Читать книгу Death’s Jest-Book - Reginald Hill - Страница 25

Cambridge

Sun Dec 16th (very early!)

My dear Mr Pascoe,

Again so soon! But measured by swings of emotion, how very much time has passed!

Still buoyed up by my sense of having made a wise decision, and been approved in it by you, I went down to dinner tonight, posting my last letter en route, and found Albacore waiting to offer me a choice of dry or very dry sherry. I displayed my independence by refusing both and demanding gin. Then, because I wanted to relax and enjoy myself, I relented and told him that, subject to detail and safeguards, he had a deal.

‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘My dear Franny, I couldn’t be more pleased. Amaryllis, my love, come and renew old acquaintance.’

She hadn’t hung around after my paper, but here she was in a sheer silk gown cut low enough to make a man forget the spur of fame. She greeted me like an old friend, kissing me on the lips and chatting away about other inmates of the Syke as though we were talking of old acquaintance from the tennis club.

It really was an excellent night. Everything about it – the setting, the food, the wine, the atmosphere, the conversation – confirmed the wisdom of my decision. I was seated between Amaryllis and Dwight Duerden, there being too few female delegates to allow the usual gender hopping (academia is equal opportunity land, but not that equal!) and the pressure, too frequent to be coincidental, from Amaryllis’s thigh, made me wonder if this happy night might not be brought in every sense to a fitting climax.

Perhaps fortunately, the opportunity didn’t arise. After the dinner Albacore invited some few of us (the most distinguished plus myself) back to the Dean’s Lodging, all men save for Amaryllis, and she soon retired as the cigars came out and the atmosphere thickened with aromatic fumes. It was deliciously old fashioned, and I loved it.

Albacore was by now treating me like a younger brother, and when Dwight requested a tour of the Lodging, he put his arm round my shoulder and the two of us led the way.

The D’s Lodging was a sort of early eighteenth-century annexe to the original college building and must have stuck out like a new nose on an old star’s face for a time. But Cambridge of all places has the magic gift of taking unto itself all things new and wearing their newness off them with loving care till in the end they too are part of the timeless whole. It was a fine old building with that feel I so much love of a lived-in church, infinitely more splendid than the Q’s suite of rooms (what must the Master’s Habitation, a small mansion situated on a grassy knoll in the college grounds overlooking the river, be like?) and full of what should have been a stylistic hodge-podge of furniture, statuary and paintings had they not also succumbed to the unifying aura of that magical world.

I lusted for it all, and I think Justin sensed my yearning, and felt how much closer it bound me to his desires, and grappled me to him ever more tightly as the tour proceeded.

The study was for me the sanctus sanctorum, lit with a dim religious light, its book-lined walls emanating that glorious odour of old leather and paper which I think of as the incense of scholarship. At its centre stood a fine old desk, ornately carved and with a tooled leather top large enough for a pair of pygmies to play tennis on.

Dwight, miffed perhaps to find himself behind me in the Dean’s pecking order, said, ‘How the hell do you work in this gloom? And where do you hide your computer?’

‘My what?’ cried Alabacore indignantly. ‘Compute me no computers! When my publisher suggested that in the interest of speed it would be useful if he could have my Beddoes book on disk, I replied, “Certainly, if you can provide me with a large enough disc of Carrara marble and a monumental mason capable of transcribing my words!” Press keys and produce letters on a screen and what have you got? Nothing! An electronic tremor which an interruption of the electrical supply can destroy. Show me one great work which has been produced by word-processing. When I write with my pen, I am writing on my heart and what is inscribed there will take the rubber of God to erase.’

I sensed that Dwight, who probably had a computerized khazi, was drunk enough to tell his host he was talking crap, so, not wanting this atmosphere I was so much enjoying to be soured by dissent, I essayed a light-hearted diversion.

‘God uses rubbers, does he?’ I said. ‘Must have burst when he was into Mary.’

Such blasphemous vulgarity is evidently much enjoyed at High Tables. Like kids saying bum, says Charley Penn, they’re excited by their own outrageousness. Certainly it worked here, everyone responding with their own kind of amusement, the well-born Brits with that head-nodding chortle which passes for laughter in their class, the plebs with loud guffaws, and Dwight and a couple of fellow Americans with a kind of whooping bray.

After that Dwight asked in a conciliatory tone how then did Justin work, and Albacore, apologizing now for being a silly old Luddite, showed him his complex but clearly highly efficient card-index system and opened drawers to reveal reams of foolscap (no vulgar A4 for our Justinian!) closely covered with his elegant scrawl.

‘And this is your new book?’ said Dwight. ‘The only copy? Jesus, how do you sleep sound at night?’

‘A lot easier than you do, I suspect,’ responded Albacore. ‘My handwritten pages hold no attraction for a burglar. A computer on the other hand is something worth stealing, as are disks. Also no one can hack into manuscript and see what I’m up to, or copy chunks in a couple of seconds to pre-empt my ideas. Your electronic words, dear Dwight, are by comparison the common currency of the air. Someone coughs a continent away and you can catch a killing virus.’

I headed off what might have been a provoking defence of the computer by asking Albacore to what extent he felt his book might bring Beddoes in out of the cold at the perimeter of British romantic literature and into its warm centre.

‘I don’t even try,’ he retorted. ‘It’s my thesis that to understand him we must treat him not as a minor English but as a significant European writer. He was – most appositely at this present period in our history – a very good European. Byron’s the only other who comes close to him. They both loved Europe, not merely because they found it warmer and cheaper than back home, but for its history and culture and peoples.’

He expanded on this for a little while, almost addressing me directly. It was as if now that he’d won our little contest he wanted to put the memory of the arm-twisting and near-bribery behind us and demonstrate that he was a serious Beddoes scholar.

The others listened happily too, sitting on the deep leather armchairs and sofa which the spacious room afforded, drinking from their brandy balloons and puffing on their genuine Havanas till the aromatic smoke almost hid the decorated ceiling. I sometimes think that it will not be the least of the twentieth century’s philistinisms that it has destroyed the art of enjoying tobacco. Like the poet said, a fuck is only a fuck, but a good cigar is a smoke.

Long before he bored his audience (the great talkers are also masters of timing) Albacore stopped talking about Beddoes and invited us all to admire the copy of the Vita S. Godrici which he mentioned to me earlier and which he’d brought from the secure room of the college library for our delectation. Merely to handle something of such beauty and antiquity was enough for most of us, but Dwight with that lack of embarrassment about money which is the mark of a civilized American, cut to the chase and said, ‘How much would it fetch on the open market?’

Albacore smiled and said, ‘Why, this is a pearl worth more than all your tribe, Dwight. Think what you have here. A contemporary copy of the contemporary life written by a man who actually visited Godric in his hut at Finchale, Reginald of Durham, a man himself of such piety and erudition that these qualities are said by tradition to be accorded to all subsequent clerks who bear that name and title. In other words you are touching the book that touched the hand of a man who touched the hand of the saint himself. Who could put a price on something like this?’

‘Well,’ said Dwight, unputdown, ‘I know a dealer called Trick Fachmann in St Poll who’d take a shot at it.’

Even Albacore laughed, and now the conversation became general, running like quicksilver from tongue to tongue, good thing following good thing, wisdom and wit doled out in a prodigality of plenty, and I felt tears prick my eyes at the sense of privilege and pleasure in being part of this company in this place at this time.

If it were now to die, ’twere now to be most happy …

I could have stayed there forever, but all things have their natural foreordained ends, and finally we dispersed, some to their student staircases, Dwight and I making our unsteady way back to the Q’s Lodging, arm in arm for mutual support.

I undressed and climbed into bed, but I could not go to sleep. At first it was because of my excitement at the world of profit and delight which seemed to be opening up before me. But then a sudden and complete reversal took place … from the might / Of joy in minds that can no further go, / As high as we have mounted in delight / In our dejection do we sink as low. Which is why, dear Mr Pascoe, my old leech-gatherer, I am sitting here propped up against my pillow, penning these words to you. Have I done the right thing in giving in to Albacore? In my last letter I was sure I had your approval. Now I am equally certain that you with your strong principles and unmoveable moral convictions will despise me for my venality. It’s so very important for me to get you to see my side of things. I am an innocent abroad here, a pygmy jousting with giants. It is not always given to us to choose the instruments of our elevation. You must have felt this sometimes in your relationship with the egregious Dalziel. You may well have wished on occasion that the glittering prizes of your career were not in the gift of such a one. And by indignities men come to dignities. And it is sometimes base.

So if I seem to be asking for your blessing, it is beca

Another interruption!

What soaps my letters are turning out to be, every instalment ending in a cliffhanger!

And this time what a climactic interruption, fit to rank with those end-of-series episodes of shows like Casualty and ER designed to whet your what-happens-next appetite to such an edge that you will return as hungry as ever after the summer break.

But I mustn’t be frivolous. What we have here isn’t soap, it’s reality. And it’s tragic.

It was the fearful clamour of a bell which distracted me.

I leapt out of bed and rushed to the open window. Since my time in the Syke, I always sleep with my window open whatever the season. Looking out into the quad I could see nothing, but I could hear away to the right a growing hubbub of noise and, when I thrust my head out into the night air and looked towards it, it seemed to me that the dark outline of the building forming that side of the quad was already being etched against the sky by the rosy wash of dawn.

Except it was far too early for dawn and anyway I was looking north.

Pausing only to thrust my feet into my shoes and drag a raincoat round my shoulders, I rushed out into the night.

Oh God, the sight I saw when I passed from the Q’s quad to the D’s quad!

It was the Dean’s Lodging, no longer a thing of beauty but now crouched there, squat and ugly as a marauding monster, with a great tongue of flame coiling out of a downstairs window and greedily licking its facade.

I hurried forward, eager to help but not knowing how I could. Firemen bearing hoses from the engine, which seemed to have got wedged under a Gothic arch that gave the only vehicular approach to this part of the college, some wearing breathing apparatus, moved around me with that instancy of purpose which marks the assured professional.

‘What’s happening for God’s sake?’ I cried to one who paused beside me to cast an assessing eye over the scene.

‘Old building,’ he said laconically. ‘Lots of wood. Three centuries to dry out. These places are bonfires waiting to be lit. Who’re you?’

‘I’m a …’ What was I? Suddenly I didn’t know. ‘I’m at a conference here.’

‘Oh,’ he said, losing interest. ‘Need someone who knows who’s likely to be in there.’

‘I do know,’ I said quickly.

He turned out to be the Assistant Chief Fire Officer, a good-looking young man in a clean-cut kind of way.

I told him that, as far as I knew. Sir Justinian and Lady Albacore were the only inmates of the Lodging and tried to indicate from my memory of our tour where they were likely to be found. All of this he repeated into his walkie-talkie. Behind him as we talked, I could see that the fire had reached the upper storeys. My heart began to misgive me that we were witnessing a truly terrible tragedy. Then his radio crackled with the good news that Amaryllis was safe and well. But my joy at hearing this was immediately diluted by the lack of any news about Justin.

It began to rain quite heavily at this point, which was good news for the firefighters. I could see no point in catching my death of cold watching a fire, so I returned to my room and letter. Might as well go on writing as I doubt if I shall be able to fall asleep.

Wrong again!

I was woken in my chair by Dwight shaking my shoulder.

As I struggled out of sleep I could see from his face the news was not good.

Indeed it was the worst.

They’d found Justinian Albacore’s body on the ground floor where the fire had been at its fiercest.

I was devastated. I had little cause to love the man but perhaps something in his mockingly subtle character appealed to me and I’d found last night that I had no problem with the prospect of spending much time in his company.

Dwight wanted to talk but all I wanted was to be left to myself.

I got dressed and went outside. The shell of the Dean’s Lodging, gently steaming in a Fennish drizzle, stood as a dreadful illustration of the power of flames. As I stood and contemplated it I was joined by my handsome young Fire Officer who gave me the fullest picture they could piece together of last night’s events.

It seems that Amaryllis had been woken by Justin getting out of bed in the early hours. Drowsily she asked him what was up, to which he replied he thought he’d heard something downstairs but it was probably nothing so why didn’t she go back to sleep, which she did. She woke again some time later to find the room full of smoke. On the landing outside her bedroom she found things even worse with flames plainly visible at the foot of the stairs. She retreated into her room and rang the fire brigade. Then, pausing only to put on slacks, T-shirt, several warm pullovers and a little make-up, she opened the bedroom window which overlooked the roof of an architecturally incongruous conservatory, built by an orchidomaniac Victorian dean before there were such things as conservation orders, on to which she descended with the help of a drainpipe and from which she slid into the arms of the first fireman on the scene.

As for Justin, all that is possible at the moment is speculation.

It seems likely that when he descended the stairs he found his study already well ablaze. His awareness that lying within was the college’s greatest treasure, Reginald of Durham’s Vita S. Godrici, which he had personally and recklessly removed from the college library, must have blinded his judgment. Instead of raising the alarm, he probably rushed inside to rescue the precious manuscript but found himself driven back by the heat to the threshold where, overcome by fumes, he collapsed and died.

From what I can see for myself and from what my new friend told me, it’s pretty clear that not only has the Vita been reduced to ashes, but not a page of Albacore’s Beddoes manuscript or a single card from his card-index system can have survived the inferno.

It is still early days to reach conclusions about causes, but when I told the Fire Officer that we had all been sitting around the study last night drinking brandy and smoking cigars, his large blue eyes sparkled and he made a note in his note-pad.

The conference has naturally been cancelled and, after a morning spent answering questions and making statements, I am sitting here once more writing to you, dear Mr Pascoe, in the hope of clearing my thoughts.

I know you will think me selfish, but deep down beneath all my real sorrow over Justinian’s death is a tiny nugget of self-pity. All my hopes have died too, all the glorious dreams of a Cambridge future I was having only last night.

Poor old me, eh?

One more interruption, this one, I hope, definitely the last!

As I wrote my last self-pitying sentence, Dwight came into the room and said with that American directness, ‘So what are your plans now, Franny, boy?’

‘Plans?’ I said bitterly. ‘Plans need a future and I don’t seem to have one.’

He laughed and said, ‘Jesus, Fran, don’t go soft on me. It’s an ill wind … Seems to me you’ve got a great future. From what I’ve picked up over the last couple of days, you’ve inherited a half-written book about Beddoes which looks like it’s got the field clear after what happened last night. Tell me, you got any deal going with a Brit publisher?’

‘Well, no,’ I said and explained the situation.

‘And there’s no way these guys can come back at you now and say they’ve got a claim to anything that Dr Johnson did while he was taking their money?’

‘No. In fact I’ve got a written disclaimer. It seemed a good thing to ask for …’

‘I’ll say!’ he said approvingly. ‘So now you can go ahead and finish the book any which way you want and make your name, right?’

I thought about it. This was an aspect of the tragedy that hadn’t occurred to me before. Truly, God works in a mysterious way!

He said, ‘Ever think about getting it published in the States? Lot of interest in Beddoes over there, you know. Lot of money available too, if you know where to look.’

I said, ‘Really? I wish I knew where to look then!’

‘I do,’ he said. ‘My own university publishers have been stirring themselves recently. They’re just waking to the truth I’ve been telling them for years, either you grow or you die. Tell you what, I’m going to pack now, then I’m being driven up to London …’

‘Down,’ I said.

‘Sorry?’

‘I think from Cambridge you always go down to London. Or anywhere.’

He came close to me and said, ‘Listen Fran, that’s the kind of thinking you want to get out of your head. OK, Cambridge was once the place to be, but that was costume drama time. Nothing stays still. Either you go away from it or it goes away from you. Hell, I was in Uzbekistan recently and being an old Romantic I wanted to take a look at the Aral Sea. Well, I got to where my battered Baedeker said it ought to be and you know what I found? Nothing. Desert. The Russkis have been siphoning off so much water for so long that it’s shrunk to half its size. I talked to this old guy still living in the house he was born in and he pointed to the cracked stony ground outside his front door and said that when he was a kid he used to run out of the house naked on a summer morning and dive straight into the waves. Now he’d have to run two hundred fucking miles! Same thing with Cambridge. It’s all dried up. Look real close at it and what do you see? It’s an old movie set where they once did a few good things, but now the cameras and the lights and the action have moved on. Nothing as sad as an old movie set that’s been left to rot in the rain. Think about it, Fran. I’ll be moving out in an hour. Hope you’ll be with me.’

Well, after that I needed a walk to clear my head. Once more I strolled along the Backs. Only this time I looked at all those ancient buildings with a very different eye.

And you know what I saw this time? Not temples to beauty and learning, not a peaceful haven where a man could drop anchor and enjoy shore leave for ever more.

No, I saw it with eyes from which Dwight had removed the scales, and what I saw was an old movie set, looking sad as hell in the rain!

Why on earth would I want to spend my days gossiping and bitching and boozing my life away in a dump like this?

So now I’m packed – my few things only take a minute to throw together – and waiting for Dwight. He should be ready soon, so at last I’ll bring this letter to a conclusion rather than an interruption.

I hope I’ve cleared the air between us. Perhaps some time in the future I may be moved to write to you again. Who knows? In the meantime, as the year draws to its close, may I once again wish yourself and your lovely family a very Merry Christmas?

Yours on the move per ardua ad astra!

Franny Roote