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  ‘That is different. It is gentle, it just happens. Without struggle, without effort. It washes over and into me.’

  ‘I know. But still, you lose control of yourself. Something happens which you cannot stop.’

  ‘I don’t want to stop it…with you. With Marius I did. It would have been violation. So I stopped it, at the last possible moment. He was very surprised and hurt.’

  ‘Now, in any case, you are to bear his child. You will let me bear it with you.’

  ‘Yes. Oh yes.’

  ‘I can come for the School holidays, in August and September? Your husband will not mind?’

  ‘He will be delighted that I have such company. But what about your aunt? She will want you, I think.’

  ‘Perhaps. But she will let me be away, most of the time. She likes to be in London herself, but she thinks the air – and the people – are bad for me.’

  ‘The people?’

  ‘Foreigners. She is very old-fashioned.’

  They went through a gate and out of the Rose Garden, then along a stream, which ran across a meadow towards a copse of lady-birch.

  ‘Peace,’ said Tessa. ‘No more row from Cant-Fun.’

  ‘I cannot understand that,’ said Theodosia. ‘None of us hears the racket when we are walking in the Rose Garden. It was all very cleverly designed, with specially calculated angles and volumes, by a chum of the Canteloupes – mine and the one before – who was a scientist, a biochemist, also an amateur of architecture.’

  ‘Yet I can hear the row when I’m in that garden. What will they do with that…that child, Theodosia? Sarum?’

  ‘I do not know. They will not consult me.’

  ‘Ought we to worry?’

  ‘We ought. But I cannot worry about that thing in the pram.’

  ‘The nurse will protect it, I think. She loves it.’

  ‘Come into this grove,’ said Theodosia. ‘There is a secret way, the only way. Canteloupe showed me, soon after we were married.’

  They came to a tiny pool in the centre.

  ‘Here on this grass. Teresa.’

  ‘Theodosia.’

  After a time, Tessa said, ‘I do not think it much matters how they dispose of Sarum himself, provided they are humane, as why should they not be? But I think others may be injured. That nanny; and whomsoever they use…for the act itself.’

  ‘If we find out anything,’ said Theodosia, ‘it may be our duty to do something, warn somebody. But it’s not up to us to obtrude ourselves, to make officious enquiry. Teresa.’

  ‘Theodosia. Theodosia.’

  Well, thought Leonard Percival, Lord Canteloupe’s Private Secretary, who was sitting concealed in an almost opaque thicket a few feet from the pool, one certainly gets good value from this coppice. These days I only come here (when well enough to walk this far) for a bit of peace and meditation. But in the past there have been many piquant scenes by this pool, and now it is so again.

  ‘Teresa, Teresa.’

  ‘Theodosia.’

  Canteloupe, thought Leonard, will be delighted that her ladyship should have such a beautiful young friend to pass the time with. But he will not be delighted if either of ’em should get any wiser about what is intended for Sarum. There is no reason at all why this should happen: they have plenty to occupy themselves with just now. But it might happen, it just might. And if so…oh dear, oh dear. Never mind, Leonard, he thought; don’t bother about all that just now; just enjoy what’s going on – one thing at a time.

  ‘Teresa? Teresa?’

  ‘Theodosia, oh Theodosia.’

  Miserable, thought Maisie Malcolm: miserable as a string of piles. Nobody here, only poor little Rosie: Fielding in Australia, silly old wanker; Marius off for this half-Quarter with his schoolmaster; and my Tessa gone to another big house in the country. And of course she’ll be going to those more and more. First that place of Mr Conyngham’s in Somerset, now this one in Wiltshire, of course she’ll be going, so clever and pretty as she is, and you’ll not, Maisie Malcolm, get possessive and stand in her way.

  Meanwhile, what to do with poor little Rosie? There’s those Blessington girls, now. Why can’t she ring up them? Caroline might be at home and Jakki should be back from that School for this half-Quarter exeat.

  So at luncheon Maisie said, ‘Them Blessington girls, duckie – why not ring them up?’

  ‘Them Blessington girls,’ said Rosie, in courtesy and not in mimicry, ‘have gone motoring in France with their parents for the whole of Jakki’s half-Quarter break. They will be passing quite near St Bertrand-de-Comminges, where Mummy and Jo-Jo and Oenone are living with Jean-Marie Guiscard. I have suggested to Caroline that they do not call in there. Mrs Blessington might not be chuffed by Mummy’s behaviour with Jo-Jo.’

  ‘Why didn’t your mummy have you out for the half Quarter?’

  ‘Mummy gets more stingy every day. She does not consider it worth buying a return air ticket for a stay of only a week. I don’t want to provoke her by complaining: for if I am not careful, Mrs Malcolm, she won’t even get me a ticket for the summer holidays.’

  When everyone was back at School after the half-Quarter exeat, Milo Hedley took Marius Stern out to tea at a nearby farmhouse.

  ‘So,’ said Milo, ‘how was it with Raisley in Norfolk?’

  ‘Very pleasant. We went to lots of nice places.’

  ‘He gave you your instructions?’

  ‘Yes. They don’t apply just yet. I don’t think they’ll really apply until after I’ve been out to Jeremy and Fielding in Australia.’

  ‘That’s all fixed then?’

  ‘Yes. Jeremy’s sent a ticket to my lawyer.’

  ‘And Raisley said it was all right?’

  ‘Of course.’

  That lovely evening at Castle Acre, thought Marius: Raisley had given full permission then. I suppose, thought Marius now, that I don’t really need his permission; but I am happier, much happier, to have it. Anyhow, everything is all right.

  ‘The trouble is,’ said Milo, ‘that it isn’t all right – not any more.’

  Milo passed over the tea table a cutting from that morning’s Telegraph. Marius didn’t bother much with the newspapers, since they were largely about malingerers, politicians and psychopaths, so he had not yet seen this.

  PEER’S SON ON IMMORALITY CHARGE IN AUSTRALIA

  said the Telegraph. It appeared that the Honourable Jeremy Morrison, second son of Lord Luffham of Whereham (formerly Peter Morrison, MP) and the travelling evangelist of the ‘Back to Mother Earth’ movement had been accused of public importuning for sexual purposes in Adelaide…

  …‘I’d like to oblige an Honourable, sir,’ the Serjeant-Trumpeter had said to Jeremy, ‘but I’m a married man.’

  ‘She’ll never know.’

  ‘That’s not quite the point, sir. I love her and I can’t let her down.’

  ‘Five hundred quid.’

  ‘Don’t talk like that, sir. It dishonours us both.’

  ‘I have to have this. Done to me. Serjeant.’

  ‘There’s a bar, sir. The Oxoxoco. That’ll be the place you want. So one of the lads was saying.’

  The Serjeant-Trumpeter was a very kind man, and he actually walked with Jeremy to the Oxoxoco, though he refused to come in. What neither of them yet knew was that there were two bars: the Oxoxoco, which was where they had now arrived and was perfectly respectable; and the Oxoxoco Bottle, of which ‘one of the lads’ had spoken and which wasn’t. So when Jeremy announced to a post office employee (whose wife had gone to what she called the toilet just before Jeremy came in) that he’d got a nice bit of oxtail to offer, the man was at first puzzled, then, when treated to translation, furiously indignant, and was of course made all the more so by Jeremy’s plush pommy accent…

  …‘Mind you,’ said Milo to Marius, ‘he’ll be let out on bail. But I don’t think, in all the circs, that he’ll want you to join him.’

  ‘I could always…go about…with Fielding Gray.’
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  ‘I imagine Fielding Gray will come home pretty sharpish. He’s not the chap to stand by a chum in a nasty jam – he’s a natural passer-by-on-the-other-side. He’ll produce some immaculate excuse, and glide away from Jeremy as smooth as a ghost.’

  Well, thought Marius, Jeremy had once contrived to glide away from Fielding without much remorse when it suited him; not so long ago either. How rotten Jeremy was: he let everyone down in the end.

  ‘You know what the answer is, don’t you?’ said Milo. ‘Jeremy’s got an itch in his arse. They have it, some of them. They do it once or twice, more or less by accident – and then suddenly they’re permanently on heat. He’d probably have co-opted you to fuck him pretty soon. Just imagine: those lovely great wobbly white buttocks.’

  Marius looked at Milo in interrogation; Milo nodded.

  ‘Rather nice,’ said Milo. ‘We both enjoyed it very much.’

  His tea untasted, Marius crept away from the farmhouse. He felt utterly defeated. The thought of Jeremy, as he displayed and deployed himself for Milo, filled him with sadness. Why had Milo told him? Out of spite, thought Marius, because Milo had sensed that Marius was now the important one with Raisley Conyngham, that he, Milo, was now nothing more than a messenger boy to Lancaster, a pawn where Marius was Knight or Castle or even Queen. But if Milo wanted revenge, he had certainly got it: thinking of Jeremy’s fair round face (as it had always been for him), then thinking of the same face distended and squealing in pathic pleasure, Marius passed into the woods which overlooked the valley of the Wey, and sat on the ground to weep.

  ‘One has to remember,’ said Raisley Conyngham to Milo Hedley, ‘that we are acting for Lord Canteloupe – with no other reward in view than the proving of our own theories and the gratification of seeing them translated into action. And, of course, the satisfaction of obliging an important nobleman, whose orders we must – since we agreed voluntarily to come into the thing – absolutely obey.’

  Conyngham sat down on a central pew of Guildford Cathedral, to which they were paying a visit of patronizing inspection, and Milo sat down beside him. Conyngham, for some reason, assumed an attitude of prayer.

  ‘Now, God,’ prayed Conyngham, ‘until the other day I had everything planned to allow for whatever course Canteloupe might wish to adopt, for any possible changes of his mind.’

  Milo now knelt, the more easily to hear Conyngham’s orisons.

  ‘Early in August, God, Your servant and mine, Milo Hedley, was to go to stay with the Provost of Lancaster once more, ready to monitor or manage any trouble in that quarter. For we have to remember that the Provost is (a) Sarum’s grandfather on the distaff side, and (b) Marius’ uncle by marriage. Despite his mental preoccupations, he might still get a whiff of what is going on and want to stop it or raise a row about it, thus much discommoding Milo and myself. Milo’s job was to be – is to be – the soothing and soft-soaping of the Provost.’

  ‘Amen,’ said Milo.

  ‘As for Marius,’ Conyngham’s devotions continued, ‘in order to flatter him and strengthen his spirit for the struggle before us, I have suggested to him that Milo’s role is a minor and subordinate one and that he, Marius, is the star of the show.’

  ‘Again, Amen.’

  ‘So the sequence, God, would have been as follows: late in July Marius, assured of my high favour and committed, in a general way, to his task, would have left for a month with Your humble servants, Jeremy Morrison and Fielding Gray, in Australia. During that time certain things would have happened to clarify the situation. Thus, it would have been found out whether Theodosia were pregnant with a boy or with a girl; and, if the latter, what changes Canteloupe might or might not wish to make in his plans. And so on; with the result that when Marius came back to England we should have known fairly precisely how to direct him. Mind you, Milo always disliked the notion of Marius’ being absent and out of our immediate control for a whole month; but I thought, and still think, that such an absence would be the best thing possible – always providing that he came home punctually, and there would have been many ways of ensuring that.

  ‘But now what has happened, O God? Jeremy Morrison has been charged with indecent behaviour and will almost certainly be disgraced before the world; and his friend, Fielding Gray, has predictably deserted him and is on his way back to England. So that no Australian trip is now possible for Marius –’

  ‘– And Your two faithful servants,’ said Milo, ‘Raisley Conyngham and Milo Hedley, are well and truly fucked up.’

  Raisley rose. ‘You should never commit blasphemy, Milo. Discourteous language to God is definitely in poor taste and invites retribution.’

  ‘That,’ said Milo as he followed Raisley out of the Cathedral, ‘depends on what God you are speaking to. Even a moderate Dualist position allows the title to either of Them.’

  ‘And certainly enjoins respect for Both. The object of prayer, Milo, is to clear the mind. Bad manners, to Whichever God, do not assist in that purpose.’

  They climbed into Raisley’s Renault 30 Turbo-Jet and headed for the Hog’s Back.

  ‘In fact,’ said Milo, ‘your prayers have cleared my mind most splendidly. As you stated, I was very much against Marius’ trip to Australia. Only now that it cannot come off, do I realize just what problems are posed by its cancellation.’

  ‘Good, Milo. You seem to have absorbed some of God’s Grace after all. Summarize these problems for me.’

  ‘This cancellation means that we shall have Marius hanging around for nigh on a month and doing nothing. It means that he will be vulnerable to the interference of time, chance, the approaches of other people concerned, the pressures of waiting, the anxieties caused by random and idle speculation – in short that he could, could, sir, become utterly demoralized, instead of being the Marius you hoped for, a nice, calm, relaxed and compliant Marius, home from a gorgeous holiday treat with his favourite Jeremy, rested and ready for what is to come.’

  ‘Bravo, Milo. So in one word, what are we now to do with Marius in August? We are into July. The matter is urgent. Speak, O blessed child, with this new insight that God (Whichever of the Two) hath given thee.’

  ‘Could he come to Lancaster with me – to his Uncle Tom Llewyllyn?’

  Raisley stopped the car in a lay-by. He moved behind some bushes and started to piss. Milo joined him and did likewise. The School, on its hill to the south, was in their exact line of fire but of course well out of range.

  ‘No,’ said Raisley Conyngham at length, as he shook the drops off. ‘I have taught Marius to regard your role as inferior. If I sent him with you to Lancaster, he would start smelling something behind the Provost’s arras. Besides,’ he said, putting his doings away, ‘I do not like the impressions I am receiving of Llewyllyn’s Private Secretary, Len. Len, it seems to me, is just the sort of person who might mislead or disorientate Marius.’

  ‘Granted. Will you now favour me, sir, with your suggestion. What do you propose to do with Marius for August?’

  They pottered back towards the Renault.

  ‘I,’ said Raisley Conyngham, ‘shall let someone else do it for me. I shall leak a little information to Marius’ connections implying that Marius (as they doubtless suspect already) is in rapidly increasing moral danger. They will then fly to his rescue – and I am tolerably certain,’ he continued, ‘of the solution they will come to, a solution that would in fact make things very easy for us, for reasons of which I shall apprise you later. And even,’ pursued Raisley, ‘if theirs is not the solution I think it will be, nevertheless, since it is theirs, they will feel self-satisfied and virtuous and clever, and go about their other business (which is plenteous and absorbing) without dreaming that anything, now, can go wrong with or for Marius. And when people get into that frame of mind,’ Raisley Conyngham said, ‘they are richly ripe for Mors Asinorum, that is to say for Fools’ Mate.’

  When Fielding Gray arrived back from Australia, since he did not fancy being alone in his house at Brough
ton or being subjected to the endless and spiteful questions which he knew that Maisie would ask about Jeremy if he went to Buttock’s Hotel, he invited himself to stay with Canteloupe, who, though he had plenty on his mind just then, was passably pleased to see him.

  Meanwhile, Leonard Percival had received instructions, which had originated with Raisley Conyngham and been passed on through Giles Glastonbury, that enough information be released about the exploitation of Marius to set Marius’ friends on their mettle and so bring about the defensive action which Raisley desired them to take, knowing well what it might be and that it would be in any case ill-judged. Leonard, being pretty near neutral in all of this and not really caring what happened to anyone so long as he himself were allowed to linger out the diseased and distressful days that remained to him at the court of Canteloupe, in fact told Fielding a good deal more than his instructions warranted, feeling that he ought to give his old friend and accomplice a fair and proper chance to come to grips with what was going forward.

  ‘Detterling wants an end of Sarum,’ Leonard Percival said to Fielding. ‘Although Sarum is your son, you will acknowledge, as soon as you see him again, that the world would be well rid of him. If you want a look, see him this afternoon. Since Detterling and her ladyship are at the County Show for the day, you’ll have things all your own way.’

  ‘All my own way?’

  ‘Detterling and her ladyship,’ said Leonard, offhandedly, ‘do not like people inspecting Sarum. If they are not here, they can make no objection.’

  ‘Won’t the nurse mind?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Percival looked as if he were about to add something, but didn’t.

  ‘So,’ said Fielding, ‘Canteloupe wants to be rid of Sarum. How?’

  ‘A very nice question. As you may imagine, Detterling is being rather discreet about the answer. Myself, I envisage some kind of plausible accident, unintentionally (on the face of it) precipitated by an innocent and thoughtless agent. That bill might be filled…by Marius Stern.’

  ‘Oh,’ was all that Fielding could think of to say for the time being.

  Leonard had already spoken far beyond his brief from Glastonbury. Now he added a few helpful hints for good measure.