by Peter Corris
Basil's own account of events was simple and straightforward. 'Matthews was a coward,' he said. 'He baulked at everything. We could have landed on McMillan's beach, gone over the headland and crossed some tundra and really explored the island thoroughly, but Matthews shirked it. Admittedly, the surf was rough but we could have landed. I hit him. The others failed to back me up.'
I remember this brief statement because it embodies one of Basil's own obsessions—the notion of crossing mountains and wasteland in a single operation. He accorded this a singular virtue, equated it with nobility. It was to become the shaping principle of his career as an explorer, on the surface at least. It also illustrates his impatience with physical cowardice and his ready resort to violence when frustrated. Basil was a subtle and cunning manipulator of men and women, but violence was never far below the surface in any of his dealings. Those with a taste for psychological interpretation might seize on the words 'The others failed to back me up' to suggest that Basil was paranoid. Nothing could be further from the case. He always expected to carry the day and when he failed to do so his surprise was genuine.
The Outer Hebrides episode further damaged Basil's standing. He was now regarded as a Fascist bully and people dropped him. He lost office in the Geographical Society and resigned his membership. Oddly, Basil's growing unpopularity never attached to me. Although we resembled each other physically, people seemed to make a clear distinction between us and to ignore our kinship. I seldom spoke of Basil to others and my friends rarely mentioned him.
Basil and I remained close, however. I still cherished the notion that I could protect him from some dark destiny I felt sure he was shaping for himself. And he still played me like a fish in the matter of sex. At Oxford Basil appeared to keep his sexual appetites more or less in check. He had several discreet affairs with dons' wives and I enjoyed the favours of two of these women after Basil had introduced me to them. Discretion prevailed. Contraception was practised. Basil made sure to approach only women whom he knew to have unfaithful husbands. He thus had a lever to use should the cuckolds ever cut up rough. None did.
Why Basil entered upon the venture that brought him to a reversal that would have destroyed most men, I have never quite known. As I have said, he read extensively in German philosophy. Worse, he read Mein Kampf and openly praised the book for the clarity of its ideas and the force of its expression. He claimed to have travelled to Germany in the 1930 holiday break and to have met the man he referred to as 'the Führer'. I do not know whether or not this was true but in 1931 he told me that he had devised his own theory of racial superiority and that the German idea of Aryan purity was a mistake.
'I'm very glad to hear it,' I said. 'I always thought it the most awful tosh myself.'
'Hybrid vigour's the thing. Cross the best with the best and you'll get something better.'
'Possibly,' I said, 'although some scientists believe that strains and species will always gravitate to a norm, over time.'
'Now that is tosh,' Basil said. 'Bloody rubbish in fact. Think about racehorses.'
I knew almost nothing about racehorses, apart from the unwisdom of betting on them. 'I understand the great majority of those bred end up as hacks or glue.'
'There are always casualties,' Basil said darkly. 'Science is like war in that regard.'
We were in his room at Walsingham. The fire was burning, we'd shared a bottle of claret and Basil had poured brandy from a bottle he said he'd smuggled in from France. That may have been another of his tales. I didn't care; he was my brother and my friend. I should say that I have always found making friends a hard business and it would never have seemed natural to me to reject the friend that life had made for me. So, this should have been a pleasant occasion, but something about Basil's attitude—a smug secretiveness, almost—disturbed me and muted my pleasure. We chatted, then read for a while and as I was getting ready to leave Basil said, 'Tomorrow, Dick, I want you to meet someone'.
A thrill ran through me as he spoke. Words like these were the usual prelude to Basil's introducing me to a woman, a lover. I knew what to expect—arousal from my usual sexual indifference, ardent interest, urgent need. I half hoped it would be so, half dreaded it. 'Who?' I said.
Basil smiled. 'Prepare yourself for breakfast, lunch and tea.'
He would say no more and I went away to spend a sleepless night. I had a great deal of practical and theoretical work to do but I touched none of it. I moved continually from my bed to the fireside where I smoked a great many pipes. Smoking was a habit Basil abominated and incessantly urged me to abandon. It was one of the few things over which I defied him. In my experience, the craving for tobacco can be as strong as the need for love and some individuals have been known to forgo the latter for the sake of the former.
The next day was one of the most extraordinary I have ever spent. Over breakfast in a tea-house off the Broad I was introduced to Peggy Mclntosh. Peggy was a tall, raw-boned young woman of almost frightening intensity. She had a long, dark face with a prominent jaw and large, square teeth. Her Scots accent was so thick it could have been used to butter bread. She ate a great deal and said little, most of it incomprehensible to me. Basil treated her like a gallant, passing her sugar and jam, whispering in her ear, touching her. She did not respond much. She seemed to be of a fearsome seriousness. I almost expected her to take a Bible from her bag and start quoting from it as a substitute for making conversation.
Despite all this, I was, as I expected to be, powerfully attracted to her. Sitting across the table from her I imagined stripping the tightly buttoned grey cloth from her body and caressing the hardness and severity from her breasts and limbs. Her lips were thin; I fantasised crushing, bruising and swelling them with kisses. But something was not quite as usual. I felt a certainty that these fantasies would never be acted out and the knowledge did not cause me the accustomed pain.
After Basil had bowed Peggy from the teahouse he returned to our table and stopped me as I began to fill a pipe. 'Not now, for God's sake. What did you think of her, Dick?'
I desperately needed the tobacco and without it could think of no sensible reply. 'She's very Scottish,' I muttered.
Basil threw back his head and emitted his braying laugh. 'That's true, Dick. That's so very true.'
He had another appointment for the rest of the morning but required me to lunch with him in a restaurant in Pembroke Street at noon.
I spent the morning wandering about in a state of heated confusion. At noon I was at the restaurant and I watched Basil arrive with a young blonde woman whom he introduced as Gwenneth Williams. She was fair and rather fat with an amiable expression and a remarkably strong singsong Welsh accent. She ate leek soup and eels for lunch and seemed to delight in the attention Basil paid her. He teased her about Wales, coal mines, Methodism and the language which, of course, he had a command of. They spoke to each other in Welsh from time to time, to my considerable confusion. I could not eat, drank too much wine and longed to smoke but feared to do so. Basil was completely in control of the occasion—he ordered the food and drink, criticised the service, fed titbits to his mistress and had me wriggling like a hooked fish.
I lusted after Gwenneth Williams like a sex-starved soldier entering a conquered town. I wanted to throw her to the floor of the restaurant and ravish her there with the academics and commercial gentlemen and respectable citizens looking on. And yet I felt held back once again. Even if Basil had offered her to me I doubted my ability to consummate the arrangement. Something was wrong. There was a new element in the twisted skeins of my bond with Basil and his women. I was alarmed. I was completely dependent on Basil for sexual expression and I feared mightily that he could turn against me and render me a eunuch.
The agonising lunch ended at last. Basil, departing with Gwenneth, his fingers twined in the ribbons she wore in her long, softly curling blonde hair, whispered to me. 'This one is plunder. Stolen from a poor fool of a classicist. Tea at the Towpath Inn. All will be explai
ned.'
The Towpath Inn was a popular drinking place for working people from the town and university 'hearties'. Located near the Cherwell River, it had been frequented by bargees in years gone by and had many associations—including the overgrown and broken-down towpath—with the canal era. It was unusual, at that time, for a pub to provide food other than an evening meal for residents, but the Towpath's proprietor realised that the garden which overlooked the river was a perfect location for the serving of country teas in the way that later became fashionable throughout rural Britain. I met Basil in the garden and we had our tea, almost in silence. We were waited on by a dark slip of a girl who flashed her huge brown eyes at Basil in an unmistakable signal. Basil maintained perfect decorum, largely ignoring her and making inconsequential chatter with me. I watched the girl's every move with fascination. Of these three women of Basil's (I could not mistake that there was a sexual connection between my brother and the serving girl), she affected me the most powerfully.
'Who is she?' I asked Basil.
Basil frowned at my pipe. I had risked lighting it in the open air. 'Her name is Maureen Darcy. A peach, is she not?'
She was indeed. Her hair was lustrous and her figure, though young and firm, was full and shapely. I felt powerfully stimulated by her and puffed furiously on my pipe. When Maureen Darcy spoke briefly to enquire whether we wanted anything more, her voice was full of a rich brogue which gave Basil visible pleasure.
'No, thank you, Maudie,' he said. 'This is my brother, Richard.'
'I guessed that,' the girl said. 'It's very alike you are although not inside, in a manner of speaking.'
'W . . . what do you mean?' I said.
Maudie tossed her head back so that the dark mane flowed in the breeze before settling on her shoulders. 'Your brother has a deal o' the divil in him. I'm thinking you might have a touch of the angel.'
'That's enough of your papist nonsense, Maudie.' Basil said. His deep voice dripped mock severity. 'Be off with you.'
The girl floated away laughing. I watched her out of sight, aroused and lustful but once again with the feeling that it was not my destiny ever to touch her. A cold fear gripped my heart at this third confused reaction. 'Basil,' I said. 'You are involved with these women, each of them?'
He nodded solemnly. He had never looked more handsome than he did then. Craggy, clean-shaven face, brown hair brushed straight back from a high brow, shoulders like a navvy and the grace of a dancer as he sipped his tea.
'This one,' I pointed to where Maudie had exited, 'is surely only a child. I should guess fifteen at the most. You are running a frightful risk.'
Basil smiled. 'Is that what's troubling you, Dick?'
'Troubling me! My brother risks gaol, ruin, the loss of everthing he has worked so hard for, over the affections of a girl. Troubled is not a strong enough word.'
Basil set down his tea cup. 'There is nothing of affection in it. Dick. Understand that first. And it isn't concern for my welfare that's causing you to suck so much of that noxious poison into your lungs. Don't pretend that it is.'
I smoked furiously and said nothing. It was an example of Basil referring obliquely to my dependence. Ordinarily he would make arrangements for me to meet his partner of the moment or indicate that his preference was for another who might welcome my attention also. Thus the game was played. My present confusion intrigued the manipulator in him. 'What's the matter, Dick? You usually like my girlfriends.'
'Three,' was all I could say.
Basil shook his head. He stared at me and the line in his forehead deepened as it did when his active brain was working hardest. At last he leaned back in his chair and gave a sigh of satisfaction.
'What is it?' I said.
'You're a curious creature to be sure, Dick. I think you have second sight.'
'Basil, for God's sake . . .'
'You know, don't you? You can feel it. Each one of 'em's carrying my child. What d'you think of that?'
It was then I discovered that my interest in women Basil had impregnated was not primarily sexual but something more like fraternal. The sexual element was still present, as it may be between a brother and sister-in-law, but it is held in check by convention and loyalty. I felt a need to protect such women from what might await them and in the years that followed I exercised this office a number of times. My second discovery was the depth to which mad theories of race and genetics had penetrated Basil's brilliant mind.
Sitting there in the winter sunshine, he explained to me how he was conducting an experiment. He was crossing his pure Anglo-Saxon genes with those of typical representatives of the Celtic stocks of Britain. He said the results would be interesting. He had no concern for the lives of the women or the children.
'Basil,' I said, 'you are talking about your sons and daughters. Your flesh and blood.'
He shrugged. 'Experiments. Accidents of history.'
'People!' I said.
'People are dying like flies of disease and starvation all over the earth every second of every day. It is not possible to concern oneself with people, as such.'
'Individuals, then.'
'Few are,' Basil said. 'Most are sheep. These brats may be, although except in the case of Darcy I did not have very good material to work with. There's good Celtic stock for you. The finest example of the type.'
By this time Basil had evidently come to believe in his own fictions—that he was the offspring of Anglo-Saxons on both sides and not a mongrelised half-Celt, half-gypsy with God knows what else thrown in along the way. I did not have the courage to confront him with these truths and it would have done no good. There was a fierce joy burning in him that day which touched and almost infected me. It is difficult to explain. I was my brother's creature in more ways than the one I have indicated. To a degree, his moods were my moods. His elation, in particular, transferred directly to me. It was a phenomenon which was to be of great use during our explorations . . .
32
ENTRY TWO
Basil is much weaker. A normal man would have been dead by now but Basil is not a normal man. He can swallow a little water from time to time. He may last another day or another week. If he were in command of his senses I would say that he will die when he is ready, but I cannot believe that. He mutters in a variety of languages. Nothing of what he says is coherent. I wonder what I will feel when Basil dies. I expect to experience a loss like that of a sense or a limb. But it is possible I will feel relief for a burden lifted, an oppression ended. It hardly matters. There is no escape from this terrible place and I will be dead myself soon after. Still, it will be interesting to record the reaction.
To resume. Basil's contempt for the energies and intellectual powers of women brought him undone at Oxford. Maureen Darcy was an alert, strong-minded creature who discovered what Basil had done and reported him to the college authorities. Nothing could save him. The seduction and compromising of young women by Oxford men was a commonplace and occasioned no comment as long as scandal was avoided. But Basil had overstepped all bounds. The families of the Misses Mclntosh and Williams howled for Basil's blood and he had to flee Oxford unceremoniously. Walter Devendish, an outstanding young classicist, and the intended of Gwenneth Williams, led the charge. Basil disappeared overnight, telling no-one where he was going, not even me.
I did what I could. I lived frugally, well within the funds my father had set aside for my education, and I was able to meet certain expenses for the Mclntoshes and the Williamses. Peggy and Gwenneth left Oxford to bear their children and I heard no more of them. I was powerfully attracted, with the restraints I have discussed, to Maureen Darcy. I admired her spirit and did not criticise her for the action she had taken. Basil had violated codes of behaviour to which I myself subscribed. In addition, he had challenged the traditions of one of the greatest institutions in the country. Punishment of some kind was fitting. I think Basil might also have thought so himself. I wondered if he felt shame or remorse, but I heard nothing from him.
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Maureen resolved to bear her child. I promised to provide for her throughout her confinement. I suppose I cherished some notion that my feelings towards her might change after she had borne the child. It would be, after all, my niece or nephew, almost a child of my own. Perhaps I could love Maureen and the child and live a life resembling that of other men. Maureen had no family. I was her sole support. I had hopes.
Meantime, I pursued my studies and my own modest university career. I became president of the Geographical Society—the first time I had risen to an office or won an award higher than Basil's—and I had begun to publish modest essays in the fields of geography and geology. The latter became my passion and threatened, at times, to deflect me from my principal area of work. But my tutors expressed themselves happy with the reconciliations I made between the two pursuits. In Basil's absence I flowered somewhat at Oxford. Looking back, I can see that some of my brother's notoriety rubbed off on me without bringing with it obloquy.
'You're a sly dog, Dick.' I recall one Walsinghamite saying to me after he had favoured me with an invitation to one of his fashionable sherry parties.
'How's that, Simon?' I said.
'Everyone knows about your discreet colleen. Gad, sir, the gallantry! To forestall the minions of the law by assuming the blame and emptying your purse to prevent the wench from becoming a charge on the parish. 'Tis heroic, nothing less. Amontillado is the only appropriate libation. Sup up!'
So the truth of my intervention had become distorted. I had never claimed to be the father of Maureen's child. Her own forthright honesty would have made such a deception impossible, but my pledge of support did help to constrain the police. Maureen was fifteen years of age when Basil seduced her and warrants were issued for his arrest on a charge of unlawful carnal knowledge. But she turned sixteen and had, instead of an outraged family insisting on the pursuit of the culprit, a benign protector concerned for the interests of all parties.
