The Comforters

by Muriel Spark

  ‘Look,’ she said, ‘I don’t inquire into your fantastic affairs. Leave mine alone. And look,’ she said, ‘we have nothing to say to each other this evening. I’m going home. I’ll walk.’

  They were dining in a small restaurant only a few minutes’ walk from Caroline’s flat, and so her ‘I’ll walk’, falling short of its intended direness, tickled Laurence.

  ‘I find it difficult to keep up with you these days.’ And to pacify her he added, ‘Why do you say that the “book” is nearing the end?’

  She was reluctant to answer, but his manner obliged her.

  ‘Because of incidents which have been happening within our orbit of consciousness, and their sequence. Especially this news about your grandmother’s friend.’

  ‘Which friend?’ said Laurence.

  ‘Haven—’t you heard about it? Helena rang me this morning, very excited, and from what I can gather it’s most remarkable —’

  ‘Which friend?’

  ‘One of those concerning whom you entertain your daft suspicions. Andrew Hogarth. Apparently he was paralysed, and his father took him off to some little shrine of Our Lady in the French Alps. Well, he was brought back yesterday and he’s actually started to move his paralysed limb. Helena says it’s a miracle. I don’t know about that but it seems the sort of incident which winds up a plot and brings a book to a close. I shan’t be sorry.’

  ‘But they haven’t been abroad since January. They hadn’t planned to leave until the middle of March, at least so I understood. I have reason to believe the Hogarths are diamond smugglers, don’t you understand?’

  ‘Ask your mother,’ Caroline said. ‘She knows all about it. She’s brimming full of it.’

  ‘I don’t see,—’ said Laurence, ‘much point, now, in going to Lausanne in March.’

  ‘Absolutely perfect … A pass back there — a foul tackle and the whistle … the sun has come out, everything looks absolutely perfect with the red coats of the band … that feeling of— of tenseness … and now again for the second half … the first dramatic … absolutely perfect … it’s a corner, a goal to Manchester City … a beautiful, absolutely …’

  Louisa Jepp sat beside the wireless cuddled in the entranced caress of Laurence’s voice.

  Much later in the day, after he had braked up loudly outside the cottage in his new car, and had settled into a chair by the stove with a newly opened bottle of beer, he said, ‘Is it true about young Hogarth?’

  ‘He is receiving physiotherapeutic treatment,’ she said, with correctness, for she used and pronounced her words, however unlikely, accurately, or not at all.

  ‘And he has actually started to use his legs?’

  ‘Yes. He totters a little. It’s too soon to say “he walks”.’

  ‘He was absolutely paralysed before.’

  ‘My, yes. The trips abroad did him good. I always knew they would.’

  ‘I suppose,’ said Laurence, ‘that the Hogarths have cancelled their holiday in Lausanne?’

  ‘Oh yes. There’s no need for them to go wandering in March. It’s very chilly. Much better at home. Andrew is getting his treatment.’

  ‘I suppose,’ said Laurence, ‘they will be off again in the early summer?’

  ‘Not abroad,’ said the old lady. ‘Somerset or Cornwall I should say, if the boy’s fit enough.’

  ‘I suppose that means,’ said Laurence, ‘that your game is up, Grandmother?’

  ‘Why, dear,’ she said, ‘I was thinking, as I listened to you on the wireless today, how much I wished for your sake, dear, that you could have caught us red-handed. It must be a disappointment, love. But never mind, we all have our frustrations and you were lovely on the wireless, you were absolutely perfect.’

  ‘I had every clue, Grandmother. I only needed the time. If I hadn’t had the smash I’d have got you last autumn, Grandmother.’

  ‘There, never mind.’

  ‘But you’re in danger. An acquaintance of ours is on your trail. I heard by chance through Caroline. His name’s Willi Stock, a phoney Baron —’

  ‘No, he is quite authentic a Baron.’

  ‘You know Baron Stock, then?’

  ‘I have met the Baron,’ she said.

  ‘Well, do you know,’ he said, ‘Caroline told me last November, just before the smash, that the Baron had been seeing you last year. He described a hat you wore. Caroline recognized it, and inferred —’

  ‘That was very stupid of the Baron, but typical, though he is nice —’

  ‘But I didn’t,’ said Laurence, ‘place much faith in what Caroline said. I thought she was sort of dreaming.’

  ‘Why, you can’t be clever at everything.’

  ‘It was a good clue,’ said Laurence. ‘I ought to have followed it up. I might have got you right away. Have you any fears of the Baron? —Because if so —’

  ‘No, no. He’s my London party. Or was.’

  ‘The Baron has been in with you! I thought there were only the four of you.’

  ‘There are only four of us. Baron Stock was only our London agent.’

  ‘You’ve packed up the game, then?’

  ‘Now, which game?’ she said, puckering a smile as if to encourage him to recite a lesson.

  ‘Smuggling diamonds through the customs,’ he said, ‘concealed in plaster figures.’

  ‘And rosary beads at times,’ said Louisa. Her whole body seemed to perk with delight, and to further signify her sense of occasion she passed Laurence a glass and a bottle of stout to open for her. She watched him pour the brown liquid and she watched the high self-controlled froth as one who watches a scene to be preserved in memory.

  ‘You took a risk, Grandmother.’

  ‘There was very small risk,’ she said. ‘What there was, the Hogarths took, as I see it.’

  She drew up to the stove and sipped warmly.

  ‘I had many a smile,’ she said, ‘considering how they came through with the merchandise.’

  ‘Several times a year,’ said Laurence, ‘at a guess.’

  ‘It has varied,’ she said, ‘over four years and eight months. Some trips were better than others. It depended so much on our continental parties. It was difficult for that end to get the right moulds for the statues. The beads were easier. But Andrew preferred the statues.’

  ‘I should have thought the customs would have got suspicious with all that coming and going. Very risky,’ Laurence said.

  ‘Everything’s risky,’ she said. ‘Many a laugh I had to myself when Mervyn told me about the customs men passing remarks. Mervyn didn’t laugh, he didn’t like that part of it. You see they went as pilgrims looking for a cure, Andrew in his invalid chair, you can picture him, hugging his statues with a long churchy face. So as to deceive the customs, don’t you see. Each time they went to some shrine of the Virgin Mary and our contact would meet them in the town, who was a gentlemanly party I believe. But I made Mervyn and Andrew visit the shrines properly, in case they were watched. You can’t be too careful with the continental police, they are very deceitful and low.’

  ‘Are the Hogarths Catholics?’

  ‘Oh, no. Not religious at all. That was the pose, you see. Many an entertainment I had, love.’

  ‘Mother has heard about Andrew Hogarth’s recovery,—’ Laurence said.

  ‘Yes, I wrote and told her. I thought it would be of interest to her that the young man, being a neighbour of mine, had got a cure at a Roman Catholic shrine. She likes those stories.’

  ‘Do you think it was a miracle, then?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said, ‘I do believe in lucky places if your luck is in. Indeed Andrew was unlucky before. He got a cold in the bladder at Lourdes two years back, but Myans has brought him luck, where there’s a black Madonna, I believe. And indeed I once knew a gentleman very up in history and fond of the olden days who had a stammer which he lost in the Tower of London.’

  ‘That sounds psychological,’ said Laurence.

  ‘Oh, it’s all what I call l
uck,’ Louisa said.

  ‘You don’t think Andrew’s case is clearly a miracle, then?’

  ‘Oh, quite clear a miracle, as I see him now. He can move his legs from the knees, sitting in his chair. He couldn’t do that before.’

  ‘What do the doctors say?’

  ‘They say he has to have physiotherapy. He’s improving already.’

  ‘How do they explain it?’

  ‘They say it’s a marvel but they don—’t make mention of miracles. They brought a great crowd of students to look at Andrew up at the hospital. Andrew put an end to it, though, by swearing and spitting. He has such a temper. —’

  ‘Good for him!’ Laurence said. ‘I suppose he’s thrilled to be able to move his legs?—’

  ‘I think so. But he has a temper,’ she said, and passing a box of cigarettes, ‘Have a Bulgarian. —’

  Laurence smiled, comparing this account of Andrew with the picture in his mother’s imagination of the young man miraculously cured. In Helena’s eyes, the event entirely justified the Hogarths’ shady activities. It justified her mother. She was content to remain vague about Louisa’s late intrigues, and convinced that Ernest, through his strong hand with Mervyn Hogarth last year in the course of a luncheon, had been successful in ending the troubles, whatever they were.

  When she told Laurence of Andrew’s cure at the Alpine shrine, he remarked, ‘They’re still at the game, then.’

  ‘Nonsense,—’ Helena replied. ‘At the very worst, the Hogarths might have been winding up their business, whatever it was. I expect they will both become Catholics. The young man will, surely.’

  ‘Helena wants to make a Church thing of it,’ Louisa told Laurence. ‘But she won’t be able to. I’m sorry for her sake, but the Hogarths aren’t interested at all in churches.—’

  ‘Like me,’ said Laurence.

  ‘No, not at all. They aren’t interested in quite a different way from you.’

  The old woman had sipped from her glass only at long intervals. Even so, Laurence was fascinated to notice how little she had drunk, while giving the companionable appearance of keeping pace with him.

  ‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘you made a packet between you.

  ‘Yes. I meant to retire this year in any case.

  Helena had developed a firm new theory about her mother’s motives. ‘I am sure she involved herself in all that unpleasantness, whatever it was, simply to help the young man. My mother is extremely secretive. She is quite capable of planning to send him to the holy shrines, using the financial reward as a bribery.’

  Laurence reported this to his grandmother. She wrinkled her nose and sipped from her glass. ‘Of course I knew the trips would be good for Andrew. Psychologically. It gave him a job to do and a change now and then. The business side was good for me too. Psychologically. I shall miss it, dear, it was sport. Helena is sentimental, my!’

  ‘What was Mr Webster’s role, Grandmother?’

  ‘Oh, the good fellow baked the bread, and he sometimes went to London for me.’

  ‘Now tell me where the bread comes in,’ said Laurence.

  ‘You found diamonds in the bread, and you wrote to tell Caroline of it. That caused a lot of trouble.’ — Laurence, feeling sleepy from his day’s work, the warmth and the beer, was not quite sure whether he heard or imagined these words.

  ‘What did you say, Grandmother?’

  The glass was at her lips. ‘Nothing, dear,’ she said when she had sipped.

  ‘Tell me about the bread. Who transferred the diamonds to the bread? You know I saw them once.

  ‘Mr Webster,’ she said. ‘Because I desired to have my merchandise quickly, as soon as the Hogarths brought it in. For the sake of the London end. Sometimes, at first, there was a little delay owing to Andrew being poorly after the journey and leading Mervyn a dance. So we arranged that Mervyn should break up his saints and rosaries and extract the stones as soon as he returned from the trips, which was always in the morning. Mervyn would telephone Mr Webster, because they use telephones, I stick to my pigeons. And then Mr Webster called at the Hogarths to deliver the bread.’

  ‘Ostensibly,’ said Laurence.

  Louisa closed her eyes. ‘He called to deliver the bread as it might seem. You can’t be too careful. And he took the money for it.’

  ‘Along with the diamonds.’

  ‘Yes, you are clever, dear. Mr Webster has been invaluable. He would bring the merchandise to me on the following morning in my bread. I didn’t think it would be nice to let him slip the little goods into my hand as if there were some mystery or anything shady going on.’

  ‘Wonderfully ingenious—” Laurence said.

  ‘It was sport,—’ said Louisa.

  ‘But totally unnecessary, the bread part of it,’ Laurence said.

  ‘No, that was necessary. I never liked to have the diamonds carried loose.’

  ‘I can guess why,’ Laurence put in suddenly. ‘The police.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I don’t trust the police. Our local constable is a nice fellow, but the police all stick together if it comes to the bit, the world over.’

  Laurence laughed. Louisa’s dislike of the police was a family joke. ‘It’s the gipsy in her,’ Helena would explain.

  ‘I should have thought,’ Laurence said, ‘that if you got the goods safely into the country, there would be no need for elaborate precautions.’

  ‘You never can tell. It was sport,’ Louisa said.

  After a while Laurence said, ‘I believe Mrs Hogg gave you some trouble.’

  ‘None at all,’ she said, ‘nor will she.’

  ‘You think she’s likely to turn up again? Has she any evidence against you, Grandmother?’

  ‘I don’t know about that. But she won’t trouble me, that I know. She might try, but I shan’t be troubled.’ She added, ‘There are things about Mrs Hogg which you don’t know.’

  At a later time when Laurence learned of the relationship between Mrs Hogg and the Hogarths, he recalled this remark of his grandmother’s, and thought that was what she must have meant.

  ‘And at a side altar, I do assure you, Caroline,’ said the Baron, ‘robed in full liturgical vestments, was Mervyn Hogg alias Hogarth serving cocktails.’ Thus he ended his description of the Black Mass he had recently attended at Notting Hill Gate.

  ‘It sounds puerile,’ Caroline said, lapsing unawares into that Catholic habit of belittling what was secretly feared.

  ‘You as a Catholic,’ he said, ‘must think it evil. I myself do not judge good and evil. I judge by interesting or otherwise.’

  ‘It sounds otherwise to me,’ said Caroline.

  ‘In fact you are right. This was a poor effort from the sinister point of view. For a really effective Black Mass you need a renegade priest.

  They are rare in these days, when the Faith is so thin. But Hogg is the one who interests me. He assumes the name of Hogg on the dark side of his life and Hogarth by daylight so to speak. I am preparing a monograph on the psychology of diabolism and black magic.

  ‘And my informants tell me that Hogarth has recently un-bewitched his son, a man in his early twenties who since infancy has suffered from paralysis in the lower part of his body due to a spell. This proves that Hogarth’s magical powers are not exclusively bent towards evil, it proves —’ ‘Tell me,’ said Caroline, ‘have you ever spoken to Mervyn Hogarth?’

  ‘Not in his natural flesh. But I shall shortly. A private meeting is to be arranged. Unofficially, I believe, he has been into the bookshop, transformed into a woman.

  ‘I’m sure, Willi,’ said Caroline, ‘that you are suffering from the emotional effects of Eleanor’s leaving you. I am sure, Willi, that you should see a psychiatrist.’

  ‘If what you say were true,’ he said, ‘it would be horribly tactless of you to say it. As it is I make allowances for your own disorder.’

  ‘Is the world a lunatic asylum then? Are we all courteous maniacs discreetly making allowances for eve
ryone else’s derangement?’

  ‘Largely,’ said the Baron.

  ‘I resist the proposition,’ Caroline said.

  ‘That is an intolerant attitude.’

  ‘It’s the only alternative to demonstrating the proposition,’ Caroline said.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said the Baron, ‘really why I continue to open my mind to you.’

  At various times the Baron had described to Caroline the stages by which he had reached the conclusion that Mervyn Hogarth was a diabolist and magician. The first hint had come to him from Eleanor. ‘She told me he had previously been through a form of marriage with a witch. Eleanor had seen the witch, a repulsive woman. In fact, it was when she began to frequent the house in Ladle Sands that Eleanor left Hogarth.’

  ‘I shouldn’t take much account of what Eleanor says. She dramatizes a lot,’ said Caroline, and barely refrained from adding the information that Eleanor, in her college days, had been wont to send love-letters to herself. Caroline only refrained because she was not too sure if this were true.

  ‘My subsequent experience has borne out her allegations. My subsequent investigations have proved that Hogarth is the foremost diabolist in the kingdom. One must speak as one experiences and as one finds. You, Caroline, are no exception. Your peculiar experiences are less explicable than mine: I have the evidence. The broken plaster images: a well-known diabolic practice: the black dog. If you would only entertain the subject a little more you would see that I am right.’

  So he attempted to extort sympathy from Caroline. He appeared to her more and more in the nature of a demanding creditor. ‘The result,’ she told herself, ‘of going to him with my troubles last autumn. He acted the old friend and now he wants me to do the same, which is impossible.—’

  And she told him, ‘You are asking me to entertain impossible beliefs: what you claim may be true or not; I have doubts, I can’t give assent to them. For my own experiences, however, I don’t demand anyone’s belief. You may call them delusions for all I care. I have merely registered my findings.’

  Caroline had been reflecting recently on the case of Laurence and his fantastic belief that his grandmother had for years been the leader of a gang of diamond-smugglers. She had considered, also, the case of the Baron and his fantastic belief in the magical powers of Mervyn Hogarth. The Baron was beginning to show a sickly resemblance to Eleanor. She thought of Eleanor with her habit of giving spontaneous utterance to stray and irresponsible accusations. Caroline found the true facts everywhere beclouded. She was aware that the book in which she was involved was still in progress. Now, when she speculated on the story, she did so privately, noting the facts as they accumulated. By now, she possessed a large number of notes, transcribed from the voices, and these she studied carefully. Her sense of being written into the novel was painful. Of her constant influence on its course she remained unaware and now she was impatient for the story to come to an end, knowing that the narrative could never become coherent to her until she was at last outside it, and at the same time consummately inside it.