The presence in the armchair next to his of Roger Ashby, the Fellow in Modern European History, had over some years become an expected part of those evenings. Edward had no objection, except when Ashby commented on what he saw as the similarity of their situations, having divorced his wife four years previously and not remarried. This proved not to be one of those occasions. Instead, so to speak, he asked in a meaning tone if Edward had seen the newspaper that day.
‘Not yet,’ said Edward. He had explained more than once to Ashby that he held off doing so until the time of his final snack and his nightcap at home.
‘Thing in it that’s bound to interest you. A fellow claims to have discovered some previously unknown lines from Gray’s Elegy. Which if I mistake not is a poem that lies within your field, my dear fellow-toiler?’
‘Very much so. Does the paper quote the passage in question?’
‘Yes, but I fear . . . Ah. Excuse me.’
While Ashby crossed the room and returned to his seat, Edward felt in himself an onset of that same excitement that had visited him when Lucy started to recite her spurious stanza. Now as then, he found it hard to sit still.
‘Yes,’ said Ashby, turning to the middle pages of the captured newspaper and clearly preparing to read the relevant part aloud.
Edward forestalled that by saying, ‘Let me see if I already know how those lines run.’
‘I thought you said you hadn’t yet—’
‘Nevertheless, I have a feeling I may know them. You can hear me if you would.’
Ashby gave in with a fairly good grace, and said nothing while Edward recited verbatim what he had heard from Lucy at that tutorial. This feat of memory drew no appreciation from Ashby, who kept his eyes on what was before them and moved his head tentatively in small lateral jerks. ‘Is that all?’ he asked finally.
‘Yes. Am I right?’
After a headshake of greater amplitude than before, Ashby said, ‘Well, it might be best if I simply read you what’s here.’
‘I’d sooner see it with my own eyes,’ said Edward. He had a well-founded distrust of the other man’s willingness or ability to read anything aloud without oral annotations of his own. The words on the page proved to be set out in a way that obscured their function as part of a stanzaic scheme, but he soon rectified that in his mind and read:
Should one retrace his steps whose foolish dream
From righteous labours lured him far astray,
None but would hail him as he drove his team,
And court his company at close of day.
Secure all night within his peasant cot,
Each morn he treads the land that gave him birth,
And contemplates some not unhonoured spot
To house his weary bones in native earth.
Edward had fully taken in these lines before it occurred to him to do as much as glance at the surrounding matter. This informed him that the two stanzas quoted had come to light among a packet of manuscript papers in the library of a London house whose name meant nothing to him. The authenticity of the documents was uncertain, but was being checked by experts in eighteenth-century literature and in the history of writing materials. The finder of the papers wished to remain anonymous while verification was still proceeding, but was himself a well-known authority on the poetry of the period.
Some minutes had gone by since Edward had begun to read, a longer interval than Ashby normally let pass in silence. He turned out to be on his way back from the buttery hatch carrying two glasses of sherry, and soon overrode Edward’s protest that a single drink before Hall was as much as he allowed himself.
‘Have you formed any opinion on the authenticity of those verses?’ asked Ashby.
‘My first tentative impression,’ said Edward carefully, ‘is that their author is unlikely to have been Thomas Gray.’ His mind was still perturbed at this unlooked-for sequel to the Lucy stanza, as he called it to himself, and what it might mean.
‘You are clearly not one of the experts consulted by the anonymous finder. Which is a little surprising, isn’t it? Given your well-known eminence.’
‘Thank you, Roger, but there are quite a few others of at least equal eminence.’
‘Really. Perhaps less ready than you to detect a forgery.’
‘That’s possible too, of course.’
‘Whereas a successful forgery would be worth a great deal of money.’
‘These days a reasonably careful and physically prepossessing forgery of such a famous poem, even if openly acknowledged to be a forgery, would be worth a substantial sum, especially in America. It would be interesting to have a look at that manuscript. I wonder whether—’
What Edward wondered competed unsuccessfully with the buzzing of the internal telephone. Answering this was something Ashby seemed to like doing. He threaded his way across the room between couples of old dons and young dons and a parson or two and spoke into the instrument. When he hung up his eyes were on Edward.
‘Call from Suffolk for you in the lodge,’ said Ashby. ‘A Miss Masterman.’
Edward was picking up the receiver in the porter’s lodge in much less time than he had taken over the newspaper. He was breathing quite fast as he gave his name.
‘This is your favourite pupil and relative,’ said the familiar youthful voice. ‘How are you?’
‘Fine, but why aren’t you in Cambridge?’
‘Revising for exams, of course. You could give me a tip or two there, especially over the Metaphysicals. It’s been simply ages since we saw you down this way. I was just thinking, if you happen to be free, why don’t you turn up at your usual time on Friday?’
‘My dear Lucy, I can’t think of anything I’d rather do.’
The warmth of Edward’s response was clearly a little surprising to Lucy. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Well, that is good news, I must say. I’m afraid it’ll be deadly dull, just me and the aged parents.’
‘Couldn’t be better.’
‘Couldn’t it? I was going to offer an inducement, but it seems you don’t need one.’
‘What sort of inducement?’
‘Just, there’s a bit more to tell you about, you remember, that Gray’s Elegy thing. You know, that cod verse I stuck in my essay.’
He very nearly screeched at her to tell him instantly, but thought he had better refrain in the circumstances. Instead, he asked her, ‘You’ve seen the paper today, have you?’
‘Well yes, but what about it?’
‘Look again. Page 7.’
‘A second and more successful attempt, or at least a subsequent one.’
Lucy had settled herself on the floor of her parents’ drawing room in one of those squatting attitudes impossible for any normal male west of Suez. ‘Are we sure about that? If it matters, that is.’
‘That sort of thing always matters,’ said Edward from the sofa. ‘No, we’re not sure, how could we ever be, but there’s a strong suggestion in the fact that this time he avoids the cockney rhyme we noticed in your text. Presumably he noticed it too. Could I have another look at what you’ve shown me?’
‘My text, golly!’ said Lucy, passing him the typewritten sheet.
‘M’m. Yes, this is a workpaper all right, leading to fair copy, probably with one or two precursors. Earlier efforts to you.’
‘Thank you, Uncle.’
‘How certain are you that there are no other bits hanging about somewhere?’
‘As certain as I can be without taking the bloody place apart brick by brick.’
‘All right, Lucy. Well, there it is. I’d give a lot to know who it was that cooked up this stuff.’
‘Would you? What would you do if you did know? What good would it do you?’
‘Put it down to interest. Or instinct. I just want to know.’
‘Would it help to know who typed what you’ve got there?’
‘What are you talking about, of course it would. A hundred, a thousand to one they’re the same person. Why? Surely you’re not goi
ng to tell me you know who it was? I don’t think I could stand another shock.’
Lucy jumped up from the rug and seated herself next to Edward, turning her top half round towards him in her best unselfconscious style. ‘I’m afraid I have been rather saving this up to tell you face to face.’
‘Like the typescript. All right, but please keep it as short as you can.’
‘Of course, what do you take me for? The first thing was me tracing the typewriter. That was easy.’
She brought out a sheet that, while a little crumpled, resembled in its general appearance the one he already held. Edward compared them.
‘The typings are certainly very similar,’ he said after a minute or two.
‘More than just very similar. Look at the “d” in mind and abroad and so on. The bulgy part has got a little break in it near the bottom. You see? And the “s” all over the place, too far over to the right. And the “h”. Almost like an “n”.’
After a shorter interval, Edward said, ‘Yes, I do see. But what . . .’
‘It belongs to my dad. As soon as I saw it, the original one, I thought I knew it. Somebody staying here for the weekend borrowed it off him one afternoon. Would you like to know who it was?’
‘Oh, I suppose I might as well, now we’ve come this far.’
‘Good. He’s called Colonel Orion Procope.’ She spelt the surname. ‘Three syllables, stress on first,’ she explained. ‘Strikes a chord?’
‘There’s a restaurant in Paris called something analogous, but I’m afraid I’ve never heard of any such person.’
‘I’ve an idea there’s a Sir in front of most of that or perhaps a Lord hanging about somewhere, and I’m pretty sure there’s an MC after it. Evidently he did something jolly gallant in the desert. Any better?’
‘Sorry.’
‘Well, I had a shot, at least. Mind you, the colonel, which is how he likes to be addressed – Colonel Orion Procope has rather got the look of, you know, someone who changes his name about a bit. Anyway, you’ll have the chance of judging such things for yourself in a little while.’
‘What!’
‘My turn to be sorry,’ said Lucy, neither sounding nor looking particularly sorry. ‘Yes, he’s coming to dinner. I promise that’s the last of my surprises.’
‘For this weekend at least. Well, that’s a comfort.’
Before they went off to change, Lucy released some further crumbs of information about the gallant colonel. He lived no great distance away, across Suffolk, near the coast; having never married, he lived there on his own, ‘apart no doubt from the occasional fisherman’, according to Lucy; he got invited over for the weekend a couple of times a year, for dinner or Sunday lunch two or three times as often; he might never have been invited at all but for his apparently lonely situation, ‘and he most likely wouldn’t have been even so, if Mum weren’t such an old softie’; he had first met Lucy’s father in the course of some ‘strangulatingly boring’ piece of business in the City of London; he had never been known to say much about his history.
Edward had his usual room at the eastern end of the house, usual at least since Louise’s death. For some months after that death, he had thought he would never have been able to come down here again, but when once he decided to try, it had not proved so difficult. These days, in fact, the place was only fitfully one where he had known some happy moments with her; he valued it more for itself, for its spaciousness, though it was not very grand or very old, and its silence. He liked this part of East Anglia too, never sunny for long, but at some time every day full of light from its enormous sky, which Constable had never forgotten.
Of course this was Lucy’s place too. Now that she was momentarily out of his sight, he found it easier to think of her as an entire person, easier too to consider with some objectivity her resemblances to her aunt, seen in her colouring and the look of her face with its round eyes and arched brows, and felt rather than seen in the way she held herself, upright but with head a little bowed. He now doubted the truth of his earlier impression that the glance of those brown eyes had grown more direct recently. But was he accurate in supposing that he saw her first of all as a version of Louise?
He was tying his tie at the dressing table when out of the tail of his eye he caught a distant movement through the east window. He soon saw a car descending a low hill in the nearer distance. For a few seconds it vanished before reappearing and entering the short driveway, an expensive-looking car sprayed a very dark blue picked out with crimson. After it drew up, just beyond rather than below where Edward was standing, nothing happened for a short time. Then a youngish man in a dark suit and a chauffeur’s cap got out of the driving seat and another about Edward’s age out of the passenger’s seat. What could be seen of the latter showed him to be an average sort of man in a dinner jacket, not tall, not short, with a mop of brown hair that seemed to have kept most of its colour, but there was something about the presumable Colonel Procope that made Edward draw cautiously back from his window.
There was no trace of that something to be seen when in due course the two men met. Indeed, the colonel made a favourable impression with his generally straightforward manner and the restrained warmth with which he greeted the three Mastermans. When he came to Edward, he managed to convey satisfaction at meeting one he had heard good reports of. He was quite unmilitary in his appearance, which by including a remnant of stubble by one ear and a loosely tied tie rather suggested some colleague of Edward’s, or the popular idea of one. It might perhaps have been said that he talked a little too quietly for perfect manners.
The first patch of conversation that Edward remembered afterwards came during dinner, and was preceded by a brief warning look, or glare, at him from Lucy.
‘Oh, colonel,’ she said, ‘I am right in thinking, am I not, that you got a medal for something brave you did in the war?’
Before answering, Procope moved his eyes to her and only then turned his head, a slightly disconcerting trick Edward had noticed in him before. ‘A medal?’ he echoed with humorous pomposity. ‘Come, every Tom, Dick and Harry gets a medal. What they gave me was a decoration, what? The old MC, you know. In fact, Lucy girl, you know perfectly well.’
‘I wanted to be sure because one of my college mates I happened to be telling about you said she was pretty sure she remembered her father saying he’d known somebody with your name or something like it in the war in North Africa somewhere.’
‘When you’ve got your breath back, tell me what unit he was in.’ The colonel made a vaguely conspiratorial face at Lucy’s mother, Kate Masterman, who beamed back at him. The two were certainly on good terms, Edward thought, but in no more than a companionable way, without any trace on Kate’s side of the old softie of her daughter’s description.
Lucy seemed to search her memory. ‘Could he have been a Desert Rat?’
‘Certainly he could. I had very little to do with them. They were strictly the Seventh Armoured; I was with the Tenth. Most of the time.’
‘Of course, Edward was in the desert too, weren’t you, uncle?’
‘Only for a couple of weeks,’ said Edward discouragingly. He had seen his share of action, but had got no nearer ‘the desert’ than Anzio in Italy.
If Lucy had hoped to drive Procope into some sort of corner, to force him into undue reticence or talkativeness, she was disappointed. In five minutes or so he had shown that he had either experienced fighting in North Africa at first hand or been thoroughly briefed by somebody who had. Whichever it was, Edward could see nothing at all in him of any kind of man that might have tried to fake a couple of Gray’s Elegy quatrains. On the other hand, it had to be conceded that he did look a bit like one given to changing his name about, as Lucy had put it. Edward felt this strongly enough to see something false in the chummy au revoir the fellow sent Kate when the two women left the table.
So, what with one thing and another, Edward was more than adequately surprised to hear Procope say, almost as soon as the
door was shut, ‘I gather you’re a great authority on Thomas Gray, Dr Saxton. The chap who wrote the Elegy.’
‘I suppose one might put it like that. Nice of you to anyhow, colonel.’
Procope made one of his faces. ‘Well, it’s true. Now you obviously think Gray’s pretty good as a poet, otherwise you wouldn’t have bothered to turn yourself into an authority on him.’
‘Yes, at least pretty good.’
‘Sorry. Of course, I know I’m a complete what-you-may-call-it, a layman, an amateur, but I’ve always been fond of the old hoary-headed swain and the rest of it. Time was when I could have repeated whole chunks that I’d got by heart. Don’t you worry, Toby, I’m not about to start polluting your dining room with a poetry recital.’
Toby Masterman made some inoffensive remark. To Edward’s eyes he looked indisputably more like a military man than his guest, but like nothing positive that could be thought of, stout, almost florid, unlike his dead sister with a completeness once mildly comic to Edward and now the cause of mild thankfulness. The only surprising thing about him was that he had produced Lucy.
After a laudatory word or two about the port now in circulation, Procope said with renewed vivacity, ‘Things being as they are, I consider myself lucky to have run across an expert like you, Dr Saxton, just when there’s been this thing in the paper about some extra verses of the poem seeming to have turned up from somewhere. You must have seen that, naturally. Tell me, off the record, so to speak, what did you think of them, those verses? I quite see you may prefer not to commit yourself until you know more about the thing.’
Edward tried to remember that the question had come from the apparent author of the verses in question. ‘Well,’ he said cautiously, ‘as regards poetical merit, what I saw struck me as distinctly below par, below the general standard of the Elegy, but then what Gray wrote is so familiar that one can’t be sure. What I’m trying to say is, it’s hard to compare the known with the unknown.’
‘I’m pretty hopeless myself when it comes to anything like that. But I value your opinion, welcome it too, because it throws some light on a question I have to admit interests me more, the authenticity of those eight lines. Taking into account your first reaction to them as poetry, do you think they’re Gray’s work or not? As far as you can tell.’
Dear Illusion: Collected Stories Page 41
