The Roses of Picardie

by Simon Raven

  ‘Don’t you threaten me, man, I tell you, I have –’

  ‘– Friends. Friends in high places. Friends in high enough places to piss on the department. Like enough, Lord Constable. But Balbo Blakeney hasn’t any friends in high places any more, ever if he had. It’s Balbo Blakeney we’re really threatening, sport. And you can make it easier for him. Which, if I mistake not, is what you want.’

  ‘How can I make it easier for him?’

  ‘By telling me where he is. Blakeney, the dicey don, comes under home affairs, like I told yer. And so even if he’s abroad, a home affairs man goes to talk to him – provided we know where to find him and can go straight there. But if there’s got to be a silly buggers’ hunt, they’ll send a foreign affairs man, because a silly buggers’ hunt in Europe comes under foreign affairs, see, and once that happens we can’t be at all sure who might be sent after poor boozy Balbo.’

  ‘What difference does it make?’

  ‘The difference between a foreign affairs man, perhaps a mean man, Lord Constable of Reculver Castle, and perhaps made even meaner by the trouble he’ll have being all buggered up by the search – the difference between such a ratty-arsed sod as that bastard might prove to be and a home affairs chap, perhaps quite a nice chap, like me.’

  Constable grunted noncommittally. Jones, S, rose from his chair and lightly sketched a forward defensive stroke with his wrists and arms, left elbow well up and prominent.

  ‘Yer know what that is, sport?’

  Constable shook his head.

  ‘It’s a straight bat. That’s how I always tried to play, and how I still do. I think you know that much about me already. When you realized that I was a cricketer chap –’

  ‘– A name out of Wisden, that’s all –’

  ‘Alright. When you realized I’d come out of the pages of your Wisden, you didn’t bother any more with checking out my credentials. That’s what I mean.’

  He picked up his card from Constable’s desk and put it in his pocket.‘You’re trying to persuade me,’ said Constable, ‘that I can trust you?’

  ‘Yeez. That you can trust me to be kind to your chum, or at any rate not such a bastard as someone who lives and hunts among foreigners and has picked up all their dirty foreign habits. And another thing: cricketing chaps often take to the drink – Tennyson, Chapman, Hammond, to mention only a few, and so they’re well disposed, as a body, to poor old battered bottle-hoovers like this Blakeney seems to be.’

  ‘But you said it was bad, from your professional point of view, his being a drunkard.’

  ‘So it is. Very bad. But I could still be well disposed, personally, whether others might not be.’

  ‘Will they send you…personally?’

  ‘If I know where to find him…yeez. If not, it could be anybody – anybody from foreign affairs. Help me, Lord Constable of Reculver Castle; help me, help yer chum.’

  ‘Balbo Blakeney,’ said Constable, ‘has not yet given us a forwarding address. But I believe him to be in Crete. In Heracleion.’

  ‘What makes yer believe that?’

  Constable hesitated.

  ‘He was good enough to send me a postcard not long after he arrived there. He was settling down in Heracleion, he said, and had found a paying pupil to whom he gave lessons in English.’

  ‘And how come he was sending chatty postcards to you… you who’d put him through the squeezer and poured him away down the pan?’

  Constable blushed.

  ‘When…he was disgraced… I knew he wanted to go away. I also knew that he’d recently lost his private fortune and had next to nothing of his own. So I asked him where he wanted to go, and he said Crete, and I…arranged for him to have a ticket.’

  ‘Bought it with yer own bangers and mash, yer mean. Good on you, cobber.’

  ‘So I suppose he thought it was only polite to send me a line or two to say how he was getting on.’

  ‘And he was getting on – or getting by – in Heracleion. But no address?’

  ‘No address.’

  ‘Heracleion’s a small place with a lot of bars, as I recall, for its size, but that don’t make more than a conscientious investigator can cover in a day. They’ll know of him in one of those – mayhap the first I walk into. That’s the one good thing about piss-artists: it’s no problem to find them if you’ve got less than a hundred square miles or so to look in.’

  ‘There’s a photo somewhere – my wife took it in the Fellows’ Garden – if it would help.’ Constable fumbled in a drawer. ‘Here.’

  ‘We’ve got one. But I’d like another.’ Jones, S, looked at the photograph which Constable handed to him. ‘Jeeze,’ he said, ‘when was this taken?’

  ‘About two years ago.’

  ‘Jeeze,’ said Jones again. ‘For someone who was sucking it out of a hose, this Blakeney looks very pretty.’

  ‘Pretty?’

  ‘Yeez. Not handsome – too soft. Not beautiful – too round. But pretty. See that smooth forehead? Like a small child or a puppy. Something you want to pick up and fondle – even though yer know bleeding well that at any mo it’ll do a runny yellow crap down yer clobber.’

  The taxi rumbled round the bends and down the hill towards the Port of Kato Korax and the country villa of Count Komikos on its quay. The expense of the taxi was much resented by Balbo, but there was no other practicable manner (or so he had been told) of making the journey. What made it worse was that he had been incurring unlooked-for expenses ever since he left Nicopolis. Two seconds after seeing the human shin bone borne away by the piebald dog, he had realized the various possible implications of the spectacle (which ranged from the unpleasant to the unspeakable) and had felt a panic urge to be gone immediately. After a blind, panting rush from the basilica and a desperate long-distance race from Stavros (who had pursued Balbo, screaming that he was a nobleman by right and commanded Balbo to remain and make obeisance, well beyond the old city and almost into the nearest village) he had hailed the first car to pass him, a small farmer’s van, and had bribed the driver to take him back to his hotel in Previsa. He had then celebrated his escape with a costly dinner of crayfish, drunk a great many glasses of French cognac from the only bottle of the stuff to be found in all Previsa, felt sick and guilty the next morning, decided notwithstanding to proceed straight to Corfu, and had been too tired, when he disembarked from the ferry that evening, to look for a cheap hotel. Indeed, the one into which he had booked himself, just over the road from the harbour, had been, by his standards, quite outrageously luxurious. It was here that he had been told that no approach to the villa of Count Komikos was conceivable save by hired car or taxi – one of which they had officiously insisted on procuring for him, no doubt on a handsome commission. And so now here he was, on a light bright Corfiot morning, circling down to the little port of Kato Korax, burning money, and passing at every hundred yards, or so it seemed, a perfectly satisfactory coach or bus on which he might have made the journey.

  According to a slim guide book on Corfu, which he had purchased at a kiosk in Igoumenitza before boarding the ferry boat, the Komiki had for some generations been ardent and noted amateur natural historians. Balbo had therefore introduced himself, when telephoning the previous evening for permission to call at the villa, as a biochemist from Cambridge who was interested in the secretions to be had from local herbs and flowers. Count Komikos, at first very wary (as Stavros had said he would be), warmed a little when Balbo announced the ostensible purpose of his visit, bubbled slightly when Balbo turned a neat compliment about the distinguished contribution of the Komiki to Greek botanical studies, and eventually, though still with a trace of his initial reluctance, invited Balbo to lunch.

  Although a free lunch would be most acceptable after his recent occasions of heavy expenditure, Balbo was for several reasons too troubled to take pleasure in the prospect of this agreeable economy. His first source of worry was the reflection that since Stavros Kommingi was plainly and dangerously disordered, anythi
ng or everything which he had said about the connection between the Komiki and the Kommingi might be untrue; in which case Count Komikos would have no information to give him, his journey would have been wasted, and his visit highly embarrassing. Balbo’s second anxiety was that his visit would almost certainly be highly embarrassing in any case, this because of the difficulty he must undergo in turning the conversation from botanical secretions to the corrupt proceedings of the Komiki 200-odd years earlier, a pretty wide arc over which to switch compass. And a third and eminently justifiable fear which Balbo entertained was lest the Count, though indeed having the information which Balbo sought and having been brought by Balbo’s dialectical skill to admit as much, might nevertheless refuse to come across with the goodies and have Balbo ejected for prying and treacherous abuse of hospitality.

  All in all, then, it was an unhappy Balbo who climbed out of his taxi on the quayside of Kato Korax, went up an elegant flight of steps central to a charming if rather worn baroque façade, and knocked on a large, unpainted, panelled door with a brass grotesque of Gluttony affixed there for the function.

  After rather a long delay, the door opened.

  ‘Good morning,’ said a voice in an Oxford accent with the slight bubble of catarrh which Balbo had noticed on the telephone. ‘You, I expect, are Mr Blakeney from Cambridge. I am Count Komikos.’

  Balbo was aware of a small hand which was reaching out as if to stroke his knee. For what Stavros Kommingi had not told him, if indeed he had ever known, was that Count Komikos, while perhaps seventy years old, grey at the temples, intellectual and authoritative in countenance, gentlemanly in bearing, and immaculately dressed as for breakfast in an English country house on a morning in 1912 was little more than three feet high.

  ‘It is most kind of Your Excellency to receive me,’ said Balbo, reckoning that an old-fashioned style of address was called for. With a deep bow he contrived to take the nobleman’s proffered hand.

  ‘I have always regarded it as my duty and privilege to receive learned gentlemen from foreign countries,’ said the Count. ‘Pray to come in.’

  The Count led Balbo through a narrow hall flanked on either side by ill-painted portraits of otherwise distinguished and intelligent faces which surrounded narrow but normally sized shoulders. Was his host the first Komikos to have been born a midget, Balbo wondered; or had the portraits, or some of them, been blown up, so to speak, to conceal an hereditary disability? They passed into a study which looked out, through a bay window beyond a miniature desk, on to a grove of young cypress trees.

  ‘Pray to be seated,’ said Count Komikos, pointing to a chair between globes of heaven and earth.

  Now or never, Balbo thought. I cannot play at games of deception with this exquisite old gentleman. In face of such courtesy and courage I cannot prevaricate and distort.

  ‘Your Excellency should know at once,’ said Balbo, not taking the chair which he was offered, ‘that I am an impostor. I could indeed be called a learned man, a quondam Fellow of Lancaster College, Cambridge’ – Count Komikos bowed very slightly – ‘but I am now disgraced. I have come here because I am engaged in a forlorn hope which is subsidized by charity. I am, you might say, on a treasure-hunt.’

  ‘You will find no treasure here.’

  ‘I seek only information, Your Excellency, information which may be in your family archives, about a rival family with which your own family had to do…and treated somewhat less than honourably…many generations ago.’

  ‘Then it could be one of many families,’ observed His Excellency equably. ‘The important question must be…which. Some families we have treated so vilely that I could not think of discussing such matters with a stranger, and indeed might be inclined to confine or put down any stranger who even mentioned them, on the ground that he was already on the way to knowing more than was desirable.’

  ‘Confine or put down?’

  ‘You think I could not?’

  ‘I don’t know what to think.’

  ‘You will soon be clearer. Now then: some families, as I say, you would mention at your peril. Of other families to which you might refer, I should tell you that although we acted with enmity towards them we did not behave so discreditably as to preclude frank and current discussion. Very well then. Name your family, Mr Blakeney, and we shall very soon see in which category I place it.’

  ‘I think I’d rather not.’

  ‘Oh, but I must insist. You came here of your own will, Mr Blakeney, purporting to have scientific business with me which you now repudiate. Please to state what your business really is. Then I can either take you in to luncheon with an undisturbed mind…or take you wherever else may be necessary.’

  The little figure gazed calmly up at Balbo and took out a gold and onyx snuff box.

  ‘Which family…of all those with which the Komiki have had dealings over the centuries…which family interests you, Mr Blakeney? Pray to answer my question, sir.’

  ‘The…the Kommingi,’ Balbo faltered.

  Count Komikos nodded neutrally, walked to the wall of books behind Balbo, removed Volume I of Motley’s The Rise of the Dutch Republic, and spoke into a tube that protruded from the back of the bookcase.

  ‘Send Theodoraki,’ he said.

  ‘Who is Theodoraki?’ inquired Balbo.

  ‘My servant,’ said the Count. He replaced Motley and took a pinch of snuff from his box.

  ‘Why have you summoned him?’

  ‘To serve me. And to serve you, as you deserve.’

  ‘To luncheon, I hope?

  ‘That will be for Theodoraki to decide. When he has questioned you.’

  ‘I have already answered your question. You said that would decide the thing.’

  ‘Your answer hit on a marginal case. I am unsure.’

  ‘Unsure of what, for Christ’s sake?’

  ‘Whether you wish simply to know more of the Kommingi for your own purpose – for your “treasure-hunt”, as you allege; or whether you wish to impugn the honour of my ancestors. If the latter, you probably know enough already to do so, and Theodoraki will deal with you as he sees fit.’

  ‘Confine me or put me down?’

  ‘On the other hand, if Theodoraki thinks your motives for inquiring in this quite delicate area are innocent as far as we are concerned –’)

  ‘– I assure you they are. I only wish to know where the Kommingi originally came from. That’s all.’

  ‘So you say. Theodoraki will decide if you speak the truth.’

  ‘How? How can this mere servant of yours decide anything?’

  ‘Be quiet, Mr Blakeney. You might offend him. He is nearly here.’

  Although Balbo had heard nothing from the hall outside the study, there was now a scrabbling on the other side of the study door, followed by an announcement in a croaky voice, ‘Theodoraki. ‘Sti Theodoraki.’

  ‘Open the door to him,’ said the Count.

  ‘I don’t usually open the door to servants. Tell him to come in.’

  ‘Be careful not to offend him, Mr Blakeney. I have already warned you once. Now then, sir. Open the door to Theodoraki.’

  As Balbo drew the door in towards him, a squat, chunky figure, dressed in a green robe which resembled a full-length nightdress, ambled through. It turned a bloated face and eyes bloodshot purple on to Balbo, then seized him, with hands like two clusters of barbed hooks, around the throat.

  ‘So ’ow come you come ’ere?’ said the Kyrios Pandelios. He glared out of his window at the Venetian well-head in the centre of the little square, as he always did when he felt in need of reassurance, and then turned back to the small figure which sat on his sofa.

  ‘I asked at some of the bars,’ said Jones, S, of Glamorgan, ‘and they didn’t know where he’d gone, but they said that you employed him and you might.’

  ‘Might what?’

  ‘Know where he’s gone.’

  ‘God love a duck. Why you want to know?’

  ‘I’ve got some important
question to ask him.’

  ‘What questions?’

  ‘I’ll level with you, fella,’ said Jones, S, dramatically. ‘Questions about rats.’

  The Kyrios Pandelios began to giggle furiously. ‘Holy arseholes,’ he said.

  ‘Who taught you that bit of English, sport?’

  ‘Kyrios Blakeney. What ees all this ballocks about rats?’

  ‘Mr Blakeney did research for the British War Office during the last war, see? Some of that research was about rats, and the Government thinks it may come in handy in view of recent developments.’

  ‘The war,’ said Pandelios, ‘was thirty years ago. What a damn thing will Kyrios Blakeney remember?’

  ‘We may be able to jog his memory.’

  ‘You going to pester im?’

  ‘We simply want to consult him. Any objection?’

  ‘Yes. Ees too nice a gentleman to be pestered. Nice, humourful gentleman. But ’e drink too much. You pester ’im about bloody rats,’ said the Kyrios Pandelios, ‘and ’e go drink even more.’

  ‘You protecting him, bazza?’

  ‘I don’t want ’im pestered, is all. He is doing a mission.’

  ‘For you?’

  ‘And for ’im too.’

  ‘So you know where he’s gone?’

  ‘I know where ’e was going.’

  ‘Well, where?’

  ‘I’m telling you, I don’t want ’im pestered. He ’as work to do. I pay ’im.’

  ‘What work?’

  Pandelios pondered.

  ‘Art work.’

  ‘You commissioned him to paint pictures or something?’

  ‘No. To find and evaluate.’

  ‘Find and evaluate what?’

  ‘No damn biz of yours.’

  ‘Listen, cobber,’ said Jones. ‘Somebody, pretty soon, is going to find Mr Balbo Blakeney in order to talk to him about bloody rats. Believe it or not, these rats are serious. Now: if I’m the one that finds him, I shall be polite to him and not pester him more than I can help, because I’m beginning to like what I hear of him. But there’s others less appreciative who might turn stroppy with him and won’t give a one-time fuck about his being a booze artist who might flip or any other sodding thing. So if you know what’s good for Mr Blakeney, you’ll tell me where to find him. Do you get the message?’