The Roses of Picardie

by Simon Raven

  ‘A pity,’ said Jacquiz. ‘They were valuable.’

  ‘No. There is everywhere in France old letters – two, three hundred years old – family letters. Who cares now?’

  ‘Then why had you kept your family’s?’

  ‘’E kept ’em,’ said Madame pointing at Monsieur, ‘because he is a sentimental fool.’

  ‘Then you read them?’ said Jacquiz to Vibrot. ‘Can you remember what was in them?’

  ‘’E never read ’em,’ scowled Madame. ‘The writing was too difficult. Lines crossing, so.’

  She crossed the first two fingers of her left hand with two of her right.

  ‘So you looked at them too?’ said Marigold. ‘Can’t you remember anything which you read?’

  ‘She cannot read nothing,’ said Monsieur in gentle tones, as if pronouncing a blessing. ‘She was a child in the Big War in Arras. Bad place then. Nobody teach her, nothing…except what the soldiers teach her.’

  ‘Pish,’ said la Vibrot poisonously. ‘You were glad enough of the money when you come home to marry me.’

  ‘If it had only been money you got from them,’ said Vibrot serenely, ‘I should not have complained. I do not complain much as it is. It would be interesting to hear what little Auguste would say…if he could say it.’

  Little Auguste cackled. Marigold winced.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Jacquiz soothingly, ‘when the workmen have cleared the sheets out of the pipes, I could still manage to read them?’

  ‘No,’ said Monsieur. ‘In the beginning I try to clear the pipes myself. I got out two, three, four sheets – I cannot tell how many because all are one rotten lump that is parting to pieces.’

  ‘Then that’s that,’ said Marigold. ‘I knew things were going too pat.’

  As they made their way to the gate, accompanied by M. Vibrot, Auguste fils came up behind. He plucked at Marigold’s sleeve and made soft mewing noises, as of condolence or love. Then he opened his mouth and agitated his three teeth at her, more and more energetically, while at the same time he gestured with one hand in the air, like a child waving a sparkler.

  ‘He knows something,’ said Marigold. ‘He wants to tell us something.’

  ‘What can he know?’ said Jacquiz. ‘The poor brute understands nothing.’

  ‘I think he understood quite a bit just now. He followed the trend of the discussion. He knew he’d done wrong, putting those letters to be used in the bog.’

  M. Vibrot opened the wicket in the gate. Marigold lingered, looking at his son, whom M. Vibrot now tried to shoo away. But ‘that boy there’ continued to wave his hand in circles and zigzags through the air.

  ‘It’s no good,’ said Marigold. ‘I can’t get the message.’

  She raised her hand in farewell and stepped through the wicket. As Jacquiz followed, she heard Auguste fils choke violently with what she knew was disappointment.

  ‘Lunch,’ said Jacquiz.

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Time to make another plan?’

  She nodded miserably, still hearing the choke of sorrow and frustration that rose from the far side of the wicket.

  ‘Right,’ said Marigold, ‘lunch is now over, except for that enormous glass of Grand Marnier you seem to be having. Time to make your next brilllant plan.’

  ‘I offered you a Grand Marnier.’

  ‘Like M’sieur Vibrot, I’m not complaining…much. I’m saying that it’s time to make this plan you were going to make. You’d more or less thought of it already, you said: the plan you were going to make if the first idea went wrong.’

  For a moment Jacquiz looked simply silly. Then, avoiding Marigold’s eyes and directing his own into the space beyond her left shoulder, he looked astonished.

  ‘We have a visitor,’ he said.

  Down the dining-room of the Hôtel du Château de Montreuil came the vast mackintoshed figure of Auguste (fils) Vibrot. Madame the Proprietress fluttered behind him.

  ‘Madame, M’sieur, he insists,’ she wailed.

  Auguste fils stopped at Marigold’s side, reached over to Jacquiz’s glass of Grand Marnier, lifted it, and placed it firmly beyond Jacquiz’s reach, and then waved his clenched fists up and down over the table.

  ‘He wants us to go with him straight away,’ Marigold said. ‘He might let us finish lunch first.’

  ‘We have, except for your Grand Marnier. And you can see he doesn’t approve of that.’

  ‘It’s no affair of his to approve or disapprove of my habits.’ August fils croaked at Marigold.

  ‘He says we must go now,’ said Marigold, smiling and nodding at Auguste. Auguste agitated his three teeth at her in response. ‘Or there may not be another chance for a long while.’

  ‘Damned cheek. Chance of what?’

  ‘Come on and we’ll see.’

  Marigold rose and Jacquiz after her. Auguste galloped out of the dining-room followed at a canter by Marigold. Jacquiz turned to retrieve and gulp his Grand Marnier and then ambled after them, cross and sceptical but not proposing to be left out.

  When they came to the Castle Gate, Auguste solemnly raised the palm of his right hand to his mouth to adjure all present to silence, unlocked the wicket with one of a bunch of keys, and crept through it with the huge, high step of a stage spy in a joke melodrama. When Marigold and, after some time, Jacquiz had followed him through, he closed the wicket with elaborate care, repeated his mime of silence, and led them away from the Gate House, under the wall of the wing which extended from it, until they came to a low, narrow door some twenty yards short of the entrance into the Vibrots’ shop cum ticket office. Auguste pointed to the latter, put his head on one side, and made a snoring noise, then turned to the low, narrow door, unlocked it with another key from his bunch, crammed himself through it with some difficulty, and beckoned to Marigold and Jacquiz to follow. Having closed the door behind them with concentrated caution, he led them up a flight of wooden steps into what looked, at first sight, like an empty hay loft, but turned out, if one was to believe a notice on the wall which proclaimed numerous and draconian sanctions, to be the ‘Recreation Room’ of the Youth Hostel.

  ‘It makes one glad one is no longer young,’ Marigold said after examining the notice.

  Auguste breathed in heavily and wagged a finger in front of her lips. Then he shuffled across the bare wooden floor and started to unlock a padlock which hung, apparently securing nothing and merely symbolical of prohibition, from a U-shaped bracket in a side wall, just beneath a skylight which provided the sole illumination. Auguste had some difficulty with the padlock, which was obviously either jammed or rusty, but eventually the lock gave with a little screech and the flange came out with a sharp crack which caused Auguste to freeze and listen attentively for nearly a minute before he resumed operations.

  ‘He’s very afraid of being caught,’ said Marigold. ‘He’s obviously on forbidden ground.’

  She craned forward as Auguste pulled out of the wall a small square of wood which had been held in place by the padlock.

  In the aperture thus revealed was a door knob. This Auguste turned and pulled, causing a broad and previously invisible door to swing back from the rest of the wall. He then stepped rapidly across to conceal the wide gap he had made; turned; looked with adoration at Marigold; moved aside with a swift and surprisingly graceful step; gave Marigold another look as if to say, ‘Here is my gift’; and pointed rapturously to the area now uncovered.

  After about ten seconds, ‘Sweet Jesus Christ,’ Marigold said.

  ‘Even the most dispensable of men,’ said the Right Honourable the Lord Constable of Reculver Castle and Right Worshipful the Provost of Lancaster College, Cambridge, ‘even the most dispensable of men are apt to leave annoying gaps when dispensed with. We shall not miss Doctor Helmut for twelve months but we shall, for approximately ten minutes in each of them, miss his knowledge of the College archives, muniments and manuscripts.’

  ‘At you say, Provost,’ said Ivor Winstanley, wondering uneas
ily what this had to do with him.

  ‘Which being the case, Ivor, I must ask you to frequent the Chamber of Manuscripts from time to time and be prepared to furnish whatever we may want whenever we should happen to want it.’

  ‘Rather a comprehensive request, Provost? I don’t understand Helmut’s system.’

  The Provost rose, walked to a tall window, and looked out from his Lodge over the back lawn of Lancaster. The set of his back indicated that Winstanley would have to find a better excuse than that, if indeed any excuse were acceptable.

  ‘There is an assistant there, Provost, a research student, whom I believe to be familiar with all the documents.’

  ‘A research student is not a Fellow. We must have a Fellow, Ivor, a commissioned officer so to speak, in charge of every department of the College. How far you rely on this research student is your affair. In any case whatever, you will be held responsible.’

  The Provost turned from the window with the manner of a Field Marshal condescending to instruct an otiose Major on the keeping of Mess Accounts.

  ‘All you have to do,’ said Lord Constable, courteously but implacably, ‘is make yourself properly acquainted with Helmut’s catalogue.’

  ‘Rather a long order?’ said Winstanley peevishly.

  ‘And when you have done so, Ivor,’ continued the Provost, totally ignoring the protest, ‘I should be very glad to know if you have chanced to find any…irregularities or dubieties in that area.’

  ‘I beg your pardon, Provost?’ said Winstanley, curiosity now beginning to displace reluctance.

  ‘Doctor Helmut, Ivor,’ said the Provost in a new and soothing tone, ‘has been heavily preoccupied during these last months because of a change in his private situation. I wish to be sure that this has not blunted his academic efficiency.’

  ‘It would hardly have been likely to sharpen it,’ said Winstanley, confident that he now knew where the wind lay.

  ‘Precisely. Radical changes in circumstance when they come in middle age, are liable to unsettle even men of the soundest habit.’

  ‘And the more so if flaws were already apparent.’

  ‘I thought you were a friend of Helmut’s,’ said the Provost, in sharp and sudden rebuke.

  ‘I was, Provost,’ quavered Winstanley. ‘But if you remember, there – was an incident back in 1967…a case of evasion… desertion…’

  ‘How good of you to remind me.’ His ruse having been successful and Winstanley’s hostility to Helmut having been satisfactorily acknowledged by both of them, the Provost resumed his soothing tone. ‘You will understand what I mean, then? Helmut, let us say, is not at his best under pressure.’

  ‘And what a pressure,’ said Winstanley, with a vulgarity induced by the relief at the Provost’s apparent relaxation.

  ‘The new cares and distractions…’

  ‘…And the perennial possibility of cornutation.’

  ‘The what?’ said the Provost.

  ‘I thought, Provost, that we were discussing the new Mrs Helmut.’

  ‘I was discussing Helmut’s lavish inheritance of money nine months ago. It is disgraceful that so large an accession of wealth to a single individual should still be possible. It is also enervating and corrupting to the individual himself.’

  ‘That’s as may be, Provost. But whereas he was always pretty comfortable about money he was never before married. So it stands to reason that his wife, being the unfamiliar element, must be the thing that’s getting on top of him.’

  Winstanley giggled at his own play on words.

  ‘I think,’ said the Provost statuesquely, ‘that we should concern ourselves with the effects on Helmut’s work rather than the niceties of their cause.’

  ‘Just so,’ said Winstanley, coming swiftly to heel. ‘I am to understand, Provost, that while Helmut is away on his Sabbatical I am to…survey…the condition of his department?’

  ‘And to report.’

  ‘And to report. Just so. Do we know, by the way, where he has gone or what he is doing? He must have research of some kind.’

  ‘Of some kind, no doubt. I was happy to let him go without pressing him for details. I think that’s all we have to say, Ivor.’

  Winstanley made for the door.

  ‘Oh, Ivor…’ said the Provost as he reached it.

  ‘Provost?’

  ‘Your reference to Helmut’s work reminds me: how is your edition of Cicero’s poetic works coming along?’

  ‘It’s coming along, Provost.’

  ‘Good. There are those, you know, who say that these days you Latinists are a luxury. One can only defend you on grounds of substantial achievement. How soon will the College Council be able to congratulate you on the completion of your edition? And, we trust, on its acceptance for publication by the Syndics of the University Press?’

  ‘Well, not this year, Provost, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Next year?’

  Winstanley stood silently with his hand on the door knob.

  ‘I think I understand the position, lvor. And if I understand rightly, it will soon be very important, as I’m sure you will agree, that I should have something – other than your unfinished Ciceronian endeavours – on the strength of which I can justify your continued maintenance by this College. The matter of your renewal comes up in January, I believe?’

  ‘Provost?’ mumbled Winstanley.

  ‘In January,’ snapped Constable. ‘Always a worrying time for a Fellow, when the date for his renewal draws near. However, Ivor, if you prove…conscientious…in this new task which I have just allotted to you, I think I can promise that you will be invited to retain your Fellowship without serious opposition on our part or embarrassment on yours.’

  ‘I’ll do my best, Provost,’ said Winstanley brightly, like a sexagenarian boy scout.

  ‘Go to it then,’ said Lord Constable, and gravely nodded dismissal.

  ‘Let us simply consider the facts,’ said Jacquiz Helmut to Marigold. ‘Never mind our emotional reactions when Auguste first uncovered that picture. Let us simply recall what it was.’

  ‘It was revolting,’ Marigold said.

  They were back in their hotel, sitting on the balcony of their room in the evening sunshine which had at last broken through the dismal rains of the day. Although it was now clear to them, as a result of the revelations engineered that afternoon by Auguste, exactly where they must go next, there was also much else to discuss, and they had decided not to leave until the next morning. After what they had seen in the Recreation Room, they needed time, as Jacquiz had put it, to take a few deep breaths.

  ‘It was revolting,’ repeated Marigold.

  ‘That is precisely the kind of comment that helps least. Facts, sweetheart. What was happening in that picture?’ Jacquiz took a sheet of paper from his pocket. ‘It’s a pity Auguste was too nervous to let us stay longer,’ he said, ‘but I did manage to take quite comprehensive notes about the thing. “Oil painting, approx five feet long by three feet high”,’ he read out, ‘“preservation fair, seventeenth-century Dutch in style and feeling, clear signature ‘R Van H’ – surely Richard Van Hoek. Landscape with building and figures. In background the Abbey of Jumièges before it was dismantled, conclusively recognizable from the high twin towers, square at base and octagonal above, which rise over the West Door of the Abbey Church. The buildings are perhaps 250 yards from the point of the artist’s vision. In middle ground the Abbey Wall and a track running beneath it where the road runs today. In foreground a field or meadow where cafés, etc., stand today, opposite Abbey Gate. Time: night (three-quarter moon seen between towers) and winter (total barrenness of trees in right foreground).” You agree with all that?’

  ‘I think so. I’ve only ever been to Jumièges once – with Papa when I was still at school. But I think it fits. So much for the landscape and the buildings, Jacquiz. What about the figures?’

  ‘Ah,’ said Jacquiz. ‘Auguste was getting very twitchy by the time I got to them, but I think I’v
e got ’em right. “On track in middle ground at extreme left of painting two small figures (?? three inches high), a man and a woman, walking side by side. From manner of gait and freshness of faces they are clearly youthful. Dress: seventeenth-century; man in black hose and breeches, short black coat, black cloak with small area of scarlet lining visible, cavalier hat; woman in white cloak and full, plain, white dress, bare-headed.” All right, Marigold?’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘“Artist uses strip cartoon technique to portray successive events against constant background. The same two figures seen a little larger and standing in meadow about a foot (i.e. fifty odd yards by the scale and perspective of the picture) to the right of their first appearance on track. They are deep in discussion, huddled towards each other, heads nearly touching, faces visible in profile, showing sadness and reluctance on hers, urgency on his.”’

  Marigold nodded and shuddered slightly.

  ‘“Same two figures seen yet again, a foot further to right (i.e. two feet equals one hundred yards, from left end of painting), with backs to viewer. Man’s right hand clasps woman’s left wrist. Woman hanging back. Man appears to be leading or even dragging woman across meadow, away from viewer, back towards track under Abbey Wall.”’ Jacquiz licked his lips.

  ‘“Man and woman next seen”,’ he continued, ‘“a further six inches to the right, now in middle ground and on far side of wall and track, traversing open space on slight uphill slope between Abbey Gate and Library. (This appears in picture to stand twenty or thirty yards to SW of SW corner of Church, though I recall far smaller distance in fact.?? Van Hoek painting from defective memory.?? Van Hoek bad at perspective.)”’

  ‘Van Hoek telling a story,’ Marigold said. ‘Didn’t give a damn about detail.’

  ‘On the contrary, some of the detail is exquisite.’

  ‘Where it matters. Go on, Jacquiz.’

  ‘“Couple approaching entrance to Library. Man now has his arm under woman’s. Woman slightly bowed. Man looking back over own shoulder and woman’s, with free hand cupped round face, concealing face from woman, as if about to address an ‘aside’ to viewer. Man’s face at first seems to be smiling; on close inspection seen to be grinning with a combination of lust, hatred, intent to pollute, infect and destroy.”’