A Void (13 page)

in a charming rural inn. For a paltry six francs you'd tuck into

fish or crab, lamb or mutton, washing it all down with a good

strong Burgundy or a Latour-Marcillac, a Musigny or a Pom-

mard, gorging and carousing away till you'd had a skinful! Upon

which you would go for a long walk or, as you'd no doubt

call it in your hoity-toity fashion, a postprandial constitutional,

through a public park with stout oaks and spindly acacias and

tall, thin pawlonias, with marbly malls and lush and languid

lawns. You'd sip a Curasao, a maraschino or a boiling hot toddy.

You'd play a hand of whist or pharaoh. Or you might play a

round of billiards and win a franc or two from a local rustic.

And, gradually, you'd yawn and start to think about shambling

upstairs to your room. First, though, you'd drift into a chintzy

front room, in which you might obtain, gratis, a
chocolat au kirsch,

a dainty bit of ribbon or a tiny flask of Armagnac. You'd find a

buxom maid to carry off with you up to your room and, having

had your filthy fun with this bit of crackling, you'd nod off at

last, all in."

"Uh huh," sighs Amaury, "nowadays you go by train. It's rapid,

but totally lacking in chic."

Concurring with this opinion, his companion draws out of

a bag on his lap a curious cardboard box full of oblong

cigars.

"A brazza?"

"I won't say no," says Amaury.
"A propos
, I still don't know what I'm to call you."

"Arthur Wilburg Savorgnan," says his companion.

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"Is that so?" murmurs Amaury, caught short, but instantly

adding, "I'm Amaury Conson."

"Amaury Conson! Hadn't you a son who . .

Amaury abruptly cuts in. "I had six sons. All now, alas, food

for worms. All, that is, b u t - "

"Yvon!"

"That's right! But how do you know?"

Savorgnan grins. "Don't worry. You'll soon know my story.

What you should know now is that I too was a confidant of

Anton Vowl. But as I'm British, living at Oakwood, not far from

Oxford, I hardly saw him from month to month. That said,

though, Vowl was willing to talk about his condition, claiming,

as all of you know, that his dying day was at hand. Nobody took

him at his word — no, not Olga, not Hassan, not you, and not,

I'm sorry to say, yours truly. But, six days ago, Hassan rang up

and I said I'd discuss it all with him. As soon as I got to Paris,

alas, I was told of his dying . . ."

"But did you work out what that postscript of his was trying

to say to us?"

"No, but in my opinion it's wrong of us to try construing

it word for word. Was 'a solicitor so boorish as to light up his

cigar in a zoo' alluding to Hassan Ibn Abbou? I don't think

so, and you know why? (a) Vowl didn't know Hassan was a

solicitor; (b) that word 'boorish' didn't apply to him at all; and

(c) you'd catch him smoking at most two Havanas in six

months."

"Hmm. What you say has a ring of truth about it, particularly,"

adds Amaury, "as Hassan, with that addiction of his to marga-

ritas, had no strong liking for whisky."

"That's right. In addition, Hassan was much too fond of his

local Jardin d'Acclimatation to think of going to a zoo."

"So why that odd postscript?"

"I thought at first it was a phony. My hunch, now, is that it

was his only option: Anton had to go out on a full stop, so to

say. Possibly, his wish was to transmit a signal to us that wasn't

8 3

so ambiguous; but, not having such a pithy communication at

his disposal. . ."

"Nothing is as cryptic as a void," murmurs Amaury.

Arthur Wilburg Savorgnan starts. "Why do you say that?"

"I saw it in his diary. I should say, I finally got it through my

skull that Hassan had always said that. Which is why," Amaury

adds, "I'm taking you to Azincourt to visit Olga."

Not a word is said from that point onwards. Savorgnan puffs on

his brazza and Amaury, burrowing into a book bought at a station

kiosk, a long and circuitous saga about an association of major

con artists, its liquidation, gradual slump, crash and bankruptcy,

wholly fails to grasp that staring at him, in print, is a solution to

that conundrum that is haunting him, consuming him . . .

His train briskly chugs on, making its dining-car chairs rock

to and fro. An undulating rural panorama, with a solitary plough-

man raking his patch of land from a shiny tractor, bowls along

backwards as if on its way back to Paris. Now both train and

panorama start grinding to a halt, giving way to a drab, slummy

suburb, a draughty platform, an array of hangars, a bus stop and

a roundabout.

Amaury and Savorgnan go by coach from Arras to Aubigny -

a slowcoach of a coach crawling along at 20 mph maximum -

and on foot to Azincourt (or, archaically, Agincourt, that

ignominious blot and bloodstain on our military history).

A hillock, curving as unassumingly as in a child's drawing and

smiling at visitors with an aroma so piquant, so vividly autumnal,

it cannot but charm a discriminating nostril, an intoxicating cock-

tail of aromas, in fact, both cordial and miasmal, of
myosotis

palustris,
damp wood, wild mushrooms and rotting humus - this

hillock, I say, stands just in front of Olga's sanctuary, a charming

old manor that Francois Daunou had built for his family
circa

1800.

Whilst sycophantically traditionalist masons sought to copy

8 4

Hardouin-Mansard's Grand Trianon, constituting as it did a

summit, a paragon, of crypto-classicism, Soufflot, wading across

a flock of Rubicons with that nonchalant aplomb, that faindy

lunatic audacity, that was to bring him such popular acclaim,

thought to submit to his august patron a ground plan of rococo

inspiration: which is to say, portals with flying ramparts, mock-

Tudor moldings, tympanums and astragals, plus (this was what

was truly innovatory) a floridly imposing wing flanking it with

its own gothic quad.

It was, alas, a Rubicon too far. For four days Daunou would

squint this way and that at Soufflot's rough drafts, finally mur-

muring, "I'll say this for it, it's . . . original" and giving him, for

his pains, a kick in his hind parts. To avoid a fatal scalping from

M. Guillotin's sharp razor, Soufflot had to fly to Lyon clad as a

pastrycook.

A downcast Daunou saw Chalgrin, Vignon, Potain and Hit-

torf, all of whom said no, and at last struck gold with an unknown

quantity, Francois Tilman Suys, a Dutchman. Placing abundant

funds at Suys's disposal, Daunou told him to follow nobody's

inspiration but his own. And, as nobody is as rascally as a

Dutchman, so much hard cash was thrown away on this folly -

a colonial pavilion with a rhomboid roof, its supporting arch

inlaid with ugly (or, if not ugly, vulgar) frostwork - that, with

its finishing touch, Daunou was without a brass farthing. With

just two months of occupation, it was put up for auction. A

shady individual from Audruicq bought it for a song, installing

first of all a stud farm and, during that short outburst of optimism

brought about by victory at Wagram, a casino in which you could

find McDonald, Soult, Duroc, Caulaincourt, Savary, Junot and

Oudinot playing whist and baccarat. (This crook, it's said, got

away with a cool million.) At that point it was won off him at

cards by a Louis-Philippard cop, who was fond of playing host

to an unsavoury crowd of drunks, thugs and informants, until

succumbing to a fatal stab wound during a notably riotous orgy.

As this cop had no offspring to hand it on to in his will, his

8 5

manor, soon going to wrack and ruin from casual looting, would

turn into a lair of tramps, criminals, vagrants and ruffians.

In April 1918 a British major, Augustus B. Clifford, advancing

with his battalion towards no-man's-land and putting his troops

up in it for a night, took a liking to this quaint, rundown manor.

In 1924, now of Canadian nationality and occupying a post as

a consular administrator in Frankfurt, Clifford bought Azincourt

for his family, living in it on and off whilst pursuing his diplo-

matic obligations. Through his caring disposition as an occupant,

along with his polish and discrimination as a man, its roof, which

was caving in, was gradually brought back to mint condition; its

walls had a thorough scrubbing down; oil, and not coal, was

burnt; and a spacious parkland was laid out.

Augustus B. Clifford had a son, naming him Douglas Haig in

honour of that grand old warrior, his victorious commandant at

Douaumont.

A charming child, Douglas Haig (or Haig
tout court
, for that

was how his doting papa always thought of him) had an idyllic

infancy at Azincourt, filling it with his boyish whoops, playing

blind man's buff on its soft, cottony lawn, climbing its acacias,

giving food to a fish, a young carp, that swam about in a small

pond, taming it not without difficulty, baiting it with crumbs,

worms, wasps, moths, a gadfly or two and an occasional crocus.

It would swarm up at his approach, at his whistling or murmuring

call of "Jonah! Jonah!".

Haig had a lot of chums, most living in town and mad about

sport - football and rugby, mainly, but also organising amusing

trials by bow-and-arrow and going on long cross-country walking

tours. Coming back from such jaunts, his companions would find

his nanny waiting with a tray of muffins and fruit tarts and cups

of hot cocoa. So Augustus's manor was an oasis of calm and

good humour, of high jinks and high spirits. It was, in short, a

kind of Arcadia.

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At 18, having sat his school finals, Augustus's son found his

vocation: basso profundo. Haig, though not what you would

call a prodigy, had a natural vocal gift; and, unconscionably fond

of singing, was willing to work long and hard at honing his skills,

studying composition at Paris's Schola Cantorum. Fricsay taught

him plain song, Solti canon, von Karajan tutti and Krips har-

mony. Sir Adrian Boult sat in on his first public audition, at 19,

in Turin's Carignano Hall. Haig sang "Unto Us a Child Is Born",

a madrigal by Ottavio Rinucinni and, to finish with, a trio of

arias from
Aida.
Boult was wholly won round, writing a word

of introduction to Karl Bohm, who was staging
II dissoluto punito

ossiallDon Giovanni
at Urbino's "Musical May". Bohm had Haig

sing for him, found him vocally convincing if occasionally shrill

in a high pitch and, handing him a copy of Mozart's composition,

told him to study it for a forthcoming production.

Placing his gifts in Karl Bohm's firm but faithful hands, Haig

was soon gaining ground. "Your fortissimo is possibly too lan-

guid," Bohm would admonish him on occasion, or "You should

attack
Altra brama quaggiu
with total rigour and accuracy. Don't

distort it by howling or roaring. It has to flow forth without any

vibrato." Mostly, though, his pupil brought him satisfaction.

That spring, on a boiling hot day, strolling along a corridor

in Urbino's ducal
palazzo
(visitors to which would habitually find

him practising sol-fa of a morning just as his idol, Caruso, had),

Haig ran into Olga Mavrokhordatos, a soprano whom Bohm

had cast as Donna Anna, and took an instant liking (I should

say, loving) to that world-famous diva. Nor did his passion fall

on stony ground: it took him just two days to obtain Olga's

blushing accord and to marry his inamorata in San Marino. A

municipal official, vainly stifling a yawn, for it was going on

midnight, saw it as his duty to trot out a string of hoary old

truisms on conjugal rights and obligations. As a consolation,

though, on that indigo night, from an imposing rampart on San

Marino's main plaza, and all night through until first faint flush

of dawn, soft strains and . paradisiacal chords would drift down,

8 7

music from
I Virtuosi di Roma
, rigadoons and madrigals, arias,

rondos and sinfonias, music to charm an animal with two backs.

0 blissful instant! O Calm! A nocturnal violin singing a song

as candid and natural as a lark's, and an alto, and an organist's

sonorous clarion - and Haig advancing slowly, his hand tighdy

clasping Olga's.

1 know that you too, you, my ghostly collaborator, hanging

on my words, would wish it all to work out satisfactorily, with

Douglas Haig Clifford marrying Olga Mavrokhordatos, with

both Douglas and his Olga knowing only harmony and connubial

bliss, "a spiritual coupling of two souls" (as Jonson put it), and

with Olga giving birth to 26 sons, all surviving into full maturity.

Alas, no, that's asking too much! I cannot hold out any such

possibility of absolution. Nor will God grant Douglas Haig a

pardon. Infusing, always and infallibly, that cryptic signal that I

am trying, and will go on trying, ad infinitum if I must, to clarify,

Damnation will do with Haig what it has to do - with just four