The Roses of Picardie Read online

  Copyright & Information

  The Roses of Picardie

  First published in 1979

  © Estate of Simon Raven; House of Stratus 1979-2011

  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

  1842322052 9781842322055 Print

  0755129857 9780755129850 Kindle

  0755130014 9780755130016 Epub

  0755153960 9780755153961 Epdf

  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 here that debt once again 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.

  Oh, no man knows

  Through what wild centuries

  Roves back the rose.

  Walter de la Mare: All That’s Past

  PART ONE

  Temporal Princes

  Mitte sectari, rosa quo locorum

  sera moretur

  Horace: Odes; 1 38

  ‘Le cheval pour m’sieur,’ said the croupier at the bottom of the table, assembling a pile of seventeen jetons of the lowest denomination (five francs) which was current in the Casino at Aix-en-Provence.

  The man towards whom the croupier now pushed the pile with his rake was shabby, middle-aged, pustular and furtive. And yet he was not wholly wanting either in style or in confidence. He took a jeton from the top of the pile and tossed it back to the croupier with the air of one who knew the form – who knew, that is to say, that by tipping on a mere 17 to one win (when it was the custom to tip only after a win en plain) he was doing something rather unusual and was thereby staking a claim to the croupier’s future service and regard. Both his manner and his action implied that he expected to become a person of consequence at the table.

  The croupier, apparently unimpressed by his seedy client’s generosity, called his thanks with perfunctory politeness, tilted his head backwards, audibly hissed the word fâcheur and turned away to place a bet for another and more appetizing player. At this the fâcheur, who had shown, only a moment before, a fair degree of dignity and calm in his fashion of bestowing a tip, was seized by panic. His hand twitched and scrabbled along the croupier’s arm; as soon as it had won the man’s attention, it soared upward and then stabbed down repeatedly with its forefinger at the roulard of five-franc counters, sixteen in number after the tip, which sat on the green cloth where the croupier’s rake had left them.

  ‘Le premier,’ mouthed the fâcheur violently: ‘number one; the lot.’

  ‘Premier,’ repeated the croupier with no enthusiasm. He counted out the sixteen five-franc pieces. ‘Quatre-vingt francs,’ he said, and hurled them through the air in a cluster to his colleague at the top end of the table. ‘Quatre-vingt francs,’ intoned the colleague, coaxing the jetons into a roulard again and slotting the roulard into a runnel. ‘Premier,’ prompted the croupier at the far end. ‘Premier,’ confirmed h
is colleague by the wheel, making up the sum of eighty francs with three pieces, worth respectively fifty francs, twenty and ten, and slapping these down in the square marked ‘1’ with an air of consigning them to Beelzebub. ‘C’est fait.’

  This performance had a soothing effect on the fâcheur, who was now smiling and rolling an unspeakable cigarette with stubby yellow fingers. He no longer concerned himself with what was passing before him; he merely sat and smoked his filthy cigarette and gazed at the clouds of smoke which rolled from his mouth over the table. He ignored alike the activities of the other players (who were now piling on their final bets for the next coup), the exhortations of the croupiers, the quickened wheel and the white ball…which circled the upper rim of the casing, hesitated, hovered, and then idly descended towards the revolving disk of numbers, hovered again, and sidled into a slot with a light clunk.

  ‘Premier,’ called the croupier at the top end of the table: ‘rouge, impair, manque.’

  The head of his rake rapped on the fâcheur’s eighty-franc stake, lifted slightly, then rapped again in benison.

  ‘Plein,’ the croupier announced, urbi et orbi.

  The fâcheur came out of his daze and nodded complacently, accepting his good fortune as his right. This time, when his winnings were pushed to him, he did not tip, though he had won a reckonable sum, nor did he make fresh bets, with or without panic, with or without the croupiers’ assistance. He simply rose from his chair, slipped the plaques he had received into the side pockets of his sagging and frowsy tweed jacket, nodded curtly at, rather than to, the croupier nearest him, and walked away towards a large alcove at the far end of the room.

  ‘Banco,’ he called as he approached the alcove.

  ‘Banco is two thousand francs,’ said the chef at the Table de Chemin-de-Fer. ‘M’sieur can show that amount?’

  The fâcheur showed some of his plaques.

  ‘Very well. Banco from the floor.’

  The holder of the bank, a stout woman with fierce orange hair and thick orange lips, examined the fâcheur with a distaste with changed quickly into visible foreboding, made as if to pass the shoe, stiffened and shrugged, then primly dealt cards from the shoe, two for herself, two for her opponent. A croupier passed his pair to the fâcheur on a plywood spade. The fâcheur looked at his cards and laughed and went on laughing.

  ‘M’sieur, will you draw or stand?’

  ‘I’ll draw. But she may as well pay me now. She can’t win.’

  ‘Madame would prefer, I think, to find that out in the normal manner. Madame?’

  The orange lady turned over her cards. A nine and an eight; a count of seven; she must stand on that.

  ‘And now a card for m’sieur.’

  The orange lady snapped a card from the shoe and placed it face upward on the table: the nine of hearts. The fâcheur went on laughing.

  ‘I told you she couldn’t win.’

  He showed the two cards which he already held: the Queen and Knave of diamonds, which together equalled baccarat but with the third card made a winning nine.

  ‘The twins,’ said the fâcheur, as a croupier sorted the counters and plaques on the table: ‘the twins in diamonds. As soon as they showed me that they were here, I knew I couldn’t lose.’

  The croupier who was sorting the lost stakes placed them to one side, reached into a bureau behind him, and passed a 2000-franc plaque (white, stripped with cerise and purple) up to the chef. The chef beckoned to the fâcheur and handed him the plaque as he drew near.

  ‘Move on,’ whispered the chef. ‘I won’t have that talk here.’ He made a quick gesture with the first and fourth fingers of his right hand, turning them towards the ground.

  ‘I’ve a perfect right –’

  ‘– I know, I know. Just move on. There’s a greasy fat Greek with a bald head running a baccarat bank in the private room. Go and see what you and your twins can do to him.’

  ‘Good advice, and thank you for the tip. They may not stay long, my twins, and a baccarat bank will offer maximum returns for as long as they do. I must be careful not to be too greedy though.’

  ‘Just move along,’ said the chef.

  The fâcheur moved along: out of the alcove, back across the floor of the main salon, past a fountain of four baby dolphins, through funereal curtains of purple velvet (on the other side of which a footman attempted to bar his passage but bowed himself off when the fâcheur slipped him a fifty-franc disk), and over an ankle-deep carpet to the Table de Banque, where the greasy bald Greek presided over eighteen persons who were avid to win his money, of which (according to a prominent notice) he was prepared to risk as much as 20,000 francs per person per coup.

  The fâcheur had not got 20,000 francs: he had the 2000 francs which he had won at the chemmy table plus the 2800 he had won at the roulette table less the fifty he had given the footman: 4750. But now one came running to him to say that his eighty-franc bet on the premier, which he had left there after his first win, had won once more. The fâcheur was rapidly becoming a man of note in the Casino and was, after his latest good news, worth 7550 francs, less 550 which he grandly bestowed on the messenger from the roulette table: 7000 francs.

  ‘Stay with me, my friends,’ said the fâcheur out loud. ‘I shall not be greedy. See, I am betting only 5000 of the 7000 you have sent me.’

  He staked one plaque of 2000 and three of 1000 against the bald Greek’s bank, waved away a chair which three footmen were bringing up for him, and began to roll another ghastly cigarette. As he lit it, an old man, who had a rug over his knees and was attended by a starched and stainless nurse, put up the maximum wager and was passed the cards to play for that half of the table which was patronized by the fâcheur. Having turned up a natural nine to win, he had a sudden seizure and was whisked out by the three footmen, chair and all, in ten seconds flat. The nurse paused to pick up and pocket his winnings, winked at the fâcheur with whom she apparently found herself in some affinity, and with bust held high followed what was left of her employer through the velvet curtains. This meant that the fâcheur who had left his winnings on the cloth along with his original stake and was thus putting up 10,000 for the next coup, was now the highest player at his end of the table. He still declined a chair but accepted the next lot of cards…and threw down a natural eight, the Queen of diamonds and the eight of hearts, to beat the bank’s six. Again he let his stake lie, won 20,000 francs with the Knave and six of diamonds against the bank’s three-card baccarat, withdrew 20,000 from his pile on the table leaving the maximum of 20,000 still to run, and won and withdrew 20,000 francs off six coups running with combinations of cards which always contained at least one diamond. At the next coup he displayed a natural eight which consisted of the four of spades and the four of clubs, informed everyone round him that he would now be beaten, and was indeed, by the bank’s natural nine.

  ‘The diamonds have left me,’ he explained to the other players as his stake was raked away, ‘and so now I must leave you.’

  From Marseilles Soir August 26, 1973

  MYSTERY OF THE IMPASSE DIANE

  Early this afternoon, a patrol of police engaged in enforcement of the summer regulations of urban hygiene was scandalized to encounter the battered body of a middle-aged man lying concealed among the plastic containers of refuse in the Impasse Diane, a mews just off the Rue Cardinale in Aix-en-Provence.

  The man, who had been dead for about twelve hours, carried no official identification, but in the inside pocket of his jacket was a card of admission to the Casino of Aix bearing the name of ‘Monsieur du Touquet’. In the same pocket was also the sum, in notes of 500 and 100 francs, of 142,000 francs, no less.

  Certain of the authorities and personnel of the Casino, invited to view the corpse, have deposed, despite the disfiguring injuries, that it is beyond question that of a man who won this sum in aggregate, variously at roulette, chemin-de-fer and baccarat, on the evening of 25 August. M. le Directeur and others of the establishment have further depo
sed that this same man, after refusing to take the cheque advisable in the case of so significant an amount and insisting on being paid his 142,000 francs in cash, left the premises shortly after midnight. Nothing is known of his movements between the time he departed from the Casino and 14.17 hours today, when his body was discovered by the police in the Impasse Diane.

  The police at once ask themselves why the money was left on the victim’s person. Did the assailant not know of his victim’s sensational winnings? But surely so huge a pile of notes, even in an inner pocket, could not have escaped the murderer’s notice. Was the motive then other than theft? But if so, what?

  The answer might be more clear if the police had more clear a notion who ‘Monsieur du Touquet’ truly is. But so far there has been no proper identification of the corpse, and nothing can be discovered of the dead man’s family or normal place of residence.

  Paris Fiche August 3, 1974

  THE CASE OF THE DEAD GAMESTER

  It is now nearly a year since the body of a man, brutally battered to death by an unknown assailant, was discovered by the police in the Impasse Diane, a few minutes’ walk from the Casino in Aix-en-Provence. Mark carefully this locale; and now attend to what later transpired of the cadaver.

  The man, who was so horribly transformed into a pitiful pulp by blows delivered (it is believed) with a bar of iron, had been none other than Clovis di Cannaregio Baudouin du Bourg de Maubeuge, Vicomte du Touquet, the 53-year-old son and heir apparent of Clovis d’Outremer Baudouin du Bourg de Maubeuge, Comte de la Tour d’Abbéville. (This latter, it so happened, died of sclerotic senescence, in the Infirmary of the Magdalene at Amiens, only a few hours after his son had been butchered in Aix.)