Crusader's Tomb

by A. J. Cronin

  What should she do about it? – that was the question which, since she awakened, had, like a persistent mosquito, increasingly beset her. After breakfast her husband had pulled on his Wellingtons and gone out to the stables, reminding her that he must spend the day in Gillinghurst arranging for the winter feed – in any case she had decided against consulting him; this was a matter best left in her own capable hands. But how … how should she act?

  Upon that soft and ghostly evening, some weeks before, when a car drove beyond the entrance to the Court, illuminating momentarily, yet with incandescent brilliance, the figures of Stephen and Claire, she had been the driver, the startled witness of the incident. She had, in fact, called at the Court only a few minutes before, had found that her son was in London and Claire was not at home. And then, that photographic flash … how close together they had been, upon that deserted country road, and with Geoffrey absent … the sequence, added to the notorious reputation of ‘that fellow’, was most alarming.

  In fairness, the General’s lady acknowledged that Claire was of irreproachable character – at least so far as one could judge; in India she had seen some queer breakdowns in her time – and she had decided, while keeping her eyes open, to say nothing of the matter for the present. Yet the recollection of Claire’s youthful predilection for Stephen was not easily dismissed and, recurring frequently, made more ominous this disloyalty – for that it was, even in its most innocent aspect – to Geoffrey. Product of the barrack square, imbued from infancy with the tradition of restraint, all the softer manifestations of maternal fondness curbed by the clipped word, the controlled gesture, the curt exactions of good form, Adelaide Desmonde nevertheless was devoted to her son. His marriage into the Broughton acres, which raised him from the status of obscure army captain to that of landed proprietor, had caused her greatly to rejoice. Yet there had been subsequent dissatisfactions. The bulk of the estate was entailed, which, though admirable in itself, impaired the gloss of Geoffrey’s sense of ownership. Moreover, a major portion of Lady Broughton’s fortune had been settled in trust on her daughter, a fact that afforded Claire a considerable private income. This more than wifely independence, despite the docility of Claire’s nature, had often irked Adelaide, and now, after the events of the previous evening, she thought it positively dangerous.

  They had been to dinner at Gresham Park, and her neighbour on the left was Reginald Tryng. Adelaide entertained for the ruddy Rear-Admiral, with his spinsterish gossip, his limited income and semi-suburban villa, a sort of patronising tolerance. His jokes amused her less than the beads of perspiration which, after hot soup, burst like miniature water-spouts upon his rosy baldness: prejudiced by nature against the senior service, she considered him well-meaning and harmless but rather a fool. Bored, she had at first failed to understand his genial reference to Claire. Then, stung to attention, she listened while he preened himself, relating in strictest confidence his diplomacy in managing the little ‘family commission’ with which he had been entrusted. It was, he concluded, extremely handsome of Claire to put herself about for Geoffrey’s cousin!

  Speechless, Adelaide took a convulsive sip of water. For once she had not a word to say. This naval idiot had brought to a head all her worst suspicions. Claire, interesting herself surreptitiously, yet with blazing indiscretion, in this despicable cad. It must be stopped, and at once, before it became an outright scandal in the county.

  Now, in the cold light of morning, she was inclined to lay the blame entirely upon ‘ the renegade’. Without doubt he had again wormed himself into Claire’s confidence, completely indifferent as to how he might compromise her, and cadged her aid. Useless, naturally, to go to him and appeal to his sense of honour. On the other hand it was always dangerous to intervene between husband and wife. Yet this was the only course open to her. She had confidence in her tact, would be delicate and discreet. Today, she knew, Claire would be in London. With decision, she went to the telephone, and enduring with forbearance the delays of the local exchange, got through to Stillwater, asked Geoffrey to drive over that afternoon for tea.

  He came early, about four o’clock – having nothing else to do – and since the General was still at Gillinghurst, Adelaide had him to herself. She fed him well, with newly baked Sussex griddle cake, and hot buttered toast spread with Patum Paperium – a relish which had always been particularly to his taste. Then, erect and knitting, on a leather pouffe, while he stretched his legs before a glowing fire and let the smoke from his cigarette drift across his nose, she led the conversation into channels which she knew would please him – his bag at the final Stillwater shoot, the chances of a good run at the next meet of the hounds, his prospects in the gentleman riders’ steeplechase at the forthcoming Chillingham point-to-point.

  Time passed agreeably for Geoffrey in the sound of his own voice. The Mater really bucked a chap up, knew as much about a horse as anyone, and of course she was deuced fond of him. The clock struck six. Extinguishing his last cigarette end, he heaved himself out of his chair.

  ‘Jolly decent tea, Mater. Quite enjoyed our little pow-wow.’

  ‘I, too, Geoffrey.’ She accompanied him to the hall, helped him into his heavy, lined ulster, then, standing with him in the subaqueous shimmer cast by the green-tinted gaselier, she added casually: ‘By the way, I hear that your cousin is at the Rectory.’

  ‘Yes, worse luck. I shan’t have anything to do with him.’

  ‘That’s wise, Geoffrey. And I should warn Claire to keep out of his way if I were you.’

  Geoffrey looked at her, knotting his bird’s-eye scarf.

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘Simply this … you know you cut him out with Claire … it must rankle frightfully. And after these years in the lowest haunts in Paris … he’s not to be trusted.’

  ‘Tell me something I don’t know. The fellow’s capable of anything.’

  ‘Then do set my mind at rest and say a word to dear Claire.’

  He completed the adjustment of the scarf, viewed it in the small hall-stand mirror.

  ‘Oh, very well. Good night, Mater.’

  ‘Good night, Geoffrey.’

  She stood at the open door while he raced the engine of his sports car and, with a crunch of wheels on gravel, shot off down the drive. Then, well satisfied with her afternoon’s work, she turned back into the house.

  Geoffrey drove at great speed and with extreme skill. He thought well of himself as a driver, and when he was single had often toyed with the idea of racing at Brooklands. Perhaps it was the swish of fresh air which induced in him a degree of cerebral activity beyond that which Adelaide had anticipated. At any rate, as he swung round corners, nursing the thin wheel of his machine, he kept asking himself ‘ what the old girl had been after’.

  Obviously he had been asked to tea for a specific reason. In the past, at school and Sandhurst, when his mother had written to him she would convey the crux of her letter casually, as a sort of afterthought, in the postscript. Could it be, then, that the real purpose of the afternoon was contained in these final remarks concerning Claire? Beneath his checked cap Geoffrey grinned. Hampered by conceit and an expensive schooling, which had taught him nothing but the art of striking balls of various sizes, he was not especially intelligent, but long association with the sporting fraternity, with touts, bookmakers and horse-copers, had given him a species of astuteness, sharp awareness of what he called ‘a put-up job’. His immediate reaction, therefore, was a decision to take a course exactly opposite to that suggested by his mother – he would not speak to Claire but remain mum and investigate the situation at his leisure.

  When he got home it was only twenty minutes past six, and Claire, who normally travelled down by the five-thirty from Victoria, had not yet returned from London. Upstairs, as he went along the corridor to bath and change for dinner, he paused outside the small sitting-room that adjoined his wife’s bedroom and which, because of its general convenience and sunny exposure, she used a great de
al. An exploratory tap upon the door produced no answer and, after a second’s hesitation, Geoffrey went in. The room was charming, done in pale grey with curtains and chintz covers of a delicate pink, and Geoffrey was quite familiar with it – often, indeed, in Claire’s absence he would wander around, touching this and that, a letter on the desk, a card on the mantelpiece, in the manner of a solicitous, if inquiring, husband for whom his wife’s affairs, and particularly her finances, held a natural and considerable interest.

  Now, however, his inspection was less desultory. He went directly to the desk, which was always unlocked, and began systematically to search it. For a full ten minutes he examined the papers in the drawers and pigeon-holes. There was nothing, simply nothing; the innocence of what he found – there were even early snapshots of himself as a cadet at Sandhurst – brought a faint colour to his brow.

  Half ashamed, he was about to turn and go when, from the top receptacle, he uncovered a single folded sheet. It was a bill in the amount of £400, stamped and receipted, from the Maddox Galleries, 21C New Bond Street, for two paintings: Charity and Noon in the Olive Grove by Stephen Desmonde.

  Chapter Seven

  On an afternoon in early March the monthly meeting of the West Sussex District Council was droning to the end of a lengthy discussion whereat discussion had flowed and ebbed on the advisability of supplying sewer-pipes for the hitherto earth-bound hamlet of Hetton-in-the-Wold. Amongst the fourteen members then present, Albert Mould sat unusually silent, gnawing at a thumbnail, his seal-like head sunk in the upturned collar of his greatcoat, which he wore against the chill spring draughts edging through cracks in the ancient wainscoting of the council room. Next to him sat his friend and colleague Joe Cordley, and across the table that assiduous public servant Rear-Admiral Tryng.

  The gavel banged for the last time, the district clerk mumbled the customary formula announcing the closure, with date and time of the next meeting, and amidst a scraping back of chairs and a murmur of conversation the committee began to disperse. Not so Albert Mould, however. With Cordley at his elbow he stationed himself by the door and, as Tryng approached, buttonholed him.

  ‘I’d like a word with you, sir, if its convenient.’

  It was not at all convenient, Reggie was bent on bustling to the Mid-Sussex links for a brisk nine holes, but before he could bring out an adequate excuse Mould went on:

  ‘I ’ ate to take this up with you, a most unpleasant duty. But I ’ave to do it. It’s about them panels that’s being done for the Memorial Hall.’

  ‘Well, what about them?’ snapped Tryng, pointedly looking at his watch.

  ‘Just this, sir. It’s pretty near three months now since them paintings were started and to the best of my knowledge and belief nobody ’as ever even seen them. I understand that several parties did make the attemp’ and was refused, the panels being kept permanent under lock and key. Well, sir, what with the official opening drawing near that didn’t seem right and proper – at least not to two members of your sub-committee. So, to put it plain, they asked me to accompany them to inspect the pictures.’

  ‘How the devil could you inspect them if they were locked up?’

  ‘Mr Arnold Sharp ’ad me get a duplicate key.’

  Tryng stared his displeasure. He had never liked Mould, less for breaking out of the limits of his class than for retaining its servility and using this as a sort of inverted sneer against his betters.

  ‘Well, sir, to cut a long story short, we got into the ’all latish yesterday evening. And it’s my painful duty to tell you we did not like wot we saw.’

  ‘Come, come now, Mould.’ Tryng took a patronising tone. ‘You’re no judge of art.’

  ‘But it ain’t only my judgement, poor though that may be.’ For no more than a second Mould’s mud-coloured eyes met the Admiral’s gaze. ‘ Lawyer Sharp and Joe Cordley ’as the same opinion as well.’

  ‘That we ’as,’ said Cordley with decision. ‘I’ll take my Bible oath.’

  ‘Far be it for me to advise you. But if it was me was chairman, I’d ’ave a look at them at once.’

  Tryng was conscious of a twinge of concern. There was in Mould’s eye a suppressed gleam which he did not like at all. Reluctantly he put away his pleasant thoughts of golf, reflected, then said:

  ‘You have your key?’

  ‘We ’ave, sir. And Joe and me are both free now.’

  ‘Let us go, then.’

  They left the council offices, took to the road in the Admiral’s Morris-Cowley. At Charminster, on Mould’s suggestion, they picked up Sharp and Sutton. Time was consumed in this operation and darkness had fallen when the five members of the subcommittee approached the Memorial. In silence Mould admitted them. The hall was empty – Stephen had left almost an hour before. With a portentous air Cordley switched on the lights. And there, before them were the panels.

  The first to attract Tryng’s eye was that named by Stephen Offering to Peace: a young woman in the foreground holding out an infant against a background of golden wheatfields and fruitful countryside, richly peopled with reapers, harvesters, and cheerful rustic figures; and as he gazed he was conscious of an alleviation of his anxiety, a warm flow of relief. Why, the thing was good, in fact altogether excellent in a striking, unusual way – he really liked it. But when he turned to the second panel, Hail, Armageddon, with its deadly massing of guns and uniformed men, while, amidst cheering crowds, bands played and flags were waved under a darkening sky, all his misgivings were sharply reawakened. And they deepened, became shot with horrid certainty as, hurriedly, with sickening apprehension, he scanned the third canvas, The Rape of Peace, and the fourth, Aftermath, which, with stunning power, seemed to portray on the one hand, as far as his scattered wits could discern, an interwoven pattern of the dreadful incidents of war, and on the other the frightful consequences which follow it – famine, pestilence, burned-out houses, ruined villages, decimation of that fruitful countryside first portrayed, the whole surveyed by the nude, weeping figure of a woman. The final panel, Resurrection of the Slain, made his eyes start from his head, in the name of heaven, what the devil did the fellow mean with these strange human forms, corpses actually, disfigured, unclothed, some without limbs, women too, bursting out of their graves beneath a wildly trumpeting angelic host? He had never, in his wildest dreams, expected such a shattering debacle. And it was he, Rear-Admiral Reginald Tryng, who had sponsored it, practically forced this accursed Desmonde upon the members of his committee.

  They were watching him now, waiting for him to speak. He squared his shoulders – he had never lacked courage.

  ‘Well, gentlemen … this is extremely disappointing.’

  ‘Disappointing!’ Cordley was apoplectic with indignation. ‘It’s an outrage, a damn outrage.’

  ‘You see this ’ere.’ Mould jerked his head towards the figures in the final panel. ‘Naked, all of ’em … stark naked. And what’s more, both males and females, their private parts showing.’

  Tryng averted his gaze, looked towards Sutton. But the meek banker, more than ordinarily pale, was in no mood to support him.

  ‘Yes, gentlemen … this is obviously regrettable. I must see the Dean about it at once.’

  Sharp, who had been subjecting the paintings to an intensive scrutiny, now broke silence.

  ‘May I call your attention to this particular item?’ He pointed to a detail in the intricate composition of the third painting. ‘ What are these soldiers up to? Perhaps someone more artistically inclined than I am could put a name to it.’

  ‘Good God!’ said Tryng, in spite of himself.

  Amidst a general murmur Mould added softly:

  ‘That’s what made us bring the whole thing up.’

  The Admiral, very tight about the lips, took control of the situation. He said abruptly:

  ‘I call a meeting for tomorrow. Nine o’clock sharp. I’ll have Desmonde there. In the meantime kindly refrain from all public comment. Good night.’

  On
the following morning, at the time specified, with no premonition of disaster, Stephen came before the committee. Unaware of the reason for this summons – over the telephone Tryng had told him nothing – he was in excellent spirits, tired and somewhat tense from weeks of sustained application, yet permeated by a deep sense of achievement. His work was almost finished and he knew that it was good. He would show the panels to the committee in a few days’ time. Doubtless they wished to ask him about that very matter.

  ‘Mr Desmonde, I must inform you that we have seen your paintings. We are profoundly shocked by them.’

  The unexpectedness of the attack caught Stephen completely off guard. He had been unable to control a sudden start and now stood there, very pale, his eyes grown sombre and almost hard. Before he could speak Tryng continued:

  ‘I, personally, am at a loss to understand how you could have interpreted our wishes in so outrageous a fashion.’

  Stephen took a long, pained breath.

  ‘What is outrageous about my work?’

  ‘An undertaking of this nature calls for something noble and heroic. A united service group striding forward with the flag … a wounded man, supported on his comrade’s arm, or by a Red Cross nurse.’ Stephen winced. ‘Instead you have given us a … a series of outlandish ideas … and a portrayal of human suffering that is, to say the least of it, morbid and degrading.’