Mrs Midnight and Other Stories (25 page)

‘Not at all, Not at all. It’s really rather refreshing. You see, when I mention the Mortlake Manuscript to the few who would understand what I meant by it, a sort of gleam comes into their eyes. It’s like . . . I suppose I can best describe it as a look of lust. Yes, once one becomes bitten by the occult, the sensation can be very like sexual lust. A lust for spiritual rather than carnal knowledge, one might say. Your scepticism makes you immune. That could be useful.’

‘Does that mean you think you know where this document might be?’

Enoch smiled. He said: ‘Meyrink was right. It is “elusive”. It almost has a life of its own.’

After that he fell silent and I could tell that he did not want to say any more on the subject. When he offered me another cup of his horrible weak milky tea, I felt it was time to go. The drive back from Cricklewood to Oxford was always a tedious one.

II

I had more or less forgotten my last meeting with Enoch when a few days later I was invited to dine on High Table at Latimer College. My host was Francine Stalker, Yates Professor of Renaissance Studies, and fellow of Latimer. It was she who had recommended Enoch to me.

I had never been quite sure why Francine sought out my company. We are admittedly both in our thirties, though she is a few years older than me and has a far higher profile. Even when I was an undergraduate and she was doing her PhD, she already had a reputation as one of the most brilliant scholars of her generation. About a year after I had become a fellow of University College we met at a symposium on ‘The Elizabethan Cosmos’, or some such title. My paper on the Sonneteers was quite well received, but Francine’s on ‘Occult imagery in Shakespeare’ was dazzling. Nothing else was talked about during the conference, and she could have ignored me completely, but she did not. She sought me out and showed that she had understood and appreciated my work.

My immediate suspicion, I’m afraid, was that she was sexually or romantically attracted to me. I was and still am youngish, single, not bad looking in a rather ordinary way, but my vanity was very soon crushed. She was more than happy to talk, but I noticed that she shrank from the smallest degree of physical contact. If I put my hand on her arm to emphasise a point she would instantly draw it away; even if I leaned forward in the normal course of conversation she would move back so that there remained at least three or four feet of clear air between us.

Was
I
attracted to
her
? In the light of what subsequently happened I find that a hard question to answer. Francine was certainly striking in an odd way: the overall effect putting me in mind of Miss Murdstone in
David Copperfield
. She was tall and angular, but her actual figure was concealed in flowing ankle length garments, nearly always dark hued. Her features were regular but severe, her lips thin, her eyes brown and slightly protuberant. What skin she showed was as white and smooth as a marble bust by Canova. Perhaps her most striking feature was her hair. It was lustrous, black and obviously very long, though she wore it wound up into an elaborate knot on her head, secured by a tortoiseshell comb. Would she one day in my presence take out that comb, shake her hair free and let it fall in an ebony cascade down her back? I admit: the question did occur to me more than once.

Though her discipline was History and mine Literature, our paths crossed because our favoured periods, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, were the same. We maintained an intermittent, slightly bantering correspondence by e-mail, though I noticed that she was always keen to maintain her status as the senior colleague. There was, to be honest, no competition and when she was elevated to the Yates Professorship at an astonishingly young age, her superiority was irrevocably confirmed.

The invitation to high table at her college was a new development which I was able to contemplate with interest rather than feverish excitement. I suppose that says something about my attitude towards her. Before and during dinner she was very lively and hospitable, though I noticed that she still maintained her physical distance, even to the extent of not allowing me to be sat next to her on high table. At dinner she spent much of the time being brilliant at expense of the other Latimer dons, which I found rather refreshing, though I could see that it was not going down too well with her colleagues. In case you had illusions about it, I have to tell you that conversation at an Oxford High Table is usually as boring as it is at any other kind of dinner table, especially when it concerns that dullest of all dull subjects, university politics.

When the company withdrew to the Senior Common Room for coffee, Francine suggested we take ours out into the Fellows’ Garden. It was a warm night in May and I wondered what this portended. It had rained earlier that evening, the air was now clear and the blue dusk smelt richly of earth and undergrowth. She gestured me to a teak bench under a lime tree and I noticed that she sat herself on it as far away from me as possible.

‘Thank God for that! Rupert, I must apologise for the drabness of the conversation tonight. My colleagues, are, I’m afraid, irredeemably second-rate.’ It was the first time Francine had addressed me by my Christian name face to face, though our e-mails had been on first name terms.

I said: ‘I thought you saved the situation rather brilliantly.’ She waved aside the compliment.

‘One does one’s best to forestall complete tedium. I used to think M.R. James was exaggerating when he had all the dons in his stories talking about nothing but golf, but he was right. If it’s not golf, it’s the price of property in North Oxford, or their ghastly brats’ education. At least now we can discuss something interesting. I gather you’ve been seeing quite a bit of our mutual friend Enoch Stapleton.’

Why did I have the strong impression that this was the subject she had been waiting to broach all evening? I gave a vague reply and, as I did so, I noticed that her left hand was gripping her coffee cup so tightly that it trembled a little.

‘What have you two been discussing?’ she asked.

‘Oh, mainly things about my book on Tremayne.’

She said: ‘Ah yes. The Cabbalist.’ It seemed to me rather an odd way of talking about a renowned metaphysical poet; like referring to Albert Camus as ‘the footballer’.

‘You know about that.’

‘Of course, I do. By the way, is Enoch still on the trail of that . . . er . . . Mortlake Manuscript?’ She asked the question with deliberate casualness which did not deceive me. Even in the twilight under the lime, I could see that her whole body was taut with expectation. I paused, rather relishing the fact that for once I had a hold over her. At the same time I felt uneasy.

‘I didn’t know that he was really,’ I said.

‘Oh, come on! He’s been after it for years.’

‘You seem to know a great deal more about it than I do.’

‘The Manuscript would be a very important thing to find. For both of us.’

‘Why?’

By this time Francine was making no secret of her irritation with me. She put down her coffee cup on the bench between us to stop it from rattling. She breathed deeply, then, picking her words carefully, she said: ‘If you do get to hear that Enoch’s found it I’d like to know, that’s all . . . and of course, if I hear anything, I’d tell
you
,’ she added as an afterthought.

‘Why don’t you ask Enoch yourself?’

Francine looked away and said: ‘Oh, you know how tricky Mr Enoch Stapleton can be. I don’t seem able to get a straight answer from him these days.’

I said: ‘Francine, I don’t understand why this matters to you so much.’ She turned back to me and her eyes looked straight into mine. She stretched out her hand towards me, but not far enough to touch.

‘Please, Rupert,’ she said. As I put out my hand to take hers she withdrew it. It was at this moment that I thought I saw something out of the corner of my eye. Against the high flint wall of the Fellow’s Garden was a group of elms, between which there appeared the shadow of a tall man in a gown or cloak. I had the feeling he was looking at me, but I saw no features, only the dark outline. Then from beyond the garden wall I heard the high-pitched laughter of some undergraduates walking in Latimer Lane. It was a momentary distraction, but when I looked again there were no strange shadows among the elms. I said something noncommittal to Francine and we went back into the Senior Common Room to replenish our coffee cups. By some unspoken mutual consent we did not mention the Mortlake Manuscript again that evening.

III

A few weeks later, and towards the end of that Trinity Term, I had an e-mail from Enoch Stapleton. That was unusual, but his offhand perfunctory tone was not. It merely said that he would like me to get down to Cricklewood to see him as soon as possible. I knew it would be useless to interrogate him further so I simply replied that I would be with him early the following day. I set off the next morning before five, the only time when driving to London from Oxford can be almost pleasurable. I was in Cricklewood shortly after seven.

Enoch came to the door of his flat, as usual in pyjamas, with a bowl of soggy cornflakes in his hand from which he ate greedily as he led me into the main room. There on the table was an ancient oblong cardboard box. In spite of myself my heart began to beat violently.

‘Is the Manuscript in there?’ I asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Where did you find it?’

‘Hastings. When Crowley died there in 1947, at a guest house called Netherwood, he owed his landlady a considerable sum of money. She retained some of his papers in lieu, as it were, hoping to sell them at a later stage: and many of them she did. All except this one box. I have been in touch with the landlady’s son for some years now and eventually I got him to turn out his attics in case there was more Crowleyana. He found this. Why it had not been disposed of before is a mystery. If I were fanciful, which I am not, I would say that it hid itself until it wanted to be found.’

‘I am so glad you are not fanciful,’ I said, looking away from him and out of the window to hide my smile. I could see my car parked across the street, and that a man was standing beside it. It worried me. He seemed to be a black man in a black hooded track suit. One should not give in to prejudice. I turned back and looked at Enoch who was staring at me with his pale eyes. At one corner of his grey, shapeless lips was a drop of milk and a soggy shred of cornflake.

‘Are you going to let me take a look at it?’ I asked.

‘No. I am going to let you take it back to Oxford and examine it at your leisure.’

For some moments I could say nothing I was so astonished. I began falteringly to explain that I had no money with which to pay for it, nor even adequately insure it, if indeed it was in the hand of Dr Dee himself.

‘Oh, yes. It’s Dee all right. And I can confirm that there is a postscript of sorts written by your friend Elias Tremayne. These documents require no payment. They are quite literally priceless. The previous owner asked no money for them either. He seemed glad to be rid of them.’

I picked up the box. The contents seemed unusually heavy for papers. Enoch was watching me intently and I thought I detected dismay in his eyes when I put the box down again. I felt I owed him something, so I told him of my conversation with Francine Stalker in the Fellow’s Garden at Latimer.

Enoch nodded several times and then said: ‘You won’t tell her about our discovery. She is not to be trusted.’ He brushed aside all my requests for an explanation. ‘If you want to get back to Oxford, you’d better be going now,’ he said. I made no further demur and picked up the box. Enoch in his pyjamas followed me downstairs and across the street to the car. The black man was gone and my car had been, as far as I could tell, unmolested.

Once Enoch had seen me place the box reverently on the back seat he gave me a perfunctory wave and jogged back over the road to his flat. I was alone at last with the Mortlake Manuscript.

I can be a patient man when I choose to be. When I got back to my rooms at University College I put the box in the bottom drawer of my desk. I then listened to two undergraduates read me their amazingly foolish opinions on Spenser’s
Faerie Queene
in a tutorial
.
After this I went for a long walk on Port Meadow with only the swans and horses for company to wash away the effects of lazy and ill-informed thinking. I dined in Hall and it was only after I had returned from this that I took the box out. I had ‘sported my oak’, that is bolted the outer door of my rooms, and so made myself free from interruption.

The box itself was well over fifty years old and on the lid, scrawled in black ink were the numbers 666 in a triangle and the words
Noli Me Tangere
(do not touch me), obviously in the hand of the Great Beast himself, Aleister Crowley. Inside were about seventy five sheets of very old paper interleaved, by some careful later owner, with tissue paper.

The manuscript was in two sections. The second was some sort of magical text or grimoire with the usual jumble of sigils, diagrams and nonsense; the first seemed to be a continuous narrative in Latin. Fortunately I am a fairly proficient classicist and could translate. The very first sheet in the box was a kind of title page. At the top in bold capitals was written:

RELATIO DIVINA DE SECRETA SECRETORUM

‘Sacred Narration concerning the Secret of Secrets.’ Below this was the scrawled signature ‘Johannes Dee’ and a date, ‘Praga, Martio Mense, Anno MDLXXXVI’, ‘At Prague in the month of March 1586.’ At the very bottom of the sheet, as an afterthought Dee had added: ‘scriptio pro omnibus et nemine,’ ‘a writing for all and no-one.’

I think I had better simply put my rough translation before the reader and leave whatever comments I have to the end, as I will Tremayne’s contribution to this extraordinary document.

IV

In other places and at other times I have told and will tell of the many wonderful things I saw and did in Bohemia; and also of the many conversations with spirits and angels which I had, together with my companion Edward Kelley. But this narration, for many significant reasons, I must put down separately and guard from intruding eyes, not least that man in whom, to my shame, I laid my greatest trust. [He means, I believe, his medium, the aforementioned Kelley.]