by Simon Raven
So they went to the Toulouse-Lautrec exhibition in the fortified Episcopal Palace. Marigold disliked the pictures of the straddling old whores on sofas but was delighted by Coco Dansant. As she stood and admired the black dancer hornpiping in his deer-stalker, Jacquiz said: ‘There’s a young man over there who’s very taken with you. Only a boy, really.’
Marigold turned. ‘I see no one,’ she said.
‘In front of that picture of German troops marching along a street… He seems to have gone.’
Marigold went over to the picture. Leading the soldiers was a young mounted officer, whose golden hair descended six clear inches beneath the rim of his forage cap down the back of his head and his neck. His face, in profile, was set yet soft, arrogant, tender, with a small nose slightly hooked. The acolyte, she thought, the gardener. Aloud she said, ‘What a pretty officer.’
‘Exactly like the boy who was looking at you, though a little older.’
‘I expect the boy had come to see the picture of himself. Rather a frightening coincidence for him.’
‘It was you he was interested in.’
‘I was once told,’ said Marigold, ignoring Jacquiz’ last remark, ‘that I bore a close resemblance to Bellini’s Madonna of the Meadow. I went to the National Gallery to see, and it simply wasn’t true. The person I did look like was Cupid in the Bronzino – you know, the one where he’s goosing his mother.
Once I’d discovered this, I found myself going back day after day, appalled yet fascinated by my role in the painting. I expect it’s the same with that boy.’
Why am I babbling on like this? she thought. Why don’t I just tell him that that boy has been with us, on and off, ever since Pau? Because it can’t be true and I won’t have it, any more than I’ll have dead men mating with their widows, it isn’t tolerable or decent, it isn’t, in one word, sane. Strange boys don’t follow one all over France, flickering in and out of one’s line of vision in multiple disguises.
‘How was he dressed, that boy?’ she asked.
‘In a green track suit. Or rather, not quite a track suit. The bottom half was more like tights.’
‘How exciting. Good legs?’
‘Perfect. And a piquant bottom,’ said Jacquiz. ‘Just the very thing if only one liked boys.’
‘What a pity I missed him,’ Marigold said, praying she had seen the last of him, knowing she had not.
‘In 1947,’ Elvira Constable was saying (at about the same time as Jacquiz and Marigold entered the Toulouse-Lautrec gallery in Albi), ‘my husband was Tutor of the College. He was known as a stern disciplinarian, as a determined and (for that period) very left-wing socialist, and as a man who despised the pleasures but intensely cultivated the uses both of intellect and of body. It was then I married him. I often wonder why. I think I was vanquished by his sheer physical presence. He was – indeed he is – an impressive man to look at.
‘Now, when my husband had returned from the Army to Lancaster in the autumn of 1945, he made the acquaintance of a young biochemist who had become a Fellow of the College while he himself was away at the war. I refer to Mr Balbo Blakeney, the unfortunate gentleman who recently had to leave us because of his addiction to the drink. In 1945, however, Mr Blakeney was a bright and promising young scientist, with a brilliant reputation for his wartime research into the nature and capacity of rats. My husband was fascinated by all he had to say on the subject, most of which had to do with achieving tight enough control over rats, both individually and in the mass, to exploit them for the purposes of contamination, occupation or destruction. It seems that Mr Blakeney had come very near discovering certain techniques, part scientific and part personal, that would have turned the common rodent into a formidable military weapon.’
‘I remember about that,’ said Ivor; ‘but surely he gave it all up after the war and went in for some other line.’
‘The effects of alcohol on the bloodstream,’ said Lady Constable. ‘Very appropriate, as it turned out. But he still remembered his war-time work very clearly, and he had, so my husband said, a drawer full of notes of the experiments which he had made at the time. Robert often asked to see these, but he was told that he would be quite unable to understand either their substance or their implications – and just as well for him, Mr Blakeney used humorously to add, if he valued his sleep.
‘Well. One day during the long vacation of 1947, not long after our wedding, I brought Robert a cup of tea at his desk and with my habitual clumsiness – much increased by nervous awe of Robert – I spilt a lot of it over a fawn folder which was thickly stuffed with documents. Robert said something quietly savage, and I leant forward to wipe up the tea with my handkerchief, and Robert snatched the folder away from under my eyes – but not before I had seen inscribed on it the words “B Blakeney. Work in progress, Netheravon, April 1944”.
‘“So you’ve persuaded him to let you look at those notes at last?” I said. And he told me he’d been allowed to borrow them for the period of Mr Blakeney’s absence in France, where he had gone to spend the long vacation.
‘So of course I thought no more of it, until I discovered some days later, while snooping round my husband’s study in the unpleasant fashion we females have, that he was in fact copying out all the documents in the folder, though these were in long hand and very hard to decipher. When I asked him for his reasons for undertaking this painfully laborious task, he told me to mind my distaff – an old-fashioned phrase of which I rather approved – and once more I thought no more of the matter…until Mr Blakeney came to dine with us at the beginning of the following term. Since the provision of food and drink which my husband allowed me to make for our guests was niggardly even for a notoriously sparse era, it was a wonder Mr Blakeney accepted the invitation; but accept it he did, and in the course of an otherwise unmemorable evening complained to us very bitterly of his bedmaker, who, he said, during his absence in France had poked her nose into a drawer which he had always forbidden to her and had spilt a large quantity of what looked like tea on a folder full of his wartime notes. Of course, he said, the wretched woman had denied it, but who else could it have been?
‘It was then that I realized that my husband had been in possession of Mr Blakeney’s documents without Mr Blakeney’s knowledge or consent and must have returned them to Mr Blakeney’s rooms, as stealthily as he had obtained them thence, some time before the latter returned from his tour. Since I was at that time very much in love with Robert Constable, I held my tongue in front of Mr Blakeney; and only after his departure did I tax my husband with the lie he had told me.
‘His excuse for deceiving me was that he had not wished to worry me; his excuse for thieving from Mr Blakeney was that he had been, as he put it, about the world’s work. It was possible, he said, that those records, if read and understood by the wrong people, might lead to the development of a rodent force which could be used against the working class in case of its protest or revolt. Perhaps such a development was already in hand. It was therefore essential to make the notes available to “correctly thinking people”, by which my husband at that time meant left-wing elements only short of and perhaps partly comprehending the Communists themselves. This would enable them to anticipate the use of such a weapon against them and even, perhaps, to produce one themselves, to counter oppression and to further beneficent revolution. He had therefore, as a matter of socialist duty, “procured” and copied Mr Blakeney’s notes unknown to Mr Blakeney and sent his copy off to “suitable recipients”.’
‘And who exactly were they?’ asked Len.
‘I never found out exactly, Mr Under-Collator, and I never knew the exact scope of the information which my husband sent. Nor, as far as I am aware, has anybody, “suitable” or “correctly thinking” or of whatever other description, made any use of it. I have yet to hear of rats replacing soldiers. But you surely see the weight of what I am telling you? On evidence to which Mr Blakeney and myself can attest, my husband is guilty, at the very least, of stealing
Mr Blakeney’s notes, of copying and conveying them to a third party (no matter exactly to whom) without Mr Blakeney’s knowledge or permission, and of illicitly entering Mr Blakeney’s accommodation in order to replace the notes. Even if we leave aside any suggestion of crime or treason (and why should we?) my husband in any case stands convicted of flagrantly unprofessional conduct…public knowledge of which would certainly bring about his ruin.’
There was a long silence.
‘And you are prepared to…show him up…on this count? To strip him?’ Ivor asked.
‘I am prepared, with your assistance, to torment him. To let him know that if he wishes this matter to remain secret, he must obey my will and yours, Mr Winstanley, Mr Under-Collator, to obey anybody’s will but his own will be to him a very grievous punishment.’
‘Why have you chosen us as…assistant chastisers?’ said Ivor.
‘And beneficiaries,’ added Len.
‘You will do as well as anyone. Your antics have considerably amused me. More important, I need someone to seek Mr Blakeney out, because without him to bear his part of the testimony, mine is useless. It would also be convenient if he could tell us where the stained notes now are. They would improve our case and add to our bargaining power.’ She fingered and twisted the bright yellow beads on her necklace. ‘They are not, by any chance, in this Chamber? He could have presented them to the College, I suppose?’
Len went over to the Catalogue.
‘No,’ he said. ‘No trace of anything written or presented by Balbo Blakeney.’
‘Try the College Library,’ said Lady Constable.
Ivor rang up the Librarian.
‘There’s a typed copy of his paper on rats,’ he said, ‘the one he wrote when he returned here after the war.’
‘That was the one that ruined his reputation,’ said Elvira Constable, ‘the one which nobody would heed or print, averring it to be lunacy.’
‘I remember,’ said Ivor. ‘He produced it as a kind of memoir, long after he’d changed over to blood and alcohol.’
‘In 1948,’ said Lady Constable: ‘about a year after the events of which I have just been telling you.’
‘In any case, it can’t possibly be what we’re after?’
‘No. We are looking for a fawn folder full of handwritten notes.’
‘Then we’re out of bloody luck,’ said Len.
‘Even if they were here,’ said Lady Constable of Reculver Castle, ‘we should still need Mr Blakeney himself…to confirm that the tea stains were made in his absence, at a time when he had thought his notes were lying undisturbed in their drawer. Yes, gentlemen,’ she pursued: ‘Mr Blakeney must at all cost be found, and it needs someone shrewd and ruthless, someone with a snout well practised in truffling for misery and squalor, to find him. In a word, Mr Under-Collator, it needs you.’
‘Lady, lady,’ said Len, ‘you slay me with your compliments. But I’ve no idea where to start.’
‘He went to Crete,’ said Elvira Constable. ‘But more recent and accurate information is probably to be had at this address in Jermyn Street’ – she passed Len a used envelope on which she had scribbled a number – ‘an agent from which has been here to inquire after Mr Blakeney of my husband. One presumes that the agent must have got on his track by now, and that someone at that address can therefore tell you at least roughly where to look.’
‘Why do these people in Jermyn Street want Balbo?’
‘My husband quoted the agent as saying that “Rats are in fashion again”.’
‘That seems to fit all right,’ Ivor said. ‘They think he can help them in something to do with rats – though he must be a bit rusty on the topic by now, and God knows why they should need such help.’ He giggled foolishly. ‘Perhaps “correctly minded” left-wingers are at last making effective use of that information which the Provost sent them all those years ago. Did the agent seem at all suspicious of Lord Constable?’
‘Quite definitely not. All he wanted was my husband’s assistance in locating Mr Blakeney.’
‘Perhaps it’s him they suspect. Or perhaps, as Ive says, they just want his help in coping with some old rat situation, never mind what’s caused it. But whatever their reason for wanting him,’ said Len, ‘they may also want to keep him to themselves. No way are they going to strain their ghoolies to help me and Ive.’
‘If you present yourselves, and if Mr Winstanley explains in his best manner that Mr Blakeney is wanted for reasons of College business, I imagine they’ll be pleased to give you what help they can.’
‘I don’t,’ said Len. ‘Organizations like this Jermyn Street don’t rate College business as high as old-fashioned sweethearts like you. But’ – he turned to Winstanley – ‘it has to be worth a try. Find Balbo, confirm that he can support Lady C’s story… though this, of course, will be the first he’ll have heard of it, I hope he remembers those tea stains real good…find Balbo, I say, then blackmail His Lordship into keeping his cakehole shut about those manuscripts and doing everything else we need to oblige us. And thereafter heigh diddley-dee for the good life. What say, Ive, man? Surely worth a try?’
‘Yes,’ said Ivor: ‘surely worth a try.’
‘No time to lose,’ said Lady Constable, swirling to her feet like a pre-Raphaelite apparition. ‘I say, get cracking.’
‘We’ll spend the night in London,’ said Ivor, ‘and be at Jermyn Street first thing in the morning.’
‘My God, these dreary Picassos,’ Marigold said. ‘Who would have thought the old man had so much shit in him?’
Marigold and Jacquiz were in the Picasso Room of the Musée Réattu, formerly a Priory of the Knights of Malta. The previous night at Albi had been restless. Marigold’s sleep had been full of shadows and voices, of figures writhing on tombs and hideous cries of pleasure. By two in the morning she had been able to bear it no longer.
‘We must leave now,’ she said to Jacquiz. ‘There is something or somebody that wants us to get on to Arles at once. That is why I am being tormented.’
So they had persuaded a reluctant and incompetent night porter to make out a bill for them, and they had then driven on to Arles. When they arrived, at six in the morning, it had been too early, or so Marigold said, to book into an hotel. She had made Jacquiz park the Rolls by the public gardens and roam the streets with her, up the steps and past the Theatre, down the hill to the Arena, then across to St Trophîme and down again to the Baths of Constantine, where they mouldered by the River Rhône.
‘Here,’ she said; ‘the house that Poppa Comminges came to with his new wife must have been round here.’ She opened a green Michelin and consulted a plan. ‘We know he lived in “a fair tall house” near the Priory,’ she said. ‘The Priory is a hundred yards along on the left.’
So they had walked down the street past the Priory and along the river.
‘There are many fair tall houses,’ Jacquiz said, ‘and even if we knew which belonged to Poppa Comminges, how would that help us?’
‘The family may still live there,’ Marigold had said, and shivered fiercely.
Finally, Jacquiz persuaded her that they should go inside the Priory to the Musée Réattu, which had just opened, there to get warm and inquire of the curator, whether he knew of a fair, tall house in that neighbourhood which had once belonged to a famille Comminges.
But the curator, a woman with a short skirt and spindly legs, had shaken her head stupidly when asked (in rather the same way, though they could not know this, as the clerk at the Jules César had responded to a similar question from Balbo Blakeney). Marigold had wanted to leave at once but Jacquiz had insisted on a quick round of the rooms. Other attendants, when questioned about the Comminges and their dwelling, had responded as sullenly as the curatrix, the attendant in the Picasso Room most sullenly of all.
‘They all know something, I’m sure,’ Marigold had said. ‘My God, these dreary Picassos…’
‘Let’s find a hotel,’ Jacquiz said.
They walk
ed up the hill away from the river, through the Place du Forum, into a narrow street.
‘Straight on for the main road,’ said Marigold, wearily consulting her chart. ‘Then we can turn left for where we put the car – which is almost opposite the Hôtel Jules César. I suppose we’d better stay in it. Though quite what we’re going to do here, I don’t know.’
‘If we can’t find the house,’ said Jacquiz, ‘we must hunt round all those places Louis and Constance went to on their journey to Pau. Aigues Mortes and the rest.’
‘That would be going backwards. We want to move on to wherever the Comminges went to when and if they left Arles. You know, Jacquiz darling, I’m sure those attendants all knew something. I’m sure the name of Comminges meant something to them. But they just weren’t talking. They were trying to pretend, for whatever reason, that somebody or something did not exist. Perhaps a few hundred-franc notes might help.’
‘There’s the Museum of Christian Art,’ said Jacquiz. ‘Would you mind if we just popped in before going to the car? There’s a sarcophagus I want to look at. It has a Christian motif on one side, Pagan the other; not altogether unusual, but a fine example.’
‘Suits me,’ Marigold said. She suddenly, for no reason at all, felt less defeated and depressed.
Inside the Museum, Jacquiz circled his sarcophagus warily. ‘The last supper on this side,’ he said, pointing to the low relief carving, ‘and on the other Hermes guiding the soul of the dead man to the Elysian Fields.’
‘Where do those steps go to?’ Marigold said.
‘Down to the Cryptoporticus. Where a lot of these coffins once were.’
‘There’s someone coming up.’
But Jacquiz was more interested in Hermes. Marigold watched while a boy in a dark jacket, grey shorts and white knee socks emerged at the top of the steps. He stared at Marigold, briefly felt his penis, then turned away towards the exit.
‘Surely,’ she said, ‘French schoolboys stopped wearing that rig years ago.’
‘What can you mean?’
