The Pendragon Legend (28 page)

“You’re telling me you came because of Osborne.”

“You see, you aren’t so dumb after all. And I can tell you, as my old friend and ally, that my trip here has not been in vain. Last night … ”

“Oh, Lene, congratulations. Compared with Osborne, an innocent theologian of forty-five is a sex-crazed Italian from the deep South.”

“Not bad, hey?”

“Fantastic! But confess: Osborne only surrendered under extreme duress. You must have threatened him with a revolver.”

“I didn’t go that far, but it certainly wasn’t easy. If you’re
interested
in the details, I’ll tell you. You know how reserved Osborne was with me, until yesterday. Or, not exactly reserved: he just treated me in the same very polite way he did his male friends. If I were as easily offended as my mother’s generation were, I’d have been cut to the quick. But thank God I’m not one of your
supersensitive
females. In fact I was rather glad he treated me as a man. I knew that the mere fact that he didn’t find me repulsive was no small achievement.

“All the same, when I took his hand he blushed scarlet and started to lecture me on the dramatic works of Shakespeare’s
contemporaries
. I thought: just you wait, I’ll get you in the end. I’d worked out over time that women’s wiles cut no ice with him. In his innocence he just didn’t notice. That time in London, when we were dressing up in funny costume, it was a waste of time parading myself before him in my flimsy underwear. Whenever I started to undress he was desperate to get away. But when I told him it didn’t bother me, he just lit a cigarette and stayed put. After that, he found it quite natural to see me naked. But I could see from his face that there was nothing in the way of manly desire stirring in him. As far as I was concerned, his innocence was all the more provocative.

“It went against the grain, but I even tried sentimentality. I said all the usual things: how lonely I was, how sad my evenings, how no one had truly loved me, and oh, how heavy my heart was. He listened, very sympathetically, and promised me that when we got back to Oxford he’d introduce me to some really top people—he thinks everyone else is as great a snob as he is—but until then I should make a study of the contemporary English novel, since a good book was the best friend one could have.

“And that’s how I came to Llanvygan. I was really ashamed of myself. In the time it had taken I could have become the mistress of a French king and enjoyed limitless power, or seduced a couple of ambassadors. Last night, when I managed to get him out here in the park, my hopes were really high. You know how the English love nature …

“I suggested we sit on the grass, but he was afraid it might be damp, so we found a bench. I leant my head on his shoulder and
started kissing his ear. He sat there in total silence, very polite. When I got bored with that, he told me with a smile that it was no doubt a German custom, and probably very ancient. I said I didn’t know about that, but anyway it was a nice one. ‘Interesting,’ he said, in a contemplative sort of way. I asked him if he’d like to kiss me. ‘Oh, yes, he would,’ he said, again very politely, and gave me a peck on the forehead. ‘If I were a man,’ I told him, ‘I’d rather kiss someone on the lips.’ He thought that would be unhygienic. Then he asked me if I’d rather be a man. ‘What about you?’ I retorted.

“That rather shook him, but I could see this wasn’t getting us anywhere. Then I had a stroke of genius. I said I wanted to climb a tree, and would he help me? I clambered up on to a branch, with his support. Then I swung out, gave a loud scream, and fell on top of him. Now if I fall on anyone, with my build …

“We both ended up on the ground. So that was how I got to the point where kissing was possible—at the cost of a few bruises. My ribs were aching, but the goal was in sight.

“Needless to say, even in that position Osborne remained the perfect gentleman. There was no point in leaving him to take the initiative. Half an hour later we untangled ourselves and I asked him if he’d enjoyed it; he said he had, quite definitely, and he sounded reasonably sincere. He said he was pleased to have had one of life’s richer practical experiences. And—would you believe this?—that he’d had his first lover.

“That made me really angry and I told him the English were a bunch of well-bred idiots if they thought that after a bit of
nonsense
like that they could call you their lover. So he lapsed into day-dream again and said he was sorry. Then he started to get up. I grabbed hold of his jacket, following biblical precedent, and told him he needn’t worry: if he asked me very nicely he really could be my lover, and he’d get even more hands-on experience. He knew what I meant. But he just sat there, and went on thinking.

“Finally I snapped at him and asked what he was waiting for. He said he was trying to remember what one was supposed to say on such occasions. I assured him that actions spoke louder than words. ‘That’s good,’ he said, ‘because I couldn’t think of any words.’ And still he just sat there. ‘So let’s see some action,’ I said.
‘Try to be a bit more passionate.’ So he grabbed me and shook me. I won’t go into any more detail, because I can see from the expression on your face that you would have done rather better in his position, and I don’t really fancy you just now. I’m having a monogamous day today, for the first time in my life. I shall be true to Osborne.”

“Well,” I said, “am I free to imagine the rest?”

“As you wish. The scene of what followed wasn’t the park but my room. It went on the whole night. Because you see … Osborne wasn’t a disappointment. And he got his satisfaction too. He said he hadn’t enjoyed himself so much in ages. Oh, and he hoped we’d tie the marriage knot soon.”

I was horrified. Such a misalliance! My snobbish heart wept blood. The poor Earl … This was all the Pendragon destiny needed. It would be the end of everything.

“My congratulations,” I muttered, with tears in my voice.

“Come off it, you idiot. You don’t think I’d really marry him?”

“Why not? It’s not a bad match.”

“No, my dear boy, I’m not that stupid. Marry into such a
degenerate
aristocratic family? What would my friends in Berlin say? Anyway, I’m still young. I’ve hardly known anything of life. So many experiences are waiting for me. I’ve never had an affair with a tenor. Or a Hohenzollern. And only once with a negro. I really can’t get married just yet.”

“You’re absolutely right,” I said, heaving a deep sigh of relief. “You’ve got the whole of your life ahead of you.”

“I’d just love to know,” she went on, “whether this little ‘life experience’ will change Osborne in any way. Will he now be more like a man?”

“In his dealings with you, yes,” I said—“just as long as you expect him to, and not a minute longer. The moment you’re gone, everything will be just as it was before. That’s my experience of young Englishmen. Very occasionally, when he’s out one evening with a few close friends, and the conversation turns to women, he’ll tell them—without mentioning your name—that he did once have a girl, and it was all rather wonderful. He’ll live on the memory for the next ten years, until another Lene comes along and seduces him.”

“Oh my God,” she said. “How stupid, how utterly immoral, how thoroughly screwed-up. On the other hand—don’t you find?—there’s something rather sweet in all this purity of soul.”

I didn’t answer. Something had just occurred to me, something that had happened during our outing that morning, which I hadn’t thought anything of at the time. We were driving through a wood, beside a clear little mountain stream. Osborne stopped the car, stripped off and had a swim, though there was quite a chilling breeze. As he was getting dressed again, shivering with cold, he said to me:

“Oh, Doctor, if only I could live on an uninhabited island … a coral island in Polynesia … where there was no one to talk to, only birds and fish … and not a soul to be seen, especially not women … then a chap would be able to keep his human dignity.”

I remembered the look on his face. It bore all the misery of a dog that feels thoroughly ashamed of itself.

I had another tense and restless night. I dreamed of Eileen St Claire as a whore in a sea port, somewhere at the back of beyond. All sorts of obscene, and at the same time deeply horrible, things were going on. The next morning I woke, still rather tense, with the strange feeling that I had briefly understood, but had then forgotten, why the Earl still loved her.

Cynthia was in happy mood and looking her loveliest, seated golden-blonde at the breakfast table in a sleeveless dress that showed off her girlish, sunburnt arms. She made quizzical faces over her tea to ask why I was looking so dull when we happened to be alone—Lene and Osborne had gone out to bathe—and she came over to me, kittenish and intimate, to ask why I was so sad.

“I had a very strange dream,” I told her.

“Tell me.”

“You shouldn’t ask me such an improper thing.”

“Oh,” she cried. “So, it was about a woman?”

“Certainly.”

She looked downcast for several minutes, then steeled herself to ask:

“Was it me?”

“I’m sorry, but it wasn’t.”

“Recreant, traitor! So who was it then?”

“You don’t know her.”

“What does she look like, then?”

“She’s taller than you, has reddish-blond hair and a stunning figure. She has the face, sometimes, of an Etruscan statue.”

“Tell me what her name is.”

“You don’t know her, but you’ve certainly heard of her … ” and something suddenly struck me. “I was dreaming of Eileen St Claire.”

“Eileen St Claire? But she’s my best friend! I was with her that day in Llandudno!” she exclaimed, blushing prettily. “So you know her? Isn’t she wonderful, a real angel?”

I put my pipe down and stammered:

“What are you saying? Your best friend?”

“Yes. She’s the one I’ve been telling you all about, the person whose name I didn’t want to say. My great friend, my only true love.”

Oh the silly, tragic little goose! God knows what she had done in the innocence of her heart.

“How did you come to know her?”

“Two years ago I was having my summer holiday in Brittany and she was staying in the villa next door. I was still very upset—it was just after my mother’s death. She gave me back my
joie de vivre.
She’s so beautiful. And she was so good to me. But not just to me. She knows my uncle very well. They used to be very good friends. She’s the only one who knows what a truly wonderful man he is. Why are you looking at me like that … like a police
superintendent
?”

“Nothing, nothing. Please carry on.”

“What else can I say? I’ve told you how much I like her. How much she means in my life.”

I was gradually piecing it all together. Of course Cynthia had no idea who Eileen St Claire was. No one dared utter her name in the Earl’s presence, and this taboo extended to all the other Pendragons. No one had told Cynthia that Eileen St Claire and Mrs Roscoe were one and the same person.

I had only ever spoken of her as Mrs Roscoe. I had told her nothing of what the woman was like, or how I knew her. I had had no wish to discuss the night I spent with her, so I had said no more than was strictly necessary.

And Cynthia was as dreamy and romantic as all the other Pendragons. She too had projected her most cherished fantasies on to the beauty of Eileen St Claire.

“Oh, Cynthia … and have you kept in touch with her ever since? Have you been writing to her?” My alarm was growing by the second. “Do you mention the Earl in your letters?”

“Oh yes, I didn’t tell you—I promised to report everything that happened to my uncle, and I have done, all this time. And now you must tell me how you came to know her.”

So here was the ‘spy’ who had kept Morvin’s gang informed of everything.

I leapt up and walked round the room twice, at great speed.

“I’ve written to her about everything,” she continued
dreamily
, and quite untroubled. “I’ve told her a lot about you too. Even before you got here I told her you were coming. I felt your coming here would be a major event. And when you went back to London I explained exactly why you’d gone. I’ve written lots of bad things about you. You’ll hear all about them the next time you see her. But what’s wrong with you? What is it? You mustn’t tease me.”

By then I think I must have been tugging at her arm.

“Cynthia, did you also tell her where the Earl is right now?”

“Of course. I gave her the precise details. She’s taught me that whatever I do I must be thorough.”

“When did you write to tell her the Earl was going?”

“But why? What’s the matter with you? I wrote yesterday
afternoon
.”

“Where to?”

“Llandudno. The Palace Hotel.”

I made a rapid calculation. The letter could well have got there by the evening. So they could already have set off to find him. There was no time to lose—if indeed there still was anything left to lose.

“Cynthia my dear, you must telephone your friend this minute. We absolutely have to know if she’s still in Llandudno.”

“But why?”

“I will explain everything. But you must phone her now. Tell her whatever you like, but go.”

And I dragged her to the phone.

A few minutes later she was put through to the Palace Hotel. Mrs St Claire (as she had registered herself) was out. She had left the night before. She hadn’t left word when she would be back.

No doubt, the moment she got Cynthia’s letter …

“Pack your suitcase, and have it put in the tourer. Now. Immediately!”

With bewilderment on her face, she hurried out. I rang for one of the page boys and sent him dashing off to the stream where Osborne and Lene were bathing. They were told to come at once. Then I went up to my room to pack.

I was filled with energy, and hard as steel. I could barely
recognise
myself. I knew we were going into the last great battle. Unless it was already too late … The Earl was caught between two opposing catastrophes, and I wondered which was the more
dangerous
—the increasingly sinister spirit or the coldly-calculating twentieth-century assassin. The Knight, Death and the Devil …

Thirty minutes later we were all together in the reception area. I told the others how things stood. Cynthia went deathly pale and burst into tears. Her world was in ruins.

But every detail tallied. She recalled that during the day she had spent at Llandudno her friend had gone out twice in the car alone, once in the morning and once in the late afternoon, leaving her with some acquaintances. They were precisely the times when Eileen had tried to gain admittance to Llanvygan.