I said. “If you want to take Boadicea out of the race – and it’s really the only right and proper thing to do – then take her out and be done with it. No need to consult Raisley.” But he begged me to telephone Raisley for him, so I did.
‘“He can’t do this,” Raisley said.
‘“He can’t do anything else,” I said. “I’m not much of a mourning man myself, but I do know you can’t run a racehorse while your son and heir is lying on a slab ready to be fitted for his box.”
‘“Outmoded convention,” drawled Raisley. “Put Prideau on the line.”
‘“He’s in a bad way,” I said: “you talk to me.”
‘“All right,” said Raisley, “go and ask Prideau if he still wants to be picked for Sheriff of the County.”
‘So I went and asked Prideau, and he shambled about groaning, and at last he said, “Ring up Raisley Conyngham again and tell him that Boadicea will run. But say that I can’t be there myself and you’ll be standing in for me.”
‘So all this I told Raisley, who seemed satisfied but said it was a pity Prideau wouldn’t be there. However, he wasn’t going to make a point of that, he said, and he looked forward to seeing me at Bellhampton.’
‘So,’ said Fielding, ‘we deduce that Raisley Conyngham has a hold over Prideau…the nature of which need not detain us just now. Far more to the point is this, that it was obviously essential for Conyngham’s purpose, that Boadicea should run in the Hamilton.’
‘And secondly,’ said Giles Glastonbury, ‘while it was clearly of great importance to Conyngham, it was of very little to Prideau – otherwise he would have been all for running Boadicea let Myles have been never so dead. This supports your theory, or rather Myles’ theory in origin, that as far as Prideau is concerned, the whole thing is merely an ingenious jape, got up to amuse and amaze his friends, some utterly harmless spoof or what not…which, however, Raisley Conyngham was going to pervert into some far more sinister form, for some far more sinister purpose.’
‘So what,’ said Fielding, ‘now?’
‘We take our places as near the stage as possible,’ said Giles Glastonbury, ‘and see what comes out of the conjuror’s hat. I shall be doing piquet in the paddock, in a pretty good position to act if needed. It would be nice to know that you were hanging about somewhere. Res Unius, Res Omnium, you know.’
‘I shall be there.’
‘That’s my boy. See you at Bellhampton.’
When Fielding telephoned Canteloupe in Wiltshire (which he did as soon as he had finished talking to Giles), he was told by Leonard Percival that Detterling was spending a few nights in his London club, and that her ladyship had departed for the West Country.
‘Something’s up,’ said Percival, ‘and whatever it is she’s not letting me in on it, because she don’t care for me one little bit.’
‘One thing I can tell you,’ said Fielding: ‘if anything happens it’ll happen the day after tomorrow at Bellhampton Races, probably before or during the ’Chase for the Hamilton Cup.’
‘Too far for Leonard Percival this time,’ Leonard Percival said. ‘My ulcers are tearing me apart.’
Having done his best to commiserate, Fielding crossed Pall Mall, walked round St. James’ Square, and so up St. James’ Street to Canteloupe’s club.
‘Hamilton Cup at Bellhampton,’ he said to Canteloupe, who was hanging about morosely in the library, there being no takers for backgammon. ‘We ought to be there.’
‘Why ought we?’
‘The Cup was first given by the founder of the Regiment. In the old days, there were always two or more officers of the 49th riding in the race. In 1933, it was won by a corporal of ours, up on a gelding owned by a Troop Leader in the 10th Sabre Squadron.’
‘That was when soldiering was a pukka profession,’ Canteloupe said. ‘There won’t be any of ours riding this year or ever again. So why go to Bellhampton just to be reminded that the Army these days
is a mob of greasy mechanics?’
‘This year, as it happens, there is a connection with the Regiment. Corporal-Major Chead’s boy, Danny, is riding Prideau Glastonbury’s Boadicea.’
‘As a pro?’
‘As a pro. Even so…’
‘Look,’ said Canteloupe: ‘don’t try to pull the wool over my eyes. I know why you’re interested in Bellhampton Races: there’s something up there to do with Marius Stern, or so they say. Theodosia’s off already. In my view, the whole thing is mere moonshine, and one Canteloupe is enough to cut capers in it. Anyway, I have important discussions in London. I have to see that all the Sarum entails, about the house and the land, are arranged as…as flexibly as possible.’
‘Entails are never flexible.’
‘I’m afraid that’s turning out to be the case. So the flexibility,’ said Canteloupe sullenly, ‘will have to come from another source.’ He emptied a glass of port and pressed a bell. ‘Tully,’ he said, ‘has money in trust, in America, from Max de Freville. That would be quite enough for him.’
‘But as things stand,’ said Fielding, ‘Tully will have it all, house, land and Cant-Fun, unless you break the entail?’
‘Right.’
‘But of course you can’t break the entail?’
‘Right again.’
‘Then why not give up what can only be a futile attempt, and come with me to Bellhampton?’
‘No. There could just be some chink somewhere. I must go on talking with the lawyers.’
‘Whatever chinks there are, Tully must have the title.’
‘Unless I challenge his paternity.’
‘Too late. You’d wind up on a charge of conspiracy. Besides, you’d be dishonouring Baby’s memory. Not kind, Canteloupe. We did our best for you, Baby and I, and such as it is, you’re stuck with it.’
‘Am I?’
‘Yes; so give up all this jabbering with lawyers at a thousand guineas a minute and come with me to Bellhampton.’
Silence.
‘Res Unius, Canteloupe, Res Omnium.’
‘That cock don’t fight. Not with me. Not any more.’
