The God of the Labyrinth

  Angela Glenney was somehow very Scottish—slim, pretty, lively, with close-cropped hair and a slightly freckled face. She wore a long woollen sweater that came almost to her knees, and jeans.

  ‘Would you like tea? Or a drink?’

  I said I’d prefer tea at this hour. They both went into the kitchen, and I glanced at the books on the shelves, and at the pictures. It was clear that Alastair Glenney had brought them from Golspie: there was a fine set of Scott and John Galt in the original editions, and a great many other Scottish writers of whom I had never heard. The bookplates said Horace Glenney, but from the dates this was evidently the son—Esmond’s literary executor.

  In the corner of the bookshelf I saw a book called Letters from a Mountain, by Reginald Smithson. The title page showed no publisher or date, but someone had written ‘1780’ on a flyleaf. There was a design on the title page—of a mountain with a bare tree, and an antelope. Something about it struck me as oddly familiar. I felt suddenly dizzy, and sat down, closing my eyes. It seemed that my hangover was still with me. When I closed my eyes, the dizziness became almost vertiginous, so I opened them and stared again at the book. Then, with sudden clarity, I knew what was happening. I was ‘becoming’ Esmond again. But this time, I was not seeing the world with his eyes. It was as if we were sharing my head, and seeing things with an effect of double exposure. But I now knew why the book was familiar. I had seen it before. It brought a sense of foreboding. Something unpleasant had been associated with it.

  I stared with sudden shock. The door opened, and Horace Glenney came in, carrying a tray. He looked at me, then said:

  ‘Are you all right?’

  The double-exposure effect ceased, and I recognised Alastair Glenney. I said: ‘Yes, I’m rather hung over, that’s all.’

  He looked at the book in my lap.

  ‘Oh, you know that?’

  ‘No.’

  Angela came in, and he said:

  ‘Isn’t that amazing, Angy? He’s found the Letters from a Mountain. Doesn’t that prove something?’

  They had made sandwiches, and I realised I was hungry. As I ate, the last traces of the dizziness vanished. I was completely myself again. Three cups of hot tea completed the cure. While I ate, she told me why they were interested in Esmond Donelly. After her husband’s death, Angela had decided to complete the university course she had abandoned to get married. She enrolled at Edinburgh; her teacher was Professor David Smellie, the biographer of James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd. When Smellie discovered that Angela was Lady Glenney, he was pleased and excited. He was writing a history of the Edinburgh Review, and Glenney had been one of the original contributors. He had been recruited by Dr Gilbert Stuart, a man whose chief personal characteristics were envy and rancour. The sharpness of its tone made the Review an immediate success when its first issue came out in June 1773: Glenney contributed an excellent critical article on Lord Momboddo, and a rather harsh review of a history by Dr Henry, one of the most successful Scottish writers of the day. Then, apparently, Glenney—like a great many other people—began to feel that all this bitterness and satire was point­less, and wrote Stuart a long letter—October 1773—explaining his feeling that the Review ought to aim at being more construc­tive; that there was, after all, some merit in Henry, Robertson, Blair and various others whose reputations had been scourged in its pages. Stuart wrote a friendly and reasonable reply, but then seems to have suspected that Glenney had been ‘influenced’ by Henry or Blair, and wrote a second letter in which he called Glenney ‘an ecclesiastical lapdog’ (Henry was a ‘Reverend’).

  The remainder of the story can be found in Isaac D’Israeli’s Calamities and Quarrels of Authors. In November, the Scots Magazine (a rival) produced a brilliant defence of Henry and Robertson, which included a skilful and deadly attack on Stuart. D’Israeli quotes this at length. In the pages of the Review, Stuart asserted that the author of the attack—signed ‘E.D.’—was Horace Glenney. Glenney replied immediately by letter, telling Stuart that while he approved of every word of the attack, its author was actually his friend Esmond Donelly. The result of this letter was a murderous review of Donelly’s Observations upon France and Switzerland in the February issue of Stuart’s magazine. D’Israeli states that Glenney wanted to challenge Stuart to a duel, but was dissuaded by Donelly.

  The battle rumbled on, even after Stuart’s magazine had col­lapsed. Stuart went to London, and contributed periodically to The Gentleman’s Magazine. And it was in that magazine, in June 1781, that there appeared a brief but vicious review of Letters from a Mountain, that described it as the ‘vapours of a mind unbalanced through lewdness and enthusiasm’. In the next issue of the magazine, it was announced that the author of the Letters from a Mountain was actually Horace Glenney.

  Stuart died five years later, at the age of forty-four—embit­tered, seething with hatred, convinced that his enemies had conspired to ruin him.

  This was the story told to me by Angela Glenney. It would have excited me more than it actually did if I had not been so tired. Every time she mentioned Horace Glenney, I looked at Alastair Glenney, and wondered if it was true that he resembled his ancestor. If he did, then I had my proof that I was in some kind of psychic contact with Esmond. When she finished, I asked if there was a portrait of Horace Glenney at Golspie.

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘What does he look like?’

  They looked at one another and laughed. Angela said:

  ‘Terribly like Alastair. That’s why he’s so interested in him!’

  So there could be no possible doubt. Instead of feeling excited, I felt oddly oppressed.

  I picked up Letters from a Mountain. ‘What is it about?’

  ‘Oh, it’s a most weird piece of work. Dr Smellie thinks the form is influenced by Goldsmith’s Citizen of the World. It’s really a kind of Gothic novel—rather like Walpole’s Castle of Otranto. It’s really quite amazing for its period—when you consider that Mrs Radcliffe and Maturin hadn’t started writing.’

  ‘Could you give me an outline of the plot?’

  ‘It’s about two friends called Rodolpho and Conrad. They’re a sort of David and Jonathan. When they fall in love with the same girl, each tries to persuade her to accept the other. They go to university together, and swear eternal friendship and blood-brotherhood—you know the kind of thing. Then one day, when he’s standing in a bookshop, Rodolpho gets approached by a mysterious Moor named Abdallah Saba, who offers to tell his fortune. He tells him that he’s destined to be one of the rulers of the world, and invites him back to his home. Rodolpho goes—in spite of the warnings of Conrad—and falls in love with a girl called Nouri, who’s supposed to be Abdallah’s daughter . . .’ At this point, Alastair interrupted: ‘Surely he doesn’t want to hear every blessed word of the stuff.’

  I assured him that I did. Angela went on. The Moor gets Rodolpho involved in magic ceremonies involving a great crystal globe. They stand on top of a tower in the light of the full moon, and Rodolpho looks into the globe. He sees a vulture that looks at him with yellow eyes, then suddenly seems to hurl itself towards him. Rodolpho is saved from falling off the tower by Nouri. She then becomes his mistress and promises to marry him if his family will give their consent. She confesses that Abdallah is not her father, and that it is all a plot to involve Rodolpho in a terrible secret society that plans to destroy Europe.

  The next day, he finds that Nouri and her ‘father’ have left. He is in despair, and searches everywhere for them. One day, in an old church, he sees the figure of a vulture cast in bronze, and buys it for a few crowns. Then he writes a travel book, describing the places he has visited in his search for Nouri, and has the cover embossed with the symbol of the vulture. A few weeks later, Rodolpho receives an envelope containing the symbol of a vulture, and a note ordering him to destroy every copy of his travel book. He does this by setting fire to the London warehouse of h
is publisher, and several people die in the fire, which spreads to adjoining houses. When this is done, the Moor contacts him again, and he is able to rejoin his lady love. Now he becomes a full member of the evil secret society known as the Order of the Vulture. They feel that Nouri is a bad—or rather, a good—influence on him, and she is ordered to renounce him. She refuses, and is murdered. Rodolpho, now completely in the power of the Order, accepts a mistress called Fatima, who is also a witch. . . .

  It would be tiresome to summarise the rest of the novel, which is confused and melodramatic. There can be no doubt that it owes a great deal to The Castle of Otranto, and that, in turn, it influenced Mrs Radcliffe and Maturin. Rodolpho is tempted to do more and more evil deeds, in spite of Conrad’s attempts to save his soul. Finally, he is ordered to murder Conrad. But this is too much. The David-and-Jonathan bond is too strong, in spite of the years. At the last moment, Rodolpho throws down the dagger, and he and Conrad embrace. Rodolpho is in despair at his evil deeds, and they decide to go to Mount Athos to ask for penances. On the last stage of their journey, Rodolpho is awakened in the night by the voice of the dead Nouri. He gets up to follow it, and falls over a cliff. When the body is found, the face is so horribly contorted that the monks refuse to have it buried in holy ground, declaring that the corpse is obviously that of a demon. Conrad himself buries it in the middle of a barren steppe, then goes on to Mount Athos, where he writes his story—in the form of a series of letters to a father confessor.

  As Angela Glenney summarised the plot, my fatigue vanished. I knew now that my investigation had taken a crucial turn. The most important piece of the jigsaw puzzle had fallen into place. I knew that Esmond had, in fact, received the sketch of a phoenix soon after publishing the Observations in 1771. I knew that the complete edition had been destroyed in a fire at the London warehouse of his publisher. Now it was impossible to doubt that Esmond had been approached by some envoy of the Sect of the Phoenix in 1771. At the same time, the rest of the story could not be taken seriously. Esmond was not plunged into evil ways after that date. He and Glenney remained on close terms for years after, and the Scots Magazine article of 1774 revealed that he was still an avid reader of sermons. It was not until nearly ten years later that Glenney wrote the Letters from a Mountain.

  I owed this vital clue to Alastair and Angela Glenney. There­fore, it was clear that I owed them the full story of my own researches. So when Angela said: ‘Now, what have you dis­covered about Esmond Donelly?’, I suggested we have a whisky; then I told them the full story, as I have written it here. It took three hours, and I finished it in a restaurant in Notting Hill Gate over dinner. I had Esmond’s journals with me, as well as Glenney’s letters; I was glad of them, for there were times when the whole thing sounded so absurd to me that it was a relief to convince myself it was not an involved dream. Angela listened without saying much, her eyes never leaving my face. Alastair kept saying: ‘My God’, and walking up and down the room. As we walked to the restaurant, he said: ‘You realise this is the biggest literary discovery since the Dead Sea Scrolls?’, and it sounded so funny that Angela and I both started to laugh.

  But it was when I told them that Esmond had appointed Horace Glenney’s son as his literary executor that they became really excited. They had been hoping to find some of Glenney’s material at Golspie; now it seemed possible that they might find some of Esmond’s papers there too. Angela pointed out that Alastair could be regarded as Esmond’s literary executor, since he was a direct descendant of Horace Glenney, and there were no Astons left alive. That meant that if more Donelly papers were published, Alastair and Angela could share the profits. I already had more than enough material for my own edition of Memoirs of an Irish Rake.

  We sat up until two in the morning talking about Esmond and Horace Glenney. The chief regret, naturally, was that neither of them had taken any interest in Glenney before selling Golspie House. Angela remembered that her husband had showed her a room at Golspie where a murder had taken place—a man had been found dead under mysterious circumstances. Alastair thought he recalled something of the sort too; but when she described the room, it was not the one he remembered as the ‘murder room’.

  I slept the night on a bed-settee in the sitting room; Angela was occupying the bed in the guest room. Alastair wanted to leave for Scotland the next morning, but Angela said she had some research to do at the Museum. I decided that I might as well go with her. I spent the morning there, and found the ‘Martell and Smithson’ pamphlet on the Sect of the Phoenix. Tim Morrison was embarrassed when I pointed it out to him, and said that he had overlooked it because its title refers to the ‘Society of the Phoenix’. To make up for the oversight, he had the pamphlet photostatted for me, so I was able to take a copy away.

  Angela and I ate lunch in a Greek restaurant near Cambridge Circus. I remarked at one point that it was kind of them to trust me in this way. After all, we were technically rivals. Sooner or later—probably sooner—they would have searched Golspie House for the Glenney papers, and then the discovery—assuming they made one—would be entirely theirs. She said:

  ‘No. I’m glad you joined us. We both trust you.’

  I said thank you. She said:

  ‘In fact, I’m delighted you came along. You know, Alastair used to adore his brother Gordon. It was Alastair who persuaded me to marry Gordon, in fact. He went on about his virtues at such length that I had to meet him. I was Alastair’s girlfriend first, you know.’

  ‘Didn’t he feel hurt when you married Gordon?’

  ‘Oh no. He was delighted. You see, it brought him closer to Gordon—it meant he’d really given Gordon something important. Anyway, what I started to say was—I think he’s inclined to look up to you as he did to Gordon.’

  ‘But he’s only known me twenty-four hours.’

  ‘That makes no difference. The odd thing is, you’re rather like Gordon, physically.’

  She stopped, and I thought she reddened. She drank a gulp of lager to cover it up. I saw what she was thinking: that if Alastair had presented her to Gordon, then I might be regarded as the next in the line of succession. We changed the subject and talked about Donelly. Then I remembered something I had forgotten to mention: the letter from Klaus Dunkelman. I had his address and telephone number in my address book. She said:

  ‘Why not ring him? He might be interesting.’

  ‘I suppose I ought to.’

  I went to the restaurant phone. A woman with a foreign accent answered, and sounded hostile until I mentioned my name. Then she became very friendly, introduced herself as Annaliese Dunkelman, and began to talk at length about my books. Finally, her husband came on the phone; he asked me if I could join them for supper. I said I might be engaged then, but asked if I could go around later that afternoon. We made a date for four o’clock.

  I was not entirely happy about this development. It sounded as if it might be a dead-end. But Angela said: ‘Good, he sounds interesting. Do you mind if I come too?’

  We spent another hour in the Museum; then, since the after­noon was so pleasant, decided to walk up towards Hampstead. We strolled up through Bloomsbury as far as Camden Town, then took a bus to Belsize Park. The Dunkelmans’ address was in Keats Grove.

  The door was opened by a tall, thin man with very thick glasses that made his eyes seem distant and strange, like an octopus looking out of an aquarium. He looked a little surprised to see Angela, but invited us in cordially. We followed him along a corridor into a large sunlit studio. The floor was covered with stone dust, and there were huge Amazonian statues of women with massive breasts and buttocks. A big, grey-haired woman put down her hammer and chisel to come and greet us. She shook my hand enthusiastically, with a grip like a lobster, and nodded perfunctorily at Angela. She was less tall than her husband, but built like a wrestler, and her arms—with the sleeves rolled up above the elbow—gave the impression that she could have felled any one
of us with a stroke. Her German accent was thicker than her husband’s, and I shall not try to reproduce it here, or its curious syntax. She placed a hand on my shoulder.

  ‘Good, I have been waiting very impatiently. Ever since I read your Sex Diary I have wanted to meet you. Come along to my den.’ She turned to Angela and smiled. ‘Do you mind? I want to talk to him alone. Klaus will show you the garden.’ Angela was too surprised to object. And Frau Dunkelman grabbed my arm in a grip of iron, and steered me up a flight of stairs. I caught Angela’s eye for a moment, and she raised her eyebrows and bit her lower lip.

  Anna—as she insisted I call her immediately—led me into a small, comfortable room that smelt of tobacco. On the sideboard there were three gallon bottles containing, respectively, gin, whisky and brandy. She offered me a drink, but I said it was too early. She poured herself an enormous gin, and filled it to the top with tonic. Then she lit a cigarette in a holder that must have been a foot long, and flung herself into a deep armchair, crossing her knees. I have to admit that her legs were not bad. At the same time, it made me uncomfortable to be able to see so much of her at such short notice, for the short tweed skirt she was wearing hardly reached the tops of her stockings when she was standing up. She indicated that I should sit in the chair opposite, which left me no alternative to contemplating her.

  ‘Yes, you have great penetration for such a young man. How old are you? Really? You look much younger. When I read your book I said to Klaus: “Ah, what a pity he does not live in London. There is so much we could teach him.” And now you are only here for one day! How preposterous! What can you do in one day?’

  She told me that my books all showed considerable intelligence, and great intuition, but that what I lacked was experience. ‘You must not be offended if I tell you that in many ways you are immature.’ I said I wasn’t offended. Then, without explaining the transition, she began to speak about her own qualifications for teaching the young. ‘I should be a schoolteacher like my mother. But I have no patience with large groups of students. What I would like is two or three brilliant ones. I am creative, you see. My hands have to shape stone and clay, my mind has to shape souls.’ She stared at me penetratingly. ‘Now I want to ask you a frank question. When you make love to a woman, can you hold back your climax until you have given her all the pleasure she needs?’ I thought of Diana, and said I thought so. ‘No, no, that is not what I want to hear. I want a truthful answer. You must think of me as a doctor—as if I was your psychoanalyst . . .’ She took a long swallow of gin, reached out for a fresh cigarette, and uncrossed her legs. It was hard to keep my eyes on her face. She glanced away for a moment, then looked back quickly, evidently hoping to catch me peeping. Then she leaned her head back against the cushion, her face to the ceiling, and closed her eyes. I wondered whether this was some kind of test. She was wearing panties that might have been made of pink cellophane, and she was facing me with her feet on a leather pouffe, her knees spread apart, so that without any effort I could see the open lips of the vulva, and the entrance to the vagina. She had no pubic hairs—she had obviously shaved them off. Her legs and her bottom were shapely. But the powerful arms, the big shoulders, the grey hair, made it seem as if she was some mythological monster, with a top half that didn’t belong to the bottom. I deliberately looked away towards the empty fireplace, and kept my eyes there. She was saying: