After Many a Summer Dies the Swan (34 page)

“I had riches too gre-heat to cou-hount, could boast of a hi-high ancestral name.” Yes, decidedly, Dr. Obispo reflected, as he sang, decidedly he could have asked for a great deal more. But what would have been the point? He was a reasonable man; almost, you might say, a philosopher; modest in his ambitions, uninterested in worldly success and with tastes so simple that the most besetting of them, outside the sphere of scientific research, could be satisfied in the great majority of cases at practically no expense whatsoever, sometimes even with a net profit, as when Mrs. Bojanus had given him that solid gold cigarette case as a token of her esteem—and then there were Josephine's pearl studs, and the green enamel cuff links with his monogram in diamonds from little what's-her-name . . .

“But I a-halso drea-heamt which plea-heased me most,” he sang, raising his voice for this final affirmation and putting in a passionate tremolo, “that you lo-hoved me sti-hill the same, that you lo-hoved me sti-hill the same, that you loved me,” he repeated turning away for a moment from the Portsmouth road to peer with raised eyebrows and a look of amused, ironical inquiry into Virginia's averted face, “you lo-hoved me sti-hill the same,” and, for the third time with tremendous emphasis and pathos, “that you lo-ho-ho-hoved me sti-hi-hill the same,”

He shot another glance at Virginia. She was staring straight in front of her, holding her lower lip between her teeth, as though she were in pain, but determined not to cry out.

“Did I dream correctly?” His smile was wolfish.

The Baby did not answer. From the back seat Mr. Stoyte snored like a bulldog.

“Do you lo-ho-hove me sti-hi-hill the same?” he insisted, making the car swerve to the right, as he spoke, and putting on speed to pass a row of Army lorries.

The Baby released her lip and said, “I could kill you.”

“Of course you could,” Dr. Obispo agreed. “But you won't. Because you lo-ho-ho-hove me too much. Or rather,” he added, and his smile became more gleefully canine with every word, “you don't lo-ho-ho-hove
me;
you lo-ho-ho-hove . . .” he paused for an instant: “Well, let's say it in a more poetical way—because one can never have too much poetry, don't you agree? you're in lo-ho-hove with Lo-ho-ho-hove, so much in lo-ho-ho-hove that, when it came to the point, you simply couldn't bring yourself to bump me off. Because whatever you may feel about me, I'm the boy that produces the lo-ho-ho-hoves.” He began to sing again, “I drea-heamt I ki-hilled the goo-hoo-hoo-hoose that lai-haid the go-holden e-he-heggs.”

Virginia covered her ears with her hands in an effort to shut out the sound of his voice—the hideous sound of the truth. Because, of course, it was true. Even after Pete's death, even after she had promised Our Lady that it would never, never happen again—well, it had happened again.

Dr. Obispo continued his improvisation. “And that thu-hus I'd lo-host my so-hole excuse for showing the skin of my le-he-hegs.”

Virginia pressed her fingers more tightly over her ears. It had happened again, even though she'd said no, even though she'd got mad at him, fought with him, scratched him; but he'd only laughed and gone on; and then suddenly she was just too tired to fight any more. Too tired and too miserable. He got what he wanted; and the awful thing was that it seemed to be what she wanted—or, rather, what her unhappiness wanted; for the misery had been relieved for a time; she had been able to forget the blood; she had been able to sleep. The next morning she had despised and hated herself more than ever.

“I had grottoes and candles and doodahs galore,” Dr. Obispo sang on; then relapsed into speech: “not to mention fetishes, relics, mantras, prayer wheels, gibberish, vestments. But I also dreamt which pleased me most—or rather more, seeing that we have to rhyme with galore” (he opened his mouth and let out his richest and most tremulous notes), “that you lo-hoved me sti-hill the same, that you lo-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-hoved me . . .”

“Stopl” Virginia shouted at the top of her voice.

Uncle Jo woke up with a start. “What's the matter?” he asked.

“She objects to my singing,” Dr. Obispo called back to him. “Goodness knows why. I have a charming voice. Particularly well adapted to a small auditorium, like this car.” He laughed with whole-hearted merriment. The Baby's antics, as she vacillated between Priapus and the Sacred Grotto, gave him the most exquisite amusement. Along with the fine weather, the primroses in the copse and the prospect of learning something decisive about sterols and senility, they accounted for the ebullience of his good humour.

It was about half past eleven when they reached their destination. The lodge was untenanted; Dr. Obispo had to get out and open the gates himself.

Within, grass was growing over the drive and the park had sunk back towards the squalor of unmodified nature. Uprooted by past storms, dead trees lay rotting where they had fallen. On the boles of the living, great funguses grew like pale buns. The ornamental plantations had turned into little jungles, impenetrable with brambles. Perched on its knoll above the drive, the Grecian gazebo was in ruins. They rounded a curve and there was the house, Jacobean at on6 end, with strange accretions of nineteenth-century Gothic at the other. The yew hedges had grown up into high walls of shaggy greenery. The position of what had once been formal flower beds was marked by rich green circles of docks, oblongs and crescents of sow thistles and nettles. From the tufted grass of a long untended lawn emerged the tops of rusty croquet hoops.

Dr. Obispo stopped the car at the foot of the front steps and got out. As he did so, a little girl, perhaps eight or nine years old, darted out of a tunnel in the yew hedge. At the sight of the car and its occupants, the child halted, made a movement of retreat, then, reassured by a second glance, came forward.

“Look what I got,” she said in sub-standard Southern English, and held out, snout downwards, a gas mask half filled with primroses and dog's mercury.

Gleefully, Dr. Obispo laughed. “The copsel” he cried. “You picked them in the copsel” He patted the child's tow-coloured head. “What's your name?”

“Millie,” the little girl answered; and then added, with a note of pride in her voice: “I ‘aven't been somewhere for five days now.”

“Five days?”

Millie nodded triumphantly. “Granny says she'll ‘ave to take me to the doctor.” She nodded again and smiled up at him with the expression of one who has just announced his forthcoming trip to Bali.

“Well, I think your Granny's entirely right,” said Dr. Obispo. “Does your Granny live here?”

The child nodded affirmatively. “She's in the kitchen,” she answered; and added irrelevantly. “She's deaf.”

“And what about Lady Jane Hauberk?” Dr. Obispo went on. “Does
she
live here? And the other one—Lady Anne, isn't that it?”

Again the child nodded. Then an expression of sly mischief appeared on her face, “Do you know what Lady Anne does?” she asked.

“What does she do?”

Millie beckoned to him to bend down so that she could put her mouth to his ear. “She makes noises in 'er stomick,” she whispered.

“You don't say so!”

“Like birds singing,” the child added poetically. “She does it after lunch.”

Dr. Obispo patted the tow-coloured head again and said, “We'd like to see Lady Anne and Lady Jane.”

“See them?” the little girl repeated in a tone almost of alarm.

“Do you think you could go and ask your Granny to show us in?”

Millie shook her head. “She wouldn't do it. Granny won't let nobody come in. Some people came about these things.” She held up the gas mask. “Lady Jane, she got so angry I was frightened. But then she broke one of the lamps with her stick—you know, by mistake: bang! and the glass was all in bits, all over the floor. That made me laugh.”

“Good for you,” said Dr. Obispo. “Why shouldn't we make you laugh again?”

The child looked at him suspiciously. “What do you mean?” Dr. Obispo assumed a conspiratorial expression and dropped his voice to a whisper. “I mean, you might let us in by one of the side doors, and we'd all walk on tiptoes, like this”—he gave a demonstration across the gravel. “And then we'd pop into the room where they're sitting and give them a surprise. And then maybe Lady Jane will smash another lamp, and we'll all laugh and laugh and laugh. What do you say to that?”

“Granny'd be awfully cross,” the child said dubiously.

“We won't tell her you did it.”

“She'd find out.”

“No, she wouldn't,” said Dr. Obispo confidently. Then, changing his tone, “Do you like candies?” he added.

The child looked at him blankly.

“Lovely candies?” he repeated voluptuously; then suddenly remembered that, in this damned country, candies weren't called candies. What the hell did they call them? He remembered. “Lovely sweets!” He darted back to the car and returned with the expensive-looking box of chocolates that had been bought in case Virginia should feel hungry by the way. He opened the lid, let the child take one sniff, then closed it again. “Let us in,” he said, “and you can have them all.”

Five minutes later they were squeezing their way through an ogival French window at the nineteenth-century end of the house. Within, there was a twilight that smelt of dust and dry-rot and moth balls. Gradually, as the eyes became accustomed to the gloom, a draped billiard table emerged into view, a mantelpiece with a gilt clock, a bookshelf, containing the Waverly novels in crimson leather, and the eighth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, a large brown painting representing the baptism of the future Edward VII, the heads of five or six stags. Hanging on the wall near the dooj was a map of the Crimea; little flags on pins marked the position of Sebastopol and the Alma.

Still carrying the flower-filled gas mask in one hand and with the forefinger of the other pressed to her lips, Millie led the way on tiptoes along a corridor, across a darkened drawing room, through a lobby, down an other passage. Then she halted and, waiting for Dr. Obispo to come up with her, pointed.

“That's the door,” she whispered. “They're in there.”

Without a word, Dr. Obispo handed her the box of chocolates; the child snatched it and, like an animal with a stolen tit-bit, slipped past Virginia and Mr. Stoyte, and hurried away down the dark passage to enjoy her prize in safety. Dr. Obispo watched her go, then turned to his companions.

There was a whispered consultation, and in the end, it was agreed that Dr. Obispo should go on alone.

He walked forward, quietly opened the door, slipped through and closed it behind him.

Outside, in the corridor, the Baby and Uncle Jo waited for what seemed to them hours. Then, all at once, there was a crescendo of confused noise which culminated in the sudden emergence of Dr. Obispo. He slammed the door, pushed a key into the lock and turned it.

An instant later, from within, the door handle was violently rattled, a shrill old voice cried, “How dare you?” Then an ebony cane delivered a series of peremptory raps and the voice almost screamed, “Give me back those keys. Give them back at once.”

Dr. Obispo put the key of the door in his pocket and came down the corridor beaming with satisfaction.

“The two god-damndest looking old hags you ever saw,” he said. “One on each side of the fire, like Queen Victoria and Queen Victoria.”

A second voice joined the first; the rattling and the rapping were redoubled.

“Bang away!” Dr. Obispo shouted derisively; then, pushing Mr. Stoyte with one hand and with the other giving the Baby a familiar little slap on the buttocks, “Come on,” he said. “Come on.”

“Come on where?” Mr. Stoyte asked in a tone of resentful bewilderment. He'd never been able to figure out what this damn fool expedition across the Atlantic was for—except of course to get away from the castle. Oh, yes, they'd had to get away from the castle. No question about that; in fact the only question was whether they'd ever be able to go back to it, after what had happened—whether they'd ever be able to bathe in that pool again, for example. Christ! when he thought of it . . .

But, then, why go to England? At this season? Why not Florida or Hawaii? But no; Obispo had insisted it must be England. Because of his work, because there might be something important to be found out there. Well, he couldn't say no to Obispo—not now, not yet. And besides he couldn't do without the man. His nerves, his digestion—all shot to pieces. And he couldn't sleep without dope; he couldn't pass a cop on the street without his heart missing a beat or two. And you could say, “God is love, there is no death,” till you were blue in the face; but it didn't make any difference. He was old, he was sick; death was coming closer and closer, and unless Obispo did something quick, unless he found out something soon . . .

In the dim corridor, Mr. Stoyte suddenly halted. “Obispo,” he said anxiously, while the Hauberk ladies hammered with ebony on the door of their prison, “Obispo, are you absolutely certain there's no such thing as hell? Can you prove it?”

Dr. Obispo laughed. “Can you prove that the back side of the moon isn't inhabited by green elephants?” he asked.

“No, but seriously . . .” Mr. Stoyte insisted, in anguish.

“Seriously,” Dr. Obispo gaily answered. “I can't prove anything about any assertion that can't be verified.” Mr. Stoyte and he had had this sort of conversation before. There was something, to his mind, exquisitely comic about chopping logic with the old man's unreasoning terror.

The Baby listened in silence. She
knew
about hell; she
knew
what happened if you committed mortal sins—sins like letting it happen again, after you'd promised Our Lady that it wouldn't. But Our Lady was so kind and so wonderful. And after all it had really been all that beast Sig's fault. Her own intentions had been absolutely pure; and then Sig had come along and just made her break her word. Our Lady would understand. The awful thing was that it had happened again, when he hadn't forced her. But even then it hadn't
really
been her fault—because after all she'd been through that terrible experience; she wasn't well; she . . .