Possession. A Romance

Chapter 17

James Blackadder composed a footnote. He was working on Mummy Possest (1863). He used a pen; he had never learned newer methods; Paola would transfer his script to the glimmering screen of the word-processor. The air smelled of metal, dust, metal-dust and burning plastic.

R. H. Ash attended at least two seances in the house of the famous medium Mrs Hella Lees, who was an early specialist in materialisation, particularly of lost children, and in the touch of dead hands. Mrs Lees was never exposed as a fraud and is still thought of as a pioneer in this field by contemporary spiritualists. (See F. Podmore, Modern Spiritualism, 1902, vol. 2, pp. 134-9.) Whilst there can be no doubt that the poet went to the seances in a spirit of rational enquiry, rather than with any predisposition to believe what he saw, he records the medium's activities with sharp distaste and fear, rather than with simple contempt for chicanery. He also implicitly compares her activities-the false or fictive bringing to life of the dead, with his own poetic activities. For an account (somewhat lurid and imaginative) of these encounters see Cropper, The Great Ventriloquist, pp. 340-4. See also a curious feminist attack on Ash's choice of title by Dr Roanne Wicker, in the Journal of the Sorcières, March 1983. Dr Wicker objects to Ash's use of his title to castigate the "intuitive female" actions of his speaker, Sybilla Silt (an obvious reference to Hella Lees). Mummy Possest is of course a quotation from John Donne, "Love's Alchemy.”

“Hope not for minde in women; at their best/Sweetnesse and wit, they are but Mummy, Possest."

Blackadder looked at all this, and crossed out the adjective "curious" before "feminist attack." He thought about crossing out "somewhat lurid and imaginative" before Cropper's account of the seances. These superfluous adjectives were the traces of his own views, and therefore unnecessary. He contemplated crossing out the references to Cropper and Dr Wicker in their entirety. Much of his writing met this fate. It was set down, depersonalised, and then erased. Much of his time was spent deciding whether or not to erase things. He usually did.

A whitish figure slid round the end of his desk. It was Fergus Wolff, who sat down uninvited on the desk corner, and looked down, uninvited, at Blackadder's work. Blackadder put a hand over his writing.

"You should be up in the sun. It's lovely weather up there."

"No doubt. The Oxford University Press is not concerned witly the weather. Can I do anything for you?"

"I was looking for Roland Michell."

"He's on holiday. He asked for a week off. He's never had one, that I can remember, when I come to think about it."

"Did he say where he was going?"

"Not at all. North, I think he said. He was very vague."

"Did he take Val?"

"I assumed so."

"Did his new discovery lead anywhere?"

"New discovery?"

"He was quite chuffed at Christmas. Discovered a mystery letter or something, I thought he said. I may have been wrong."

"I don't remember anything precisely of that kind. Unless you mean all those notes in the Vico. Nothing of great importance there, sadly. Humdrum notes."

"This was personal. Something to do with Christabel LaMotte. He was quite excited. I sent him off to see Maud Bailey at Lincoln."

"Feminists don't like Ash."

"She's been seen down here, since. Maud Bailey."

"I don't know of anything to do with LaMotte, offhand."

"I was pretty sure Roland did. But it may have come to nothing. Or he'd have told you."

"He probably would."

"Exactly."

Val was eating cornflakes. She ate very little else, at home. They were light, they were pleasant, they were comforting, and then after a day or two they were like cotton wool. Outside the back area, the roses were drifting down the steps, and the borders were bright with tiger lilies and moon daisies. London was hot: Val wanted to be anywhere else, out of the dust and cat piss. The doorbell rang. When she looked up, expecting perhaps Euan Maclntyre and a dinner invitation, she saw Fergus Wolff.

"Hello, my dearest. Is Roland in?"

No. He's gone away. "What a pity. Can I come in? Where has he gone?"

"Somewhere in Lancashire or Yorkshire or Cumbria. Blackadder sent him to look at a book. He was a bit vague.”

“Have you a phone number? I need to get in touch with him rather urgently."

"He said he'd leave one. I was out when he left. But he didn't. Or if he did, I haven't found it. And he hasn't phoned. He should be back on Wednesday."

I see. Fergus sat down on the old sofa and looked up at the irregular pools and peninsulas of staining on the ceiling. "Does that strike you as a bit odd, my love, that he hasn't communicated?”

“I wasn't being all that nice to him." I see.

"I don't know what you see, Fergus. You always see a bit more than there is to see. What's up?”

“I just wondered-you don't happen to know where Maud Bailey is?”

“I see, " said Val. There was a silence. Then Val asked, "Do you know where she is?"

"Not exactly. There's something going on that I don't under stand. Yet, that is. I shall understand it quite soon."

"She has called him here, once or twice. I wasn't very polite."

"A pity. I should so like to know what's going on."

"Perhaps it's to do with Randolph Henry."

"It is. That's for definite. Though perhaps it has to do with Maud, too. She's a formidable woman."

"They were away at Christmas, working on something."

"He went to Lincoln to see her."

"Well, sort of. They both went somewhere or other, to look at a manuscript. Honestly I've lost interest in all his footnotes and things and all those dead letters from dead people about missing trains and supporting Copyright Bills and all that stuff. Who wants to spend their life in the British Museum basement? It smells as bad as Mrs Jarvis's flat up there, full of cat piss. Who wants to spend their life reading old menus in cat piss?"

"Nobody. They want to spend their lives in lovely hotels at international conferences. You didn't bother to enquire what they were reading?"

"He didn't say. He knows I'm not interested."

"So you don't know exactly where they went?"

"I did have a phone number. For emergencies. If the flat burned down. Or I couldn't pay the gas bill. In which case there was nothing he could do, of course. Some of us earn money in the enterprise culture and some of us don't."

"There may be money in all this. You haven't still got the telephone number, have you, my love?"

Val went out into the hall, where the telephone stood at floor level, balanced on a heap of papers-old Times Literary Supplements, old book bills, cards with minicab numbers, cards offering discounts on OMO DAZ KODAK MUREX, invitations to Convocation and the ICA. She seemed to know her way around this, and after a moment turned over a Takeaway Indian bill at the bottom of the heap and found the number. No name. Only in Val's hand, "Roland in Lincoln."

"Could be Maud's number."

"No. It's not. I know Maud's. Can I have that?"

"Why not? What do you want to do with it?"

"I don't know. I simply want to know what's going on. Do you see?"

"Perhaps it's Maud."

"Perhaps. I have an interest in Maud. I want her to be happy."

"Perhaps she's happy with Roland."

"Not possible. He's not her sort at all. No bite, don't you agree?"

"I don't know. I don't make him happy."

"Nor he you, by the looks of it. Come out to supper and forget him."

"Why not?"

"Why not?"

"Hello, Bailey here."

"Bailey?"

"No, it's not. I'm a friend of Roland Michell's. He was working… in the winter… I wondered if you knew where he…"

"Not the slightest idea."

"Is he coming back?"

"I shouldn't think so. No. No, he's not. Do you think you could get off the line? I'm expecting the doctor."

"I'm so sorry to have troubled you. Have you seen Dr Bailey? Dr Maud Bailey?"

"No. I haven't. I don't plan to. We just want leaving in peace. Goodbye."

"But their work went well?"

"The fairy poet. I should think it did. They seemed pleased. I haven't thought about it. I don't want to be disturbed. I'm a busy man. My wife's unwell. Really very unwell. Please get off the line."

"That would be Christabel LaMotte, the fairy poet?"

"I don't know what you want to know, but I want you off my line, now. If you don't go I'll-I'll-look here, my wife is ill, I'm trying to call the doctor, you sodding fool. Goodbye."

"May I ring again?"

"No point. Goodbye."

"Goodbye."

Mortimer Cropper had lunched at L'Escargot with Hildebrand Ash, the eldest son of Thomas, Baron Ash, who was a direct descendant of that cousin of Randolph Ash who had been ennobled under Gladstone. Lord Ash, the Methodist, was now very old and frail. He had been civil enough to Cropper, but that was as far as it went. He preferred Blackadder, whose gloomy temperament and Scottish dryness pleased him. Also he was a nationalist, and had deposited the Ash manuscripts he owned in the British Library. Hildebrand was in his forties, balding, gingery, cheerful and somewhat vacant. He had taken a fourth at Oxford, in English, and had since worked in an undistinguished way in travel firms, garden publishing and various Heritage trusts. Cropper invited him out from time to time, and had discovered he had buried histrionic ambitions. They had formed a half-project, half-daydream of a high-powered tour of American universities, where Hildebrand would put on a display of Ash memorabilia, slides and readings, and lecture on the background of English society in the time of Ash. On this occasion Hildebrand said he was short of money and would really like to have a new source. Cropper asked about the health of Lord Ash and was told that he was very frail. They discussed possible venues and fees. They ate magretde canard, turbot and earthy new little turnips. Cropper grew paler and Hildebrand grew pinker as the meal proceeded. Hildebrand had visions of a rapt and respectful American audience, and Cropper had visions of new glass cases containing treasures he'd only been allowed to look at reverently: the Poet's Letter from the Queen, the Portable Writing-Desk, the ink-stained notebook of drafts of Ask to Embla, which the family had not parted with and displayed in the dining-room of their house at Ledbury.

After seeing Hildebrand Ash into a taxi, Cropper walked the streets of Soho, looking casually in at windows and illuminated stairmouths. Peepshow. Model. Young girls wanted. Live Sex Non-Stop. Come Up and Have Fun. Serious Instruction. His own tastes were precise, narrow, and somewhat specialist. He drifted, a fine black figure, from window to window, tasting the ghosts of good food and wine. He stopped momentarily, to observe an obscured glimpse of white twisted flesh placed to suggest to him that what he wanted might be within, after all-not much of a picture, mostly obscured by a quite different, bouncy, busty one, but he lived in a world of hints and flickering indications, it was enough. All the same, he thought, he would not go in, he would go home…

"Professor Cropper"-a voice said behind him.

"Ah," said Cropper.

"Fergus Wolff. Do you remember me? I came up to you after your paper on the identity of the narrator in Ash's Chidiock Tichbourne. A brilliant piece of deduction. Of course it was the executioner. You do remember?"

"I do indeed. With great pleasure. I have just been lunching with the son of the present Lord Ash, who will hopefully speak in Robert Dale Owen University on his family's holdings of Ash manuscripts. Chidiock Tichbourne is in the British Library, of course."

"Of course. Are you going there? May I walk with you?"

"I shall be most happy."

"I was interested to learn of Ash's connection with Christabel LaMotte."

"LaMotte? Oh, yes.Melusina. There was a feminist sit-in, in the Fall of '79, demanding that the poem be taught in my nineteenth-century poetry course, instead of the Idyllsof theKing, or Ragnarôk. As I remember, it was conceded. But then Women's Studies took it on, so I was released and we were able to restore Ragnarôk. But that's hardly a connection. I don't believe I know of a real connection."

"I thought some letters were discovered.”

“I should doubt that. I've never heard of any connection. Now, what do I know about Christabel LaMotte? There is something.”

“Roland Mitchell discovered something." Cropper stopped on the Greek Street pavement and caused two

Chinese people to stop equally suddenly. "Something?”

“I don't really know what. Yet. He thinks it's important.”

“And James Blackadder?”

“He doesn't seem to know."

"You interest me, Dr Wolff.”

“I hope to, Professor.”

“Would you care for a cup of coffee?"