There was a more confident buzz of agreement.
‘We are in a crisis, as I say, in the history of ours, the one true church. In the world at large doubt, distrust and rebellion seethe, distracting the minds of the unlettered, provoking the discontent of the educated. Ridicule, distrust of long-held beliefs, rebellion against the position of the natural leaders of society – all these evils flourish today, as never before. At such a point any event – even an innocent and natural occurrence such as we witness here’ – he gestured towards the human scrap on the bed – ‘will be taken up, seized upon as a cause of scandal and concern, distorted and blackened with the ingenuity of the Devil himself, who foments and then leads all such discontents and rebellions. Let us make our minds up, let us make our choice quickly, let us conceal what has happened until such a time as it can be announced and accepted as the natural event which in truth it was.’
This time there was a positively enthusiastic reception for his words.
‘Come my friends,’ resumed Pascona, delighted at the effect of his words, ‘let us get down to business. Let us vote, and let us vote to make a decision, and to present to the world a front of unity and amity. And let us treat our friend here with the respect that a lifetime of faithful service demands. Put a blanket over him.’
It worked like a charm. A blanket was thrown over the body of the dead Cardinal Fosco, leaving his head showing. Not dead, only resting seemed to be the message. The living cardinals proceeded to a vote, and even before the last vote was in and counted it was clear that the straw would no longer be required: the smoke would be pure white.
The excitement was palpable. While they remained cloistered in the chapel the other cardinals thumped Pascona on the shoulder and indulged in such bouts of kiddishness as were possible to a collection of men dominated by the dotards. After five minutes of this, and as the chapel was penetrated by sounds of cheering from crowds in the square, the new pope proceeded to the passageway from the chapel to St Peter’s, pausing at the door to look towards the altar and the massive depiction of the Last Judgment behind it. Magnificent, but quite wrong, he thought. And perhaps a silly superstition at that.
Then he proceeded into the upper level of the great church, then along towards the door leading on to the balcony. He stopped before the throne, raised on poles like a sedan chair. He let the leading cardinals, led by the Cardinal Chamberlain and helped by the monks who had serviced the conclave, robe him and bestow on him all the insignia of his new office. He behaved with impeccable graciousness.
‘What name has Your Holiness decided to be known by?’ asked the Chamberlain. Pascona paused before replying.
‘I am conscious of the links of my mother’s family to this great, this the greatest, office. The fame of Alexander VI will live forever, but the name is too precious for me, and for the Church, for me to assume it. In truth it would be a burden. I shall leave that sacred name to my ancestor, and I shall take the name of the other pope from her family. I shall be known as Calixtus IV.’
The Chamberlain nodded.
From the square there came sounds. Someone, perched somewhere, with good eyesight, must have been able to see through the open door of the balcony. A whisper, then a shout, had gone round.
‘It’s the Borgia. The Borgia!’
The fame of his mother’s family easily eclipsed that of his father’s. The tone of the shouts had fear in it, but also admiration, anticipation. What a time Alexander VI’s had been! Bread and circuses, and lots of sex. Calixtus IV smiled to himself, then ascended the throne. As he was about to nod to the four carriers to proceed through the door and on to the balcony, one of the monks came forward with a bag of small coins, to scatter to the crowd below. As he handed the bag to the pope, he raised his head and the cowl slipped back an inch or two. There was the loved face: the languid eyes of Michelangelo’s Adam, the expression of newly-awakened sensuality, and underneath the coarse robe the body, every inch of which Calixtus knew so well. He took the bag, and returned his gaze.
‘Grazie, Ales-Sandro.’ he said.
FAMILY VALUES
It was in June 1948 that Mrs Cynthia Webber and her son Simon came to lodge in the Princes Hotel, Pixton. They were well received by the rest of the guests, all of whom were virtually residents. The country had just suffered one of the worst winters Britain had ever known: months of snow-covered land and roads, which, added to the regime of rationing and shortages that the nation had endured since 1939, brought many to the edge of despair. Most of the residents at the Princes blamed the government for the winter, and for everything else. ‘What did we fight the war for?’ was a common wail. ‘We’d have been better off if we’d lost it.’
What was still called the Princes Hotel was in fact a mere wing of the splendid Edwardian structure that overlooked the town from a vantage point that had once seemed to square with the social status of its guests. It was now run by Mrs Hocking, who was more a housekeeper than a manager. She had been put in mainly to keep the old place open. She didn’t want casual guests, which was lucky because few were to be had. She took residents at reasonable rates, commandeered their ration books and used them cunningly, and took the burdens of effort and decision from their shoulders. That was what the middle-aged and elderly residents wanted, particularly after the privations of the terrible winter. And when Mrs Webber and her son arrived they were welcomed as a new source of interest.
‘She’ll do,’ said Major Catchpole, a man of few words.
‘Such a nice sort of person,’ said Mrs Forrest, meaning ‘so obviously a gentlewoman.’ She added that it was lovely to see a mother and son who were such good friends.
Their arrival had been well signalled in advance because they had taken the suite. All the residents being, by chance or circumstance, single, ‘the suite’ was the one area in the wing that was not let out. It had been used by families before the war, many of whom came to the Peak District for the sake of a disabled or invalid child, hoping the famous Pixton waters would do them good, if a cure was out of the question. It had two bedrooms with a sitting room between – not large rooms, but providing a degree of comfort and privacy unknown to the other residents. Mrs Hocking, when she had received the enquiry, had been dubious whether the suite was habitable, but with the help of an army of hotel and hospital cleaners, all resident in the town and experienced from the Old Days, the dusty old rooms were smartened up. Even the residents pitched in, with Miss Rumbold volunteering to wash up all the ornaments and crockery in the suite, and old Mr Somervell, a traditional and sentimental soul, buying a bouquet with his own money to decorate the sitting room on the day of their arrival.
They fitted in at once. Mrs Webber, though not unduly confidential, was frank about their situation.
‘Simon is going up to Oxford in October. He has a place at Lincoln, to read history. He was found unfit for national service – lungs, you know – but his education was very disturbed in his last years, when the old teachers returned from the war and wanted all the old ways back. He’s going to do a very stiff course of reading – the car is full of books – so that he can go up with the best possible basis for study.’
The car was a basis of wonder, Mrs Webber being a widow lady, and she explained it readily.
‘It was my husband’s car. He died last year – old war wound from the Somme. He was in the Civil Defence, and had an extra petrol ration due to the driving. I’ve had to give that up, of course, but we just about make do. Simon will take his licence soon.’
Their devotion to each other made Cynthia and Simon objects of great interest to the residents. To play some part in their little personal drama the residents often appealed to them, their judgement and experience seeming to put them on a higher plane than the rest. Simon was appealed to on questions relating to The Younger Generation, Cynthia on matters of fashion, the Royal Family, etiquette, genealogy and even correct English.
‘I was always taught at school,’ began Mrs Phipps in the manner of al
l linguistic bores, ‘that it should be “ett”, the past tense of “eat”, not “eight”. Don’t you agree, Mrs Webber?’
Mrs Webber wiped her mouth with her napkin, perhaps to conceal a smile.
‘So often what one was taught at school is either wrong, or has changed with the times. I think either pronunciation is acceptable these days.’
‘I happen to know,’ said Miss Rumbold, welding together two of the residents’ obsessions, ‘that the dear Queen says “eight”. She visited the British Restaurant in Pimlico when I was doing war work there in 1944. “Eight” she said, definitely.’
‘I expect the Queen speaks the language of upper-class Britain a generation or two ago,’ said Mrs Webber, who must have been about the same generation as the Queen. ‘I know she says “lorss” for “loss”, and I think only cockneys and upper-class speakers do that.’
This remark was found daring, but because it was Cynthia it was acceptable.
Mother and son made little excursions in the car on as many afternoons as had sun and as they had petrol for. They didn’t ask anyone to go with them because, as Cynthia whispered to Mrs Hocking, if they asked one they’d have to ask them all, at least once. They valued their privacy. In the lounge before lunch Cynthia would sometimes talk about where they planned to go.
‘I know the area from my childhood,’ she explained. ‘So many of these lovely little places have memories for me. I always wanted to come here on holiday in the years before the war, but Frank, my husband, never cared for it. He was quite rude about it. “Just one b— peak after another,” he used to say.’
‘Fancy!’ said Mrs Forrest. ‘I can’t imagine anyone disliking the Peak District.’
‘I can, when I’m toiling up to the King’s Head,’ said Major Catchpole. ‘Pixton has hills that would defeat a Sherpa.’
‘To me Derbyshire beats even the Lake District,’ said Miss Rumbold. ‘And it’s much more undiscovered.’
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Webber. ‘Wordsworth has a lot to answer for.’
By mid-July the Webbers were accepted, admired, even loved, particularly for their devotion to each other, which all the women found ‘lovely’ and ‘so nice to see’, and which both the men kept quiet about. Their position was as part of the community at the Princes, yet somehow slightly above it. Mrs Webber reinforced this primacy by announcing that she didn’t need her sweet ration because she had never had a sweet tooth, and saying that she would use it to buy sweets for general consumption – a box of chocolates if one could be found, Turkish delight or liquorice allsorts if one could not. All the residents at the Princes were enthusiastic in acclaiming her generosity, though in truth it created little pockets of animosity when one or other of them was thought to be taking more than their fair share.
It was bound to end in tears. The tabloid press understands that there is nothing the general public likes more than the building-up of a popular idol – nothing except its bringing down. The Webbers had been supplied with a pedestal. By late July it was time to blow it up from under them.
It was Mrs Phipps who provided the explosive. She had, as everyone at the Princes knew, a weak bladder, and at some time during the night she could be relied on to get up and go to the bathroom in her corridor. As she went past the Webbers’ suite one night she heard a sound and stopped. It was, she felt sure, the inner door to Mrs Webber’s bedroom. She stood a second or two, waiting; then from further away she heard another door shutting – the door, it could only be, to Simon Webber’s bedroom on the other side of the sitting room.
She scurried along to the bathroom, switched on the light and looked at her watch. It was half past three.
Mrs Phipps was not an ill-disposed woman, and not any more of a tittle-tattle than anyone else at the Princes. She nevertheless found it impossible to keep her information to herself. She confided the substance of it to Mrs Forrest and together they talked to Miss Rumbold, who had the reputation of being a bit of a radical, having voted Liberal several times, though of course at the last election she had voted for dear Mr Churchill. To Mrs Forrest she was a woman of standards, though when she had listened twice to the story she still felt quite troubled – her cheeks were high pink in colour, and she had to struggle to find a way through her uncertainties.
‘So what you are – no, you are not implying anything – what the sounds you heard seem to suggest—’
‘That’s better,’ said Mrs Phipps. ‘I should hate it if—’
‘Of course you would. What those sounds suggest is that the pair of them have imposed themselves on us as mother and son, whereas in fact they are … she is … he is … Oh dear. I don’t know the word.’
‘No,’ said Mrs Forrest wistfully. ‘When an older man has a younger woman for his … you know … there are quite a lot of words and phrases, some of them quite vulgar, to describe the situation.’ Mrs Forrest’s voice sank to a whisper. ‘But this … Would the word “gigolo” describe him?’
‘I don’t know,’ confessed Miss Rumbold. ‘It brings to mind someone like Rudolph Valentino. Do you remember him? How my heart used to flutter! It suggests someone Latin. Someone like – would Tyrone Power fit the bill?’
‘Yes, I think so,’ said Mrs Phipps. ‘Someone like that. I believe he’s Irish. He’s quite unlike Simon Webber.’
‘If that is his real name. Oh, I agree. He’s so tall and regular featured and fair. One would say the Aryan type if it hadn’t been made a dirty word by those dreadful Nazis.’
A thought struck Mrs Forrest.
‘But what about his ration book? How would he get one in the name of Simon Webber?’
‘I worked in London during the war,’ said Miss Rumbold darkly. ‘In London you can get anything at a price. And though Mrs Webber says she only has the normal petrol ration they do get around a lot, don’t they? Could they have … contacts?’
‘What sort of contacts?’
‘People with a husband in Civil Defence could still have contacts that he made in the war. Where I worked, CD officers were notorious.’
It might have seemed that a guilty verdict had already been passed, but in the end they lacked courage and decided they had to consult with someone, preferably another of the guests, so that the thing would be kept within the four walls of the Princes. Pixton was a traditional, elderly, straight-laced town, and nothing could damage the residents more than a sex scandal centred on what was now their home. In the end they decided to talk to Major Catchpole, whose first reaction was not unlike Miss Rumbold’s: where she went pink he went scarlet.
‘We thought,’ said Mrs Phipps carefully, winding up her tale, ‘that you with your greater experience—’
‘Experience, dammit! I don’t—’ But he quietened down almost at once. It would strain belief if he denied ever having had contacts with adultery. ‘But of course it’s sometimes known. When I was in India there were cases of officers’ wives, with subalterns, even with one of the dusky-faced johnnies, damn them. And during the war, with couples separated, and many women becoming widows … Stuff happens that it’s better not to talk about.’
‘Oh, we do agree!’ said Miss Rumbold. ‘We are so uncertain that we couldn’t put a name to what he is.’
‘What who is?’
‘Simon. We finally fixed on the word “gigolo”, but it doesn’t seem quite right.’
‘No, it doesn’t. Some of the young chaps in the mess had a word for it – toyboy. But that doesn’t seem quite right either. Seems a serious young man, this Simon.’
‘It’s the uncertainty that makes it so troubling,’ said Mrs Forrest. ‘There might be other explanations.’
‘The question is, even if it were certain, would it be for us to judge?’ asked Major Catchpole, whose military career had left him with a life’s motto: anything for a quiet life.
‘But if we knew, and did nothing, and it got out around the town!’ said Mrs Phipps. ‘The reputation of all of us would be at rock bottom! We have a certain reputation because the Princ
es has a certain reputation. The townspeople respect us, the spa patients and their relatives respect us. We have a position in the community out of all proportion to the rent we pay.’
Major Catchpole was quick to placate Mrs Phipps.
‘Of course, of course. I’d be the last one to throw that away. But the thing is, we must be sure. We must think up a plan of campaign and when we are sure, and only then, we can decide on a strategy, think up a course of action and stick to it.’
Major Catchpole was not the only person who was decisive in theory but inconsistent in practice. That same evening he invited Mr Somervell to have a beer with him in the King’s Head, and in a corner of the Saloon Bar he confided in him the gist of the two ladies’ story. From that moment the battle for secrecy was lost.
When everyone in the Princes except Mrs Hocking knew what was suspected of the Webbers they became grateful for the afternoon excursions of Mrs Webber and Simon (they were no longer referred to as mother and son). That was when the rest could talk the situation over. The thing that was most difficult for most of them was the injunction that, until they were sure, no change should come over their behaviour to the pair.
‘I just hate having to talk to them,’ said Mrs Matthews, a roly-poly widow with strong opinions. ‘Just smiling and pretending it’s all right.’
‘It’s the same for all of us,’ said Mr Somervell.
‘Oh, I know, but I just have this strong feeling, this thing. After all, this has always been a respectable spa town – not like Harrogate, where all sorts of things were going on. Pixton has always had genuine invalids, not people sneaking away from their families in order to have a dirty time. And an older woman, much older, and a very young man. My blood freezes – it really does. I can hardly stop shivering.’
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