The Rebel Angels

  “Go away,” I shouted.

  The knock was repeated, more powerfully.

  “Bugger off.” I called, in something like a roar.

  But I had not locked the door, and now it opened and Arthur Cornish poked his head around it, grinning.

  “That’s no way to speak to an old friend, Maria.”

  “Oh, it’s you! If you’re an old friend, why didn’t you come sooner?”

  “I assumed you would be busy. I’ve been reading about you in the papers, and they all said you were closeted with publishers for twelve hours a day, making juicy terms about your friend’s book, over magnums of champagne.”

  “It’s all very well for you to be facetious; I’ve been living like a hunted animal.”

  “Do you dare to come out with me for dinner? If you wear a heavy veil, nobody will recognize you. A veil and perhaps a pillow under the back of your coat. I’ll say you are an unpresentable aunt; a Veiled Hunchback. Anyhow, I’d thought of going to a nice dark place.”

  I was not in the mood to be teased, but I was very much in a mood to be fed. I had not dared to eat in a restaurant since the trouble began, and I was sick of Mamusia’s grim meals. He took me to a very good place, sat in a dark corner, and ordered a very good meal. It was deeply soothing to the spirit—a far cry from The Rude Plenty in the company of Parlabane. Of course we talked about the murder, the excitement, and the trouble I had been having. There was no pretence of rising above the most interesting thing either of us knew about at the moment, but it was possible, in these circumstances, to see it in a different light.

  “So Hollier has taken to his bed and left you holding the bag?”

  “The loss of the Gryphius Portfolio was the last straw. He simply couldn’t believe Darcourt would take it. Where is it now?”

  “I have it. Darcourt was evasive about how he came by it, but I gathered it had something to do with McVarish.”

  “What are you going to do with it?”

  “I’d rather thought of giving it as a wedding present.”

  “Who to?”

  “Why, to you and Hollier, of course. You are marrying him, aren’t you?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Then I am mistaken.”

  “You never thought any such thing.”

  “But you and he were so absorbed in your work. You were so very much his disciple. What did the murderer-monk call you—his soror mystica.”

  “You’re being very objectionable.”

  “Not intentionally; I only want to get things straight.”

  “I wouldn’t marry him even if he asked me. Which he won’t. His mother wouldn’t let him.”

  “Really? Is he under her thumb, then?”

  “That’s not fair. He lives for his work. People do, you know, in the University. But when I saw him in his mother’s house, I knew that was where his emotions live still. His mother is on to me.”

  “Meaning?”

  “When she looks at me I see a balloon coming out of her head with Gypsy Bitch written in it, like somebody in the comics.”

  “Not Bitch, surely.”

  “To people like her all Gypsy girls are bitches.”

  “That’s a shame. I looked forward to giving you that Portfolio as a wedding present. Well, when you decide to marry somebody else, it’s yours.”

  “Oh, please don’t say that. Please give it to the University library, because Hollier wants it more than you can guess.”

  “You forget that it is mine. It was not included in the gifts to the University, and in fact I paid the bill for it less than a month ago; those dealers in rare manuscripts are slow with their bills, you know. Perhaps because they are ashamed of the prices they ask. I feel no yearning to oblige Professor Hollier; I once told you I’m a man of remarkable taste; I don’t like a man who doesn’t know a good thing when he sees it.”

  “Meaning—?”

  “Meaning you. I think he’s treated you shabbily.”

  “But you wouldn’t expect him to marry me just to get the Gryphius, would you? Do you think I’d say yes to such a proposal?”

  “Don’t tempt me to give you an answer to either of those questions.”

  “You think very poorly of me, I see.”

  “I think the world of you, Maria. So let’s stop this foolishness and talk to the point. Will you marry me?”

  “Why should I marry you?”

  “That would take a long time to answer, but I’ll give you the best reason: because I think we have become very good friends, and could go on to be splendid friends, and would be very likely to be wonderful friends forever.”

  “Friends?”

  “What’s wrong with being friends?”

  “When people talk about marriage, they generally use stronger words than that.”

  “Do they? I don’t know. I’ve never asked anyone to marry me before.”

  “You mean you’ve never been in love?”

  “Certainly I’ve been in love. More times than I can count. I’ve had two or three affairs with girls I loved. But I knew very well that they weren’t friends.”

  “You put friendship above love?”

  “Doesn’t everybody? No, that’s a foolish question; of course they don’t. They talk about love to people with whom they are infatuated, and sometimes involved to the point of devotion. I’ve nothing against love. Most enjoyable. But I’m talking to you about marriage.”

  “Marriage. But you don’t love me?”

  “Of course I love you, fathead, but I’m serious about marriage, and marriage with anyone whom I do not think the most splendid friend I’ve ever had doesn’t interest me. Love and sex are very fine but they won’t last. Friendship—the kind of friendship I am talking about—is charity and loving-kindness more than it’s sex and it lasts as long as life. What’s more, it grows, and sex dwindles: has to. So—will you marry me and be friends? We’ll have love and we’ll have sex, but we won’t build on those alone. You don’t have to answer now. But I wish you’d think very seriously about it, because if you say no—”

  “You’ll go to Africa and shoot lions.”

  “No; I’ll think you’ve made a terrible mistake.”

  “You think well of yourself, don’t you?”

  “Yes, and I think well of you—better of you than of anybody. These are liberated days, Maria; I don’t have to crawl and whine and pretend I can’t live without you. I can, and if I must, I’ll do it. But I can live so much better with you, and you can live so much better with me, that it’s stupid to play games about it.”

  “You’re a very cool customer, Arthur.”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t know much about me.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “You don’t know my mother, or my Uncle Yerko.”

  “Give me a chance to meet them.”

  “My mother is a shop-lifter.”

  “Why? She’s got lots of money.”

  “How do you know?”

  “In a business like mine there are ways of finding out. You aren’t badly off yourself. But your mother is something more than a shop-lifter; you see, I know that, too. She’s by way of being famous among my musical friends. In such a person the shoplifting is an eccentricity, like the collections of pornography some famous conductors are known to possess. Call it a hobby. But must I point out that I’m not proposing to marry your mother?”

  “Arthur, you’re very cool, but there are things you don’t know. Comes of having no family, I suppose.”

  “Where did you get the idea I have no family?”

  “You told me yourself.”

  “I told you I had no parents I could remember clearly. But family—I have platoons of family, and though most of them are dead, yet in me they are alive.”

  “Do you really think that?”

  “Indeed I do, and I find it very satisfying. You told me you hadn’t much use for heredity, though how you reconcile that with rummaging around in the past, as you do with Clement Holl
ier, I can’t imagine. If the past doesn’t count, why bother with it?”

  “Well—I think I said more than I meant.”

  “That’s what I suspected. You wanted to brush aside your Gypsy past.”

  “I’ve thought more carefully about that.”

  “So you should. You can’t get rid of it, and if you deny it, you must expect it to revenge itself on you.”

  “My God, Arthur, you talk exactly like my mother!”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  “Then don’t be, because what sounds all right from her sounds ridiculous from you. Arthur, did anybody ever tell you that you have a pronounced didactic streak?”

  “Bossy, would you call it?”

  “Yes.”

  “A touch of the know-it-all?”

  “Yes.”

  “No. Nobody’s ever hinted at any such thing. Decisive and strongly intuitive, are the expressions they use, when they are choosing their words carefully.”

  “I wonder what my mother would say about you?”

  “Generous recognition of a fellow-spirit, I should guess.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it. But about this heredity business—have you thought about it seriously? Girls grow to be very like their mothers, you know.”

  “What better could a man ask than to be married to a phuri dai; now, how long do you suppose it might take you to make up your mind?”

  “I’ve made it up. I’ll marry you.”

  Some confusion and kissing. After a while—

  “I like a woman who can make quick decisions.”

  “It was when you called me fathead. I’ve never been called that before. Flattering things like Sophia, and unflattering things like irreverent cunt, but never fathead.”

  “That was friendly talk.”

  “Then what you said about being friends settled it. I’ve never had a real friend. Rebel Angels, and such like, but nobody ever offered me friendship. That’s irresistible.”

  The New Aubrey

  6

  I will not marry couples with whom I have had no previous discussion; I insist on finding out what they think marriage is, and what they suppose they are doing. In part this is self-preservative caution; I will not become involved with people who want to write their own wedding service, devising fancy vows for their own use, and substituting hogwash from Kahlil Gibran or some trendy shaman for the words of the Prayer Book. On the other hand, I am ready to make excisions for people who find the wording of the marriage service a little too rugged for their modern concepts. I am fussy about music and will permit no ‘O Promise Me’ or ‘Because God Made Thee Mine’; I discourage the wedding march by Mendelssohn, which is theatre music, and the other one from Lohengrin, which was a prelude to a notably unsuccessful marriage. I do not regard myself as a picturesque adjunct to a folk ceremony performed by people who have no scrap of religious belief, though I do not require orthodoxy, because I have unorthodox reservations of my own.

  I was startled, therefore, by the orthodoxy insisted on by Arthur Cornish and Maria. Startled, and somewhat alarmed, for in my experience too much orthodoxy can lead to trouble; a decent measure of come-and-go is more enduring.

  My interview with Arthur and Maria took place in my rooms in Ploughwright before dinner on the Monday preceding their wedding. Maria arrived early, which pleased me, because I wanted some private talk with her.

  “Does Arthur know about you and Hollier?”

  “Oh yes, I told him all about that, and we’ve agreed it doesn’t count.”

  “What do you mean by count?”

  “It means that as far as we are concerned I’m still a virgin.”

  “But Maria, it isn’t usual nowadays for the virginity of the bride to be an important issue. Love, trust, and seriousness of intention are what really count.”

  “Don’t forget that I am part Gypsy, Simon, and it counts for Gypsies. The value of virginity depends on whose it is; for trivial people, it is no doubt trivial.”

  “Then what have you told him? That you had your fingers crossed?”

  “I hadn’t expected you to be frivolous, Simon.”

  “I’m not frivolous. I just want to be sure you aren’t kidding yourselves. It doesn’t matter to me, but if it matters to you, I’d like to be sure you know what you are doing. What really matters is whether you have got Hollier completely out of your system.”

  “Not completely. Of course I love him still, and as Arthur is giving me the Gryphius Portfolio for a wedding present I’ll certainly be working on it with Hollier. But he’s a Rebel Angel, like you, and I love him as I love you, Simon dear, though of course you’re a priest and he’s a sort of wizard, which makes all the difference.”

  “How?”

  “Wizards don’t count. Merlin, and Klingsor and all those were incapable of human love and usually impotent as well.”

  “What a pity Abelard and Heloise didn’t know that.”

  “Yes. They got themselves into a terrible muddle. If Heloise had been more clear-headed she’d have seen that Abelard was a frightful nerd in human relationships. Of course, she was only seventeen. Those letters! But let’s forget about them: Hollier has led me to some recognition of what wisdom and scholarship are, and that’s what matters, not a tiny stumble on the path. You’ve shown me as much as I am able to understand at present about the generosity and pleasure of scholarship. So I love you both. But Arthur is different, and what I bring to Arthur is untouched by any other man.”

  “Good.”

  “Arthur says the physical act of love is a metaphor for a spiritual encounter. That certainly was so with Hollier. Whatever I felt about it, he was ashamed of himself right away.”

  “I hadn’t realized Arthur was such a philosopher about these things.”

  “Arthur has some amazing ideas.”

  “So have you. I thought you were in flight from all the Gypsy part of your heritage.”

  “So I was till I met Parlabane, but his talk about the need to recognize your root and your crown as of equal importance has made me understand that my Gypsy part is inescapable. It has to be recognized, because if it isn’t it will plague me all my life as a canker at the root. We’re doing a lot of Gypsy things—”

  “Maria, be careful; I want to be the priest at your wedding, but I’ll have nothing to do with cutting wrists and mingling blood, or waving bloody napkins to show that you have been deflowered, or anything of that sort. I thought you wanted a Christian marriage.”

  “Don’t worry, there’ll be none of that. But Yerko is taking himself very seriously as a substitute for my Father; as my Mother’s brother he’s far more important, really, in Gypsy life. Yerko has demanded, and received, a purchase-price from Arthur, in gold. And Yerko has ceremonially accepted Arthur as a ‘phral’—you know, a gadjo who has married a Gypsy, and who is regarded as a brother, though of course not as a Gypsy. And Mamusia has given us the bread and salt; she breaks a nice crusty roll and salts it and gives us each half and we eat it while she says that we shall be faithful until we tire of bread and salt.”

  “Well, you seem to be going the whole Romany hog. Are you certain you need a marriage ceremony after all that?”

  “Simon, how can you ask such a thing! Yes, we want our marriage to be blessed. We’re serious people. I am much more serious, much more real, for having accepted my Gypsy root.”

  “I see. What about Arthur’s root?”

  “Very extensive, apparently. He says he has a cellar full of dried roots.”

  When Arthur came he didn’t want to talk about his root; he seemed more inclined to lecture me about orthodoxy, of which he had an unexpectedly high opinion. The reason so many modern marriages break down, he informed me, was because people did not dare to set themselves a high enough standard; they went into marriage with one eye on all the escape-hatches, instead of accepting it as an advance from which there was no retreat.

  I think he expected me to agree enthusiastically, but I didn’t. Nor did I contradict
him; I have had too much experience of life to attempt to tell a really rich person anything. They are as bad as the young; they know it all. Arthur and Maria had agreed that they wanted no revised service as it appears in modern Prayer Books, and he brought along a handsome old volume dated 1706 with a portrait of Queen Anne, of all people, as a frontispiece, which was obviously from the possessions of the late Francis Cornish. I knew the form, of course, but felt I should take them through it, to make sure they knew what they were letting themselves in for, and sure enough they insisted on the inclusion of the passage in the Preamble which debars those who marry ‘to satisfie mens carnal lusts and appetites, like brute beasts, that have no understanding’. They wanted to be enjoined publicly ‘to avoid fornication’ and Maria wanted to vow to ‘obey, serve, love, honour and keep’ her husband; indeed in the order of service they wanted she would use the word ‘obey’—so hateful to the liberal young—twice, and when I questioned it she said that it seemed to her to be like the oath of loyalty to the monarch—which is another vow that most people are too modern to take seriously.

  I would have resisted all this antiquarianism if they had not both been so touching in their delight that marriage ‘was ordained for the mutual society, help and comfort that the one ought to have of the other’. This was plainly what they were looking for, and Arthur was eloquent about it. “People don’t talk to one another nearly enough,” he said. “The sex-hobbyists go on tediously about their preoccupation without ever admitting that it is bound to diminish as time passes. There are people who say that the altar of marriage is not the bed, but the kitchen stove, thereby turning it into a celebration of gluttony. But who ever talks about a lifelong, intimate friendship expressing itself in the broadest possible range of conversation? If people are really alive and alert it ought to go on and on, prolonging life because there is always something more to be said.”

  “I used to think it was horrible to see couples in restaurants, simply eating and never saying a word to one another,” said Maria, “but I am beginning to know better. Maybe they don’t have to talk all the time to be in communication. Conversation in its true meaning isn’t all wagging the tongue; sometimes it is a deeply shared silence. But Arthur and I have never stopped talking since we decided to marry.”