I thought – as it turned out quite mistakenly – that I saw how things were shaping.
‘May I interpolate another question?’
‘Permission is given.’
‘You remain still living single in your flat?’
Delavacquerie laughed.
‘You mean did the combined trip to the Antilles have any concrete result? Well, purely administratively, it was decided that Polly and I would remain in our separate establishments, anyway for a short time longer, on account of various not at all interesting pressures in our professional lives. Does that answer the substance of your enquiry?’
‘Yes. That was what I wanted to know. A further query. Had Fiona more or less invented an excuse for coming to see you again?’
Delavacquerie smiled at that idea. It seemed to please him, but he shook his head. On the face of it, the suggestion was reasonable enough. If Delavacquerie had taken what he called an interest in Fiona, when she had frequented the house, she herself was likely to be at least aware of something of the sort in the air, an amitié, to use his own term. She could have decided later, if only as a caprice, that she might experiment with his feelings, see how far things would go. Delavacquerie stuck to his uncompromising denial.
‘No, she was sent by Murtlock all right. I’m satisfied as to that. Murtlock’s motive for wanting to get into communication with me was an odd one. Not a particularly pleasant one.’
‘He is not a particularly pleasant young man.’
‘Nevertheless people are attracted to him.’
‘Certainly.’
‘They come under his influence. They may not even like him when they do so. They may not even be in love with him – naturally they could be in love with him without liking him. My first thought was that Fiona was in love with Murtlock. I’m not sure now that’s correct. On the other hand, she’s certainly under Murtlock’s influence.’
It sounded a little as if Delavacquerie was explaining all this to himself, rather than to me, establishing confidence by an opportunity of speaking his hopes aloud. He had, after all, more or less suggested that as his aim, when he broached all this.
‘Does Murtlock hope to rope you into his cult? Surely not? That would be too much.’
‘It wasn’t me he was after. It was Gwinnett.’
‘They met, I suppose, when Gwinnett went down to see Widmerpool.’
‘That hadn’t happened, when Fiona came to see me.’
‘Murtlock knew about Gwinnett already.’
‘It appears that Gwinnett has won quite a name for himself in occult circles – if that is what they should be called – by having allegedly taken part in an act of great magical significance – in modern times almost making magical history.’
‘You mean — ’
‘By release of sexual energy in literally necromantic circumstances – if we are to accept Gwinnett did that – in short, direct contact with the dead. In performing a negative expression of sex, carried to its logical conclusions, Gwinnett took part in the most inspired rite of Murtlock’s cult.’
‘I knew that, according to Murtlock doctrine, pleasure was excluded. There is no reason to suppose Gwinnett himself believed that.’
‘You are right. Such an attitude seems even to have shocked Gwinnett. At the same time he felt that, as a scholar, he should study this available form of the gothic image of mortality. I do not think Gwinnett exactly expected that the theme would be, so to speak, played back to himself by Murtlock when he paid his visit to Widmerpool. I understand that the reason for Murtlock’s interest in him was never put – the metaphor is appropriate – in cold blood. How much Gwinnett himself guessed, I do not know.’
‘You learnt all this from Fiona?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is it time to tell my story yet?’
Delavacquerie laughed. He looked at me rather hard.
‘You knew some of this already – I mean in connexion with Fiona?’
‘As it happens, yes.’
He hesitated, perhaps more tormented than he would admit to himself.
‘Let me say one thing more. What I have been talking about is not quite so simple as the way I’ve told it. There is another side too. You imply that you know for a fact that Fiona was involved – physically involved – in some of these highly distasteful goings-on. Do you know more, Nicholas, than that she has been for quite a long time a member of the cult, therefore they would inevitably come her way?’
‘Yes. I do know more.’
‘Involved without love – even in the many heteroclite forms of that unhappy verb.’
‘Yes.’
‘My first thought – when Fiona came to me with Murtlock’s message that he wanted to know Gwinnett’s whereabouts – was to have nothing to do with the whole business. That was more on grounds of taste than morals. As Emily Brightman is always pointing out, they are so often hopelessly confused by unintelligent people.’
‘Murtlock knew Gwinnett was in England?’
‘He’d already found that out somehow.’
‘He finds out a lot. I’m surprised, having got so far, he hadn’t traced Gwinnett’s whereabouts.’
‘He may, in any case, have preferred a more tortuous approach. I felt it an imposition on the part of this young visionary – whatever his claims as a magician – to force his abracadabras on an American scholar, engaged over here on research of a serious kind, however idiosyncratic Gwinnett’s own sexual tastes may be. Would you agree?’
‘Besides, as you’ve said, so far as we know, Gwinnett pursues these for pleasure, rather than magical advancement.’
‘Exactly. Love and Literature should rank before Sorcery and Power. There was, however, an additional aspect. That was why I was not speaking with absolute truth when I denied that Fiona was in some degree playing her own game, when she came to see me. On the other hand, that possibility did not possess quite the flattering slant you implied.’
‘She told you in so many words why Murtlock wanted to meet Gwinnett?’
‘Certainly. No embarrassments at all about that. More so regarding the ulterior motive for her visit. That emerged while we were talking. The fact was that Fiona was getting tired – more than that, absolutely desperate – about the life she has been living for a long time now.’
‘That’s good news.’
‘Of course.’
Delavacquerie paused again. He did not sound quite so enthusiastic about Fiona cutting adrift from Murtlockism as might have been expected. The chronological sequence of when these things happened – Fiona come to Delavacquerie, Gwinnett gone to visit Murtlock and Widmerpool, the period between – was not very clear to me. I was also uncertain as to Delavacquerie’s present feelings about Fiona. Whatever she had said to him did not appear to have affected her doings at The Devil’s Fingers. I fully believed what Delavacquerie had described as his attitude towards Fiona as his son’s girlfriend; I believed, more or less, that he later put her from his mind; but this new Fiona incarnation remained undefined. It was quite another matter. Also there was Polly Duport in the background. More must be explained. When he spoke again it was in an altogether detached tone.
‘Fiona more or less broke down while we were talking. Even then she was unwilling to say she would give up the whole thing. This was at our first meeting.’
‘There were subsequent ones?’
‘Several. Murtlock wouldn’t accept no for an answer, so far as Gwinnett’s whereabouts were concerned.’
‘You had refused to reveal them?’
‘Yes.’
‘That showed firmness.’
‘Firmness, in any sphere, is ultimately the only thing anyone respects. Murtlock seems to have foreseen a refusal at first. Either that, or he enjoyed linking Fiona and myself in a kind of game.’
‘He would be capable of both.’
‘His instincts told him that he could force Gwinnett’s address out of me, sooner or later, through Fiona herself. Murtlock, as you know by now, is e
xceedingly cunning in getting what he wants. He was well aware that Fiona felt that he, Scorpio Murtlock, must in some manner release her, personally, from his domination – give her leave to go, before she herself, of her own volition, could escape the net.’
‘All she had to do, in plain fact, was to walk out.’
‘That is just what Fiona could not bring herself to do. Murtlock knew that perfectly. He knew she must have some sort of legal dismissal from his service, one afforded by himself.’
‘An honourable discharge?’
‘Even a dishonourable one, I think – since all abandoning of himself and the cult must be wrong – but it had to come from Murtlock. It was no good arguing with her. That was how she felt. We talked it over exhaustively – and exhaustingly – during various meetings.’
Delavacquerie seemed to have established a more effective relationship with Fiona than any up-to-date achieved by her own family.
‘So what happened?’
‘In the end I revealed Gwinnett’s sleazy hotel. The price of that was that Fiona should be free to leave. Even then Murtlock would not allow her to go immediately. He said she could only go when she had taken part in a ceremony that included the presence of Gwinnett.’
‘So it was through you, in a sense, that Gwinnett went to see Widmerpool. He said it was because he wanted to observe gothic doings done in a gothic way.’
‘That was true too. It was a bit of luck for Murtlock – unless he bewitched Gwinnett too, put the idea into his head. I prefer to think it luck. No doubt he always has luck. Those people do. Once I had told Murtlock where to find Gwinnett, Gwinnett himself decided there was a good reason to fall in with what Murtlock wanted all along the line.’
‘Where’s Fiona now? Has she got away from Murtlock yet?’
Delavacquerie looked for a moment a little discomposed.
‘As a matter of fact Fiona’s living in the flat – not living with me, I mean – but it was somewhere to go. In fact it seemed the only way out. She didn’t want to have to live with her parents – obviously she could, for a time anyway, if she felt like doing that – and, if she set up on her own, there was danger that Murtlock might begin to pester her again. A spell of being absolutely free from Murtlock would give a chance to build up some resistance, as against a disease. There’s no one in Etienne’s room. It was her own suggestion. As you can imagine, she’s rather off sex for the moment.’
‘I see.’
That was untrue. I did not in the least see; so far as seeing might be held to imply some sort of understanding of what was really taking place. A complicated situation appeared merely to be accumulating additional complicated factors. Delavacquerie himself evidently accepted the inadequacy of this acknowledgment in relation to problems involved. He seemed to expect no more.
‘When I say we talked things over, that isn’t exactly true either. Fiona doesn’t talk things over. She’s incapable of doing that. That’s partly her trouble. One of the reasons why it was better for her to be in the flat was that it offered some hope of finding out what she was really thinking.’
He abruptly stopped speaking of Fiona.
‘Now tell me your story.’
To describe what had happened at The Devil’s Fingers, now that Fiona was living under Delavacquerie’s roof, was an altogether different affair from doing so in the manner that the story had first rehearsed itself to my mind. Then, planning its telling, there had been no reason to suppose her more than, at best, a sentimental memory; if – which might be quite mistaken – I had been right in suspecting him a little taken with her, when, in connexion with his son, Delavacquerie had first spoken Fiona’s name. Nevertheless, there was no glossing over the incident at The Devil’s Fingers. It had, in any case, been narrated by Gwinnett with his accustomed reticences, and, after all, Delavacquerie knew from Fiona herself more or less what had been happening. That was only a specific instance, though, for various reasons, an exceptional one. If he felt additional dismay on hearing of that night’s doings, he showed nothing. His chief interest was directed to the fact that Gwinnett had been present in person at the rites. This specific intervention of Gwinnett had been unknown to him. He had also supposed anything of the sort to have been, more or less as a matter of course, enacted at whatever premises Widmerpool provided.
‘How does Fiona occupy herself in London?’
‘Odd jobs.’
‘Has she gone back to her journalism?’
‘Not exactly that. She has been doing bits of research. I myself was able to put some of that in her way. She’s quite efficient.’
‘Her parents always alleged she could work hard if she liked.’
One saw that in a certain sense Fiona had worked hard placating Murtlock. Delavacquerie looked a little embarrassed again.
‘It seems that Fiona revealed some of her plans about leaving the cult to Gwinnett, when he was himself in touch with them. Gwinnett suggested that – if she managed to kick free from Murtlock – Fiona should help him in some of the seventeenth-century donkey-work with the Jacobean dramatists. I hadn’t quite realized — ’
Delavacquerie did not finish the sentence. I suppose he meant he had not grasped the extent to which Gwinnett, too, had been concerned in Fiona’s ritual activities. Evidently she herself had softpedalled the Devil’s Fingers incident, as such. He ended off a little lamely.
‘Living at my place is as convenient as any other for that sort of work.’
I expressed agreement. Delavacquerie thought for a moment.
‘I may add that having Fiona in the flat has inevitably buggered up my other arrangements.’
‘Polly Duport?’
He laughed rather unhappily, but gave no details.
6
WHEN, IN THE EARLY SPRING of the following year, an invitation arrived for the wedding of our nephew, Sebastian Cutts, to a girl called Clare Akworth, I decided at once to attend. Isobel would almost certainly have gone in any case. Considerations touched on earlier – pressures of work, pressures of indolence – could have kept me away. Negative attitudes were counteracted by an unexpected aspect of the ceremony. The reception was to take place at Stourwater. Several factors combined to explain that choice of setting. Not only had the bride been educated at the girls’ school which had occupied the Castle now for more than thirty years, but her grandfather was one of the school’s governing body. The church service was to be held in a village not far away, where Clare Akworth’s mother, a widow, had settled, when her husband died in his late thirties. Mrs Akworth’s cottage had, I believe, been chosen in the first instance with an eye to the daughter’s schooling, for which her father-in-law was thought to have assumed responsibility. Anyway, the Stourwater premises had been made available during a holiday period, offering a prospect that Moreland might have regarded as almost alarmingly nostalgic in possibilities.That was not all, where conjuring up the past was concerned. In this same field of reminiscences, the bride’s grandfather – no doubt the main influence in putting Stourwater thus on view – also sustained a personal role, even if an infinitely trivial one. In short, I could not pretend freedom from all curiosity as to what Sir Bertram Akworth now looked like. This interest had nothing to do with his being a governor of a well reputed school for girls, nor with the long catalogue of company directorships and committee memberships (ranging from Independent Television to the Diocesan Synod), which followed his name in Who’s Who. On the contrary, Sir Bertram Akworth was memorable in my mind solely on account of the fact that, as a schoolboy, he had sent a note of an amatory nature to a younger boy (my near contemporary, later friend, Peter Templer), been reported by Widmerpool to the authorities for this unlicensed act; in consequence, sacked.
The incident had aroused a certain amount of rather heartless laughter at the time by the incongruity of a suggestion (Stringham’s, I think) that an element of jealousy on Widmerpool’s part was not to be ruled out. Templer’s Akworth (Widmerpool’s Akworth, if you prefer), a boy several years
older than myself, was known to me only by sight. I doubt if we ever spoke together. Like Widmerpool himself, unremarkable at work or games, Akworth had a sallow emaciated face, and kept himself to himself on the whole, his most prominent outward characteristic being an unusually raucous voice. These minor traits assumed a sinister significance in my eyes, when, not without horror, I heard of his expulsion. The dispatch of the note, in due course, took on a less diabolical aspect, as sophistication increased, and, during the period when Stringham, Templer, and I used all to mess together, Stringham would sometimes (never in front of Templer) joke about the incident, which shed for me its earlier aura of fiendish depravity.
In later life, as indicated, Akworth (knighted for various public services and benefactions) had atoned for this adolescent lapse by a career of almost sanctified respectability. From where we were sitting, rather far at the back of the church – in a pew with Isobel’s eldest sister, Frederica, and her husband, Dicky Umfraville – Sir Bertram Akworth was out of view. One would be able to take a look at him later, during the reception. It was unexpected that Umfraville had turned up. He was close on eighty now, rather deaf, walking with a stick. On occasions like this, if dragged to them by Frederica, he could be irritable. Today he was in the best of spirits, keeping up a running fire of comment before the service began. I had no idea how he had been induced to attend the wedding. Perhaps he himself had insisted on coming. He reported a hangover. Its origins could have had something to do with his presence.
‘Rare for me these days. One of those hangovers like sheet lightning. Sudden flashes round the head at irregular intervals. Not at all unpleasant.’
The comparison recalled that morning at The Devil’s Fingers, when lightning had raced round the sky. The Government Enquiry had taken place, and, to the satisfaction of those concerned with the preservation of the site, judgment had been against further quarry development in the area of the Stones. Our meeting there was the last time I had seen Gwinnett. He had never got in touch. I left it at that. Delavacquerie spoke of him occasionally, but, for one reason or another – not on account of any shift in relationship – our luncheons together had been less frequent. Fiona was still lodging at his flat when we last met. Without too closely setting limits to what was meant by what Delavacquerie himself called a ‘heteroclite verb’, my impression was that he could be called in love with her. He never spoke of Fiona unless asked, the situation no less enigmatic than his association with Matilda years before.