Morning Star (First Born of Egypt)

  Table of Contents

  Copyright & Information

  About the Author

  List of Characters in order of appearance

  Part One

  Part Two

  Part Three

  First Born of Egypt Series

  Novels

  Stories/Collections

  Synopses of Simon Raven Titles

  Copyright & Information

  Morning Star

  First published in 1984

  © Estate of Simon Raven; House of Stratus 1984-2011

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  The right of Simon Raven to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

  This edition published in 2011 by House of Stratus, an imprint of

  Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,

  Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.

  Typeset by House of Stratus.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.

  EAN ISBN Edition

  184232201X 9781842322017 Print

  0755129830 9780755129836 Kindle

  0755129997 9780755129997 Epub

  This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author's imagination.

  Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.

  www.houseofstratus.com

  About the Author

  Born in 1927 into a middle class household, Simon Raven became both an outrageous figure and an acclaimed writer and novelist. His father inherited a hosiery business and did not have to work, his mother was an internationally successful athlete. The young Simon, however, viewed the household as 'respectable, prying, puritanical, penny-pinching, and joyless'.

  Initial education was through attending Cordwalles Preparatory School, near Camberley, Surrey, where he later claimed to have been 'deftly and very agreeably' seduced by the games master. From there he went on to Charterhouse, but was eventually expelled in 1945 for serial homosexuality. Nonetheless, he still managed to wangle his way into King's College, Cambridge, to read classics, after a two year gap to complete his national service in the Parachute Regiment.

  Raven had loved classics from an early age and read daily in the original, often translating from Latin to Greek to English, or any combination thereof.

  At Cambridge, he probably felt completely at home for the first time in his life. In his own words, 'nobody minded what you did in bed, or what you said about God'. This was civilised to his mind and he was also later to write, in a somewhat fatalistic manner: 'we aren't here for long, and when we do go, that's that. Finish. So, for God's sake, enjoy yourself now - and sod anyone who tries to stop you.' Despite revelling in Cambridge life, or perhaps because of it, Raven fell heavily into debt for the first time whilst there and also faced his first real responsibility. Susan Kilner, a fellow undergraduate was expecting his child and in 1951 they married. He took little interest in the marriage, however, and they were divorced some six years later.

  He also failed to submit a thesis needed to support an offered fellowship, so fled both Cambridge and his marriage for the army, where he was commissioned into the King's Own Shropshire Light Infantry. After service in Germany and Kenya, during which time he set up a brothel for his men to use, he was posted to regimental headquarters in Shropshire. It was there that debt forced a change in direction after he lost considerable sums at the local racetrack.

  Resigning his commission so as to avoid being court-martialled, he turned to writing having won over a publisher who agreed to pay him weekly in cash, and also pick up bills for sustenance and drink. Moving to Deal in Kent he embarked upon producing a prodigious array of works which over the years included novels, essays, reviews; film scripts, radio and television plays and the scripts for television series, notably The Pallisers and Edward and Mrs Simpson. He lived in modest surroundings within rented accommodation and confined many of his excesses to London visits where his earning were dissipated quickly on food, drink and gambling – not forgetting sex which continued to feature as a major indulgence. He once wrote that the major advantage of belonging to the Reform Club in London was the presence opposite of a first class massage parlour.

  In all, Simon Raven produced over twenty five novels and hundreds of other pieces, his finest achievements being reckoned to be a ten volume saga of English upper-class life, entitled Alms for Oblivion, from 1959-76 and the First Born of Egypt Series from 1984-92.

  He was a conundrum; being both sophisticated and reckless; talented in the extreme yet regarding himself as not being particularly creative; but not applying this modesty (if that's what it was) to his general behaviour, which was sometimes immodest beyond all reasonable bounds. He was exceedingly generous towards his friends; yet didn't think twice about the position of creditors when getting into debt; was jovial, loyal and good company, but was unable to sustain a family life. He would drink like an advanced alcoholic in the evenings, but was ready to resume work promptly the following morning. He was sexually indiscriminate, but generally preferred the company of men. As a youth he possessed good looks, but a general abuse of his body in adulthood soon saw that wain.

  Simon Raven died in 2001, his legacy being his writing which during his lifetime received high praise from critics and readers alike. He was a 'one-off', whose works will continue to delight readers for generations to come.

  List of Characters in order of appearance

  Jean-Marie Guiscard, an antiquarian

  Jo-Jo (Josephine) Guiscard, his wife: née Pelham

  Major Fielding Gray, a novelist

  Colonel Ivan Blessington, a stockbroker

  Betty Blessington, his wife

  Jakki Blessington; Caroline Blessington - their daughters

  Donald Salinger, a retired man of affairs

  Max de Freville, a professional gambler and property dealer

  Gregory Stern, a publisher

  Isobel Stern, his wife: née Turbot

  Marius Stern, their son

  Rosie Stern, their daughter

  Peter Morrison, MP, ’Squire of Luffham by Whereham

  Ptolemaeos Tunne, an amateur scholar; uncle, through his dead sister, to Jo-Jo Guiscard

  Sir Thomas Llewyllyn, Kt, D. Lit. & Litt. D., Provost of Lancaster College, Cambridge, father of Lady (Baby) Canteloupe, brother-in-law of Isobel Stern being married to her sister Patricia

  Len, Private Secretary to Provost Llewyllyn

  Captain the Most Honourable Marquess Canteloupe of the Aestuary of the Severn

  Mungo ‘Avallon’, Bishop of Glastonbury

  The Marchioness Canteloupe (Baby): née Llewyllyn; niece to Isobel Stern, and cousin to Rosie and Marius

  Tullius Fielding d’Azincourt Llewyllyn Gregory Jean-Josephine Maximin Sarum Detterling, called by courtesy Baron Sarum of Old Sarum, son and heir to Lord and Lady Canteloupe

  Daisy, Lord Sarum’s nurse

  Ivan (‘Greco’) Barraclough, an anthropologist, Fellow of Lancaster College

  Nicos Pandouros, indentured page to Barraclough after the Maniot custom; undergraduate of Lancaster College

  Jeremy Morrison, an undergraduate of Lancaster College; younger son of Peter

  Carmilla Salinger, an undergraduate of Lancaster College; Donald’s adopted daughter

  Theodosia S
alinger (Thea), an undergraduate of Lancaster College; Carmilla’s twin and Donald’s adopted daughter

  ‘Mrs’ Maisie Malcolm, Proprietress (with Fielding Gray) of Buttock’s Hotel

  Teresa (Tessa) Malcolm, Maisie’s ‘niece’

  The ‘Chamberlain’, Peter’s manservant at Luffham; formerly manservant to Canteloupe

  Nicholas (Nickie) Morrison, Peter’s elder son; in hospital with incurable brain damage

  Wilfred, the Porter of the Night Gate

  Wilfred’s Assistant, the Fifth Porter of Lancaster College

  Vanessa Salinger, Donald’s (now dead) wife: née Drew

  Titus Spencer-Drew, Vanessa’s cousin

  A Fireman

  An Inspector of Police

  Walter (‘Wally’ or ‘Bunter’) St George, an assistant master at Oudenarde House

  ‘Glinter’ Parkes, Headmaster of Oudenardu House

  ‘Artemis’; ‘Pontos’; Shamshuddin - Conspirators

  An Official with fake prole accent

  Mrs Gurt and Mrs Statch, Servants to Ptolemaeos Tunne

  Part One

  The Order of Baptism

  On a morning early in April, in the eighth year of the eighth decade of the Twentieth Century, a number of people set out to attend the christening of the infant son of the Most Honourable Marquess and Marchioness Canteloupe of the Aestuary of the Severn. The service, which would be conducted by the Lord Bishop of Glastonbury, was to take place in the chapel of Lancaster College, Cambridge, of which venerable house Lady Canteloupe’s father, Sir Thomas Llewyllyn, Doctor of Letters (et Cantab et Oxon), was Provost.

  Apart from this connection and the Perpendicular distinction of the chapel, there was little to recommend the venue. Since Lord and Lady Canteloupe lived on the march of Wiltshire and Somerset, a land furnished with beautiful churches in many of which Mungo Avallon (as the Bishop of Glastonbury styled himself) could have officiated by right instead of by the reluctant indulgence of the Dean of Lancaster, a West Country setting would have been a great deal more appropriate. Or again, since the principal guests and the godparents lived for the most part in London, a metropolitan fane would have been at least convenient. Or yet again, there were those who urged that the first son of the Lord Canteloupe of the Aestuary of the Severn should be baptised in the Fishermen’s Chapel at Severn-Manche, as had been the custom for the last hundred and fifty years. To the latter contention Lord Canteloupe had replied that, since he had inherited the Marquisate through a very tenuous connection on the distaff side, the direct line was broken and what amounted to a parvenu dynasty had sidled into the title: it would therefore be presumptuous in him, who had been born Detterling, to ape the procedures peculiar to the Sarums (the family name of the previous incumbents); and in any case, His Lordship had added, he proposed to leave the choice of date and place of this affair entirely to his wife, who had had a great deal more to do with producing the infant than he had.

  Whereupon and without further ado Baby Canteloupe had declared for Lancaster Chapel, privately believing that this would please her old father the Provost (infidel though he was) and publicly remarking that it would cause gratifying annoyance to the left-wing dons who abounded in the college. That it would also cause annoyance to almost everyone who must attend the christening did not occur to her; nor would she have been one whit deterred if it had.

  The two people who had farthest to come to the christening were Monsieur and Madame Jean-Marie Guiscard – all the way from Dieppe, where Jean-Marie, a young antiquarian of promise, was writing a book about a curious episode in the history of the nearby Castle of Arques-la-Bataille. Madame Guiscard, who was English, having been born Jo-Jo Pelham, was very pregnant but very determined to make the expedition to Cambridge.

  ‘Baby Canteloupe was the love of my life,’ she had said, soon after the invitation arrived and Jean-Marie began protesting that she was in no state to travel. ‘She still is, in a way.’ Jean-Marie nodded, accepting the assertion with dignified good nature. ‘The love of my life,’ repeated Jo-Jo, ‘and so I wouldn’t miss being there for…for all the Queen’s Yellow.’

  ‘The Queen’s Yellow?’

  ‘The Queen’s Gold in the Bank of England.’

  ‘But surely, it is no longer your Queen who really–’

  ‘No, darling heart, of course it isn’t. Just an expression.’

  ‘Your English expressions. I feel that I shall never learn them until the day I die.’

  ‘You’re doing very well,’ said Jo-Jo, patting him on the tiny tonsure which had begun to appear at the root of his parting, ‘and you will get a lot of useful practice at the christening.’

  ‘But Jo-Jo, oh my darling, I do not wish you to travel across the sea just when–’

  ‘–Look,’ said Jo-Jo, banging on her belly with both fists, ‘our boy is settled in there by now. It was only at the very beginning that he might have worked loose, before he was big and strong enough to get a grip. He’s there now till it’s time for me to throw him.’

  ‘Throw?’

  ‘Drop.’

  ‘Drop?’

  ‘Foal, for Christ’s sake. And another thing,’ she went on, stroking her stomach as if to console its inmate for the drubbing she had just administered, ‘when he is christened, Baby Canteloupe will be there, wherever “there” may be, even if she’s as big as a barge with her next brat…though somehow,’ she added warily, ‘I think that one will be her lot.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Jean-Marie speculatively, ‘and why do you think that?’

  ‘Let’s say…she’ll find more interesting things to do than breed.’

  ‘And shall you too…find more interesting things to do than breed?’

  ‘That very much depends,’ said Jo-Jo, ‘on how it all turns out the first time. Now, back to Baby Canteloupe. She says her father has invited us both to spend the night after the christening in the Provost’s Lodging, along with her and Canty and some of the other guests. It’s so long since I spent a night under the same roof as Baby that I ache with wanting it.’

  ‘Darling Jo-Jo,’ said Jean-Marie. ‘Heart of my heart of my heart–’

  ‘–Funny. Uncle Ptolemaeos used to call me that when I lived in his house in the Fens. He’ll be there too. Another reason for going.’

  ‘I was only going to say, my darling, that if you really long to go so much–’

  ‘–Oh, I do–’

  ‘–Then of course we shall go. And indeed I too long to see all your English friends again–’

  ‘–Our friends, my Jean-Marie - Jean–’

  ‘–As I have not seen them,’ said Jean-Marie, blinking with pleasure, ‘since our wedding. All that worries me, despite this so courteous invitation of the Provost, is that you may become tired with the two-way journey.’

  ‘Never. On the way there, I shall be thinking of all those I shall see that I love.’

  ‘And on the way back?’

  Jo-Jo looked down from the Castle Cliff, past the sharp grey slate wedge on the roof of St Remy, past the complacent cupola, and on to the eclectic tower of St Jacques. I cannot tell him now, she thought: that must keep. I cannot tell him yet that, though I am very fond of Dieppe, I could no more settle here, or anywhere else in France, than I could settle in Tibet. Before I tell him that, I must let him finish his book. After all, that should not take long now. Then will be the time to say, ‘Jean-Marie, I love you and I love your country, but my son must be born and reared in England.’ It will be hard, saying this to him, but when the time comes I shall find the strength to say it.

  For the time being she merely said:

  ‘I shall always enjoy coming back to Dieppe.’

  ‘But let us drive to Boulogne and take the Hovercraft or the Ferry. That way we shall have less time on the sea.’

  ‘Just as you like,’ said Jo-Jo, ‘but I am a good sailor, and so’ – she touched her belly – ‘is he.’

  Fielding Gray drove down from London. These days he was beginning to find i
t rather a strain driving with his one eye, but anything was preferable to travelling by British Rail, the First Class compartments of which were even filthier than the Second. This, he presumed, was due to class hatred on the part of the rebarbative females employed to do the cleaning, one of whom he had once observed while she was deliberately hawking on to the antimacassars. She had a gentle, dreamy look on her face, he remembered, as if she had been taking part in one of the more sentimental rites of the Church, such as the carol service on the Vigil of Christmas or this christening to which he was going, much against his will, today.

  Fielding Gray disliked, in ascending order, funerals, memorial services, weddings and christenings; but the obligation to attend this one was quite ungainsayable. He had, for a start, known Baby Canteloupe virtually since the day she was conceived, having been a close friend of her father, Tom (now Sir Thomas) Llewyllyn, in the days of their spunky youth, and for a brief period the lover (though not until some time after Baby was born) of her unfortunate mother, who subsequently went off her head and was now permanently confined. Even if all this hadn’t been enough to compel Fielding’s attendance, there was also his multiple connection with Lord Canteloupe, with whom he shared an Old School and an Old Regiment. After both Canteloupe (Detterling) and Fielding had left the Army, the former set up as a partner in an adventurous publishing company (Stern & Detterling) which had adopted Fielding out of faith, hope and charity as a would-be novelist and still published him, nearly twenty years later, as an established and passably profitable one…a long, eventful and affectionate association which further dictated his presence at this afternoon’s ceremony.