Urn Burial

CHAPTER EIGHT

Without confused burnings they affectionately

compounded their bones; passionately endeavouring

to continue their living unions.

Urn Burial, Sir Thomas Browne, Chapter III.

AS IT was clearly impossible to ask Mrs Luttrell who her lover was – and Phryne caught Miss Fletcher a shrewd blow on her shin when the question was hovering on her lips – there was not much more to be said. The ladies drank their beverages, Miss Fisher confining herself to Cointreau, and they went in a body to the large parlour where a gramophone was playing and the gentlemen awaited them. They evidently had not lingered over their port.

There were several distractions to while away the long evening. The room was just big enough to dance in, provided the dancers did not attempt anything too athletic; Phryne remembered her dancing-master telling her that one needed six square yards in which to polka. There were the usual photograph albums, a scatter of the fashionable journals, and a very beautiful chess set, made of carved bone. The poet challenged the Doctor to a game. Miss Medenham walked boldly up to the Major and demanded a dance. Phryne wondered what on earth the combustible novelist thought she was doing, vamping a man who beat his wife. Then Lin Chung crossed her field of vision.

‘This is a foxtrot,’ he said. ‘May I have this dance?’ and Phryne floated into his embrace.

‘How is Tom?’ she asked.

‘Drunk but affable. He was spouting family secrets like a geyser, wasn’t he? Does he do this often?’

‘No, I’ve never seen him like that before. You dance very well.’

‘So do you.’ Phryne saw Miss Mead seated by Mrs Fletcher. They looked amiably on. Even Mrs Fletcher seemed to have forgiven Lin Chung for being Chinese and charming, as her daughter Judith danced past with Gerry Randall. Jack Lucas had persuaded Mrs Reynolds to dance with him. They matched steps very well.

‘You heard what he said,’ Phryne reminded Lin. ‘Tom said he had no objection to a love affair between you and me going on under his roof.’

‘Even so,’ said the smooth voice. ‘He was not himself. There are other distractions, Silver Lady. Gerald is evidently overcome by your charms.’

‘He’s very pretty,’ said Phryne consideringly. ‘I’ll think about it.’

‘Not too much, I beg.’ He broke step and then regained his rhythm.

‘Oh? And are you intending to seduce the bouncing Miss Fletcher?’ Lin laughed, unabashed. ‘She said to me . . . she thinks . . .’

‘Tell me.’

‘She is under the impression that all Chinese men lust after white women. I had to find a way to disabuse her of this idea, while not telling her that to a Chinese she has hair like straw, round eyes like a demon, such eyes moreover the colour of a blind person or a devil, and lumps in all the wrong places.’

‘Poor girl.’

‘No, no, I was very polite.’ He brought Phryne neatly round a corner. ‘But you, Phryne, you are altogether different. If I had to explain your appeal I would have to say . . . I don’t know what I would say. That you have the carriage of a Manchu Princess, the black hair and the neat head, the red mouth of a courtesan of the first rank, yet you have eyes like precious jade. Such eyes were never seen in China. That is what they would call you, the poets who came to make songs of your beauty. Green Jade, the Silver Lady. You are wearing your Shanghai ring.’

‘The dragon and the phoenix, yes.’

‘In Western philosophy they call it the alchemical marriage. The White Queen and the Red King. Their mating engenders the philosopher’s stone.’

‘The Major’s wife wants to leave him,’ said Phryne, changing the subject. If Lin Chung was to be coaxed out of his chastity, it would not be done by allowing him to enthuse endlessly about her beauty.

‘Indeed? I can understand that.’

‘She has a lover. Someone in this house. Can you hazard a guess?’

Lin considered the Doctor, the poet, Tom Reynolds, Gerald Randall and Jack Lucas, and shrugged fluidly.

‘No, I cannot guess. Do you know?’

‘No. Do any other groupings suggest themselves? Perhaps we can cancel them out like an equation.’

‘What an immoral conversation,’ observed Lin, amused. ‘Let’s see, Miss Medenham and the poet, I think. They were in the library together, you said. I think they’d be a match. Tom Reynolds and his wife seem devoted. The Major . . . no. I don’t think any woman would find his bluster and bullying attractive.’

‘Miss Medenham seems to,’ said Phryne as the pair danced past, close together and talking.

‘True. An eccentric woman – I believe that novelists often are,’ said Lin. ‘Well, perhaps Miss Fletcher and Gerald. And maybe I am wrong about Miss Medenham – I think she fancies Jack Lucas.’

‘The woman fancies everyone. As you say, novelists. And Lucas is certainly good-looking. But very young.’

‘You prefer experience, perhaps?’ asked Lin, sliding a hand down the back of the velvet dress.

‘Infinitely,’ agreed Phryne, clasping his waist.

The gramophone whirled to a halt.

‘Check and mate,’ said the poet into the silence. ‘You are off your game, Doctor.’

‘Yes, Tadeusz, I don’t feel well. I think I’ll just sit here and play the gramophone.’ The spare figure reached out a long hand and picked up the next record. ‘Here’s a Charleston.’ He wound the machine up and placed the needle on the spinning wax platter.

‘There is something macabre about the gramophone,’ observed the poet. ‘It preserves the voices of the dead, as cherries are preserved in confiture.’

‘And are thus exalted,’ commented Phryne. ‘Jam is the highest state to which cherries can aspire. Good cherries become jam, and bad cherries become compost.’

The poet laughed.

‘Down on your heels, up on your toes, stay after school, learn how it goes, that’s the way to do the Varsity rag,’ sang the gramophone.

The Charleston was not a complicated dance. It merely required strong ankles and good balance. Phryne could dance the Charleston all night.

She found herself next to Gerald. Two steps forward, two steps back. He was singing along with the next record.

‘In olden days a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking, now heaven knows, anything goes.’

‘The world’s mad today and good’s bad today and black’s white today and wrong’s right today and most guys today that women prize today are just silly gigolos,’ sang Phryne.

‘Although I’m not a great romancer I know that you’re bound to answer when I propose,’ sang Gerald, staring into Phryne’s eyes.

‘Anything goes,’ she replied. He really was a very pretty boy.

The Doctor, perhaps influenced by Mrs Reynolds’ silent disapproval of modern dancing, put on a waltz. Gerald bowed and said, ‘May I have this dance?’ and Phryne smiled.

‘Shouldn’t you be dancing with Miss Fletcher?’ she asked, moving closer to him. He was slim and smelt of port and the hand taking hers was smooth and strong.

‘She doesn’t waltz. In any case, I don’t belong to her,’ he said, his arm encircling Phryne’s waist. ‘I would much rather belong to you.’

To the sugary strains of ‘The Blue Danube’, Phryne waltzed with Gerald. Lin Chung was dancing with Mrs Reynolds. Jack Lucas had left the room. Letty Luttrell had presumably gone to bed. Judith was sitting next to the Doctor and leafing through the records. The poet had abandoned his surrealist principles and had led out Mrs Fletcher, and Miss Medenham was hanging on to the Major with grim determination.

‘What does Miss Medenham see in the Major?’ she asked idly, noticing that Gerald Randall was a very good dancer.

‘God knows. Though I believe that she used to know him in Melbourne. She’s rather marvellous, isn’t she – so vivid.’

‘Yes. You dance very well.’

‘Only with you. You’re as light as the feathers in your hair.’

Phryne smiled and noticed that her partner, who was leading, was moving them unobtrusively towards the door into the little parlour. As they passed under the carved Gothic lintel, the record wound to a close, but Gerald did not release his hold.

‘Beautiful Phryne,’ said the young man very softly. ‘Most beautiful lady.’

‘Exceptionally decorative Gerald,’ she replied.

‘Let me come to your room tonight,’ he whispered. ‘Last time, we were interrupted.’

‘So we were,’ she agreed. ‘I’ll think about it,’ she temporised. ‘This is a strange gathering and I’m worried about what happened to Lina. I don’t know if I’m really in the mood, Gerald.’

‘I can change your mood,’ he said confidently.

‘Can you, indeed? Perhaps,’ she said. The music started again, a slow foxtrot, and Gerald gathered her close. There was little light in the small parlour, just a shaded pink lamp on one Victorian table. The bodies moved together, clung and slid, jade velvet against sable broadcloth.

Then they were no longer alone. Cynthia had manoeuvred the Major into the half-dark, her bright blond head leaning on his massive shoulder, and Gerald and Phryne slipped away, back into the general dance.

Before they parted, Phryne put her mouth to the young man’s ear and breathed, ‘Yes.’

Phryne captured Lin Chung three dances later and said quietly, ‘Dance us into the little parlour. I am very curious about Cynthia Medenham and the Major.’

‘Her attentions to him have been marked,’ he agreed, moving the pair of them towards the door and turning so that Phryne could see over his shoulder into the half-dark. The strange couple were still there, clasped close together. Miss Medenham was crushed in a strong embrace, and the Major was evidently much attracted. He lifted his head as Phryne and Lin Chung appeared, and glared.

Phryne smiled seraphically and nudged her partner back into the parlour. ‘Interesting,’ she commented.

‘Phryne, are you really going to seduce that boy?’ asked Lin Chung, sounding slightly offended.

‘Possibly. I am wondering why he is making such a dead-set siege of me,’ she replied.

‘One can carry investigation too far,’ he commented, avoiding Mrs Reynolds and the Doctor, who were deep in conversation, and swinging Phryne around the protruding edge of a large table against the wall.

‘Not if one seeks the truth,’ she said sententiously, and Lin Chung snorted.

‘Come, come, my Confucian. If it were not for your exaggerated sense of ethics I would be sleeping with you,’ she said. ‘One must suffer for one’s beliefs.’

‘You,’ said Lin Chung admiringly, surveying the dark head with the panache of feathers, ‘are a woman who could corrupt a monk.’

‘So I would, if he were a pretty monk who didn’t really think about his vows when he made them.’

Lin laughed.

Golden hair said to dark hair, ‘It’s no use. I’ll never be free.’

‘Yes you will,’ said dark hair to golden. ‘I’ll make you free.’

‘Kiss me again.’ There was a sound of mouths meeting, frantically, and hands slid under a white shirt and dark coat to find skin damp with desire.

Golden hair broke away from the embrace with a groan. ‘It’s immoral, it’s improper, we can’t do this. What would people say?’

‘Who cares what people say?’ asked dark hair flatly. ‘My love, my own love. Say it.’ They kissed again. ‘Say it, I want to hear the words.’

‘My . . . love,’ faltered golden hair. ‘My dear love, my own.’

The party wound down. Phryne found herself sitting next to the poet, looking through the family photograph albums.

‘The Edwardian Indian summer,’ he said in his accented voice. ‘Here is the whole house party. By the rabbits I deduce that they have been hunting.’

‘Gosh, Hinchcliff hasn’t changed, has he? Or his wife. And there’s Tom, looking every inch the Lord of the Manor, and Evelyn, she looks so young, and who’s that?’

‘Her son,’ said Tadeusz. ‘Young Ronald. He went, as they say, to the bad.’

‘Not Tom’s child, then?’

‘No. She had another husband. He died. She doted on that boy – doted on him, and that is very bad for the young.’ Phryne stared at Mrs Reynolds’ face in the fading sepia. She looked soft and happy and vulnerable, holding the hand of a tall young man with her sharp features and strong bones.

‘I believe that he stole money from Tom – Tom forgave him, but then he stole from his employer and went to prison for two years. I remember him, this Ronald. He was sure of his worth, sure that he had droit de seigneur over the housemaids – Mrs Reynolds put him straight on that fast enough. The world owed him a living, like the grasshopper in the Aesop fable. He did not want to work but he was not prepared to forgo the good things – so he stole. A common tale,’ said the poet, looking sad.

‘What happened to him?’

‘He ran away to America, I believe, where he worked on a cattle ranch. He wrote, for some little time, to his mother – always asking for money. She cried lamentably over those letters. Then – nothing. I believe that he is dead, but his mother keeps hoping. Poor Evelyn. A tragedy,’ said the poet.

‘So it is,’ said Phryne, turning the pages. ‘ ‘‘She’d have been different if the boy had turned out well.’’ That’s what Tom said at dinner.’

‘So she might. I am worried about Tom Reynolds, Miss Fisher.’

‘Me, too. I’ve never seen him that drunk. Who gave him that much juice?’

‘I don’t know. It was not me. A glass of this and a glass of that, even several bottles of that and this – I will indulge, happily. But sodden drunk at my wife’s dinner party, no. I have never known him to display such bad form.’

‘He’s worried about Lina.’

‘So am I. She is a nice girl, if a little fantastical, but that is no excuse for Tom to drink himself into social disgrace.’

‘No. I do not like this house party, Tadeusz, and I wish I could get away.’

‘I do not like this party either, Phryne, and I cannot write poetry in this atmosphere.’

‘There are consolations,’ she replied, and the poet grinned wickedly.

‘There are, but mine appears to have taken up with another.’

‘Mine has developed a deep concern for my reputation,’ she confessed, and Tadeusz laughed and clasped her hand.

‘There are others,’ he chuckled, and Phryne smiled and patted his cheek.

‘Jack and Gerald have been coming here for a long time,’ she said, turning another page of the large leather-bound volume.

‘Yes. There is old Mr Lucas – Jack’s father. That falling-out – it was a pity. They were such old friends. Yet it was not really Tom’s fault. And there,’ the broad finger stabbed at the page, ‘that is the tramp, the one they are all scared of. Harry.’

‘Dingo Harry?’ Phryne peered at the picture. A stocky man in a collarless shirt and stockman’s moleskins held up a long string of what must be dingo scalps. He was wearing a shapeless hat and grinning into the camera. His face was concentrated and intelligent, as far as one could tell through the mane of uncut hair and forest of beard.

‘He is interesting; an educated man. When he wants to talk, which is seldom, he is worth the listening. I had a long conversation with him about the fall of the Paris Commune once, sitting on a rock in his little camp. Now there is a man who needs no material possessions. He is, regrettably, quite mad, but a poet should talk to the insane. Is not insanity just another way of looking at the world?’

‘I suppose it is. Is he dangerous?’

‘He has rages,’ admitted Tadeusz. ‘I have seen him seize a great branch and beat the walls of the cave with it, bellowing about the voices. Once I saw Evelyn tend him when he had beaten his head against a stone to let out the demons. But in between he is perfectly civilised.’

‘Oh, good,’ said Phryne, hoping that, if she met this character, he would be in one of his tolerant moods. ‘Where is his camp?’

‘Down by the caves. I fear, in fact, that he might be flooded out by this storm. Is it still raining?’

Phryne listened beneath the music and heard the relentless swish of falling water. She nodded.

‘Tomorrow we go to the caves; they are miraculous. Almost they could make me believe that a Divine Spirit and not chance ruled the cosmos. Almost. You are going?’

Phryne rose and smoothed down the jade velvet. ‘Yes, I think I’ll go to bed,’ she said. ‘Thank you for showing me the pictures. Good night, Tadeusz.’

He kissed her hand with a continental flourish.

Phryne found her hostess and bade her good night, waved a hand to the rest of the company and turned at the door. Lin Chung bowed a little from the chess table, where the Doctor had just made the first move. Gerald smiled at her, a breathtaking, glittering smile. The Major and Miss Medenham were still missing, presumably in the little parlour. Miss Mead smiled, a rather meaning smile.

Phryne climbed the monumental staircase, blew a kiss to the lady and the knight in the Morris windows, and came to her own room.

She tapped softly and called, ‘It’s me, Dot.’

There was a scraping as the chair was pulled away and Phryne slipped inside.

Dot had dined well, accepted one glass of light white wine, and was unaccustomedly flushed and pleased. Phryne dropped into a chair, pulled off the silver shoes and rolled down her stockings. Wiping the cold cream off her face with a cotton-wool swab, she asked, ‘What’s happened, Dot? You look excited.’

‘Miss, you remember all that paper we took out of Lina’s books? And her little box? I’ve been looking at it.’

‘Good. What have you found?’ Phryne slicked her face over with milk of roses, dried it and followed Dot into her own room, where she surveyed neat little piles laid out on the single bed.

‘These are just chocolate wrappers and bus tickets and things, Miss, nothing written on them. But I’ve found some letters and this.’

Dot showed Phryne a diamond ring. The silver mounting was discoloured from having lain in the brass box, but the stone twinkled as bright as ice.

‘That’s a good diamond – a couple of carats at least,’ commented Phryne. ‘Where would a housemaid get fifty quid’s worth of jewellery, do you think?’

‘I don’t know, Miss. And there’s a letter.’

Phryne scanned it. It was written in an educated, flowing hand, in very black ink on cream-laid vellum. Lina, I’ll never forget you, R. ‘Hmm. No date, of course, or address, or anything betraying like that.’

‘And this,’ Dot produced her most important find. It was a torn sheet of typing paper lettered with black capitals. LINA, COME TO OUR OLD PLACE, R.

‘Cryptic, but it might explain why she was out in the mist that night. And I’ve an idea who R is, too. Dot, well done. A pretty piece of sorting. Can you clean up that ring?’

‘What are you going to do, Miss?’ asked Dot, alarmed.

‘I’ll wear it and see who notices,’ said Phryne. ‘Tomorrow, when we go to the caves. You’re a genius, Dot. This ridiculous, horrible case is beginning to make sense, I think. File all that stuff away. Keep everything, even the bus tickets, and we might get a breakthrough. Now, I’ve got a player in this odd masque coming to see me tonight. He’ll be here soon. Lock your door and don’t come out.’

‘What if he’s dangerous?’ demanded Dot suspiciously.

‘Then I shall scream and you can bean him with the poker,’ said Phryne.

Dot did as she was bid, and Phryne put out all the lights but her reading light, stripped off the jade dress and donned her chrysanthemum robe, and sat down. There was a book on the dressing table and she opened it.

That the bones of Theseus should be seen again in Athens was not beyond conjecture and hopeful expectation: but thefe should arife so opportunely to ferve yourfelf was an hit of fate, and honour beyond prediction . . . But thefe are sad and sepulchral pitchers, which have no joyfull voices; silently expreffing old mortality, the ruine of forgotten times, and can only speake with life, how long in this corruptibile frame some partes may be uncorrupted; yet able to outlaft bones long unborn and noblest pile amongft us.

She shivered. The house was silent. She closed the book and laid it down, next to a small stone urn which had, by some chance, appeared in her room.

As Phryne stared at this intimation of mortality, Gerald whispered at the half-open door, ‘Can I come in?’

Phryne admitted him and then closed the door, jamming the Sheridan chair back under the handle. He watched this with some amusement.

‘Are you expecting an enraged husband?’ he asked.

‘In this house an enraged elephant is quite possible. Well, dear boy, this is what you wanted – an assignation.’

He came towards her, the shirt front gleaming in the soft light.

‘Oh, yes,’ he whispered, touching her cheek. ‘That is what I wanted. Most beautiful Phryne.’

He drew her down to sit on her bed and the slim hands dropped to the belt of the chrysanthemum robe. He had clearly had some practice at extracting a lady from her clothes.

She undid the soft shirt, noting that he had changed his clothes so as to be easier to undress, which, she thought, demonstrated experience. He smelt of Floris woodbine scent as the soft mouth kissed down from her lips to her throat and thence to the bared breast.

As Phryne allowed the robe to fall away and embraced Gerald’s waist as he stood to remove the rest of his clothes, she had a vision straight from the learned Sir Thomas: she and her lover as dry skeletons lying together, pelvic bone to pelvic bone, bare tibia and fibia crossing as grinning skull kissed grinning skull in the coffined embrace of the long dead.

Perhaps Lin Chung was right. The presence of death was an aphrodisiac. Gerald, naked, threw himself into her arms, his hands light on her skin, his mouth urgent, demanding. She tasted something like desperation in his kiss.

She wrapped her thighs around his waist, clutching the curly head to her breast. Opposed to death there was always life.

The living skeletons melded together, hard flesh sinking into yielding flesh, and the young man gasped aloud.

‘Oh, Phryne,’ he sighed, lying next to her with his head in the curve of her shoulder.

‘Gerald, my dear,’ she said absently. The vision of the bones had not reappeared, and her body was satisfied and slumping towards sleep.

‘You’re so beautiful.’ He ran a soft hand down the curve of her breast to her hip, cupping the bone.

‘So are you,’ she replied, stroking the curly hair, her hand resting on the entrancing delicacy of his nape. He was a boy, too young, perhaps, even to shave.

‘I’d better go, though I’d love to stay with you all night.’

‘Hmm,’ she murmured.

‘You will help me, won’t you?’ he asked, kissing her shoulder.

‘Of course. Help you with what?’

‘Jack, of course. My chum. I mean, I might have to marry Miss Fletcher, but I can’t do that until he’s settled.’

‘You might have to marry – Gerry, have you seduced Judith Fletcher?’ Phryne came awake with a rush. The young man sat up, the delicate cheek flushed, his skin slick with sweat and shining in the soft light, as beautiful as a Pre-Raphaelite angel.

‘Why, would you mind?’ he asked defensively.

‘No, no, dear boy, but it seems unwise if you don’t want to marry her,’ she commented, wondering how on earth he had managed it with Mrs Fletcher watching her daughter’s every move. ‘I mean, is she really the person with whom you want to spend the rest of your life?’

‘Well, no, perhaps not, but I have to marry, and she’s in love with me.’

‘That is not a good reason,’ said Phryne severely.

‘You don’t have to marry yet – you’ve got time.

Look at Letty Luttrell and the Major. She married in haste and the poor girl is repenting in sackcloth and ashes and has been for years. You might find it hard to get rid of a wife, Gerry, and in any case it’s messy and expensive.’

‘You don’t know everything,’ muttered Gerald.

‘No, I don’t,’ agreed Phryne. ‘Do you feel like telling me?’

Gerald shook his head and felt for his clothes. Phryne watched him dress, feeling a certain disappointment as the flannel bags slid up over the delicate loins.

She accompanied him to the door and he kissed her. She slid the chair away and looked into the corridor.

‘No one. Good night, Gerry.’

He smiled his entrancing little-boy’s smile and leaned his forehead, for a moment, on her shoulder. Then he was gone.

Phryne, suddenly awake, read three chapters of Urne Buriall before she could fall asleep.