MASQUES OF SATAN (3 page)

‘Are you keen on porcelain?’ said the lady brightly, in a voice redolent of Parochial Church Councils and Conservative Associations.

‘I have an interest in such things,’ said Jack, in a tone that suggested he was being deliberately modest.

‘The china in that cabinet is mostly Chelsea. Chelsea is a soft-paste porcelain which began to be made in the factory at Chelsea from the year 1743——’

‘Yes, we know that,’ said Jack. ‘Unfortunately most of what is on display here is not Chelsea, but nineteenth century copies of Chelsea Ware.’

‘I don’t think you can be right,’ said the lady, who was evidently not in the habit of being contradicted. ‘These pieces have been verified by experts——’

‘What experts? As far as I can see, there is only one genuine Chelsea piece in the whole cabinet. This coffee-pot here. The others are late imitations. Most of them not very good——’

‘I can assure you——’

‘I am sorry, madam, but I don’t think you can. You know, it really isn’t good enough. I have two young sons here who are anxious to learn’ — Peter and Andrew were staring vacantly at the pargetted ceiling — ‘and as a parent I have a right to expect that at the very least they will not be supplied with inaccurate information.’

‘I assure you——’

‘Now, this may seem like a very pleasant day out to people like you, but actually, you know, you have a responsibility to the public here which, I am sorry, you are failing to fulfil. I take this sort of thing very seriously. I’m afraid I shall have to report this to the National Trust of which I happen to be a member.’

‘Please do,’ said the lady with the tightest of smiles. Jack examined the badge on her chest which displayed her name. ‘It’s Mrs. Loxton-Pocock,’ she said, retreating from his myopic scrutiny. ‘We at the National Trust are always happy to receive
helpful
suggestions from members of the public.’

If irony was intended it was lost on Jack, who had, even while she was speaking, stalked into the next room, closely followed by his family. Maggie was the last to leave the Green Drawing Room, and, as she did so, she shot Mrs. Loxton-Pocock an apologetic little smile. It was met by a look of frozen contempt.

In the rooms that followed, their respective custodians were subjected to questioning from Jack and mostly found wanting, but his assaults on them were comparatively mild. Maggie was hoping that he had, as she put it to herself, ‘shot his bolt’; but then the family entered the Long Gallery.

One of Blakiston’s glories is its Long Gallery on the first floor. It is over one hundred and twenty feet long and runs the entire length of the East Front between the corner turrets. Its ceiling is an elaborate
tour de force
of Jacobean plaster work, an intricate pattern of embossed ribs, studded with pendants, every available space taken up with some emblem, as the guide book put it vaguely, ‘of alchemical or zodiacal significance.’ It was lit by tall, mullioned bay windows opposite which had once hung a row of ancestral portraits. These had been removed to the Great Hall in the eighteenth century when the sixth Earl had furnished the walls from floor almost to the plastered ceiling with bookcases, now full of handsome, unreadable, calf-bound volumes. A few pictures remained on the panelled piers between the windows and opposite them above the fireplace, which was situated halfway along the book-lined wall.

The guardian of this impressive room, which struck even Jack’s sons with awe, was a thin, frail, elderly man who was, perhaps illicitly, sitting on a Hepplewhite mahogany dining chair in one of the bays. A shaft of sun passing through the window fell on his hollow, birdlike features, making his withered skin look almost translucent, as if it were made of tissue paper. As Jack and his family entered he rose with an effort and made a slight but courteous inclination of his head towards them.

The Protheroes seemed disposed to ignore him, so he sat down once more to dream in the sunlit, mullioned bay. The family studied the plaster ceiling with the aid of an angled mirror on one of the tables, and Jack drew their attention to a small case of fine miniatures in the centre of the room. All was going well until Jack began to scrutinise the picture above the fireplace. It was a dark landscape, much in need of cleaning. Barely discernible between tall, threatening trees in full leaf was a serpentine path on which a man in classical garb was running. As he ran, the man glanced behind him and a little downwards in horror. Through a gap in the trees smiled a serene landscape which had once been painted in delicate shades of blue but was now a dirtier more ambiguous colour. On the gilt frame was a wooden label, also gilded, on which in black capitals was painted the single word, POUSSIN.

Jack stared at the picture, then at his guide book, then back at the picture again. He turned to the frail old man in the bay who stood up once more.

‘Excuse me,’ said Jack, ‘but it says here this painting is by Poussin.’

The man blinked. ‘Yes,’ he said in a high, refined sort of voice. ‘
Landscape with Man Pursued by Snake
, by Poussin, as you say.’

‘It is not by Poussin,’ said Jack.

‘Jack——’ Maggie began in a whisper.

‘Just a moment, Maggie. We want to get this right. I’m sorry, but that painting is not by Poussin. It is a copy of a painting by Poussin, the original of which is in the Pulteney Gallery, Bath. I happen to know that because I saw it there only three weeks ago.’

‘Ah, well,’ said the man. ‘Poussin painted this subject a number of times, you know. The menace lurking in the most idyllic surroundings: a favourite trope of his.
Et in Arcadia ego
. Virgil, and so on . . .’ Jack sensed that the old man was improvising, though well, he had to concede. The fellow was not such a dodderer as he looked, but this only made Jack all the more eager to defeat him.

‘I mean this is an exact copy of the Bath picture,’ he said, also improvising up to a point, because his memory of the Bath Poussin was not that good. ‘He would never have done an exact copy. Besides which, the brushwork is much too broad and crude for Poussin — what you can see of it under the grime. And that’s another point: if this is a real Poussin, why hasn’t it been cleaned? It would be a disgrace not to restore a real Poussin. He is one of the great masters of all time.’

‘Ah well . . .’ said the old man with a little flap of his skeletal hands which seemed to indicate that, while he conceded Jack’s point, it was not a matter that greatly concerned him. He turned away from Jack and began to totter towards his favourite Hepplewhite chair in the bay window. Jack was infuriated by his indifference.

‘I am sorry, but that is not good enough. You cannot go around misrepresenting an eighteenth or nineteenth century copy as a genuine original. I have kids here who want to be educated. It is the duty of the National Trust not to supply misleading information. I have to say that I have not been over-impressed by the standard of expertise and knowledge displayed by your colleagues. My family and I paid good money to come here. This is not what I want to see from such a respected institution.’

‘Well, I’m very sorry, but . . .’ said the man, who had sat down again and was wiping his watery eyes with a handkerchief.

‘Jack!’ said Maggie. ‘That’s enough! Can’t you see the poor old man’s exhausted.’

‘No. I’m sorry, Maggie, but this is important.’ Maggie was accustomed to her husband’s using the word ‘sorry’ only when that was the last thing he felt, but it still irritated her. He walked up to the seated old man and stared down at him sternly. ‘I’m afraid——’ That was another thing. He only said ‘I’m afraid’ when he palpably wasn’t. ‘I’m afraid I am going to have to register a very serious complaint. It is all very well being cavalier with facts like this, but I don’t think you fully understand the responsibility you carry. And what I want to know is, what are you going to do about it?’

‘Yes, yes,’ said the old man, looking up with his grey rheumy eyes at the tormentor. ‘You must excuse me, I’m feeling a little . . .’ He began to breathe heavily, as if even this was an exertion.

‘Jack!’ said Maggie. ‘Can’t you see that he’s——’

‘That’s all very well,’ said Jack, ‘but we have a matter of principle at stake here——’

‘Have you seen the Grey Bedroom yet?’ said the old man in a slightly stronger voice. Jack was rather taken aback; he had not expected to be interrupted in this way. ‘The little oak door at the end of this Gallery on the left.’ He pointed a long bony index finger. ‘I think you will find it most interesting. I don’t think that the gentleman in there will’ — he paused for breath — ‘disappoint you.’

‘That’s all very well, but——’

‘If you will excuse me, I am a little . . . Perhaps after you have visited the Grey Bedroom we could resume our discussion?’ There was firmness in the old man’s tone despite the feebleness of his physical condition. He pointed again towards the door, his finger trembling slightly as he did so.

‘Come along,’ said Maggie. ‘Let’s go and look at this Grey Bedroom, shall we?’ Jack, for once, allowed himself to be guided by his wife, but he was puzzled. Normally where rooms were on display to the public in National Trust houses, the doors were open. This one was shut. The family paused before the oak door with its comparatively plain Georgian frame. Jack looked back at the old man on his chair. He was staring intently in their direction, and when Jack put his hand on the door handle he nodded his encouragement, almost vigorously. So Jack opened the door and took his family into the Grey Bedroom.

It was well named. The walls were lined with patterned grey silk hangings, the damask curtains of the four poster bed matching them exactly. There was an old fashioned cane-backed wooden wheelchair beside the bed. Apart from a portrait above the fireplace the walls were adorned with prints. There was some decent Regency furniture, and a glass case containing a display of some kind under one of the two windows that faced the bed, but this did not strike the Protheroe family as a particularly exciting room. The light from the windows was rather dim: the sun must have gone behind a cloud. The room nevertheless seemed to impart a strangeness which was perhaps chiefly due to its other occupant.

Standing in the far corner of the Grey Bedroom next to another door was a man. He stood stiffly erect, his hands clasped in front of him, an oddly artificial pose which made him look like a costume dummy, except that no one would want a dummy to resemble him. He was small and slightly built with a large, bony bald head that was out of proportion with his body. His eyes were concealed behind thick-rimmed pebble glasses. He wore a crumpled grey linen jacket and grey trousers which did not quite match. His white shirt was slightly frayed at the cuffs and collar, and he wore a grey and black striped tie, so tightly knotted that it appeared to throttle his long scrawny neck. He had not spoken or stirred when Jack and his family had first come in, so that they were still trying to work out whether he was a wax effigy or not when he said:

‘Welcome to the Grey Bedroom.’

They all started, and then Jack and Maggie laughed with relief.

‘Good morning, sir’ said Jack, adopting a ponderously jocose tone, which seemed to him appropriate in the circumstances, ‘I hope you can supply self and family with information concerning this interesting looking chamber.’

‘I will endeavour to give satisfaction,’ said the man in a neutral tone. It was impossible to tell whether he had responded to Jack’s would-be humorous sally or not. The man’s accent was not quite what Jack would have called ‘gentry’, but it was not rough or ill-educated either. As a matter of fact, it was rather like Jack’s. The man took a pace towards them, away from the corner and the other door.

‘Where does that door go to?’ Asked Peter.

‘That door, young man, leads to what we call the Black Room. We don’t usually show that to visitors.’

‘Why not?’

‘It originally housed a small private chapel or oratory for the Chekes, who were secret Catholics in the reign of Elizabeth. Some say that below it was a chamber used as a priest’s hole, but no one has ever found it.’ The man with the pebble glasses had shown no compunction in not replying directly to Peter’s question. After a pause, he said: ‘Do please take your time to look around, and feel free to ask me anything you would like to know.’ But, by implication, he offered no guarantee of providing them with an answer.

Between the two windows which looked out onto the formal parterres on the Eastern side of the house stood a table attached to the wall, its base of gilt wood carved in the form of a gryphon writhing under a table top of greenish onyx marble. Above it was a mirror of similarly elaborate eighteenth century craftsmanship.