The Rebel Angels

1

I will not marry couples with whom I have had no previous discussion; I insist on finding out what they think marriage is, and what they suppose they are doing. In part this is self-preservative caution; I will not become involved with people who want to write their own wedding service, devising fancy vows for their own use, and substituting hogwash from Kahlil Gibran or some trendy shaman for the words of the Prayer Book. On the other hand, I am ready to make excisions for people who find the wording of the marriage service a little too rugged for their modern concepts. I am fussy about music and will permit no "O Promise Me" or "Because God Made Thee Mine"; I discourage the wedding march by Mendelssohn, which is theatre music, and the other one from Lohengrin, which was a prelude to a notably unsuccessful marriage. I do not regard myself as a picturesque adjunct to a folk ceremony performed by people who have no scrap of religious belief, though I do not require orthodoxy, because I have unorthodox reservations of my own.

I was startled, therefore, by the orthodoxy insisted on by Arthur Cornish and Maria. Startled, and somewhat alarmed, for in my experience too much orthodoxy can lead to trouble; a decent measure of come-and-go is more enduring.

My interview with Arthur and Maria took place in my rooms in Ploughwright before dinner on the Monday preceding their wedding. Maria arrived early, which pleased me, because I wanted some private talk with her.

"Does Arthur know about you and Hollier?"

"Oh yes, I told him all about that, and we've agreed it doesn't count."

"What do you mean by count?"

"It means that as far as we are concerned I'm still a virgin."

"But Maria, it isn't usual nowadays for the virginity of the bride to be an important issue. Love, trust, and seriousness of intention are what really count."

"Don't forget that I am part Gypsy, Simon, and it counts for Gypsies. The value of virginity depends on whose it is; for trivial people, it is no doubt trivial."

"Then what have you told him? That you had your fingers crossed?"

"I hadn't expected you to be frivolous, Simon."

"I'm not frivolous. I just want to be sure you aren't kidding yourselves. It doesn't matter to me, but if it matters to you, I'd like to be sure you know what you are doing. What really matters is whether you have got Hollier completely out of your system."

"Not completely. Of course I love him still, and as Arthur is giving me the Gryphius Portfolio for a wedding present I'll certainly be working on it with Hollier. But he's a Rebel Angel, like you, and I love him as I love you, Simon dear, though of course you're a priest and he's a sort of wizard, which makes all the difference."

"How?"

"Wizards don't count. Merlin, and Klingsor and all those were incapable of human love and usually impotent as well."

"What a pity Abelard and Heloise didn't know that."

"Yes. They got themselves into a terrible muddle. If Heloise had been more clear-headed she'd have seen that Abelard was a frightful nerd in human relationships. Of course, she was only seventeen. Those letters! But let's forget about them: Hollier has led me to some recognition of what wisdom and scholarship are, and that's what matters, not a tiny stumble on the path. You've shown me as much as I am able to understand at present about the generosity and pleasure of scholarship. So I love you both. But Arthur is different, and what I bring to Arthur is untouched by any other man."

"Good."

"Arthur says the physical act of love is a metaphor for a spiritual encounter. That certainly was so with Hollier. Whatever I felt about it, he was ashamed of himself right away."

"I hadn't realized Arthur was such a philosopher about these things."

"Arthur has some amazing ideas."

"So have you. I thought you were in flight from all the Gypsy part of your heritage."

"So I was till I met Parlabane, but his talk about the need to recognize your root and your crown as of equal importance has made me understand that my Gypsy part is inescapable. It has to be recognized, because if it isn't it will plague me all my life as a canker at the root. We're doing a lot of Gypsy things –"

"Maria, be careful; I want to be the priest at your wedding, but I'll have nothing to do with cutting wrists and mingling blood, or waving bloody napkins to show that you have been deflowered, or anything of that sort. I thought you wanted a Christian marriage."

"Don't worry, there'll be none of that. But Yerko is taking himself very seriously as a substitute for my Father; as my Mother's brother he's far more important, really, in Gypsy life. Yerko has demanded, and received, a purchase-price from Arthur, in gold. And Yerko has ceremonially accepted Arthur as a "phral" – you know, a gadjo who has married a Gypsy, and who is regarded as a brother, though of course not as a Gypsy. And Mamusia has given us the bread and salt; she breaks a nice crusty roll and salts it and gives us each half and we eat it while she says that we shall be faithful until we tire of bread and salt."

"Well, you seem to be going the whole Romany hog. Are you certain you need a marriage ceremony after all that?"

"Simon, how can you ask such a thing! Yes, we want our marriage to be blessed. We're serious people. I am much more serious, much more real, for having accepted my Gypsy root."

"I see. What about Arthur's root?"

"Very extensive, apparently. He says he has a cellar full of dried roots."

When Arthur came he didn't want to talk about his root; he seemed more inclined to lecture me about orthodoxy, of which he had an unexpectedly high opinion. The reason so many modern marriages break down, he informed me, was because people did not dare to set themselves a high enough standard; they went into marriage with one eye on all the escape-hatches, instead of accepting it as an advance from which there was no retreat.

I think he expected me to agree enthusiastically, but I didn't. Nor did I contradict him; I have had too much experience of life to attempt to tell a really rich person anything. They are as bad as the young; they know it all. Arthur and Maria had agreed that they wanted no revised service as it appears in modern Prayer Books, and he brought along a handsome old volume dated 1706 with a portrait of Queen Anne, of all people, as a frontispiece, which was obviously from the possessions of the late Francis Cornish. I knew the form, of course, but felt I should take them through it, to make sure they knew what they were letting themselves in for, and sure enough they insisted on the inclusion of the passage in the Preamble which debars those who marry "to satisfie mens carnal lusts and appetites, like brute beasts, that have no understanding". They wanted to be enjoined publicly "to avoid fornication" and Maria wanted to vow to "obey, serve, love, honour and keep" her husband; indeed in the order of service they wanted she would use the word "obey" – so hateful to the liberal young – twice, and when I questioned it she said that it seemed to her to be like the oath of loyalty to the monarch – which is another vow that most people are too modern to take seriously.

I would have resisted all this antiquarianism if they had not both been so touching in their delight that marriage "was ordained for the mutual society, help and comfort that the one ought to have of the other". This was plainly what they were looking for, and Arthur was eloquent about it. "People don't talk to one another nearly enough," he said. "The sex-hobbyists go on tediously about their preoccupation without ever admitting that it is bound to diminish as time passes. There are people who say that the altar of marriage is not the bed, but the kitchen stove, thereby turning it into a celebration of gluttony. But who ever talks about a lifelong, intimate friendship expressing itself in the broadest possible range of conversation? If people are really alive and alert it ought to go on and on, prolonging life because there is always something more to be said."

"I used to think it was horrible to see couples in restaurants, simply eating and never saying a word to one another," said Maria, "but I am beginning to know better. Maybe they don't have to talk all the time to be in communication. Conversation in its true meaning isn't all wagging the tongue; sometimes it is a deeply shared silence. But Arthur and I have never stopped talking since we decided to marry."

"I'm beginning to wonder if we haven't got the legend of Eden all wrong," said Arthur. "God threw Adam and Eve out of the Garden because they gained knowledge at the price of their innocence, and I think God was jealous. "The Kingdom of the Father is spread upon the earth and men do not see it" – you recognize that, Simon?"

"One of the Gnostic Gospels," said I, a little nettled at being instructed in my own business by this young man.

"The Gospel of Thomas, and very juicy stuff," said Arthur, who was in a condition to lecture the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Pope, if they needed any help. "Adam and Eve had learned how to comprehend the Kingdom of the Father, and their descendants have been hard at it ever since. That's what universities are about, when they aren't farting around with trivialities. Of course God was jealous; He was being asked to share some of His domain. I'll bet Adam and Eve left the Garden laughing and happy with their bargain; they had exchanged a know-nothing innocence for infinite choice."

This was all very well, and a great improvement on what I usually meet with when I talk to young couples who are approaching marriage. How dumb a lot of them are, poor dears; quite incapable of putting their expectations into words. They don't even seem to comprehend what my function in the service is – not as somebody who publicly licenses them to sleep together and use the same towels, but as an intermediary between them, the suppliants, and Whatever It Is that hears their supplication. But I had my reservations. These two were a little too articulate for my complete satisfaction. And I wanted to be satisfied, for I still loved Maria deeply.

She knew that I was not easy in my mind, and before they went she said: "What you told us in the first class I took with you is the motto for our marriage. You remember that passage from Augustine?"

"Conloqui et conridere…"

"Yes. 'Conversations and jokes together, mutual rendering of good services, the reading together of sweetly phrased books, the sharing of nonsense and mutual attentions'. And the mutual attentions of course include sex. So you mustn't look worried, Simon dear."

I would have had to be more than human not to worry. I was losing a greatly gifted pupil. I was losing a woman whom I had regarded, for a time, as the earthly embodiment of Sophia. Though I knew I could never possess her, I loved her still, and I was going to bind her to a man against whom I knew nothing that was not good, but who somehow bothered me.

I decided this was jealousy. I suppose the Rebel Angels were not above jealousy. It is an unpopular passion; people will confess with some degree of self-satisfaction that they are greedy, or have terrible tempers, or are close about money, but who admits to being jealous? It cannot easily be presented as a good quality with a dark complexion. But my job as a priest is to look human frailty in the face and call it by its right name. I was jealous of Arthur Cornish because he was going to be first in the heart of a woman I still loved. But as Maria had said, a Rebel Angel takes something of a woman's innocence as he leads her towards a larger world and an ampler life, and it is not surprising if the man who has done that is jealous of the man who reaps the benefit. I could understand and value Maria as he never could, I was sure of that; but I was equally sure that Maria could never be mine except on the mythological plane she had herself explained. What ails you, Father Darcourt, is that you want to eat your cake and have it too; you want to be first with Maria, without paying the price of that position. All right, I understand. But it still hurts.

Why was I so withholding in my feelings about Arthur? It was because, although I had seen quite a lot of his crown, I knew nothing about his root except what might be inferred from his deep feeling for music. Maria seemed to have yielded to him completely; whatever she had said in the interview just closed had a – no, not a falsity, but a somewhat un-Marialike quality that spoke of Arthur. I had observed that in plenty of brides, but Maria was not to be judged as one of them.

All this orthodoxy – what could it lead to? In my experience the essentials of Christianity, rightly understood, may form the best possible foundation for a life and a marriage, but in the case of people of strongly intellectual bent these essentials need extensive farcing out – I use the word as cooks do, to mean the extending and amplifying of a dish with other, complementary elements – if they are to prove enough. One cannot live on essences.

Young couples whom I interview before marriage are sincere in their faith, or pretend to a sincerity they think I expect, but I know that in the household they set up there will be other gods than the one God. The Romans talked of household gods, and they knew what they were talking about; in every home and every marriage there are the lesser gods, who sometimes swell to extraordinary size, and even when they are not consciously acknowledged they have great power. Every one of the household gods has a dark side, a mischievous side, as when Pride disguises itself as self-respect, Anger as the possession of high standards of behaviour, or Lust as freedom of choice. Who would be the household gods under the Cornish roof?

I knew of the special bee in Maria's bonnet; it was Honour, a concept she had seized from the work of François Rabelais, and made her own. Honour which was said to prompt people to virtuous action and hold them back from vice; was there a dark side to that god? Fruitless to speculate, but I could imagine Honour raising quite a lot of hell if it were to swell to a size where it darkened the face of the one God.

2

Maria's marriage was, all things considered, a great success, though there were a few oddities. Standing at the altar, waiting for the bride, I could see her, at the back of Spook Chapel, slipping off her shoes, so that she was barefoot when she confronted me, though her long white wedding-gown concealed her feet most of the time. It made her a little shorter than I had ever seen her before, and although Arthur Cornish was not especially tall, he seemed to tower above her. He was handsomely and conventionally dressed; it was plain that his morning clothes were made for him and not hired. I have seen many a wedding given a decided list towards comedy when the groom wore badly fitting hired clothes, and was all too plainly ill at ease in his first stiff collar. (I think it a bad omen when the groom is the clown of the circus; it is usually the top hat that is the betrayer.) Arthur and his best man were impeccable. The best man was Geraint Powell, a rising young actor from the Stratford Festival, handsome, self-assured, and somewhat larger than life as actors tend to be on ceremonial occasions. Where, I wondered, had Arthur picked up such a friend, who was as near as our modern age allows to what used to be called a matinee idol.

The music, too, was impeccable and I suppose it was Arthur's choice. It was strange to see Maria walking with the splendid poise of a barefoot Gypsy down that long aisle on the arm of Yerko, who padded like a huge bear, and made a great business of smiling through tears, which he clearly thought was the proper emotional tone for his role. Somewhere – God knows where – Yerko had found a purple Ascot stock, and it was pinned with a garnet like an egg.

Mamusia, in the first seat of the first pew on the bride's side of the chapel, was a phuri dai in state attire, a complexity of skirts, gaudy petticoats, not less than three shawls, and her hair greased until she was like the God of Sion; her paths dropped fatness. No tears for Mamusia; matriarchal dignity was her role.

I had no eyes for anyone but Maria, when once she appeared, and as she drew near me the ache I felt changed to astonishment, for she was wearing the longest necklace I have ever seen. The Lord Mayor of a great city might have envied it. It was made of gold roundels at least two inches in diameter, stamped with the image of some horned beast; without rude peering I could not read the inscription on each piece, but I could make out a word that looked like "Fyngoud". What was this? Some Scottish treasure? Mamusia's Maria Theresa thalers, which she wore for the occasion, were nothing to this. To increase the resemblance to a mayoral chain it was pinned far out on her shoulders and quite a lot of it hung down her back, beneath her veil; if it had simply depended from her neck, like an ordinary necklace, it would have reached almost to her thighs.

There she was, my darling and my joy, standing beside the man to whom I was to marry her. Time to begin.

" 'Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of this congregation' (and what a crew they are – nobody but Mamusia on the bride's side of the chapel, except Clement Hollier, who looked about as well pleased as I felt, and on the groom's side a considerable group of people who could have been relatives, though some were probably board members and business associates) 'to joyn together this man and this woman in Holy Matrimony.' " Which I did, marvelling, not for the first time, how short the marriage service is, and how easy and inevitable the answers are, compared with the tedious rigmarole involved in a divorce. And at the end, in duty bound, I implored God to fill Maria and Arthur with spiritual benediction and grace, so that they might so live together in this life that in the world to come they might have life everlasting. I don't think I have ever spoken those words with a stronger sense of ambiguity.

It was a morning wedding – the orthodox Arthur again – and afterwards there was a reception, or party, or whatever you like to call it, in one of the rooms Spook sometimes makes available for such affairs, a room of oaken academic solemnity. It was here that Mamusia held court, and was gracious in what she appeared to think an Old World Viennese style towards Arthur's business friends, who all seemed to be called Mr. Mumble and Ms Clackety-Clack. Maria had set aside her veil for a kerchief tied in the married woman's style. Yerko was rather drunk and extremely communicative.

"You saw the necklace, Priest Simon?" he said. "What you think it worth, eh? You'll never guess, so I'll tell you." Warmly and boozily he whispered an astounding sum into my ear. "I make it myself; took me a week working hours and hours every day. Now, this is the big thing; all that gold except the chains, which I made out of some personal gold left by her father, Tadeusz, was Maria's purchase price! You know – what Arthur paid me, as her uncle, to marry her. Sounds funny, you say, but it is the Gypsy way and because Arthur is rich and a gadjo, he has to pay plenty. My sister and me, we are people of wealth, too, but an old custom is an old custom. That's why we give it back, in the necklace. You saw those big pieces? A full ounce of gold, every one. Guess what they were; come on, guess. – Kruger-rands, that's what they are. Pure gold and Maria has them for her own if anything goes wrong. Because these gadji, their money is all paper anyways and could go phtttt any day. What do you think of that for generosity, eh? What do you say to a family that gives back all of the purchase price?"

I could only say that it seemed extremely open-handed. Hollier was listening; he said nothing and looked sour. But Yerko was not finished with me.

"Tell me, Priest Simon, what kind church is this? I know you are a good priest – real priest, very strong in power – but I look everywhere and what do I see? Bebby Jesus? Nowhere! Not a picture, not a figure. Lots of old saints behind the altar, but not Bebby Jesus or his Mother. Doesn't this church know who Bebby Jesus is?"

"Bebby Jesus is everywhere in our chapel, Yerko, don't doubt it for a moment."

"I didn't see him. I like to see, then I believe." And Yerko padded off to get himself some more champagne, which he drank in gulps.

"There you are," said I to Hollier. "I think I agree with Yerko; we ought to make the evidences of faith more obvious in our churches. We've refined faith almost out of existence."

"Nonsense," said Hollier. "You don't think anything of the sort. That sort of thing leads directly to plaster statuary of the most degraded kind. I'm hating all this, Sim. I loathe this self-conscious ethnicity – purchase price, and bare feet. In a few minutes we'll all be dancing around shouting and spilling wine."

"I thought that was just your thing," I said, "the Wild Mind at work. Whoop-de-doo and unbuttoned carousing."

"Not when it's done simply for show. It's like those rain-dances Indians are coaxed to do for visiting politicians."

He still looked unwell from his collapse, so I didn't contradict him. But he felt what I was thinking.

"Sorry," he said. "I have to toast the bride, and making speeches always puts me in a bad state."

He needn't have worried; the Mumbles and the Clackety-Clacks were real Canadian Wasps and unlikely to take off their shoes, or sing. Powell, the actor, was master of ceremonies, and in a few minutes he called for silence, so that Hollier might speak – which he did, with what I thought a degree of solemnity too severe for a wedding, though I was grateful for what he said.

"Dear friends, this is a happy occasion, and I am particularly honoured at having been asked to propose the health of the bride. I do so with the deepest feeling of tenderness, for I love her as a teacher to whom she has been the most enriching and rewarding of pupils. We teachers, you know, can only rise to our best when we have great students, and Maria has made me surpass myself and surprise myself, and what I have given to her – which I will not pretend with foolish modesty has been little – she has equalled with the encompassing warmth of her response. She is surrounded at this moment by her two families. Her mother and her uncle, who so clearly represent the splendid tradition of the East and of the past, and by Father Darcourt and myself, who are here as devoted servants of that other tradition which she has claimed as her own and to which she has brought great gifts. One mother, the phuri dai, the Mother of the Earth, is splendidly present among us: but the other, the Alma Mater, the bounteous mother of the University and the whole great world of learning and speculative thought of which the University is a part, is all about us. With such a heritage it is almost superfluous to wish her happiness, but I do so from my heart, and wish her and her husband long life and every joy that the union of root and crown can bring. Those of you who know of Maria's enthusiasm for Rabelais will understand why I wish her happiness in words for his: Vogue la galère – tout va bien!"

Polite applause rose from the Mumbles and the Clackety-Clacks, who seemed a little subdued by what Hollier had said; probably they had expected the usual avuncular facetiousness that goes with such toasts. Then Arthur made a speech that did nothing to lighten the atmosphere. To marry, he said, was to take a hand in a dangerous game where the stakes are the highest – a fuller life or a life diminished and confined. It was a game for adult players.

The speeches of bridegrooms are usually awful, but I found this one particularly embarrassing.

When toasts were over, and it was time to go – for as priest I know that I should leave before anybody gets obviously drunk, and family quarrels or fist-fights occur – I went to take my leave of Maria.

"Shall we see you again next term?" I said, because I could think of nothing that was not banal.

"I can't be sure, just yet. I may take a year out to get used to being married. But I'll be back. As Clem said, this is my home and you and he are my family. Thank you, thank you, dear Simon, for marrying me to Arthur, and thank you for the year past. I learned so much from you and Clem."

"Very sweet of you to say so."

But then there came over the face of my Maria a look I had never seen on it before, a look of teasing and mischief. "But I think I learned most from Parlabane," she said.

"What could you have learned from that ruffian?"

" 'Be not another if thou canst be thyself'."

"But you learned that from Paracelsus."

"I read it in Paracelsus. But I learned it from Parlabane. He was a Rebel Angel too, Simon."

Hollier came away with me, and he seemed so desolate that I hesitated to leave him. "Better go home and get some rest," I said.

"I don't want to go home."

I could understand that. The society of Hollier's mother was not precisely what a man needs who has relinquished his love to another man. Time I spoke out.

"Look Clem, there's no use whatever in either of us feeling sorry for ourselves. We've had all of Maria that was coming to us, and we gave her all that our nature and circumstances allowed. Let's not delight ourselves with the bitter-sweet pleasures of Renunciation. No 'It is a far, far better thing I do –' for us. We must be ourselves and know ourselves for what we are: Rebel Angels, we hope, and not a couple of silly middle-aged professors boo-hooing about what could never have been."

"But I was such a fool; I found out too late."

"Clem, don't spit on your luck. You think you have lost Maria; I think you are free of her. Remember your destiny that the phuri dai read for you at Christmas? The last card was Fortune, with her ever-turning wheel? It has turned in your favour, hasn't it? You have the Gryphius Portfolio as soon as you and Maria can get together again. That's your destiny, at your age and with your character. You're not a Lover; you're too much a Wizard. Now look here; go to your rooms and have a good afternoon's rest, and come to dinner at Ploughwright at six o'clock sharp. It's a Guest Night."

"No, no, I'll crowd your table."

"Not a bit of it; a guest has dropped out at the last moment, so there's a place which Fate has obviously cleared for you. Six o'clock for drinks. Sharp, mind. don't keep the Warden waiting."

3

It was an especially genial Guest Night, because it was our last before the long summer break, and also because the calendar and a public holiday had intervened in such a way that it was our first following Easter. Downstairs, when the first part of dinner was over and the students had gone about their own affairs, all our regulars were present, and as well as Hollier, there were two other guests, George Northmore, who was a Judge of the Supreme Court of the province, and Benjamin Jubilei, from the University Library.

I wondered how long it would be before somebody brought up the murder of Urquhart McVarish, and who would do so; I had made a mental bet with myself that it would be Roberta Burns, and I won. Once again, for The New Aubrey, I give I some notion of how they chirped over their cups.

"Poor old Urky. Don't you remember him dining with us last autumn, and how proud he was of his penis-bone, poor devil? He tried to get a squeak out of me with that, but I was one too many for him; Urky simply had no idea what a tough nut an intelligent middle-aged woman can be."

"He was an Oxonian of the old dispensation," said Penny Raven; "thought women were lovely creatures whose sexual coals could be blown into warmth by raunchy academic chit-chat. Well, well; one down and a few score around this campus still to go."

"Penny, that isn't like you," said Lamotte.

"No, no, Penny," said Deloney; "the poor fellow is dead. Let's not beat the bones of the vanquished."

"Yes," said Hitzig, "we're not hyenas or biographers, to pee on the dead."

"Okay. De mortuis nil nisi hokum," said the unrepentant Penny.

"I was myself at Oxford at least as long ago as McVarish," said the Warden, "and I have never thought meanly of women."

"Oh, but you were Balliol, Warden. Always in the van. Urky was Magdalen – quite another bed of cryptorchids."

The Warden smirked; Oxford rivalries died hard in him.

"I wonder what is to become of all his erotica," said Roberta Burns. "He had a pornographic bootjack at his door that always interested me."

"A pornographic b –!" Lamotte was playing the innocent, as he loved to do with women.

"Indeed. A naked woman rendered in brass, lying on her back with her legs astraddle. You put one foot on her face, forced the other into her crotch, and hoiked off your galosh. Practical enough, but offensive to my lingering female sensibilities."

"I never know what people want with such nasty toys," said Lamotte. "It has been my observation, over a long life, that a man's possessions are a surer clue to his character than anything he does or says. If you know how to interpret the language of possessions." Lamotte looked as if he considered himself such a man.

"All we'll ever find in your cupboards are pieces of rare old china," said Deloney; "and from what I hear, René, they don't provide guarantees of a blameless taste."

"What? What? We must hear about this," said Roberta. Lamotte was blushing.

"René is reputed to have a fine collection of bourdaloues," said Deloney.

"Being –?"

"Eighteenth-century china piss-pots for elegant ladies to slip under their skirts on long, cold coach journeys."

"No, no," said Lamotte. "Named for the Abbe Bourdalue who preached inordinately long sermons – extreme tests of human endurance. But who says this –?"

"Aha, wouldn't you like to know? Are they really painted with naughty pictures?"

"As long as I keep on drinking mineral water while you are sipping port, it will be quite a while before you find out."

"Minds that are too refined slip into grossness. Watch your step, René; we have our eyes on you."

Here it was Lamotte who smirked.

"Do I hear you discussing the deep damnation of Urky McVarish's taking-off?" It was Durdle, shouting down the table, which the etiquette of the occasion forbade him to do.

"Ah, the Pink Ribbon Murder," said Ludlow, the law don. "What did you make of that, Judge?"

"I didn't make much of it," said Mr. Justice Northmore. "I read everything that appeared in all three papers, and the accounts were so muddled and contradictory that I couldn't be sure of anything except that a professor had been murdered under somewhat imaginative circumstances. I wish it had come to trial, so we could have got to the bottom of it –"

Roberta Burns snorted. The Warden raised his eyebrows.

"So that we could have found out the truth about the ten feet of pink ribbon that were concealed in the rectum of the body. Now why would anybody want to do that?"

"There was talk in one of the confessions of 'ceremonies'."

"Yes, yes, Mr. Ludlow, but what ceremonies?"

"The full explanation of that was given only in the letter that reached the police, which I had an opportunity of examining," said Ludlow. "Something very complicated about Queen Anne."

"Can we not talk of anything else?" said the Warden.

"Tell me later, Ludlow," hissed the Judge.

But the Warden's mild plea could not stop the flow.

Deloney was querying Ludlow: "Whatever became of the body?"

"McVarish's body, do you mean? I suppose the police released it to the family, when they had found out whatever they could."

"I never knew there was any family."

Here I was able to intervene with special knowledge. "There isn't. So the University took over and there was a very private funeral. Just a couple of people from the President's office at the crematorium."

"That can't have been much of a 'ceremony'. But a parson, one presumes? Who was it? Not you, Simon?"

"No, not me. I read the service for the murderer, however, if you collect such information. I'd known him all my life."

"I think that fellow – the murderer – deserves public thanks," said Elsa Czermak.

"Elsa, we never knew you had it in for Urky!"

"I mean for finishing himself off and not putting the public to heavy expense in the matter of a trial. He must have been a man of considerable quality."

"He was, I can assure you," said Hollier.

"Suicide, wasn't it?" The curious Deloney again. "I heard he drank a whole can of Dog-Off."

Strange to hear Hollier defending Parlabane. "Nothing of the sort I assure you. He was an exceptional man, a man of formidable abilities, with a sense of style that would utterly reject death by Dog-Off."

"Of course, the book! The great book. Is it really magnificent?" said Durdle.

"When will it be published?" said Aronson. "You are supposed to be attending to that, aren't you, Hollier?"

"Somebody else has been dealing with it while I have been ill," said Hollier. "I understand the bidding among the publishers is not yet concluded. The film rights have been in demand from people who haven't even seen the book."

"The really important point is that the original manuscript should be lodged in the University Library," said Jubilei, who was an expert in archival work. "It sprang from this University, it led to an incident in University history that is inescapable, however reprehensible, and we must have it where it properly belongs."

"It's been left to his old college library," said Hollier. "St. John and the Holy Ghost. Spook, to you."

"I am not convinced such a small library will know how to deal with it," said Jubilei. "Can you guarantee that it will be preserved, page by page, between sheets of acid-free paper?"

I thought of Parlabane's squalid mess of typescript, and smiled a private smile.

"I don't see how you can possibly speak of it as 'an incident'," said Durdle. "It's our Crime, don't you see, and a real beauty! How many other universities can boast a crime – an acknowledged, indisputable crime, that's to say? It gives us a quality all our own, lifts us high above every other university on this continent. It was international news! Worth at least three Nobel Laureates! Raises us all immeasurably in our professional stature!"

"Oh rubbish! How can you possibly say such a thing?" said Stromwell.

"You can ask that? You, a medievalist! What were the great scholars of the past? Venal, cadging, saucy, spiteful, contumelious, and quarrelsome – Urky and his murderer are right in the pattern – and they were also great humanists. What is the modern scholar? A frowsy scarecrow of bourgeois conventionality."

"Speak for yourself," said Stromwell.

"I do! I do! I was saying precisely that to my wife this morning at breakfast."

"And what did she say?"

"I think she said Yes dear, and went on making a list for her shopping. But that's beside the point, which is that some grotesquerie, some wrenching originality, is a necessary part of real scholarship, and brings a special glory with it. We all share in the dark splendour of Urky's murder; we are the greater for his passing, and his murderer's book is in a special sense our book."

"You don't even know whether or not it is a good book."

As they wrangled, some of the others were trying to change the subject, to please the Warden.

"I have it on very good authority that we shall shortly have another Nobel Laureate in this University," said Boys.

"You mean he's got it?" said Gyllenborg.

"Can't be absolutely certain until the announcement is made, but there are only three possible contenders this year, and I hear our man is top of the list."

"I thought it might be so when I read his Kober Lecture. Ozy spoke like a man who knew he had come to disturb the sleep of the world. We shall all have to revise our thinking. Excrement: daily barometer of whether the body – perhaps even the mind – is tending towards health or sickness. Of course he stands on Sheldon's shoulders, but don't we all stand on somebody's past work?"

"That is what lends splendour to a university," said the Warden. "Not these dreadful interruptions of the natural order."

"You lean always towards the light, Warden; perhaps both are necessary, for completeness."

"Quite so," said the Warden. "I confess I never really liked McVarish, but it is good modern theology to acknowledge every man's right to go to hell in his own way."

As I listened, I felt a sadness creeping over me that was unquestionably tinged by the self-pity I had condemned in Hollier earlier in the day. Ah, well; a little self-pity is perhaps not amiss in circumstances where we cannot reasonably expect pity from anyone else. So I gave way to a measure of the harlot-emotion, and to my immense satisfaction it turned in a few minutes to a deep tenderness.

Vogue la galère, Maria. Let your ship sail free.