The Pendragon Legend (18 page)

This was how our friendship began: I set myself on fire and she put me out. I’d been sitting by the hearth with
The Times
. I’ve never been able to handle English newspapers—apparently one has to be born with the knack of folding these productions into the microscopic dimensions achieved by the natives—and, as I flicked a page over, the entire room filled with newsprint.

Just at that moment, it seems, the young bellboy topped up the fire, rather carelessly.
The Times
burst into flames, and I took on a resemblance to the Burning Bush. The details escape me. All I know is that in a trice Lene was towering over me, stamping on the blazing pages, sousing me with whatever cups of tea were on hand in the room and tugging at my hair in the belief it was being singed. Then she hauled me off to her room, washed me down, stripped me naked and dressed me in some extremely masculine woman’s garment, which was far too big for me anyway—and all before I could murmur my undying gratitude. Then she gave me a
thorough
scolding for being so inept.

From that day on Lene could not be persuaded that I was
anything
other than helpless, hapless, and clumsy, and that I would rapidly come to grief unless someone took charge of me. Which she did.

Every day she would burst into my room without knocking (what’s the point of knocking, anyway?) and hurl my clothes around the room in order to sew a few buttons back on. She warmed my milk for the night. She sharpened my safety razor. In the Reading Room she would descend on me as I was about to leave, bundle my notes together and tuck my briefcase under my arm. If I didn’t hang on to it very firmly she would carry it back herself.

The situation got rather worrying until luckily, one specially warm summer’s day, it occurred to her that the heat of London was bad for me, so she packed my bags, booked a ticket for the train and despatched me to Scotland.

This was not a bad idea. I had a fine time touring round the lochs and did not return until after the start of term, when she was safely back in Oxford. However we still met in the vacations and our
friendship
continued, though in a less tempestuous form. Fortunately for me, Lene liked to change her protégés on a regular basis.

This was the other thing about her that shocked me: her
boundless
and wide-ranging love life. Now I’m no Puritan, and I take the view that everyone’s love life is their own affair. I also realise that Lene’s willingness to give herself was simply part of her larger benevolence and generosity. It was her unprecedented versatility that terrified me.

For two days she might be seen with a Chinese engineer, then for a week with a Canadian farmer, who made way for a French
gigolo
, who would himself be replaced by an ageing German classical philologist on tour and a Polish ping-pong champion,
simultaneously
. And all these lovers, and myself, would be told about all the other lovers, in hair-raising detail and with a total absence of
emotion
, though she did make occasional reference to
das Moralische
, which
versteht sich von selbst
(I never quite discovered where the
self-knowledge
came in)—but it was all perfectly objective, quite
terrifyingly
objective.

And behold, no sooner was I back from Llanvygan than I was again firmly under her wing. After heaping relatively mild abuse on my appearance, she hauled me off for a beer. I never dared compete with the quantity of beer she drank, or the number of cigarettes she smoked. Through a haze of gentle melancholy I sat until closing time observing her epic consumption and listening to her tales: how she had pulled two Oxford athletes out of the river, how she saved a wealthy Scot from moral ruin after he had succumbed to an uncharacteristic fit of generosity, and how she seduced a Professor of Theology who had preserved his innocence until the age of forty-five.

At this stage I had no idea what impact her militant
personality
would have on my Welsh adventure. Had there been none, I
should not have said so much about her, for I too am a qualified enthusiast of the ‘New Objectivity’ and am not in favour of purely incidental characters. But let’s take things one at a time.

The next day I set out to execute my commission.

It was not a difficult one. When I called on the Director he had already received the Earl’s letter. He explained to me, at great length, that it was quite unprecedented in the history of the Museum for an item in its possession to be given away. However, in view of the Earl’s exceptional role as a contributor to the
collection
… and he waxed lyrical about the treasures the Earl had presented when he had succeeded to the title.

He then looked over the codices and asked me to bear with him until the evening. By then he hoped to have obtained
permission
from his superiors to hand over the manuscript, and various oriental specialists would have decided which codex they would want in exchange. I took my leave of him and informed the Earl by telegram that I would return with the manuscript the
following
day.

I lunched in a little Italian restaurant in Soho. The only meal I ever took in the hotel was dinner. Two English meals a day would have done for me.

When I got in, after my short walk, there was a letter waiting for me.

That was one thing I had no desire to do. Since the business of the ring I felt the deepest distrust of her. I was convinced that she was part of the conspiracy against the Earl, and I determined to avoid the whole area around that particular hotel.

That afternoon I called on one or two friends, then made my way back to the British Museum. Everything was in order,
permission
had been granted, and the experts had chosen their codex.

“The Museum is in fact making an excellent exchange,” the Director told me. “Compared with others of its kind, the codex is worth five hundred pounds, while the manuscript is a lot of worthless nonsense, so far as I can judge. But the Earl certainly takes an interest in references to the family. There’s some
impossible
story in it about one of his ancestors.”

When I got back to the hotel with the various tomes, the porter gave me a meaningful look.

“There’s a lady waiting for you in the foyer.”

I went down and found Eileen St Claire. She was surrounded by elderly ladies from New Zealand, all sitting stiffly at their
needlework
. Not a word was uttered. They just stared at her with the profound contempt all women feel for a certain sort of beauty.

She greeted me with a smile, coolly and calmly, as if nothing could be more natural than for her to be waiting there for me. “You simply must have dinner with me,” she said. “It’s most important that I should speak with you.”

With the awkward manner of a schoolboy I cobbled together a couple of lies. I’m not a good liar. My various appointments with supposed friends must have sounded pretty implausible, and I probably made too many excuses.

Not for a moment did she go through the motions of believing me. She didn’t even dismiss my excuses as unimportant. She
simply
continued to insist that I dine with her.

My resistance gradually weakened. After all, it wasn’t every day I had the chance to dine with such a beautiful woman. And dinner at Grosvenor House would surely be of a different order to the one that threatened me at the hotel. And what could possibly
happen
? I would tell her only what I thought fit. I might even learn some things I didn’t know.

The reasons for my reluctance were not, in the first instance, particularly rational. No doubt I was clinging to the superstitious notion that nothing good could come from anything connected with Eileen St Claire because I found her so very beautiful. Such paradoxical taboos lurk at the heart of our desires.

In the end I gave my consent, by which time I would have been distraught had she changed her mind. I felt an inexpressible
longing
to see her doing such ordinary things as eating and drinking.

I took the books up to my room and locked them in the
cupboard
. As fast as was humanly possible, I changed for the evening, and went back down. She straightened my tie in the foyer.

One of her Hispanolas was waiting for us outside, and we glided off to Grosvenor House.

As soon as we were in the car she asked:

“So, how did it happen?”

“Exactly as you read in the papers. He fell from the second floor. Climbing was his passion, and it cost him his life.”

“That’s horrible. But I don’t believe it. I was with him once in Switzerland. He went up the most impossible rock faces, with the very worst reputations. I can’t imagine him falling from a simple balcony.”

“It’s happened to others. You climb a hundred rocks with no problem, and fall off the hundred-and-first, which is probably far less dangerous.”

“It couldn’t have happened to Maloney.”

“So what do you think did happen?” I asked, somewhat alarmed.

“He was pushed.”

“What do you mean? Who could have pushed him?”

“I don’t know. I can’t point to anyone in particular. But I’ve known the people at Llanvygan a lot longer than you have. You’ve no idea, Doctor, what you’ve got involved in.”

I had no intention of letting her know that I did: that I was fully aware that she and Maloney were members of a very dark plot. All I wanted was to have dinner with the beautiful woman Eileen St Claire, and not to talk about anything beyond what one usually does talk about with a beautiful woman.

We arrived at Grosvenor House. I gathered, with a mixture of surprise, pleasure and anxiety, that we were to dine in her private suite.

The dinner-for-two began as if we had no secrets to exchange but simply wished to pass the evening pleasantly. But it was quite hard work keeping her amused. She gave minimal responses to my contributions and made very few herself. The same cannot be said of me: the fine meal and the wine were already loosening my tongue.

She ate and drank much as anyone else would; in fact she ate with good appetite and proved a serious drinker. The wine seemed to make her more human. Her voice became a shade more
natural
and casual, and she looked one in the eye in an almost friendly way—or at least very seductively. Every so often I would put a personal question to her, but she evaded it every time.

It was only when we were on the dessert that some promising mutual acquaintances finally emerged. Over coffee I ventured the remark that Lady Nichols always donned Russian costume for intimate meetings with her Russian chauffeur, to ease his
homesickness
… and that Edwin Ponsonby preferred boys because women reminded him of Queen Alexandra, for whom he had excessive respect … and that Mme de Martignan was so offended by certain habits of her countrymen that she put a notice on the palm trees outside her villa in St Juan les Pins saying, ‘For dogs only’ … and at last we began to make progress.

By degrees my imagination became bolder. Perhaps we might even get on more intimate terms. You never could tell with Eileen St Claire. My poet friend Cristofoli had little idea what would happen to him that memorable Fourteenth July in Fontainebleau. It augured well that my chitter-chatter frankly amused her, and no mention was made of such uncomfortable topics as the ring.

The truth is, the dark secret I associated with her would have made her even more alluring, had she not already been alluring to an infinite degree.

And then, quite abruptly, I still don’t understand why, it burst from me:

“I did give the Earl your ring.”

“I thought so. And … no doubt he wasn’t altogether pleased.”

“Indeed. He made no comment; just turned his back on me.”

“Did you tell him who gave it to you?”

“What do you think? I gave you my word.”

“Poor Maloney wrote to me about some of the dreadful things that happened. Someone took a shot at the Earl. Who do they think was responsible?”

“They didn’t tell me.”

“If they did tell you, it wouldn’t have been the truth. Some day,
when I get to know you better, I’ll tell you one or two facts about the Pendragons.”

“And when will that be? I hope you’ll give me the chance more often to become better acquainted. You find I’m the best fellow in the world.”

“It’s entirely up to you whether we become friends or not. So far I’ve only asked you one thing, and that you refused.”

“But I gave him the ring!”

“The ring … oh, that was such an age ago I’d already forgotten about it. I asked you to tell me the full story of Maloney’s death.”

I repeated what I knew about his nightly training sessions, that I’d actually heard him fall, and had stood over the body.

“Tell me … just before it happened, had there been some sort of scene, between him and the Earl?”

“No. I know for certain that the Earl never spoke more than ten words to Maloney.”

Which was true, in the literal sense. The message sent via Osborne was a different matter. But I didn’t want to reveal that I knew about Maloney’s machinations. I was taking care not to drink too much and lose control over what I should or should not be saying.

She changed her tactics. Her face and posture took on a softer expression and she embarked on a longer story.

“I’ve already told you, on the way to Chester, that the Earl was once my closest friend. No one knows him as well as I do, and perhaps no one will ever love him as much. And, just lately, I know things have been happening to him, horrible, dreadful things … they want to kill him … but of course you know that. The most awful thing about it is that the Earl won’t do anything to protect himself. Only two people know who is trying to kill him: the Earl and myself. And he doesn’t do anything, I feel it’s my duty to save him. I would very much like you to help me. I gather you hold the Earl in high regard … ”