September Castle Page 15

  Full of self-satisfaction at the way in which he had passed his morning and at the conclusions to which he had come, Jean-Marie passed under the suspended portcullis and along the causeway across the empty moat. A few months now, he thought as he turned for a farewell look at the gatehouse, and the ticket machines will be whirring and the postcards selling, the walls and the walks will be safe and spruce, eager queues will be filing round the refurbished donjon, and there will be a worthy memorial for all to gaze on of the little Princess from Romany, who journeyed so bravely to this Castle of the north, then pined and died for the never-resting sea.

  But as he walked towards his car, which was parked in a meadow beneath the Castle wall, a small voice spoke in his heart and said:

  There needs no stone, Jean-Marie, for all to gaze on. I like this pretty wilderness, and so do the lovers and the loiterers. I like this grim old donjon, and so do the high-voiced children, who are far happier with its quirks and snares than they will be with your primly fenced galleries. If you really love this place, Jean-Marie, as I know you think you do, go away and leave it, leave it and us, alone.

  ‘And so,’ said Jean-Marie Guiscard to M. Socrates Besançon over his well-earned luncheon, ‘as a result of my reconnaissance this morning I recommend that we start with the gatehouse or barbican, near which there are some dangerously exposed dungeons, and then work by degrees towards the keep, leaving the excavations which interest us both so much until the very end.’

  ‘Thus giving us plenty of time to investigate the nature and lie of the ground before we actually begin to dig.’

  ‘Indeed, M. le Directeur.’

  ‘So. Given that work is to commence in thirteen days’ time how soon shall we be finished with reconstructing the interior of the donjon and ready to excavate the Chapel and the Lady’s tomb?’

  ‘In three months’ time, if all goes well.’

  ‘In December. Not a propitious season.’

  ‘A discreet season. There will be no watchers.’

  ‘There will be no watchers in any case,’ esteemed Jean-Marie. ‘We shall close the Castle gates – shall we not? – as soon as we commence work…or indeed well before.’

  Jean-Marie licked his lips.

  ‘With respect. The closing of gates, M. le Directeur, has never yet deterred serious snoopers. Besides,’ he said very carefully, ‘I do not think, after my…experiences…this morning, that the Castle – or shall we say the Genius of the Castle? – will look favourably on such a proceeding. Could we not leave as much as possible of it open, even while we work?’

  M. Socrates examined Jean-Marie and sucked at his teeth. After a long pause, ‘You may well be right,’ said M. Socrates, who had not arrived where he was in the Department for nothing; ‘one should always be mindful of the Genius. I remember a time when we tried to close the bridge between Beaucaire and Tarascon – but never mind that now. Now we are concerned with Arques, and with Arques in mind I will give the question thought. For the time being we shall leave the Castle open, but we shall issue very strict and precise warnings against each and all of its dangers. You will see to that?’

  ‘Happily, M. le Directeur.’

  ‘As for the operations, whether we leave the Castle open or partly open, or close it altogether, we shall, I now think, observe the schedule which you propose. December is, as you remark, a discreet month, probably a more effective inhibitor of snoopers than any number of bolted gates.’

  ‘And so,’ said the Marquis des Veules-les-Roses to his sister at tea time that same day, ‘my spies tell me that the Castle may well remain open during the operations of the Department; also that there will be relatively little attention paid to the eastern end – our end – until much later in the winter.’

  ‘Who are these spies?’

  ‘One spy, to be precise. A female typist of quite astounding seniority.’

  ‘Reliable?’

  ‘So I care to think.’

  ‘What do you pay?’

  ‘I do not pay. I was once briefly et il y a mille ans her lover. In memory of which time I provide her, every Christmas, with a rare and expensive brand of rumbustious and ejaculatory vibrator. She seems appropriately grateful, and her information has always been broadly sound. So I have little doubt that matters in re the Castle of Arques are much as she has just reported…which will, by and large, please the gross Ptolemaeos.’

  ‘And so,’ said the gross Ptolemaeos to his niece Jo-Jo, having received a telephone call from M. des Veules-les-Roses shortly after tea (anchovy muffins), ‘they are leaving our bit of the Castle until the last.’

  ‘Good?’ she enquired.

  ‘Only on the face of it. They are bound to start making surveys and preparations from quite early on, so that they will be buzzing around the area all day. That will make Ivan’s work impossible.’

  ‘Could he not work at night?’

  ‘He could – if unimpeded. But once the works begin, the Department will maintain a night watchman to protect its equipment and deter visiteurs du soir. So the thing is quite clear: Ivan must be finished before the Director and his gang begin. He will need eight days. On his present schedule he will have exactly that – if he can still get to Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer and on to Dieppe at the times planned. If only I knew where to find him I might have got him there sooner. But as it is…let the thing run, as previously reckoned, if only it will, and Ivan and the Canteloupes will have the bare eight days.’

  ‘Len has a problem,’ said Ivor Winstanley to Tom Llewyllyn in Tom’s room in Lancaster College.

  Tom surveyed his two guests equably and passed the port to Ivor, who filled and passed it to Len, who filled and passed it back to Tom. Ivor was a Latin don in an advanced state of fruitiness: Len, his protegé, was a stringy man of just under thirty, who was dressed in stylish bad taste and had a face of sly intellectual distinction.

  ‘Like the pitch is this, man,’ said Len to Tom in an immaculate Cambridge accent. ‘I’ve stowed enough bread in the bank to feed me high off the hog for a lifetime, with a lot more besides. So what’s to do with me and it? Any ideas?’

  ‘Surely,’ said Tom, ‘when you first…first became affluent … you intended to travel and live the good life. Art, music, literature, worldly pleasures of every kind – you had them all before you, and Ivor as an expert guide and tutor.’

  ‘That was the notion. But how it all turned out was different. In the beginning, before I made it, old Ive, like you say, was my guide and tutor. Dear old Ive, he taught me everything. What to eat and drink and read, and how to finish up a letter to a Royal Princess that’s married a Baronet. And pretty soon he raised me up from being a shitty-arse cunt-hungry bum, spewing cant and envy all over the place and crawling with left-wing bugaboos, drooling my life away as a so-called graduate student researching into social garbage and squeezing out a few more scabby pennies by looking after the College Manuscripts in some smelly hole in the heap – he raised me out of all this into being my own man who knows what was what and where to get it. And then he put me – and him – in the way of a big pile of loot. After which we had a lot of fun for a while, up and down Europe, expensive and memorable fun, and not for the world would I have missed it.

  ‘But by now old Ive had long since ceased to be my guide and tutor, Tom. By now I knew it all myself – and was in a fair way to getting sick of it. The trouble with the good life is that once you’ve had it for a few minutes you don’t want it, or not all that much, and only at intervals; a man must have some occupation other than feeding his mind and his face. The good life is no fun, Tom, unless you’ve got something else as well to keep your wits sharp and your sword bright. So what am I to do, Tom, in the intervals of the good life? Don’t tell me to make money, because I’ve got all I need.’

  ‘Do you wish,’ said Tom, ‘“to reign in Hell” or to “serve in Heaven”?’

  Ivor Winstanley giggled.

  Len looked blank for a moment. Then, ‘You mean…do I want flashy work
or solid work?’ he said. ‘Do I want excitement or duty?’

  ‘Very roughly, yes.’

  ‘A bit of both. I’d hoped I might find them back here in the College.’

  ‘You want to come back to Lancaster?’ said Tom. And to Ivor, ‘Has Len mentioned this to you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ivor. ‘He thinks – and I think – that he could handle the young quite well in his own way.’

  ‘Helping them. That would be duty all right,’ said Len.

  ‘And where is the excitement?’ enquired Tom. ‘You did say you hoped for both.’

  ‘Like Ive says, I can handle the young,’ said Len shamelessly. ‘He was speaking metaphorically: I’m talking straight.’

  ‘So,’ said Tom, ‘you envisage some post in this College, presumably of an administrative rather than strictly academic nature, which would enable you to act as arbiter and mentor among the young, and also as their sexual impresario?’

  ‘Not for all of them,’ said Len complacently: ‘mostly the girls. Since they’ve managed to nag their way into the place, they may as well be put to some use. I see myself as a kind of house-father. Just as an unmarried master at a public school employs someone called a house-mother, so I’ll be employed here as house-father. Drying the tears and changing the knickers. But we’d better give me a more classy name: say, “Counsellor”.’

  ‘And who,’ said Tom, ‘is going to persuade the College Council to ratify this interesting appointment?’

  ‘Provost Constable still owes me and Ive from the old days,’ said Len. ‘We had him by the crinklies and we let him down light.’

  ‘That may well be,’ said Tom. ‘It may also very well be that Lord Constable, who finds your brand of rascality rather engaging, would agree the debt and engineer the appointment: after all you could certainly teach the undergraduates of either gender much that they should know about the world; and since their sexual activities are these days so comprehensive in any case, they might just as well, and possibly with advantage, comprehend you.’

  ‘I’m glad you see it my way,’ said Len.

  ‘But there is, my dear Len, a worm in this nice, rosy apple, a worm of which Ivor, with his kindly and tactful character, has apparently forborne to warn you.’

  ‘I fear so,’ said Ivor, in a tone so mildly self-deprecatory as to be virtually self-gratulatory, and reached by stealthy degrees for the port.

  ‘Well, then,’ said Tom, putting the decanter firmly into Ivor’s hovering hand, ‘it falls to me, as his host and advisor of the evening, to explain to Len why his elegant little scheme is just so much piss up the wind. Lord Constable can in no way assist you, Len, whether he owes you or whether he don’t, because he is on the way out.’

  ‘Not until the end of the academic year,’ said Len, ‘next June.’

  ‘Founder’s Day,’ said Tom. ‘December the sixth, as you doubtless recall. Little more than two months from now. That is what the Statutes rule in his case, if strictly interpreted. Normally these would be waived and he would be allowed, indeed pressed, by the Council, in its courtesy, to remain until June or even later. But as it is, since Provost Constable, although a Socialist, is also a scholar, a Peer of the Realm, an ex-officer of gallantry and distinction, and a man, man, Len, of discipline and mettle, the present rabble of philistines and levellers want him out of the way at the first possible moment, so that they can start their dismal antics unimpeded and with the minimum of delay. A new Provost will therefore be elected in a very few weeks’ time: from the first moment the election is called, the Provost in situ, though still technically reigning until December the sixth, is forbidden by Statute from proposing or promoting any new measures or appointments, even if the Council be willing to underwrite them.’

  ‘Right you be,’ said Len. ‘That still leaves some time before the election is called.’

  ‘You forget. Full Term begins on October the twelfth. Nothing can be done for you until that date falls. As that date falls, the election will be called…and thereafter nothing can be done for you. The thing is quite clear, Len: your horse does not even get into the starting box.’

  ‘Nor even into the race card by the sound of it,’ mused Len. ‘What hope with the next regime?’

  ‘Nil. Zero. Niente. As far as the young set are concerned you are not only a reactionary but also a class traitor. As far as the older men see, you’re a jumped up nothing –’

  ‘Thank you very much, Ethel –’

  ‘– who’s made some shady money. Without Constable, Lenny mine, you’re absolutely without hope.’

  ‘So that’s flat,’ said Len without rancour. ‘You just sling your hook, Len Cunt, you fascist parvenu oik, you, and don’t slam the door as you go out.’

  ‘You’re much better out,’ said Ivor, ‘than in. It’s going to be horrible here. Nothing but brutes canvassing other brutes to elect the most brutish brute of them all. And the standard’s pretty high these days, I can tell you.’

  ‘Or,’ said Tom, ‘the brutes will carefully arrange to elect some dripping wet slob, so that they can run the whole place over his head. Either way the College is going to be ridden with tertiary Socialism within six months.’

  ‘They’ll forbid the May Ball,’ moaned Ivor; ‘they’ll cancel all the Feasts and sell the College Cellar.’

  ‘They’d sell the College Chapel if they could find a buyer. They’ll certainly sell the Rubens and the glass out of the windows…and give the money to Oxfam.’

  ‘To terrorists, my dear, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  ‘I think that’s rather overdoing it, Ivor. They may be perfect sods, but they’re not assassins. Not yet, anyway. But Ivor’s quite right, Lenny,’ said Tom, retrieving the port from Ivor and pouring Len a liberal back-hander. ‘There’ll be nothing here worth hanging about for, not with Constable gone.’

  ‘Point taken,’ said Len, ‘and thank you for the tip. I think I shall go somewhere east of Suez and turn native. Fuck myself to death, like Gauguin.’

  ‘Very boring. If you really want excitement,’ said Tom, suddenly remembering something, ‘I might be able to fix you up. My daughter and her husband have a friend, an old Lancastrian, called Ptolemaeos Tunne. Rather before your time but very much to your present taste. He’d like you too, I think.’

  ‘So what’s with this Tunne?’ drawled Len.

  ‘I’m not quite sure. But from the little I overheard while lunching there the other day, there’s something bubbling that’s right up your own stinking alley. It’s indecent, insanitary, illicit if not criminal, and much beset about with ghoulish apparatus. Just your cuppa, me ole Len.’

  ‘You think they could fit me in?’ said Len.

  ‘With the greatest of pleasure, I should imagine, if once you acquaint them with your range of hideous talents. Why not apply to Ptolemaeos? Just forty minutes’ drive from here; I’ll give you his number and address, and you can say I sent you. He’s got a nice little bit of hot twat living with him,’ said Tom momentarily reverting, in Len’s honour, to the tone and taste of his own youth, ‘who may well fancy a sharp fellow like you.’

  ‘What would this Ptolemaeos say?’

  ‘He’s not the jealous type. He’d probably come along and watch. But just one word of warning, Lenny doll,’ said Tom in a voice of marble. ‘My daughter Tullia’s going to be in on all this somewhere, and if you put your greasy prick anywhere near her, I’ll slice the fucking thing off.’

  At about the same time as Tom Llewyllyn and his guests finished dinner, Ptolemaeos and Jo-Jo started theirs.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Jo-Jo. ‘All this chat about what Ivan Barraclough may or may not be going to find in that Castle is great stuff for an autumn evening, but isn’t it time we asked ourselves exactly how and where he’s going to find it?’

  ‘We know where the shrine was built. Though the official Chronicle is vague, the Appendix makes it absolutely clear that the shrine and cloisters were set up north of the donjon and on the edge of the tilting
ground, which lay towards the eastern end of the Castle. It is also clear that the shrine lay at the bottom of the western slope, or perhaps a little way up the slope, of a mound on which stood a chapel. The inference is that the shrine was placed there so that it should be on Holy Ground.’

  ‘Then it would have been a little way up the slope,’ said Jo-Jo. ‘If a chapel stands on a mound, then you can say that the mound is holy or sacred, but somewhere there must come an end of the holiness – obviously at the bottom. So they would have put her at least a little way up the slope. Right?’

  ‘I dare say so, and I know Ivan agrees with you. So what with that and all the other co-ordinates, we can say that we have the shrine more or less pin-pointed.’

  ‘So then we ask ourselves, how was the thing designed? We know that the only entrance to it was a door looking on to or over the tilting yard. What else do we know?’