Mark Lambert's Supper

by J. I. M. Stewart

  An eye less ungenial than Poyle’s might view the situation in a humorous rather than a ludicrous light. Indeed, this was perhaps the discreet course to adopt. It was a light, perhaps, that flickered somewhat uncertainly upon certain corners of the exhibition. But – Miss Bave firmly told herself – there was nothing lurid in it; and, where Anthea was concerned, it played with an effect of lambent irony. For, in her heart of hearts, Anthea was a little in love with herself as a footnote. She had even a lurking hankering after some species of involvement in her father’s imaginative world; and rather fancied, even while she claimed to have resented, that former amiable disposition of her elders to cast her in the role of an ill-starred Lambert heroine. And now if she married her young man – Miss Bave reflected as she grimly climbed the tiresome steps at the top of which Milan keeps its trains – she would have to admit that the more striking connection with the Lambert legend was all on her husband’s side.

  Only the elettrotreno, it appeared, would bring Miss Bave to Florence at the time she had planned, and for this there was nearly an hour to wait. So Miss Bave, who disliked partaking of food when in rapid motion, and who had today been obliged to do so once already, decided to employ the interval in simple and stationary reflection. She therefore made her way to the restaurant, followed by her luggage on a trolley, and delivered herself in careful Italian of precise directions as to what should be set before her. It was when she arrived at a glass of milk and soda water, un bicchiere di latte con aqua di soda, that cries of recognition made themselves heard. She turned to confront two of her colleagues at St Cecilia’s, the Sub-Dean and Miss Chipchase.

  FOUR

  The situation in which Miss Bave thus found herself is one, in the nature of things, frequently recurrent in the lives of all members of a widely-travelled community. Yet Oxford people, although their preparations for foreign pilgrimage are often elaborate, extending from the purchase of insecticides to the committing to memory of such essential information as the names of the five principal Sienese families of the quattrocento, are commonly caught unawares by these, in general, thoroughly predictable occasions. There is a moment of horror, and then the common forms take charge.

  They took charge now. Miss Bave was presently listening with civility to the experiences of her unexpectedly encountered friends. These appeared to have been chequered. In Arezzo the ladies had been totally unable to obtain hotel accommodation – and this for no better reason than the descent upon Vasari’s unoffending city of Signor Togliatti and the entire secretariat of the Italian Communist Party. This had really been too bad. The travellers had reached San Sepolcro, it was true, and there viewed Piero’s Resurrection; and in Arezzo itself they had with great enterprise – which Miss Chipchase celebrated in some detail – penetrated into a sort of lumber-room containing the same painter’s Madonna della Misericordia. But Monterchi had eluded them, and it was entirely the wretched Togliatti’s fault.

  Miss Bave sympathised. Monterchi, inaccessibly harbouring the artist’s supreme masterpiece, was a sort of cultural Everest of the day, and it must indeed be humiliating to Miss Chipchase to have failed in her assault upon it. Miss Bave turned the conversation to Florence, where it was more likely that her colleagues had sojourned with unflawed satisfaction.

  But in Florence too things had not gone entirely well. The Sub-Dean, for example, had been disgracefully hoaxed. Having remarked to a fellow-resident in her pensione – a youth from Magdalen, of acceptable manners and address – that she was to have the privilege of taking tea with an American connoisseur and collector for long resident just outside the city, she had been earnestly counselled on no account to fail to ask if she might see his Vitamina Lorenzini. This the Sub-Dean – obscurely conjecturing, it may be, a Tuscan forerunner of Angelica Kauffmann and Vanessa Bell – had duly done. But Vitamina Lorenzini, it had appeared, was neither old master nor old mistress, but simply a patent medicine. The incident was the more vexatious in that it was impossible subsequently to rebuke the young man without giving herself away; indeed, she had even had to suffer from him in silence the subsequent advice, given with a wealth of corroborative and picturesque detail, on no account to miss the little hill-town of Vietato Fumare, to which Messrs Thomas Cook and Son would be delighted to conduct her any day of the week. It had been, the Sub-Dean remarked, an extremely childish form of humour, and not at all what one might expect of a Magdalen man. She would be inclined to speak to the President about it, were it not only too probable that his only response would be to guffaw loudly into his horrible old beard.

  Miss Bave, prompted to some interest and approval by this vigorous turn of phrase, pronounced with authority that the Sub-Dean’s anecdote was of a kind that had best not be ventilated further. She then enquired if her friends had run into Anthea Lambert.

  “We did, indeed. And Anthea was extremely kind.” The Sub-Dean, it seemed to Miss Bave, was rather touchingly pleased to be able to make this announcement. “Anthea took a great deal of trouble.”

  “That was entirely like her,” Miss Bave pronounced – and was conscious that behind this conventional response she felt at once mild surprise and obscure relief. She had no reason to suppose Anthea Lambert other than a good-hearted girl. Nevertheless an Anthea who went out of her way to give pleasure to this particular brace of wandering colleagues was an Anthea upon whom the sun was shining. Perhaps even – Miss Bave reasonably conjectured – an exalted Anthea. And this conjecture led her at once to enunciate, “And Mr Dauncey?”

  “Yes – her fiancé was with her, and she introduced him to us. They had only just become engaged – although no doubt it is not news to you. Mr Dauncey appears to be a most estimable young man. I recall indeed coming to that conclusion when first noticing him in the University Parks.” The Sub-Dean paused. “I am so glad. They are both young enough – just young enough – for it to be perfect. And in Florence!” The Sub-Dean had faintly flushed – and now, as if aware of this, turned her attention sharply to her plate. “I regard the Milanese risotto as a sadly over-rated dish.”

  Miss Bave, to whom human nature was even more beguiling than literary history, listened with satisfaction and was then prompted to experiment. She turned to Miss Chipchase. “And you?” she asked. “You regard the young man as desirable?”

  “I can see no objection to him – no objection to him in himself, that is to say.”

  “For my part, I can see no objection to him at all,” the Sub-Dean interjected – and jabbed with unnecessary violence at her plate.

  Miss Bave perceived with interest that she was in the presence of conflicting opinions. She turned to Miss Chipchase. “But you feel that for Anthea . . . ?”

  “I feel it decidedly queer to choose Florence.” Miss Chipchase’s impassive face began to take on its familiar appearance of a large open field upon which her eyebrows meaningfully manoeuvred. “It is a place holding strange associations for each of them, to say the least. There occurs to me the picture of a man spreading out a banquet—or is it no more than unpacking a picnic?—in a dusty, even perhaps in a verminous family lumber-room.” Miss Chipchase, as of long habit, paused upon this. But the silvery laughter of the Sub-Dean did not succeed.

  Miss Bave continued to find such a rift in the lute intriguing. It was perhaps this circumstance that enabled her so far to mitigate her indignation as to proceed on no more than a note of simple interrogation. “A lumber-room?”

  “Precisely.” Miss Chipchase was triumphant. “I see you haven’t heard of Rupert Poyle’s discoveries.”

  “No. I can’t say that I have.”

  “In a book published only the other day. They are absorbingly interesting.”

  With some deliberation, Miss Bave reached into her bag and produced the offensive companion of her recent flight. “It isn’t possible,” she enquired, “that you mean this?”

  “Certainly I do.” Miss Chipchase was disconcerted.

  “I am surprised.” Miss Bave’s tone was level and grim. “Th
ere is no single piece of fresh information in the man’s essay of which he offers any authentication whatever. And this, Chipchase, must have eluded you. You used, I think, the word ‘discoveries’. I am at a loss.” Miss Bave fixed a cold blue eye upon her colleague. “Or have I misunderstood?”

  Miss Chipchase gulped. Her eyebrows might have been described as in disorganised retreat. The Sub-Dean appeared to judge that tactful intervention was necessary. “The Carmine,” she said rapidly. “It was in the church of the Carmine that we met Anthea and her friend, and that they were so very kind. We were doing the Carmine and they were doing the Carmine.”

  “Doing the Carmine?” Miss Bave found this slightly odd. “Anthea and Mr Dauncey were sight-seeing?”

  “Yes. We must all be frank trippers in Florence, must we not? And the young people caught us out as being singularly inefficient in that role. We had forgotten our guide-book. And in the Brancacci Chapel, of all places.”

  “Of all places?” Miss Bave was a little at sea.

  “It is particularly difficult. On one side, you may remember, there is an Adam and Eve by Masolino. And on the other side there is an Adam and Eve by Masaccio. Masaccio’s is of course altogether superior in every way to the earlier work. But, not having a guide-book, we were naturally in doubt as to which was which. And Anthea lent us her Baedeker.”

  “Which no doubt settled the matter.” Miss Bave, conscious that this was perhaps discourteously dry, added hastily, “You had the impression that Anthea and Mr Dauncey were giving their time to the churches and galleries and so on?”

  “Yes – to that, and to excursions round about. What could be more delightful for them? It often seems to me that the surroundings of Florence are like a great garden.”

  “An Eden, perhaps.” Miss Chipchase, who had been silent while digesting her late discomfiture, struck in with what was plainly malign intent. “They might be described, you know, as playing at Adam and Eve. Their kindness had rather the quality of being directed upon the beasts of the field.”

  “No doubt they would be a little wrapped up in each other.” Miss Bave paused and eyed her colleague narrowly. “It is to be hoped that they encountered no serpent.”

  “Nor came across any undesirable tree.” Two small spots of colour had unprecedentedly appeared on Miss Chipchase’s cheeks.

  They had been propelled there, Miss Bave curiously conjectured, from very considerable depths. “Florence may have its apple for them, if you ask me.”

  “Its apple, Chipchase?” If Miss Bave had been grim before, she was stony now. She had arrived at some glimpse of what was prompting this unpleasing talk.

  “An apple of most inconvenient knowledge. The relationships of their parents having been as we now know them to be, anything might emerge.” The spots on Miss Chipchase’s cheeks deepened. “Anything at all. But they appear to take no interest in their family history; none whatever.”

  “No interest?” Miss Bave was startled.

  “None. I asked Mr Dauncey if he had been in the habit of visiting Florence long ago, when his father was alive. His only response was to look at me in a species of mild surprise.”

  Miss Bave put Poyle’s book back in her bag and closed it. “Mr Dauncey,” she said, “was possibly entitled to some astonishment. And as for family history – well, it is surely natural and pleasing that for the present they should be less interested in that than in each other?”

  “That’s a question, if you ask me.” Miss Chipchase leant forward in what Miss Bave characterised as a covert and unwholesome excitement. “If you ask me—”

  “But Anthea at least maintains relations with her brother.” The Sub-Dean again intervened. “She is staying, you know, at the Villa Pastorelli. She had not intended to, I understand. But perhaps she has thought it best in the circumstances. Of her engagement, that is to say. It is proper for members of a family to draw together on such an occasion. And her kindness extended to introducing us.”

  “To the villa?”

  “And to her brother, who is of course quite an elderly man. We had naturally been most anxious to see Mark Lambert’s home. It is older than most of the villas there, and has a hint of the grand style one associates with some of those on the Fiesolan side.” The Sub-Dean, who clearly felt that she must talk for some time if an undesirable tension was to be relieved, barely paused for breath. “The novelist’s study has been preserved as in his lifetime. There is a remarkably fine writing-table, said to have been used by Monteverdi. Or was it perhaps by Macchiavelli – or even Savonarola? I really forget. But I shall certainly not forget the view. There is a most remarkable view – as of course you might expect.”

  “And Mr Lambert – you found him agreeable?”

  “I judged him a little cynical, I confess.” The Sub-Dean hesitated. “He appears not to have lived any sort of useful life, and I much doubt whether his habits are at all orderly. It was an impression that a little spoilt the pleasure of the visit. But that of course leaves Anthea’s kindness unimpaired.”

  “I thought Raymond Lambert very entertaining.” Miss Chipchase, although sulking, could not resist breaking silence to contradict her travelling-companion. “He gave us a most amusing account of old Mr Dauncey’s funeral.”

  “An account of old Mr Dauncey’s funeral?” Miss Bave was again startled.

  “Yes. It was a sort of macabre comedy, it appears; and took place in 1934.”

  “Did it indeed?” Miss Bave grimly asked. “Then it must have been rather an old joke.”

  “Mr Lambert was also very entertaining about a number of more recent events.” Miss Chipchase paused in recollection. “For example, he gave a most lively sketch of his interview with Rupert Poyle early this year.”

  For Miss Bave this was at least a break in a decidedly cloudy sky; and at the same time corroboration of a possibility which she had been debating with herself not long before. It had not been from old Wendell Dauncey, declined into garrulous dotage, that Poyle had extracted his bizarre story. It had been from Raymond Lambert. In the light of this fact Miss Bave was now disposed to proceed with some vigour. “You gathered,” she inquired of her colleagues, “that what purports to be new in Mr Poyle’s essay was derived from the interview which Mr Lambert described to you so entertainingly?”

  “Certainly. Nothing could have been clearer.” Miss Chipchase was confident this time. “And one could hardly have a source nearer to Mark Lambert than his own son.”

  “Perhaps so. But we must consider, must we not, that Mr Lambert could not have been more than eleven or twelve years old at the time of the events represented as having culminated in Mr Wendell Dauncey’s marriage ? He would hardly have been entrusted, surely, with an account of such a situation as we are asked to believe in?”

  “Possibly not.” Miss Chipchase spoke impatiently. “But a boy of twelve, I don’t doubt, might pick up a lot, either at the time or subsequently.”

  “He might make up a lot too – especially if disposed to malice, and in the presence of those who relish it. But perhaps you have no reason to suppose him fond of making up malicious and absurd stories?”

  “None whatever.”

  “I have.” Miss Bave enunciated these monosyllables with precision rather than emphasis. She then paused to negotiate with the waiter for her bill and the summoning of a porter. “I have,” she then repeated. “It may interest you to know – I am prompted to say that it may instruct you to know – that the elder Mr Dauncey had no funeral, comically macabre or otherwise, in 1934. He was certainly alive three years ago, and I have no reason to suppose him not alive now. The miscellaneous malicious rubbish with which Mr Lambert entertained Mr Poyle clearly included this particular piece of malicious rubbish with which he appears to have diverted you.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “You would do well to exercise your capacity for disbelief elsewhere.” Miss Bave paused on this with some force. “Mr Lambert, it seems, not content with providing Mr Poyle with mate
rial for exhibiting the Lambert family history in a light at once disagreeable and ridiculous, set a species of booby-trap for his guest by committing him to the statement that Mr Wendell Dauncey was no longer alive. Whether that renders Mr Poyle open to some troublesome experience of the law of libel, I don’t know – although I certainly hope so. But I do know that throughout this business we are in the presence of a species of testimony to which no credence can reasonably be given.” Having somewhat eased her mind by the delivery of this salutary speech, Miss Bave glanced at her watch and rose cautiously to her feet. “Is Mr Poyle’s worthless book on sale in Florence?”

  “Certainly it is. I bought a copy there.”

  For a moment Miss Bave considered this brief answer in silence. The Sub-Dean had produced a notebook and appeared to be recording in it the recent disbursement of sundry small sums of money. This was perhaps merely because she was pre-eminently a woman of order and method. But it was conceivably because a point had come at which she was sharply prompted to dissociate herself from her fellow traveller. Miss Bave, perceiving this, and perceiving too that the spots of red had returned to Miss Chipchase’s cheeks, was prompted to a further question. “You have it still?”

  For only a fraction of a second Miss Chipchase hesitated. “I gave it to Anthea.”