Hearing secret harmonies (33 page)

‘Scotch.’

‘Haven’t you had enough?’

‘Not… feeling… myself.’

‘No, you’re not your usual self, Bith, on a day off. All right. We’ll see what can be done.’

Henderson, opening a cupboard, brought back to the desk a bottle and glasses.

‘Now unwrap it. How did you manage? It wasn’t theft? You’re sure of that? I’m not going to handle it, if it’s stolen. There must be evidence you were allowed to take it. That’s absolutely definite.’

Bithel made a jerky movement of his shoulders, apparently indicating that nothing at all nefarious had taken place in regard to whatever was under discussion.

‘All right, but why can’t you say more? You’re not usually like this, Bith. You’ve had much too much. What will Scorp do to you? Try and tell me about it.’

Bithel took a deep gulp, finishing off the reasonably generous shot of whisky Henderson had poured for him. He held out the glass for more. Henderson allowed him an individual replenishment. I attempted to explain to Bithel that we had been comrades-in-arms. It was hard to think of an incident that had not reflected some unhappy moment in his own military career; any happy ones almost certainly experienced at times he would have been too drunk to recall.

‘Do you remember our Company Commander, Rowland Gwatkin?’

Bithel’s eyes, damp and bleary, suddenly reacted.

‘ Fol-low, fol-low, we will fol-low Gwatkin —
We will fol-low Gwatkin, everywhere he leads.’

Bithel sang the words gently. Their reference to romping round the Mess on Christmas night, following the Commanding Officer over tables and chairs, sideboards and sofas, must have been entirely lost on Henderson. In any case the Commanding Officer’s name had been Davies. Now Colonel was evidently merged as a single entity with Gwatkin in Bithel’s mind. Becoming more than ever impatient, Henderson once more tried to get hold of the parcel. Bithel demanded a third round before giving it up.

‘Not before I see the picture – know how you got it.’

Bithel made a violent effort to give an explanation.

‘Going to… be burnt.’

‘Scorp wanted to burn it. You rescued it?’

Bithel’s twitching face seemed to indicate that solution as near the mark.

‘Does Ken know?’

This question threw Bithel into a paroxysm of coughing, followed by an awful dry retching. He seemed about to vomit, something not at all out of the question in experience of him. An alternative possibility was apoplexy. When this violent attack was at an end he got out a sentence.

‘Lord Widmerpool’s… dead.’

‘What?’

Both Henderson and I exclaimed simultaneously.

‘Murdered.’

Bithel’s powers of speech made some sort of recovery now. He had contrived to articulate what was on his mind. This was when it became clear that nervous strain, at least as much as drink, was powerfully affecting him. In fact the whisky he had just drunk had undoubtedly pulled him together. At first his words, dramatically gasped out, aroused a picture of gun, knife, poison, length of lead piping.

Then one saw that Bithel was almost certainly speaking with exaggeration. Even so, some ritual – like the gash at The Devil’s Fingers – might have gone too far; for example, misuse of a dangerous drug. Allowing for overstatement, I was not at all sure which was meant. Henderson, with closer knowledge of the circumstances, seemed to regard anything as possible. He had gone white in the face.

‘Was he found dead? Has this just happened? Are the police in on it?’

‘Scorp was responsible. You can’t call it anything but murder. I’m not going back. I’ve left for good. I’m fond of Scorp – fonder than I’ve ever been of any boy – but he’s gone too far. I’m not going back.’

‘But what happened? You don’t really mean murder?’

‘What Scorp made him do.’

‘Say what that was.’

The story came out only by degrees. Even in a slightly improved condition Bithel was not easy to follow. In his – comparatively speaking – less dilapidated days, Bithel’s rambling narratives had been far from lucid. The events he had just been through seemed to have been enough to disturb anyone. They had, at the same time, to some degree galvanized him out of the state of brain-softening he had displayed at Stourwater. He kept on muttering to himself, his voice at times entirely dying away.

‘Lord Widmerpool ought never to have gone. Wasn’t fit. Wasn’t in the least fit. It was murder. Nothing short.’

That the old Bithel – with his respect for the ‘varsity man’ – survived under the tangled beard and foul rags, was shown by dogged adherence to calling Widmerpool by a title he had himself renounced by word and deed; if never by official procedure. After a bout of breathlessness, Bithel now showed signs of falling asleep. Henderson prodded him with a paper-knife.

‘What happened?’

Bithel opened his eyes. Henderson repeated the question.

‘What happened about Ken? *

‘We could all see Lord Widmerpool wasn’t well. He hadn’t been well for weeks. He was bloody ill, in fact. Not himself at all. He could hardly get up from the floor.’

I asked why Widmerpool was on the floor. Henderson explained that the cult did not use beds. Bithel groaned in confirmation of that.

‘When Lord Widmerpool did get up he was all shaky. He wasn’t fit, even though it was a warmish night last night. It was Scorp who insisted.’

‘Was Widmerpool unwilling to go?’

Bithel looked at me as if he did not understand what I was talking about. Even if prepared to accept that we had served in the same regiment, could recognize the same songs or horseplay, he certainly had not the least personal recollection of a common knowledge of Widmerpool.

‘Lord Widmerpool didn’t object. He wanted to be in Harmony. He always wanted that. He took a moment to get properly awake. At first he could hardly stand, when he got up from the floor. All the same, he took his clothes off.’

‘Why did he take his clothes off?’

Henderson explained that was the rite. He seemed to have fallen back into regarding what had gone forward as natural enough in the light of the ritual, a normal piece of ceremonial. Not only did he understand, he seemed a little carried away by the devotional aspects of the story.

‘Scorp must have thought it would get too cold if use was not made of that late mild spell we’ve been having. He was right. The temperature dropped this afternoon. If he’d left it till tonight they’d never have been able to go out.’

‘Do you mean they all went out on a naked run in the early hours of this morning?’

‘Ken never wanted to be outdone in Harmony by Scorp.’

Henderson and Bithel agreed about that, Bithel almost showing animation.

‘Didn’t we all? Didn’t we all? But I’m through. I’m bloody well through. I swear I am. If I go back, it won’t be for long. I swear that. I can’t stand it. I’ll find somewhere else. I swear I will.’

Bithel rocked himself backwards and forwards.

‘What happened on the run?’

‘It was through the woods.’

‘Scorp was leading of course. Did Ken feel ill when he got outside?’

‘Lord Widmerpool seemed recovered at first, they said. There was a warm mist. It was cold enough, they told me, but not as bad as they thought it would be.’

‘So they set off?’

‘Then Lord Widmerpool shouted they weren’t going fast enough.’

Henderson showed amazement at such a thing happening.

‘Why should Ken have done that? It was never a race. The slow pace was to give a sense of Harmony. Scorp always made a point of that.’

‘When Lord Widmerpool shouted, they said Scorp sounded very angry, and said no. They were going fast enough. To increase the speed would disrupt the Harmony. Lord Widmerpool didn’t take any notice of Scorp.’

‘That was unlike Ken.’

Bithel lay back, so far as doing so were possible, in the pop-art armchair. The Scotch had greatly revived him, calmed his immediate fears, enabled him to tell the story with a kind of objectivity.

‘If Lord Widmerpool disagreed with Scorp he’d always say why. They quite often argued. Lord Widmerpool seemed to enjoy a tussle, then giving in, and being given a penance. Never knew such a man for penances.’

Abandoning his narrative, at the thought of Widmerpool’s penances, Bithel sighed.

‘Did Widmerpool increase his own speed?’

‘Not at first, they told me. Then he began complaining again that they weren’t running fast enough. He started to shout “I’m running, I’m running, I’ve got to keep it up.” Everybody thought he was laughing, trying to get himself warm. After shouting out this for a while, he did increase his pace. Some of the others went faster too. Scorp wouldn’t allow that. He ordered Lord Widmerpool to slow down, but of course he couldn’t stop him. He was way on ahead by then. Somebody heard Lord Widmerpool shout “I’m leading, I’m leading now.”‘

‘How did it end?’

‘It was rather a twisty way through the woods. Nobody could see him, especially in the mist. When they came round a corner, out of the trees, he was lying just in the road.’

‘Collapsed?’

‘Dead.’

Bithel held out his glass for yet another refill. Henderson topped it up. There was quite a long silence.

‘How did they carry the body back?’

‘They managed somehow.’

‘It must have been quite a way.’

‘You bet.’

‘What did Scorp say?’

Henderson’s voice shook a little when he asked that. I felt disturbed myself. Bithel seemed glad to leave the more macabre side of the story, for its administrative elements.

‘I was sent to London to ask Canon Fenneau what should be done.’

‘That’s why you came up?’

‘I couldn’t find Canon Fenneau till this afternoon. He wasn’t too keen on being mixed up with it all. In the end he said he’d do what he could to help.’

‘And the drawing?’

‘Scorp said the first thing was for all Lord Widmerpool’s things to be ritually burned. There wasn’t much. You know there was hardly anything, Barnabas, except the picture you told me to try to get hold of, if ever Scorp, in one of his destructive moods, insisted on throwing it out. You said it was between the cupboard and the wall, bring it along, if you’ve half a chance. It looks like a rough scribble to me, but I’m sure it’s the one you said. I hope it’s the right picture, and you’ll make me a nice bakshee for bringing it along. I got it off the fire without Scorp seeing, just as he was going to set everything alight with the ritual torch. I stuffed it away somewhere, and here it is. God, I’m tired. Bloody well done in. I haven’t had any sleep since they got back at five this morning.’

Henderson snatched the parcel, and began to open it. Bithel lay still further back in the pop-art armchair. He closed his eyes. Henderson threw away the brown paper. He held the Modigliani drawing up in front of him. The glass of the frame was cracked in several places; the elongated nude no worse than a little crumpled. It had been executed with a few strokes running diagonally across the paper. The marvellous economy of line would help in making it hard to identify – if anybody bothered – as more than a Modigliani drawing of its own particular period. It was signed. In any case, no one was likely to worry. It had hung in Stringham’s London flat in early days; then passed to Stringham’s niece, Pamela Flitton; on Pamela’s demise, to her husband, Widmerpool. Pictures had never been Widmerpool’s strong point. For some reason he must have clung on to this one. It was odd that he had never sold it. Henderson, even at the period of his renunciation of such vanities as art, must have marked it down, as it lay about somewhere in the commune. Now the agent, even at second-hand, of its preservation, he deserved his prize. Bithel gave a terrible groan in his sleep.

He had begun to slip from the exotically shaped armchair; would soon reach the floor.

‘I shall have to be going.’

‘I’ll come and let you out.’

‘What will you do about Bithel?’

‘I’ll ring up Chuck. He’ll lend a hand. Chuck won’t be too pleased. He doesn’t like Bith. This has happened before. We put him on the late train.’

‘You’ll send him back?’

‘Of course. Where else can he go? He’ll be all right.’

‘Will Fenneau do the clearing up down there?’

‘Everything he can. He’s very good about that sort of thing. He understands. Now I know about it, I’ll get in touch with him too.’

We said goodbye. Henderson was right about the temperature dropping. It was getting dark outside, and much colder. A snowflake fell. At first that seemed a chance descent. Now others followed in a leisurely way. The men taking up the road in front of the gallery were preparing to knock off work. Some of them were gathering round their fire-bucket.

The smell from my bonfire, its smoke perhaps fusing with one of the quarry’s metallic odours drifting down through the silvery fog, now brought back that of the workmen’s bucket of glowing coke, burning outside their shelter. For some reason one of Robert Burton’s torrential passages from The
Anatomy of Melancholy
came to mind: