The Satan Sampler

by Victor Canning

  “On the contrary, he’s absolutely level-headed. Democracy as we know it isn’t working and won’t work. It never has worked. Man is not a democratic creature. Nothing with blood in the veins and passion in the spirit can ever be. This is the eternal paradox, the everlasting problem. The answer is not a positive solution but a working compromise. That’s the challenge of humanity to its own imperfections . . . to find the right, the least dishonest, the most benevolent state of balance between the law of the jungle and that of the judiciary. Either he thinks he’s found it, or the means to it which—from what Seyton told you he heard on the tapes—sounds like some form of benevolent dictatorship, a myth in itself, or a period of draconian, near fascist direction to be slowly relaxed when human nature has been through a proper course of schooling. The time could be coming right for either to work. If I had to make a bet on one or the other I should be obliged to toss a coin. Grandison is no fool, nor will the others with him be. He and they might succeed, but that is not our problem. We are not in our service to make judgments of that kind. We have a clear brief. The maintenance of the status quo.”

  “Then what is the answer?”

  “Oh, come, Warboys—there’s only one. And you know it. We’ve got to clear up the mess, and it must be done so that there is no chance of a word being said against Birdcage. The processes of history will produce what they will. But no matter what sort of government we eventually get in this country there will always be a need for us—so we must keep our haloes intact. We do not make or destroy governments. We work with loyalty to the Government of the day. Once there arises any doubt about that—then we become nothing. Grandison has planned to commit the ultimate crime in our calendar—to use us as an active political instrument. But politics don’t work like that. Politics must always be a natural force spawned by human society. We lose the little virtues we have if we start to use our power and privilege independently—as did the C.I.A.”

  “So what do we do about Grandison?”

  “You must go to him and tell him everything. That’s your right and your duty, not mine. Only one course is open to him and he must take it. Resign, retire to private life.” Quint gave a slow smile. “Perhaps then he will find time to write one of the biographies he’s always talking about. But like the August cuckoo—go he must.”

  “And Seyton?”

  “He’s no problem. He hands over the tapes and films and forgets them—having our word that the whole plot has crumbled to dust. A word from us to Felbeck will give him back his Hall, and he will live happily ever after—and keep his mouth shut.”

  Warboys sighed wearily. “My God, I’m not looking forward to seeing Grandison. We’ve been so close.”

  “I think you will find he will take it philosophically. He’s gambled before on our behalf and lost and accepted the way the dice fell. Now he’s gambled on his own account. To corrupt Pope a little, I do not think he will sit blaspheming his gods, the dice, and damning his fate. And when you send someone down to Seyton to collect his stuff, I suggest you tell Kerslake to do it. He knows the ground and he can go on and give Georgina her marching orders. Which will make her happy and certainly her father. A curious contrast, isn’t it, between poor old Collet and Grandison. The one trapped by a surfeit of conscience and the other by the seduction of power?”

  Warboys shrugged his shoulders. “What man lives who isn’t the casualty of misplaced virtue at some time in his life?”

  * * * *

  Warboys saw Grandison that afternoon in his chief’s office at the top of Birdcage building. Grandison, hunched down a little in his chair behind his desk, listened to him without any show of emotion, his lips a little pursed as though he were gently restraining some inner stir of amusement. The smoke from the cigar in his hand rose in a fine, unwavering line.

  When Warboys had finished speaking, Grandison was silent for quite a while. Then suddenly he smiled openly.

  “So,” he said, “my affairs have gone agley. All has foundered on an unexpected rock—if one might call Seyton’s brother that. Odd and ironical, isn’t it, that a plan to move this country to a different system of government should have been destroyed by a relic of feudalism? However, don’t think that I won’t accept your judgment. It is exactly what I would have expected of you and Quint. Nor would I waste my time now in trying to convert you and him to an acceptance of the absolute necessity of the change envisaged. For the time being it has proved still-born. But one day there will be another birth to bring a sturdier youngster which will grow to fruitful manhood. Political evolution is as irresistible as natural evolution—and neither of them are cramped by time. Time is the mother and necessity the father of such an offspring. It will come. As Coke said, ‘Minatur innocentibus qui parcit nocentibus’. That was my guiding principle broadly. He threatens the innocent who spares the guilty. We would have put down the truly guilty men, even though so many of them are unaware of their guilt. Though you clearly will never accept it, your conception of the true role of Birdcage is old-fashioned. You cannot sit aloof, beyond contamination by human affairs. Birdcage is part of the human condition and must move—as man does—with the times. However. . . I say no more on that point. I shall retire. It befits my age if not my wishes. So what happens now?”

  “I shall send someone down to collect the tapes and film from Seyton.”

  “Who?”

  “Kerslake.”

  “Ah, yes. A Quint man?”

  “Yes. As I was and am sadly no longer yours.”

  Grandison laughed. “Speak no requiems. And when you have these tapes and films?”

  “If they are what he says they are, then I shall have to see Felbeck and tell him that he must hand back the Hall as the price for his absolution.”

  “I see. Well the tapes and films will be what he says they are. Seyton is no man to bluff while holding a bad hand. But I think I am the man to talk to Felbeck—if you agree?”

  “I do.”

  “Then I shall go down to the Hall and see Felbeck. He is down there this week arranging for some coming conference.”

  “How on earth did you ever get Felbeck into this?”

  “My dear Warboys—no matter how high a man’s dreams are set there must always be some private pleasure which occasionally sends him a nightmare. He is a friend and I cannot betray him now though I was ready enough to blackmail him once.”

  “And what will you do?”

  “Your concern for my welfare is touching, but I know sincere. Well, I shall not fall on my sword and end things like a noble Roman since as a Catholic that is forbidden to me. No, I shall make an old dream come true. I fell in love once with a woman. And she long dead before my time. Now, since I shall have no excuses to stop me from celebrating her, and also I shall enjoy the irony of the way chance has brought it about, I shall write the biography of Sarah Satan.”

  Warboys laughed. “Yes, I really think you will.”

  “Without doubt, and with love in my heart because—with a little taming—she would have made such a splendid Birdcage person. So there it is. You need do no more. When I have seen Felbeck I shall announce my retirement. Until then I trust you and Quint to give no hint of its imminence.”

  “Of course.”

  “And one other point before you go. Perhaps not necessary, but I would like to make it. I bear no hard feelings towards you or Quint. But it would be idle to deny the bitterness in me. For that I must find some cure more immediate than time.”

  “The biography?”

  “Perhaps. But, at the least, and more immediately, something sweeter far than flowing honey.”

  “You quote?”

  “Possibly and only partly, but it has a shadowy substance in my mind. And now you can leave me to sit here alone for a while to look back over a life so far spent with a rich share of delights and disasters that give me no cause for bitterness nor repentance.”

  * * * *

  On his way back from London he had made a detour and called on her.
He sat now on the settee by the window overlooking the garden and orchard running down to the river. The daffodils were still in bloom and the first of the cherry blossom. A blackbird gave a before-dusk virtuoso performance. He sat sipping his whisky and watching her as she worked to finish a small drawing of a goldcrest on a spruce branch in the last of the good light. Although he was keeping it under control the change in him was only too apparent to her. Its source and nature left her without curiosity, but wondering what he would say, what his manner would be if she were to tell him now that she was soon to pack up and go. No reason had been given. She had just accepted the dictat, and accepted too the instruction that she was to say nothing of her going to Seyton. What she had wanted for her father was to be given. That was all that mattered to her. She could take up her life again, knowing that Birdcage could make no further calls on her.

  But now this man sat talking to her and she knew exactly what was in his mind without needing it spelled out in black and white. Before he left here she knew he would ask her to marry him. There was no need of clairvoyance. The thing ran between them almost visibly, like a spark between two poles.

  He said, “Things went well in London. I had a bit of business luck and feel like celebrating. Would you care to come out to dinner with me, Georgina?”

  Back to him, working, she smiled at the use of her full name. Never once had he called her Georgy . . . not even while caressing her. And she liked it that way. Some names were not meant to be mutilated.

  “Oh, Richard, I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  She turned then and looked full at him and knew that she had no way of avoiding honesty.

  “Because I don’t want to.”

  “Why don’t you want to? Have I done something? Upset you?”

  She moved to him then, unable to stop herself, bent briefly and kissed him on the forehead and then stepped back.

  “No, of course not. It’s what you might do—and that’s something I don’t want.”

  Seyton grinned and shook his head. “You’ve got to do better than that.”

  She looked at him and breathed deeply to hold back the threat of tears in her eyes. “All right. I don’t want to because of what I think is going to happen. You’re going to ask me to marry you, aren’t you?”

  He sat up, surprised. “My God, how could you know that?”

  She laughed then because there was no holding it back, and to spare him any hurt she leaned forward and kissed his forehead and let him quickly take her hands so that she stood close to him as she said, “Because it’s written all over you.

  No——” she freed her hands, “——let me go. I’ve got to speak plainly and I can’t do it if you’re touching me.”

  “Now you’re getting me worried. Yes, of course I was going to ask you to marry me. But I didn’t see it coming out just as bluntly as it has. I mean . . . well, over dinner or . . .”

  “Or what? In bed?”

  “Would that be wrong?”

  “Of course not, you fool. It would be lovely. But it’s the marriage thing that’s wrong. Yes, I love you—but it can’t be. And it’s nothing to do with you. It’s me. I’d give you anything else. Just as I have already. But not marriage. I’m not the Seyton type. Big house and estate and all that. . .”

  “Nonsense. In this day and age? My God—you should see some of the types some landowners pick—Oh, Christ! I could have put it better.”

  “No. You put it right. I’m just not your type. Oh, yes—for a while like it has been. Or if you were unhappy . . . well, as your mistress. Or just a chummy affair like with Nancy. Now there’s the one you should marry. She’s right. So right that you can’t see it.”

  “I don’t want Nancy.”

  “And you can’t have me. Not with wedding bells. Not with my father. Not with me all wrapped up in my work. And not with a lot of other things about me that make me so sick I’d die if I had to tell you. And, for God’s sake, don’t ask me to.”

  “If you say not, then I won’t. But I’m not the sort who gives up easily. I’m sorry it has come out this way. It’s not like I’d seen it at all.”

  She smiled, reached for his glass and took a sip of his whisky. “Oh, Richard—you may be inscrutable and damned poker faced when it comes to business. But in something like this . . . well, it’s all over your face.”

  “There’s something else you should know about me. I don’t give up easily.”

  “Oh, I know that. And neither do I.”

  “I really don’t understand you. I love you and you love me, but you won’t marry me. That doesn’t make sense.”

  “It doesn’t have to make sense. Or be explained. I love you but not all the way to marriage. Why can’t we leave it like that, and just enjoy what we’ve got while it lasts?”

  “All right for now. But I’m damned if I understand all this. I shan’t give up, you know.”

  She turned away from him and stared at her drawing, knowing that her face might betray her in the surge of temptation which possessed her . . . a deep urge to tell him everything. That she had been sent down here to work on him, that whether she did a bad or a good job she had the promise of a parole for her father as reward, that she was what she was and that made her as guilty as her father had ever been. Then she turned back to him and said, “Look, Richard . . . why don’t we let it ride for a while? I don’t want to go out to dinner with you . . . I don’t want other people around. But I will have dinner with you. I’ll cook something here for us. Fair compromise?”

  He smiled. “Of course. A fair and sensible one. I guess I was rushing my fences a little. We’ll do just as you say. But I’m not giving up.”

  “I know you’re not. But from this moment that subject is out. Right?”

  “Right.” He stood up and took her in his arms and kissed her and then holding her from him he said, “Speaking quite unemotionally, I think I shall have a painting of you done. In that dress you wore when we went to Clyro . . . I can see it hanging in the library as a companion to the painting of Sarah Satan. You won’t mind being in such bad company, will you?”

  She laughed. “Why should I? I’m no stranger to bad company. Have you forgotten my father’s in prison?”

  “What does that matter? Plenty of Seytons have been in prison. You name a crime and we’ve probably got it somewhere in the family annals.”

  Later, while he slept at her side, she lay with a calmness now of spirit and body, facing and accepting the unalterable nature of their relationship. She loved him, would always love him, but the dark gods had long decreed that there could be no true fruiting of their love. For her . . . well, it was just a question of gather ye rosebuds. . . Long ago the trap had been set for her, a trap that her father had planted and which Quint had sprung. Take what you can while you can was the answer . . . for that same flower which blooms today, tomorrow will be dying, as Quint would probably have said, garnishing his own self-disgust with other men’s fine words.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  AT THREE O’CLOCK Kerslake had a call from the reception desk that his car had been brought round and was waiting for him. That morning he had been briefed by Warboys to go down to the Dower House at Seyton Hall and to pick up tapes and film which Richard Seyton would have waiting for him and to bring them back to London. A little while ago Quint had come into his room and, clearly knowing of the instruction from Warboys, had asked for his briefing.

  “I go down to the Dower House and collect tapes and films from Seyton—who has been informed—and bring them back here to Warboys.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “No.”

  “Good.”

  Daring, remembering a past conversation, Kerslake said, “Did you expect anything else?”

  “There was always a possibility. Loyalty, like love, has many faces. However, off you go and ride down through the fine spring which has surely come because walking across the Park this morning I could not put my foot down without stepping on three dais
ies.”

  “Lambs’ turds we say in Devon.”

  “Equally poetical.”

  In the hallway Kerslake was surprised to see Sir Manfred Grandison standing by the reception desk, light overcoated, and a large brief-case in his hand. He would have passed with a polite nod, but Grandison stopped him and said, “Warboys is sending you to Hereford?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Seyton Hall?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Grandison smiled. “We must practise minor economies. Look after the pence and the pounds will look after themselves. I’m going down to Seyton Hall and you can take me. When you have collected what you have to collect you will hand it to me.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. Then let us be on our way.”

  They walked out together into the primrose sunshine and Grandison sat in the back and Kerslake drove. For this small comfort he was grateful. To have had his Chief alongside him would have meant conversation of some sort and, at this moment, Kerslake was far from being ready to welcome that. They did indeed have a little occasional chat, but very soon Grandison opened his brief-case and began to work, and after that was done he settled himself and went to sleep, now and again snoring gently, and Kerslake was left to his fast driving and his thoughts.

  Some three hours later Warboys walked into Quint’s room, gave no greeting and sat down on the window seat and looked out over the Park. The day had turned sour and so had his mood since lunch. A fine drizzle, backed by a wind from the east up the river, was rolling grey veils of rain across the lake. Down in Hampshire on the banks of the Test, he thought—though it was the least important of his thoughts, often smothered by others—the wind and rain would be coming off the left bank and making quite a few normally easy lies difficult to cover. He watched a tall girl in the Park struggle with a wind-blown umbrella, her red mackintosh, sleek with rain, rising like a small parachute dome above her legs as a gust hit her. Not the girl, but the coat brought back another girl to him, the one who had walked so often with him wearing a similarly coloured mackintosh and whose face he had last seen looking up at him from below a balustrade, fallen petals of rhododendrons like red blood stains jewelling the grass and the flagged path. The past momentarily troubled the present, and then was gone. He looked up to find Quint standing beside him, holding a glass of sherry. He took it and smiled greyly. Quint said quietly, “What is it?”