He came back with rations and the news. Evans and six others were missing. Elsa was missing too. The colonists assumed she was with the others but were puzzled since they knew that she had mild contempt for the inner circle. Had the police been informed? Well no, they hadn’t. General opinion was that the disappearance must be connected with some ritualistic observance. Three days of fasting under the oaks, perhaps. Broom Lodge was of course aware that the adepts did have their places of worship but out of reverence for the mysteries of others – inspired by Marrin himself rather than the characters of his disciples – refrained from tasteless curiosity. Another good reason for not reporting the missing persons was that the commune disliked police on principle. Working for the future and happy in the present, they felt no need for the protection of law.
All the commune knew of Wigpool was that Marrin had done some casual search for ores which he needed in the laboratory. Another tour of nearby pubs confirmed that Broom Lodge need never come into the picture at all. Marrin, with his genius for staging a convincing scenario, had set a story going that assays of minerals were occasionally carried out for the training of students in geology. That accounted for the tracks of vehicles and signs of excavation.
In the last of the twilight and an empty countryside we came upon the Broom Lodge van still standing at the end of the rough lane. It was safe enough there and the odd villagers who might have passed it would naturally assume that the ‘geologists’ were at work nearby or perhaps camping for a night or two. We approached the low heap of pit props silently, and listened. Nothing to be heard. Then we tried the blocked gate to the old workings. There they had been at desperate work, for a hole had been scraped out of the timbers which ended at the iron bars above and below the slit. It appeared to have been done laboriously with a knife, and all the chap had gained by a blistered palm was the certain knowledge that the bars were too close together for a body to pass. There, too, we could not hear a sound, but that meant little. The loudest speech could not carry round two corners of the gallery.
We started very cautiously to remove the pit props until only four were left, quite easy to push aside. Obviously the condemned were so demoralised in the darkness that they had given up hope and possibly were huddled together in the changing room which might retain some warmth from my bonfire. We wanted them out and away, so I went down as far as the cross gallery thudding on the floor with a pit prop and hammering against the rock wall. At last I heard somebody feeling his way up, falling and, instead of cursing, sobbing at his helplessness. I came up, cleared the hole completely and we settled down in a dry ditch close to the van to await their arrival.
It took the best part of an hour. Perhaps some of them had to be fetched up from the great cavern – a difficult journey through black nothing, even though the way could not be missed. Torches would have burned out long since and the batteries of flashlights would be flat. They must have had some in order to get from the entrance to the changing room, and now that I think of my fast and spontaneous activities, I believe there was a pocket flashlight in each of the coats I threw on the flames.
They whimpered with relief when they found their truck still in its place and collapsed against it, their dim figures looking like life-size rubber dolls simultaneously deflating. There were only six of them, and they were in no state to go hunting in the dark for the persons who had set them free.
Somebody said:
‘Could you finish the windlass?’
‘Not the lot. Couldn’t in the dark. Most of it has gone.’
A voice I recognised as Ballard’s whined:
‘The wind! Oh, the wind!’
There was not much of it. A damp, cool breeze. But when, as I myself had found, one has been wet, hungry and cold for so long fresh air is altogether too fresh.
‘Who let us loose?’
‘Same man who shut us in.’
‘I’ve told you. It was Elsa.’
They could have no doubt that Elsa had acquired the bowl exactly as and when she did, but I gathered there had been a disagreement on whether she had made her dramatic appearance in order to save the major and/or the unknown, or whether she had boldly attempted to take over her uncle’s high priesthood to which Evans had succeeded.
Apparently that was not unthinkable. As opposed to some of their eastern doctrines they allowed women to have souls. I should bloody well hope so! I know men who are so single-minded that the chance of eternal life for them will be a case of win or lose. But women have as many aspects as a diamond and at least one facet must be immortal if anything is.
They must have debated the question of Elsa over and over again, as well as the mystery of the major’s companion. That they touched on, just enough to confirm my opinion that I had not been identified, and slopped themselves into the van. To judge by the driver’s course down the track I could only hope that the hour was too late for much traffic on the forest roads and that nothing of what there was would have the bad luck to meet him.
‘Poor sods! Only misguided!’ the major exclaimed with a pity I had not expected. ‘They are not likely to return. But we will now go down and deliver them from any further temptation.’
I said that we should need explosives to close the place for good.
‘Didn’t mean the way of the body, Piers. Way of the soul what matters.’
I was in no mood for any of his theological hairsplittings but there was another good reason to go back: to see that Evans’s body had not been left about. Abruptly and as never before I was shocked to realise how the innocent and happy colonists were involved in criminality without being aware of it. Inner circle was a misnomer. A better picture of Broom Lodge was a figure of 8 with a small loop at the top and a larger one at the bottom and the fraudulent but impressive magus at the junction.
When we reached the great cavern it was plain that the work of dismantling the windlass and removing all traces of occupation had been interrupted by lack of light. The main wheel, weighed down by axle and fittings, had been sunk in the lake. Most of the superstructure remained, but bolts and lashings had been partly loosened so that it was easy to demolish the lot and to steer the floating timbers and ropes to the other side of the cavern where the current of the stream slowly carried them away to oblivion under the low roof.
There was no sign of the exact fate of Evans. The swimmers must have been able to disentangle him from the dredge, but when they found that he had been under too long to be revived I suppose they pushed the body out as far as they could and weighted it. Their anxiety to leave no trace of recent occupation seemed to me exaggerated. The cavern and its lake might, however, be rediscovered at any time – since rumour proved that it had been visited in the past – and they wanted no awkward questions. Nor, for that matter, did I.
The major now turned to delivering them from temptation. With the energy of a Round Table champion he attacked the altar of the pagans with a heavy baulk of timber. I helped him with some regret. The altar, and especially the pedestal for the cauldron, had its own beauty like everything Marrin touched. Fortunately he thought more of proportions than good mortar, or else it had not set properly in the prevailing damp. Splash after splash, his cut ashlars were drowned in the lake.
Returning to the surface, we bedded down the pit props and scattered loose ones above them, recreating the illusion of a derelict pile which had been there for years. While we were driving home to the den I asked the major what story he thought the six would tell when they arrived at Broom Lodge. He was far more conversant with the social diversities of the commune than I was.
‘Anything. Any mystery,’ he replied. ‘The rest of the colony won’t care where they have been.’
‘But what about Evans?’
‘After long prayer and meditation he left them to seek further enlightenment.’
‘The commune will let them get away with that?’
‘No reason to disbelieve. And thankful to be rid of him.’
‘Who will take o
ver?’
‘Democracy, old boy.’
‘But democracy needs a chairman.’
‘He’ll appear. Pity to see the place all sixes and sevens. I used to enjoy it. Simeon and all. Guest room always ready. So I think I’ll go back for a bit.’
‘What on earth for?’
‘Boring from within, Piers. Boring from within.’
I insisted that it was dangerous and that he shouldn’t take the risk.
‘No risk. If I’m dead, I can’t let on where Elsa and the bowl are. They know I know. But if I say nothing about Wigpool, all they can say is: “Good morning, major. Nice day!” Easy to keep ’em in order while they’re off balance.’
‘And Elsa? What will you tell the commune about her?’
‘That she couldn’t stick working with Evans and cleared out in a temper. Might come back when she hears that Evans has gone.’
‘How could you know?’
‘Ran into her in Gloucester, Piers. She was seeing Simeon’s lawyer to sign some papers.’
I remarked too lightly that for someone who disapproved of lying, that was a beauty. He took it almost as an insult, informing me as if I were a junior fellow officer that to preserve the honour and safety of a woman a lie was not only permissible but a duty. He was still in a mood for military snorts until we were back in the den and had opened a bottle.
We could not sleep. The little pool of lamplight in the clearing, surrounded by the wall of larches which seemed as black and solid as the impenetrable rock, was a continuance of our ordeal.
‘I think you want to give back the cauldron,’ I said at last.
‘Yes – on conditions. Summon the bright water for your girl’s dowry!’
‘It’s never bright. A dirty blue under the sun. Milk chocolate under cloud.’
‘Let’s walk to the top of your hill, Piers.’
We pushed our way up to the peak, where through the slender trunks we could watch the great expanse of the Severn Sea silently sliding down to ocean at half tide and under a half moon.
‘Gold under the silver, Piers. You’ve forgotten it in all this sordid excitement.’
In the morning I again tried to stop him setting out upon his new illusion of himself as missionary to the pagans or whatever he meant by ‘boring from within’. It was no use. The only indication he gave of any lack of confidence was to tell me – should I not be far away and not wish to appear in person – to look for any message at our old ash stump and leave a reply.
When he had gone I cleared up the den since it was unlikely that the wolf would need it any more. Meanwhile my thoughts played for the hundredth time over the dreams and contradictions in the major’s character. The Gloucester solicitor, who had caused the temporary coldness between us, kept recurring to mind. He really existed and was Marrin’s unfortunate executor. I had his name and address from Elsa who was about the only person able to answer questions on the assets of the commune, though she couldn’t make much sense of them. I decided on the spur of the moment to call on this Mr Dunwiddy as a friend and guest of Broom Lodge. He might refuse to talk to me as having no standing in Marrin’s affairs but, if he did talk, some clue to the source of Marrin’s capital might come out of it.
Dunwiddy’s office was in the cathedral close. I think I would rather live in such a place than anywhere else in England. All the benediction of the land is there, from the devotion of the Norman architects struggling with traditions of Byzantium to the ecstasies in stone of the fifteenth century and, around the lawns, shapely Georgian houses of the servants of the great church. I am overcome by the sanity of it all rather than by any religion, mindful that before this Christian civilisation there were few peaceful havens for the soul. It was no place for an executor of Simeon Marrin, who served past and future gods by blood on a torch-lit altar or slower death in the quicksand of Box Hole.
Dunwiddy was a round ball of a man with a fitting rotundity of wit and wisdom. He made me wait some time, but, as soon as he had opened his office door and set eyes on me, received me with a cordiality for which I could not account.
He led me to talk of my interest in ancient economies and thus, via agriculture in the Forest of Dean, eased the way to my impressions of Broom Lodge.
‘I trust, Mr Colet, that the commune will now farm the hereditament with enterprise and without enthusiasm.’
Catching his obscure meaning, I replied that I did not think belief in reincarnation ever had much effect on their efforts to make the place pay.
‘Indeed I myself do not order my day to conform with the cathedral chimes, except that I go home at compline when they, I understand, exchange the plough for meditation and the ministrations of the admirable Elsa. By the way can you tell me where she is?’
‘I don’t know. I understand she left very suddenly.’
‘Come, come, Mr Colet! There was a day when local business compelled me to take luncheon in Thornbury. It so happened that I saw Adam and Eve – fully clothed, I assure you – walking in the garden. I am old but not old-fashioned. And as an experienced solicitor I recognise a distinction between love in the eyes and eying with love. I hope that for your sake and hers you are only observing a gentlemanly discretion when you tell me that you do not know where she is.’
I allowed him to think so and said that in fact she had gone to stay with my mother.
‘Excellent! Excellent! Would you be good enough to let her know that I am anxious to see her?’
‘Of course. Can I help at all?’
‘I doubt it. No one ever can. It is a question of a car which presumably should be included in Mr Marrin’s estate. The boat which contributed to his sad end is obviously the property of the commune, though an unpleasant, puritan sort of fellow named Evans with whom I had a preliminary talk knew nothing about it. The car, now. A good lady at Bullo is sure that he sometimes crossed the river at night and returned before dawn. The police have made enquiries whether anything was known – let us say of a secret liaison – at Overton or Arlingham. Nothing. And you will agree, Mr Colet, that in small villages scandal, often amounting to criminal slander, is the breath of life. So the police were sure that Mr Marrin’s business was further afield and that he must have had a car at his disposal. They found it. He kept it in an outlying barn which he had rented at Fretherne – a remarkably quiet hamlet just above Hock Cliff. It was a grey Morris, inconspicuous at night as a grey rabbit. So, it appears was he. It’s quite extraordinary how so commanding, unforgettable a man could drift out of Broom Lodge leaving no more trace behind him than a ghost – in the existence of which, as he once informed me when I was engaged on a breach of tenancy due to persistent haunting, he firmly believed.’
I could not help Mr Dunwiddy, but he had helped me. I had never thought of a car permanently garaged on the left bank within easy reach of Marrin’s landing place. All I knew – and that I kept to myself – was that he set out on a falling tide which would carry him over the river to the Hock Cliff. He had then only to wait for the flood to carry him back again to Bullo. What did he do meanwhile?
After I left the solicitor’s office I decided to cover again, this time by car, all the left bank of the Severn where I had walked and waded in search of an unknown Roman port. My theory of a treasure – of Nodens, as I had called it – which Marrin had dug up was not demolished at all; only the cauldron was. Without doubt it was modern and he had made it, but of pure gold which, according to the Museum, no craftsman, ancient or modern, would use.
The site must be too far from Hock Cliff to walk. That stood to reason, anyway. Before the desolate stretches of sea wall were built, the river plain on the left bank was flooded at high tide and must have been a network of mud and marsh at low. So the bank itself could be eliminated as fit for a burial mound or temple treasury, as well as the miles of meadow intersected by pills which even today could overflow when a spring tide came up with a south-west wind behind it. Where did he go in that inconspicuous Morris? Between dusk and dawn he had time e
nough to reach far into the Cotswolds, dig and return.
The devil! In all this line of speculation I had forgotten that Marrin’s case with all his diving equipment was in the dinghy. So it had to be the Severn and nowhere else. And he would dive from the bank as he always did, not from an unstable boat. But why not take the boat all the way to the chosen site? Answer simple. If he went down on the tide beyond Hock Cliff and the Noose he would never be nearer to the left bank than the mud flats.
I wasted two days on the job, spending the nights at Gloucester. An utterly frustrating period with grey clouds spitting drizzle at me above, and Severn mud over my boots below. In the back of the car was all my equipment for diving, but I had no need to unpack it. I ruled out the sandbanks and the shoals which could never be excavated by a single-handed diver. I ruled out the low red cliffs of marl and sandstone constantly eaten away by the torrents of the ebb to form beaches. I ruled out pills and meadows. In all the centuries from the bronze age onwards no one would ever have buried a chieftain or built a temple where the next spring tide would turn the site to marsh and a year later to a mudbank separating two new channels. So I gave up and returned to London and Elsa.
I had called her up every evening and gathered that she was happy window-shopping, sightseeing and appreciating a solitary holiday in my flat after the insistent group society of Broom Lodge. I found her more delicious than ever. The abbess had fallen away along with her robes and there she was on the wings of womanhood, lovely, intelligent, irreverent and spreading round her an infectious delight in being alive.
On the second day, when we came home from celebrating our reunion by a lunch far too joyously expensive for a second-rate historian of ancient economies, the telephone was ringing and she jumped to it – for in my experience no woman will ever let an insistent telephone alone – though the call had to be for me. But it wasn’t.
‘It’s the major for me,’ she said, her hand over the mouthpiece, and carried on a conversation of which I could make little at her end. She too looked puzzled.
Summon the Bright Water Page 15
