Mrs Midnight and Other Stories (31 page)

When Jumbo came round to collect me after the show, he was unusually taciturn. Freda was not waiting for us in the Land Rover. Jumbo remained somewhat brusque as we drove out of Nairobi, and I was beginning to wonder if I had offended in some way. Then, just as we were passing the junction of the Karen and Ngong roads, he spoke.

‘I think I ought to warn you, young feller. Sabrina King is currently staying with us.’

‘Ah.’

‘Yes. You may well say “Ah”!’

My laconic answer for some reason put him in a better frame of mind, and for the rest of the journey he was almost his usual self.

On our arrival at Cloud’s Hill we found Freda and Mrs King in the sitting room with the Ridgebacks. Freda was nursing a drink and seemed withdrawn; but Mrs King, in a gold-edged purple sari, her coffee-coloured arms ringed with bangles, burned very bright.

‘Welcome back to Cloud’s Hill!’ she said, then to me: ‘Hello again, young man. And how was the
Hay Fever
tonight? Not too severe, I hope?’ She accompanied this dreary little joke with a tinkling laugh, like Samantha whenever she delivered a witty line. She was behaving as if she and not Freda were the hostess of Cloud’s Hill. Jumbo snorted and went for the whisky decanter.

‘Care for a snifter?’ he said to me.

‘Thanks.’

‘Now, we don’t want you two boys to drink yourselves silly,’ said Mrs King, wagging her finger and smiling roguishly at us, ‘because Freda and I have a plan. We’re going to play Bridge, Freda and I against you two. Girls against boys.’

‘Now hold your horses, madam,’ said Jumbo. ‘In the first place this young man has not had his sandwiches, and is probably done in after all that acting. In the second place, how do you know he plays the wretched game?’

‘Oh we know that. Last time he was here he played Honeymoon Bridge with Freda and beat her hollow. Isn’t that right, Freda?’

Freda merely nodded. Her eyes were following Mrs King as she darted and glittered about the room like a dragonfly. Jumbo looked at me enquiringly. I smiled and shrugged in acquiescence. Just then Abdullah entered with a tray of sandwiches.

‘We can eat our sandwiches at the Bridge table,’ said Mrs King. ‘See, we’ve got it all laid out for you.’ She pointed to a corner of the room where, under a standard lamp, the card table and four chairs had been set up, complete with two packs of cards, score sheets and pencils. ‘Shall we say one Kenyan shilling a point?’

Jumbo looked at me with a concerned expression. I was young and I felt that my nerve was being tested. I nodded soberly; he winked and gave me the thumbs up sign. Inside I felt very hollow.

In those days I was a fairly competent Bridge player, and I had a feeling that Jumbo might be a good one too. Freda and Mrs King were unknown quantities, but I was reasonably confident that we could match them. All the same, I could barely afford to be even a few hundred points down by the end of the session. Besides, I have always had a deep aversion to gambling for high stakes. In that respect, if in no other, I seem to have inherited my father’s genes of cautious respectability.

When we began playing it soon became evident that the two partnerships were quite evenly matched, with the advantage perhaps slightly on our side. Jumbo’s and my play was solid and we rarely overbid a hand; on the other hand Freda and Mrs King had flair and pulled off a number of spectacular slam bids. Freda continued to drink steadily. She was a naturally sharp player but, as the evening went on, she made one or two careless and costly mistakes. Mrs King was perhaps the most keyed up of all of us. She counted every point and tried to keep her partner’s drinking under control. Mrs King herself did not drink and only ate one sandwich, but on the table she kept a little silver case which contained a supply of strange lavender coloured sweets that she would occasionally take out and suck but never offer to anyone else.

Her gamesmanship was masterly and subtle. If Jumbo or I played or bid a hand less well than we might have done, she would always explain, with a great show of kindliness and patience, precisely how we had gone wrong. Though I don’t think these attempts to demoralise or irritate us were particularly successful, I noticed, as the evening went on, that ‘the girls’, as Jumbo called them, were beginning to go uncomfortably ahead on points. It was not that Jumbo and I were playing any worse than them, but the run of the cards did seem to be decisively in their favour. I noticed that this was especially the case when Mrs King was dealing. I don’t think I suspected foul play at that point—the idea was too preposterous—but I did dislike the exultant glitter in her eyes as she pulled off yet another spectacular slam. When I looked across at Jumbo I saw an unfamiliarly dark expression on his face. He was controlling himself by concentrating furiously on the game.

Suddenly, just as Mrs King had begun to deal for a new rubber, Jumbo leaned across the table and his great pink hand closed itself around one of Mrs King’s slender brown wrists. Mrs King shrieked; Freda looked stunned.

‘Oh, no you don’t, my lady!’ said Jumbo.

With the other hand he picked up from the table the silver case in which Mrs King kept her sweets.

‘Madam,’ said Jumbo in a strange, cold voice. ‘You have just dealt my wife a card from the bottom of the pack. And I notice,’ he continued, flourishing Mrs King’s silver case, ‘that you placed your little sweetie box directly beneath the pack as you dealt, so that you could see where every card went, reflected in the polished silver top. Do you take me for a complete fool, madam? Did you spare a single thought for this young lad who couldn’t possibly afford to pay you his share of the money you’ve attempted to swindle out of us?’ Jumbo brought his great red face up to Mrs King’s and growled: ‘Sabrina King, you are a damned cheat, and you always have been!’

Mrs King protested shrilly against Jumbo’s allegations, but she did not directly deny them. Freda left the table and poured herself another large whisky, her back to the company. When she turned towards the rest of us again, having swallowed a large mouthful of spirits, she began to stare at Mrs King with a kind of detached fascination. I recognised the look.

By this time Mrs King had backed herself into a corner of the room, like an animal at bay. She said: ‘You talk to me about cheating! You’re all hypocrites. You wouldn’t be here. None of you would be here if it wasn’t for me.’

‘What rubbish is this?’ said Jumbo.

‘Oh, don’t ask
me
, Jumbo. Ask your darling Freda. I’m amazed she hasn’t told you. Didn’t you tell your Jumbo all about it on the wedding night, Freda?’

Freda was staring at Mrs King, still apparently unmoved by what she was trying to say. Finally she drawled: ‘Oh, do shut up, Sabrina. Nobody’s interested in all that old stuff, and your stupid lies.’

‘They’re not lies, and you’d be surprised how interested people are in the old times. Only the other day a nice man from an English publishing company was contacting me about writing my memoirs.’

Freda said: ‘Sabrina, darling, that is such a damned lie. Nobody is interested in you and your dreary reminiscences.’

‘Oh, they would be interested to hear my story of the famous Hartland murder. How you came to my house in Nairobi late that night, begging me to lie to the police for you and say you had been with me all night.’

‘You’re a filthy liar! You haven’t a shred of evidence.’

‘Yes, but I have, Freda dear. You remember how you gave me the gun? The other gun. The Smith and Wesson that you used to shoot Harry along with “darling” Jock. And you asked me to get rid of it for you?’

‘But you said you had thrown it down the Thika Falls!’ said Freda.

A second later I saw the faint realisation that she had given herself away pass across Freda’s face. She frowned, as if trying to concentrate. The full enormity of the situation was still being anaesthetised from her by drink.

‘I said I had thrown it in Thika Falls, but I did not. I kept it. I too need my security.’

Mrs King picked up her bag off the floor where it had been resting beside her chair at the Bridge table. It was a large capacious affair, sewn together, I suspect by Mrs King herself, from patches of embroidered Chinese silk and other rich fabrics. From it she drew out an ancient Smith and Wesson revolver and placed it on the Bridge table.

This ought, I suppose, to have been a moment of supreme drama, but somehow it was not. We were all too drained by the night’s events to rise to the occasion. For what seemed like minutes we stared stupidly at the object without saying a word.

Finally Jumbo said: ‘Well, I don’t know about you chaps, but I’m for my bed. I’m all in. We can discuss this in the morning when our heads are clearer.’ Then he turned to me. ‘I’ve put you in the same room as you were in last time. Hope you don’t mind.’ I believe he even winked.

I kept my windows shut that night which was why I was only vaguely aware of some muffled bangs like a car backfiring at about five in the morning. I was woken some hours later by a commotion outside my window on the veranda. I opened the French windows and stepped out into a tableau of figures.

Jumbo was fully dressed, as were the two Somali servants who were talking volubly. A little apart stood Mrs King in a dressing gown of flame-coloured silk, staring blankly at the naked body lying on the veranda.

It was Freda, with a great bloody hole in her chest. The Smith and Wesson was still clutched in her hand. Rigor mortis had set in. The sight might have seemed to me more horrific had it not been for her face. It was pale and almost innocent of wrinkles and other ravages of age. Her fine features looked as if they had been carved in Carrara marble. Her eyes were closed and her look was serene. She might have been sleeping.

V

After a short service in a nearby church Freda was buried in the garden at Cloud’s Hill, as she had requested in her will. The funeral was very sparely attended and of the few who came nearly all mentioned to me at some stage during the proceedings that they were there purely ‘to give Jumbo moral support’. The exception was Mrs King who was pointedly shunned by the rest, as she was by Jumbo who nevertheless, for reasons best known to himself, tolerated her presence. She stayed by the grave after everyone else had gone into the house for refreshment. While Jumbo and the others were downing gin slings and whisky sours in the sitting room, I watched her through the window.

Mrs King had gathered jasmine blossoms from the garden and was slowly, rhythmically, scattering them on the naked red earth of Freda’s grave, as if performing a ritual of her own devising. Her great dark eyes were dry and she looked down at the soil which covered Freda with a kind of hungry fascination, a slight smile on her lips. I recognised the look.

THE GIACOMETTI CRUCIFIXION

‘I think we can all agree,’ said Professor Drew, ‘that the Giacometti Crucifixion is one of the great masterpieces of modern art—did you say something Dr Corcoran?’

‘I was merely going to say, Master, that in my humble opinion the word “masterpiece” and the words “modern art” are seldom juxtaposed in the same sentence with any degree of accuracy.’

There was a little murmur of laughter from the other fellows of St Paul’s. Professor Conrad Drew, Master of St Paul’s College Oxford, smiled thinly. He did not go in much for humour, not even the desiccated donnish kind in which old George Corcoran excelled.

Drew said briskly: ‘Dr Corcoran is a traditionalist in his views on art. I think we can all respect that.’

‘I have absolutely no objections to the Giacometti Crucifixion,’ said Corcoran. ‘In its place.’ Corcoran knew when he was being condescended to and objected strongly.

‘So, what is its place?’

‘
Not
in our college chapel.’

There was a pause.

‘George does have a point, you know, Master,’ said Bigby, the chaplain. ‘I mean, don’t you think it might look rather out of place?’

‘A crucifix, out of place in a chapel?’ said Drew raising an eyebrow. Heavy irony was the closest he came to wit.

‘It is, I understand, over six feet in height,’ said Corcoran. ‘Where would you put it?’

‘On the east wall behind the altar, of course.’

‘Do I need to remind you that on that wall behind the altar is a Burne-Jones tapestry depicting Mary Magdalene at the empty tomb. You can’t put a Giacometti on top of a Burne-Jones.’

It was a shrewd blow and Drew was irritated that his aesthetic sense was being called into question. His reputation as a historian rested on the way he linked cultural and political events; his most famous book
Imperial Decline and the Rise of Modernism in 20th Century Europe
was a standard work.

‘Of course I am not suggesting that the crucifixion should be placed on top of the Burne-Jones. The tapestry will be removed, so that the Giacometti can be seen in all its starkness in front of a bare wall.’

‘Remove the Burne-Jones!’

‘Nobody could say it’s exactly an outstanding work of art.’

‘A matter of opinion.’

‘Oh, come on! And a tapestry too. It’s not even as if it were an original painting.’

‘Master, you’re missing the point,’ said Corcoran. In his late sixties and officially retired, though still teaching and an honorary fellow, George Corcoran was the only one in that college meeting who was quite unafraid of Drew. Besides, Dr Corcoran was an Ancient Historian and his traditionalism extended to regarding Drew’s discipline, Modern History, as an inferior brand, so he was not even in awe of the Master’s reputation. ‘The relative artistic merits of Burne-Jones and Giacometti are not at issue here. We are talking about suitability. During the last major restoration of the chapel in 1895 our then Master, A.C. Lincoln commissioned the Burne-Jones tapestry from Morris and Co. to cover the wall behind the altar and below the east window. He chose the design specifically to chime in with the seventeenth century glass painted by Van Osternberg which depicts the ascension of Christ in Glory. He even specified the colours to harmonise with it. It was all very carefully done and thought out. I am not saying that the Burne-Jones is a masterpiece in its own right; though I’m not saying it’s
not
. I am saying that it is suitable; it is appropriate; it is
meant
. The Giacometti, for all its vaunted excellence as a triumphant piece of modernism, is not.’

Drew did not immediately reply because he was hoping that the other fellows at the meeting would come to his aid. They failed him. The silence became embarrassing. Drew looked towards Bigby who, as chaplain, was chiefly concerned after all. Bigby a soft, plump little man who liked to play the diplomat on these occasions searched his mind for a solution.

‘If I might offer a compromise,’ he said eventually, ‘why not put the Crucifixion in the ante-chapel? Like the Lazarus by Epstein in New College chapel?’

‘No. No, that’s quite out of the question,’ said Drew cutting in over what he suspected might be a rising tide of approval. ‘Sir Bromley Larsen wouldn’t have that. It would be an insult to his incredibly generous benefaction.’

Drew had been hoping that he wouldn’t have to mention Sir Bromley Larsen, but he was his trump card. Larsen, of Larsen International Pharmaceuticals, had made large financial donations to his old college, and was now proposing to give it the most prized item in his renowned art collection. The Tate would have given almost anything to own this extraordinary work, but Larsen had set his heart on placing the Giacometti above the altar of his old college chapel. His motives were unknown and Drew, the only person in St Paul’s who was in regular contact with him, had not troubled—or dared—to ask what they were.

Drew continued: ‘There would also be questions of security in placing it in the ante-chapel. At a conservative estimate, based on recent auction prices of Giacometti’s work, the Crucifixion is worth at least seventy million.’

‘All the more reason to turn it down,’ said Corcoran. ‘We can’t possibly afford to pay the insurance.’

‘Sir Bromley has agreed to see to that.’

‘In perpetuity?’

‘It’s all been agreed.’

‘I see. A
fait accompli
, is it?’

‘I don’t need to remind anyone here,’ said Drew, ‘that Sir Bromley’s contribution to the life of St Paul’s College has been amazing. The Giacometti is like the icing on the cake.’

‘Damn funny icing, damn funny cake,’ said Corcoran.

‘I am merely pointing out that it would be incredibly ungracious to refuse this gift,’ continued Drew. ‘But I am not saying we should accept the Giacometti merely out of gratitude or plain good manners.’ Here he looked at Dr Corcoran who folded his arms and stared at the ceiling. ‘Though those aren’t considerations that can be ignored. I think this is an extraordinary benefaction in its own right. The Giacometti Crucifixion will attract visitors to our college from all over the world. It will reinvigorate the life of our chapel. It will bring it into the modern era with a bang.’ Two of the junior fellows were not quite managing to contain their amusement at this. The Master was perfectly dutiful in his attendance at chapel when he needed to be there, but nobody could have described him as a keen churchman, and his wife was a stalwart of the Humanist League. His sudden enthusiasm for ‘the life of the chapel’ was unconvincing. ‘It will contribute something new, challenging, vibrant to the building. Something stark, uncompromising, dangerous even. It may not be very cosy and reassuring, but I don’t think—Dennis Bigby here can correct me if I’m wrong—I don’t think the message of the gospel was exactly intended to be cosy.’

Bigby made a vague gesture of acknowledgement and began instantly to worry if Drew’s remarks contained an implied criticism of him. He was aware that he was not the most dynamic of pastors. Contrary to the current fashion that proposed we should abandon the image of ‘gentle Jesus, meek and mild’, Bigby had always rather liked the idea.

‘I should like to take a vote now,’ said Drew. ‘I want to carry my colleagues with me on this one.’

The Master’s clear implication was that he was going to accept the donation of the Giacometti on behalf of the college regardless of the Fellows, but that he chose out of politeness to them, to maintain a democratic façade. As it turned out, he needn’t have worried. There was one vote against: Corcoran; one abstention: Bigby; and the remainder voted in favour. Back in the Master’s Lodging Drew discussed it with his wife, Barbara.

‘I hope I haven’t made an enemy of George,’ he said. ‘I know he disapproves of me, but I actually rather like him.’

‘I can’t think why. Corcoran’s a reactionary old bigot,’ said Barbara, who had been a cabinet minister in the recent Labour government. ‘Are you dining on High Table tonight?’

‘No. I need an evening in.’

‘So I should hope. I’m going to make a bean curd and walnut soufflé. By the way, did you put forward my idea of a vegetarian night at least once a week on High Table?’

‘Er . . . not yet. No.’

‘Well, it’s time you did. It may be only a small gesture, but even dons need to do their bit to save our planet, you know.’

II

Corcoran was strolling back from the college meeting across the quad: a tall man with a shock of white hair, retaining into late middle age some of the athleticism of his youth. Like the Master, he was not in the mood for High Table that night. He thought he might try the new bistro that had just opened up in the Turl. Having recently become a widower he occasionally allowed himself the treat of solitary dining with a book at a restaurant. He was not short of money because, though retired, he was still retained by the college to give tutorials on his specialism which was Thucydides and the Peloponnesian War. On reaching the Porter’s lodge, he found himself waylaid by one of his undergraduate pupils, Dominic Carter-Benson. He quite liked Carter-Benson in spite of the fact that the young man affected a certain fogeyism in his dress and manner. Being a traditionalist, Corcoran liked the young to be young and not to ape the style of their elders. Carter-Benson sported a bow tie and a yellow waistcoat with brass buttons.

‘Dr Corcoran, are you free after Hall this evening, about eight?’

‘Why?’ said Corcoran who had long ago learned never to commit himself without first discovering the implications.

‘We’re having a meeting of the A.C. Lincoln Society tonight. In the Lincoln Room. There’ll be port and so on. And we’re planning to read the work too. Derek Parsons our star thespian has agreed to perform.’

Corcoran was about to decline the offer. He had come to believe with Jules Renard that ‘the only man who is really free is the one who can turn down an invitation without giving an excuse’, and he would have had no compunction, but the name Lincoln suddenly brought to mind the debate over the Giacometti Crucifixion. He had not yet given up that fight and the vague notion that Lincoln, even from beyond the grave, might somehow aid his cause changed Corcoran’s mind.

‘I’d be delighted,’ he said. ‘I’m not dining in hall myself, but I’ll come to your meeting afterwards.’

‘It will be an honour, Dr Corcoran,’ said Carter-Benson.

The prospect of a dull, pretentious evening in the company of undergraduates was slightly mitigated by Carter-Benson’s obvious pleasure at his acceptance. Perhaps Corcoran might even enjoy being read to by Parsons whose transvestite Hamlet for O.U.D.S. had caused such a sensation the previous term.

Corcoran was a long standing member and ‘patron’ of the college’s A.C. Lincoln Society, or ‘the A.C.L. Soc.’, as it was popularly known. It had been set up shortly after Lincoln’s death in 1934 to celebrate the college’s most famous and long-lived Master. It was essentially a dining club for the kind of undergraduate who favours discreet, civilised self-indulgence over the flamboyant rowdyism of the Bullingdon or the Grid. An ambitious secretary like Carter-Benson could also, if he chose, hold lesser gatherings in which Lincoln himself, after whom the society was named, could be more directly commemorated.

The Rev. A.C. Lincoln had come to the Mastership in 1893 when comparatively young and acquired a reputation as a zealous reformer, and something of a moderniser. By the time he eventually retired from the post in 1927, he had become a formidable traditionalist. During his lifetime Lincoln was known chiefly as a theologian and a pioneer of Patristic Studies. Even now he retained a toehold on the foothills of fame but not for his scholarship.

In 1901 Lincoln had brought out a book entitled
A Clerical Ghost and Other Tales
, this was followed by
Quieta Non Movere
(1909) and finally
The Morchester Imp and Other Unwelcome Visitors
(1921), all of them volumes of ghost stories, most with an antiquarian and ecclesiastical flavour. Comparisons with M.R. James had, inevitably, been made, and though Lincoln was described by some, rather dismissively, as ‘a sort of Oxford M.R. James’; James himself came to be referred to by many Oxonians as ‘the Cantab’s Lincoln’. The two never met and professed never to have read each other’s books. When Carter-Benson mentioned ‘reading the work’, he was, of course referring to the ghost stories.

Corcoran was not old enough to have known Lincoln, but when he first became a fellow of St Paul’s he came across many people in the college who had. The impression he formed from Dons and college servants alike was not altogether favourable. Like most people who hold positions of power over a long period of time, Lincoln had developed autocratic habits, and was intolerant of any kind of opposition. The phrase most often used about him in his last years was that he was ‘not one to suffer fools gladly’ which is generally a superior euphemism for ‘rude’. On the other hand he could be a genial host with a liking for old fashioned fun that included reading his tales to enthralled undergraduates by candlelight in his lodgings.

This tradition was revived after port and conversation at the A.C.L. Soc. meeting. During the conversation part of the evening Corcoran had thought several times of mentioning the Giacometti bequest, but the temptation was resisted. Corcoran was unusually scrupulous about keeping what he believed to be confidences, even when it was in his interest not to do so. He did, however, feel that he was entitled to talk in a general way, it being the A.C.L. Soc. after all, about Lincoln’s improvements to the chapel, his commissioning of the Burne-Jones tapestry and so on. The undergraduates listened to him with polite interest and at least one, Carter-Benson, who was shrewder than he looked, wondered if there was some ulterior motive behind Corcoran’s eloquently expressed enthusiasm for what were known as ‘the Lincoln Renovations’.