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  ‘That little Tessa Malcolm was here for her half-Quarter. She’s having rather a heavy walk out with her ladyship.’

  ‘Great God.’

  ‘Her ladyship and Tessa discussed the matter of Sarum,’ said Leonard, ‘in the lady-birch grove. They surmise that Sarum – Tullius – may not be long for the realms of light, but they don’t really know about that and they don’t really care. What they do care about, however, is that no one else should get injured in the action. So,’ said Leonard, spelling it out, ‘if you want an ally to help protect Master Marius from mental agony or moral injury, go to Theodosia.’

  ‘She’s been bothered about Marius for some time.’

  ‘But hasn’t really known what was planned for him nor what to do about it. If you tell her what I’ve just told you, she’ll go chuntering into action.’

  ‘Why not tell her yourself?’

  ‘Because I don’t really give a fart, and because I can’t be fagged to put up with her airs and graces. And because she won’t come near me in any case. She thinks, quite rightly,’ said Leonard, ‘that I’m old, lame, lewd-minded if no longer lewd in practice, unattractive, drunken and smelly. She can’t understand why Canteloupe – why Detterling keeps me on. She’ll talk to you – the sensitive and literate Fielding Gray – but she wouldn’t listen to me, not if the Archangel Gabriel came down to request it. God knows what she’d do,’ leered Leonard, ‘if she knew I’d watched her hot luscious games with little Tessa.’

  Fielding met Sarum’s nurse, Daisy, as she was wheeling his pram in the Rose Garden. When he asked if he might take a look at Sarum, she gave him an odd look and said, ‘You’re Fielding Gray, the book writer?’

  ‘The same.’

  ‘Then there’s something that may interest you. Come along.’

  She wheeled the pram out of the Rose Garden and along the stream towards the grove of lady-birch. As it happened, Fielding had been that way a few months before, on a walk on Christmas Day afternoon with Leonard Percival and Giles Glastonbury, the latter of whom was his fellow guest in the house for Christmas.

  ‘We used to come here sometimes,’ said Daisy, ‘when her ladyship – the first one – had just had Sarum and was still feeding him. She used to sit in here by the pool with her friend Jo-Jo Guiscard and feed Tully in front of her. It excited them both,’ said Daisy in a matter-of-fact way.

  She lifted Sarum out of the pram and carried him into the grove, by the secret entrance which Fielding and Glastonbury had been shown by Leonard at Christmas. Sarum, examined closely, was less horrible than Fielding had feared. He had slightly pointed ears, a snub nose – so snub that it was almost flat – wrinkled cheeks and a tuft of bristling hair on the crown of an otherwise bald scalp. He also had a sort of fungoid down on his chin and jaw.

  ‘He can’t talk and he can’t walk,’ said Daisy, ‘but other things he can do.’

  She squatted on the grass by the pool and began to undress Tullius. When she had finished, Tullius crawled fast to the pool, lurched into it, and began to swim round it.

  ‘He loves bathing in this pool,’ Daisy said; ‘perhaps it’s because his mother liked it so much. We’re Baby’s baby,’ she sang out to Sarum. ‘It’s splendid exercise for him too,’ she said to Fielding.

  While the naked Sarum was crawling into the pool, Fielding saw that below the neck he was perfectly made. He might be, perhaps, just a shade short and thick in the calves, but only if one looked very critically.

  ‘Why can’t he walk?’ Fielding said.

  ‘I don’t know. He just never has.’

  Now the girl was taking off her own clothes.

  ‘I bathe with him,’ she said. ‘He likes that. You should too. You’re his father, aren’t you? I’ve picked that much up. You should hold him, mould him, love him, fondle him.’

  She had a little line of gold hair between her large but very firm breasts, and another line from her navel down to her generous ginger triangle, which was fluffy, Fielding now saw, not wiry. Her calves, like Sarum’s, were perhaps a shade short and stout. Her thighs were very white, with occasional brown moles.

  Fielding started to take off his own clothes. This was a kind of ritual, he told himself, an agape. He was Sarum’s father; this girl, Daisy, the child’s only real mother: they were cleansing themselves and each other en famille. He was suddenly reminded of a Japanese picture he had once seen. The males of the family were bathing with the females: father, son, mother and two little girls. The father had a prominent erection, the son a creditable imitation.

  ‘They think of these things differently,’ Max de Freville had explained, many years ago. ‘It is the father’s duty to make sure that the son is properly equipped and reacts in the normal way to elementary endearment, which the mother will have been told to lavish on him. The two girls are there to observe, and to learn from, what is now about to happen. Very soon the man will fuck the woman, probably from behind, a tergo sed non per anum. At the same time they will both help the boy to masturbate.’

  ‘No joy for the girls, you say?’

  ‘Not this time round. When they are older, perhaps. Female masturbation is very common in Japan – often performed in a rocking chair with a couple of marbles clicking up and down in the vagina as the girl rocks – but it is discouraged in the immature, lest it cause disfigurement.’

  ‘But the boy is not mature either.’

  ‘If you look very carefully you will see a tiny wisp. In any case it doesn’t matter. The only effect pre-pubertal masturbation can have on the male anatomy is to enlarge it – which in males is desirable, at any rate up to a point.’

  And so now, ‘You know what we have to do?’ said Fielding to Daisy.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. She lifted Sarum out of the pool and crawled out after him. Fielding followed.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I know what is to be done.’

  She settled Sarum on the grass, supine beside her, and at once opened her thighs for Fielding, who, watching her hand as it gently kneaded his son’s enormous (by comparison with the rest of him) little prick, was stiffened by a spurt of desire such as he had not felt for many years.

  ‘We come here often in the summer,’ said Daisy, ‘your son and I. Tullius will grow up into a fine boy. Look.’

  Once again, as he lowered himself into Daisy, Fielding looked. Oh yes: a fine boy. Lovely, well-made limbs. A perfectly arched penis, the foreskin sliding slowly and easily back under Daisy’s kind and careful fingers. A fine boy of nearly four years: unable to walk or talk, with a beard of sorts on his chin and the face of a sexagenarian satyr bacchant.

  Later on, Fielding escorted Daisy and Sarum back from the grove to the Rose Garden.

  ‘I’m very grateful to you,’ Fielding said to Daisy.

  ‘I enjoyed it too.’

  ‘I meant rather…that I am grateful to you on behalf of Sarum, of Tully. Of my son. You are giving him the one kind of pleasure he can ever know. What you do for him…is the only thing that makes him in any way aware. His only link with humanity.’

  ‘Let’s not get too solemn about it,’ Daisy said. ‘I love this little boy and I like to please him. As things are, that…that and the swimming…is the best way I know.’

  ‘We are saying the same thing. Do you think…that we might meet again while I am here?’

  ‘That,’ said Daisy, ‘must be as God wills it.’

  As Leonard Percival watched the pram trundling back along the stream towards the Rose Garden, he thought: I should have known she’d take him there. I should have thought of that earlier, and got myself down there to see and hear what went on. But this ulcer… I wonder what view he is taking of Canteloupe’s plans for Tully Sarum. The whole thing would be so simple, if only Sarum weren’t the heir-apparent to the Marquisate. If he weren’t the heir, he could just be left in the care of that nurse (or another) for the rest of his life. She could keep him clean and see to his needs. There is plenty of room in this place for a dozen like him. But Canteloupe never
could, never would own to such a one as his heir; and Fielding Gray of all people will see Canteloupe’s point, even though Sarum is Fielding’s own son.

  What to do, Leonard? he apostrophized himself. Only one answer, the old answer: just sit still and let the thing go on.

  Fielding stayed on with the Canteloupes for some days. God did not, apparently, will that he should have any further meetings with Daisy and Sarum, both of whom seemed to have vanished. He did not broach the subject of Sarum either to Canteloupe or to Theodosia, partly because he himself had yet to form a definite opinion about Leonard’s disclosures, and partly because it seemed ill bred to raise a subject, which must be (to say the least) unattractive to them, under their own roof.

  Fielding did wonder whether he should attempt to pass a warning about Canteloupe’s plan to Daisy. He had not done so during their previous meeting, as it had been his view that one did not discuss important matters with servants (or anyone else, for that matter) until one had known them at least ten years. On later reflection, he decided that this was still his view. In any case, he did not see Daisy; therefore he could give her no warning without passing a written message, and to attempt to do so would excite comment and suspicion in his hosts.

  And so, after attending with Canteloupe a few quite agreeable race meetings at Bath and Newbury, he went on his way towards London, decided en route that he still could not face Maisie in Buttock’s Hotel, and cut across country through Bletchley and Stony Stratford to Stamford, where he took chambers at the George. By this time it was clear to him what he would do about the Sarum business: he must of course (as he always did) land all responsibility for decision and action on somebody else more willing and therefore more competent to bear such burdens, and in this case the ideal correspondent was now less than an hour’s drive away.

  Carmilla Salinger, sitting in her drawing room in Lancaster College, was not at all pleased to see Fielding Gray, who was walking down the south wall of the Chapel, heading straight for her own staircase. Tiresome, this. For one thing, she expected Richard Harbinger to arrive from London in under an hour’s time, and for another she had noticed that Fielding seldom arrived anywhere, these days, without trouble and misery in his train.

  And so, of course, it was now.

  Having told Fielding that she could only give him thirty minutes, she spent the first ten of them listening to his account of how Jeremy had publicly and irremediably blackguarded himself in Adelaide and the next five being treated to a plausible apologia to the effect that there was nothing Fielding could have done about it all without making matters much worse for both of them.

  Having thus, so to speak, buried her old lover, or at least scraped him under the carpet, Fielding proceeded to talk ominously of Marius Stern, who would fain have been her new lover some weeks back, and might indeed, had it not been for the clinging and rebarbative Harbinger, have got the post. Carmilla was told, as succinctly as Fielding could tell her, what was being cooked up for Marius in the affair of little Lord Sarum of Old Sarum, i.e. that he was to be the agent (or instrument) of Sarum’s demise, to some extent innocent or unwitting, perhaps, and certainly not ostensible, but nevertheless first party to a murder. Fielding added that, as far as he could determine from Leonard Percival, Theodosia (whose new connection with Tessa Malcolm he did not divulge) could not bring herself to be much fashed about the death of a monster (albeit one as junior and tender as Sarum), but would certainly deprecate the use and abuse of Marius in the matter.

  All this occupied another ten minutes, at the end of which Fielding departed, having taken five minutes less than the time stipulated by Carmilla to put the two balls that were bugging him firmly in her court. Carmilla, feeling slightly faint, decided (a) that there was nothing to be done about Jeremy until an Australian court had passed sentence (for Jeremy now had quite as much money at his disposal as she did if there were any possibility of buying his way out of trouble); and (b) that as to Marius, she would consult Harbinger, whose initial misliking of the boy had now turned to sincere interest and sympathy.

  But Harbinger had come, she found, simply to proclaim that he was off. An unexpected offer from an industrial sponsor (pharmaceutical) was to waft him to the small central African republic of Bugari, where a new and incurable disease of venereal origin was reported rife. In return for the permission of the Bugari Government to wander at will in the hitherto un-explored Elang Mountains (in which Homo Picanthropus was rumoured to survive) Harbinger and his medical researcher must experiment with a new and likely-looking drug on sufferers from Nim (the natives’ name for the new disease) in the more remote regions of the country, where it would not much matter if the experiments went wrong. If, however, they went right, it would be a great relief to the nation of Bugari, 37.431 per cent of whose population was infected, and productive of much prestige and profit to Alchemicals PLC.

  Having told Carmilla this, Harbinger announced that he must return to London straightaway, but that a quick suck would be in order first.

  After Carmilla had chucked him down the stairs with a neat throw that her sister had taught her, she remembered that she had not had time to consult him about Marius. She also remembered Marius’ oblique offer to become her lover and her refusal, which latter had been made on pretty well sole grounds of Harbinger’s incumbency. This obstacle was now removed. She could summon Marius as soon as his School Quarter ended. And summon a pack of trouble with him, she thought. She had a lot of work ahead of her this coming summer, and hoped to complete comprehensive notes for a book on diseases of the Eastern Mediterranean during the twelfth century ad. Marius installed as lover might make for agreeable and therapeutic intervals of relaxation; Marius involved in a lethal intrigue (as portrayed just now by Fielding) would be boring and, even worse, disruptive.

  All of which things being so, Carmilla decided, in the interests of scholarship, to do precisely what Fielding Gray had decided to do in the interests of himself: she would pass the buck.

  ‘Fielding’s been here,’ she said to Theodosia on the telephone.

  ‘Is he getting on with The Grand Grinder?’

  ‘He didn’t mention it. It’s my belief that it’s stopped with the first half. Never mind. Ashley Dexterside has relented and says we shall do very well out of it as it stands – particularly after that rumpus when extracts were printed in the Adelaide Angelus. Fielding says, by the way, that that was the main reason why he had to leave Oz so quickly and come home; but I think he just wanted an excuse to rat on Jeremy – as Jeremy once ratted on him.’

  ‘Jeremy,’ said Theodosia with restrained mordancy, ‘deserves everything he gets.’

  ‘Well, amen to that, I suppose. But Fielding brought up something else. Marius. And Tully.’

  ‘What about…Marius? And Tully?’

  Carmilla told her what.

  ‘Leave it with me,’ said Theodosia, quite quickly.

  ‘Good. I hoped you’d say that. I’ve got a lot on this summer and autumn. By the way, Thea, I’ve thrown out Harbinger.’

  ‘That cunt with the beaver? Good on you, Carm,’ Theodosia said.

  Theodosia, not feeling quite up to driving herself two hundred miles in the heat, hired a chauffeur-driven car from Avis and was carried down to Burnham-on-Sea on the south coast of the Bristol Channel. She then directed the driver to a jolly little house called Sandy Lodge, which was built almost in the sea itself, where she had arranged to talk with the owner, whom she knew as the aunt of Marius’ dead friend, Galahad Palairet: his Aunt Florence or (more commonly) Auntie Flo.

  ‘Lonely?’ said Theodosia.

  ‘Not particularly. One or other of the old gang drops in on a condescending visit from time to time. One of them took me to the meeting at Bath the other day. Nice day out, though I don’t care so much for the Flat. Whisky?’

  ‘No. Preggers.’

  ‘Canteloupe?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Candidly, no, my dear. I saw Canteloupe at Bath.
He was with that one-eyed writing bugger you all seem to know.’

  ‘Major Fielding Gray. It’s not him neither, in case you were wondering. I’ll tell you soon enough – if it all goes smoothly. Meanwhile, a request. A request with some money in it.’

  ‘Then fire away.’

  ‘Galahad’s friend, Marius Stern. Can you feed him, board him, wash him and amuse him for a thousand a week?’

  ‘A thousand?’

  ‘I’ve got plenty, and I want you to have some of it. All right with you?’

  ‘Yes, dear: all right with me.’

  ‘Next thing. There are people who want to corrupt and exploit Marius…’

  ‘Fancy his cute little bum, do they?’

  ‘No. They fancy his cute little soul. They’ll find out very soon that he’s here. He’ll probably tell them himself. There’s nothing we can do to stop any of that. You mustn’t even try. And let him have whatever visitors there may be. But – let me know every single thing that goes on.’

  ‘Righty-hoh,’ said Aunt Florence, rather dazed.

  ‘He may have good visitors or bad. Good are his sister Rosie, her friend Tessa or Teresa Malcolm, Teresa’s Auntie Maisie, and his mother – though I don’t think she’ll be coming here from France – Fielding Gray, Jeremy Morrison, if they don’t put him in an Aussie slammer. My sister Carmilla. Also good, very good, are Jakki and Caroline Blessington, and their parents.’

  ‘Ivan Blessington of the old Hamilton’s Horse?’

  ‘The very one. And his wife, Betty.’

  ‘What a lovely man,’ said Auntie Flo, not meaning Betty. ‘I’m a bit older than him, of course, but I well remember a party in London where some girl asked him to let her watch him while he had a pee. Some rotten spoilsport knocked on the door of the loo… Where were we?’

  ‘Marius’ visitors. Now the baddies. Raisley Conyngham –’

  ‘– The schoolie racehorse owner?’

  ‘– And his pupil, Milo Hedley. Giles Glastonbury, because he’s Conyngham’s friend –’