Anglo-Saxon Attitudes (36 page)

Gerald wondered who 'everyone' could be, but instead he said, 'I'm very grateful to your girl-friend for bringing us together, Robin.'

'Oh! trust Elvira to do the right thing. She likes you very much, Father.'

'I like her.' He paused and chose a little colloquialism which he remembered hearing somewhere: 'She's got it very badly over you, Robin.' The phrase sounded strangely on his lips.

Robin said, 'I hope so. I'm in the same boat.'

'Not quite, I should think,' Gerald commented.

'Oh! you mean her little outburst the other evening.' Robin shrugged it off. 'She's very highly strung, you know, and then the crowd she goes about with never go to bed as far as I can see. At least not to sleep.' He was very impressed with the easy promiscuity of Elvira's friends.

Gerald tried another tack. 'Do you remember Dollie at all?'  he asked.

'Dollie Stokesay?'  Robin blushed involuntarily; he had not expected quite this degree of intimacy, but he determined to cope with his new role. 'Yes, of course,' he remarked with what he hoped was a casual air. 'I was fourteen or fifteen when you cut loose from her.'

'I didn't,' Gerald said firmly, 'she cut loose from me. I've never ceased to regret it. Oh, don't think I'm going to say anything that is critical of your mother. I'm fully conscious of the fact that I'm entirely to blame for the whole thing. I don't know that I should ever have married Inge. I did so, you see, on what they used to call the rebound. From Dollie's refusal of me, to be exact.' Robin was more and more appalled. He gave himself grimly to breaking up his rings of rum-soaked pineapple - 'But having met Dollie again, we both knew that everything else was unimportant. I believe romanticism of that sort is unfashionable. Indeed, it was not very sophisticated in the twenties. We tried to be much more sensible, and Inge tried too. In fact, everybody tried. Your mother and Dollie used to meet. Well, you remember how she was Auntie Dollie in your childhood. It worked at first because we were so much in love that we didn't notice how impossible it was. It went on working for some years because Dollie disguised from me how much she hated it. In the end neither she nor Inge could keep it up. I lost Dollie. She became a "dipso", you know. And I lost all the respect and affection of my family too, and any right to it. I'm very much against being sensible in these things; as a result I don't think one has any right to impose that strain on anyone one loves.' He had told the story so badly, indeed he wished that he had never told it.

Robin wished this too. He said, 'My case is a little different, you know. Marie Hélène can't give me a divorce, she's a Roman Catholic.'

Gerald quickly said, 'Yes, yes, I know. You'd have to work it out in your own terms. I only wanted to warn you against putting too much strain on Elvira.'

'Thank you,' said Robin. 'I think we'll manage all right.'

There was a pause in their conversation as they were given coffee.

Offering Gerald a cigar, Robin said, 'Don't take this in the wrong way, Father, but ours is a very new acquaintance. I think we ought to take it slowly, you know.'

Gerald had determined that he would pay no regard to the various rumours that reached him of the Heligoland excavations. He admired Pforzheim and he would wait for the congress at Verona to hear his report. The spring weather at the end of March brought May too often into his mind, but, on the whole, he was so absorbed by his current work that he suffered no more than momentary anxieties. After all, even if the Heligoland burial proved similar to that at Melpham, the two things were not one. Certainly, at this stage, he had no right to influence Pforzheim's views with what were only suspicions - and suspicions in no sense based on historical scholarship. He had allowed the incident with Gilbert far too much influence in his life as it was; he could do far more for his chosen profession in getting on with the job in hand, than by interfering in the detailed scholarship of a period that was not his own. If Pforzheim expressed any misgivings himself about Melpham, then he would report what he knew - but privately, in a way that would take the decision out of his hands. But the decision was put firmly back into his hands before May or the congress had arrived.

It was in April, on a morning when Gerald had noted the first primroses in the Park, that Jasper rang him up. He was in England for a short interval, he said, to check some facts at the B.M. He proposed to go to Verona and then to spend the rest of the summer in Italy finishing his book. He would like to discuss the articles for the
History
that Gerald wanted from him while he was here and to tell him of the very fascinating time he had had in Germany. He could come round whenever Gerald chose. He would like a little relief from early medieval Church and State.

He came two days later to tea, suave and a little vulgarly elegant as always. Gerald was somewhat perfunctory in his expressions of interest about Germany and insisted on getting down to business at once. However, even his protracted discussion of the editorial rules and his minute discussion of the nature of the articles he had requested had to come to an end.

Jasper had, indeed, become a little restive. 'You promise to be as great a tyrant as Clun in your editorial supervision,' he said, laughing.

'I suspect we've avoided King Stork to be landed with King Stork. Oh, no,' he protested, waving a well-manicured, somewhat thick hand, 'I'm delighted, Gerald, delighted. I haven't seen you so animated for a long time. I look forward to your reactions to what I have to tell you of Pforzheim's work.' He fitted a cigarette into his holder and lit it. 'Is it too soon after tea for a drink?'  he asked. 'Just the Vermouth, no gin.'

Making himself comfortable, he began his story. 'Pforzheim's work was a revelation to me,' he cried, 'the neatness, the clarity. I doubt if any English historian or archaeologist could turn technique into art in that way. But he's rewarded. It's Aldwine's tomb without a doubt. The remains of the coffin are fragmentary, but they're enough. By a miracle a part of the inscription came to light at a slightly deeper level; it must have been broken off and sunk in a softer part of the peat. What's held up the report, of course, has been the idol. Pforzheim spent a long time with Cuspatt and Fish at the Museum and they've been over there. It's very worn down and fragmentary, but it builds up well to fit all the Baltic and North Sea coast idols that have been found. Of course, that wouldn't have been enough to admit it as such in such a place, but for Melpham. It's really a fantasy how something which seemed so much a fascinating oddity should suddenly become so important. That's why the Museum people here were in such a pother. It appears, believe it or not, that Cuspatt insisted on subjecting the Melpham idol to Geiger laboratory tests. Of course, it's a bit recent to respond to most of these things, they can only answer fot such enormous periods of time. It was utterly unlikely anyway, as Pforzheim said, that the thing could have been a fake. Apart from Stokesay's reputation, it would have been so utterly pointless to fake such a thing at that date. Anyhow, there's no doubt now on that score. Actually I think even he was a bit worried at one point. He'd been through all the reports of the Melpham excavation, including some unpublished papers of Stokesay's and of Portway's, which Cuspatt had, and apparently the whole thing was wildly haphazard. Of course, we didn't think that a 1912 excavation would have stood up to modern tests, but even so, I think, Pforzheim was a bit shocked considering Stokesay's reputation. However, the less said about that the better, especially if Rose Lorimer is anywhere about, she'd get into such a state if criticism were made of Stokesay.'

He smiled. 'We must be considerate of our Rose now. After all, there's a certain reason in her madness. She sees the pagan hidden hand in every Christian action, and even those of us who are good old-time agnostics would not care to go that far. Nor do I think many people will follow her in her back-to-Iona movement.' He smiled and finished his drink. He was so interested in what he was saying that he hardly thanked Gerald when his glass was filled again. 'All the same, this dual cult wasn't simply a personal roguery of Eorpwald's. Cuspatt and Pforzheim are both very keen to start other excavations that might throw up the same thing, though it's a very long shot, of course. We're all wondering how Lavenham and the Roman Catholics are going to react.' He gave the nearest to a chuckle that elegance would permit. 'By the way,' he said, 'Pforzheim tried hard to get in touch with
you
but you'd gone off on some jaunt to Vienna. He wanted any first-hand impressions you had of Melpham. I told him you could only have been in long clothes or whatever they put babies into in 1912, but apparently you
were
there. You look so distinguished, Gerald, one can't tell what age you are.'

'I
told
him I was simply an undergraduate staying there who saw nothing.'

'So it seems he realized when he read the reports and your name wasn't mentioned, and then Sir Edgar wrote a few weeks ago to say that you'd had a sprained ankle throughout the proceedings, so that put you out of court. I hope you haven't any vital evidence to contribute, because if so you'd better speak now or for ever hold your peace.'

Gerald smiled and gave Jasper another drink. 'How is your book getting on?'  he asked.

It seemed hours to Gerald before Jasper left that evening, although there was time before his dinner engagement in which to begin the desperate brooding over Melpham that was to take hold of him during the coming week, breaking his newfound ease, flattening and fading the spring colours of the Park. In the end he was driven to the decision that he had avoided aimlessly for so much of his life, more determinedly since Christmas night. Even so, he would not perhaps have been committed had it not been for the advice of three people; and two of these had no relation to historical scholarship at all.

It was seldom that Kay came to see Gerald. It was seldom, to give her her due, that the housekeeping and baby care allowed her to come up from Reigate. After two years there she had found two or three other intellectually inclined young married women and they made a sort of social existence out of lamenting how little they were able to keep in touch with what mattered. She had arranged her life to revolve round Donald, baby, and home, and she was, in fact, almost entirely content, however much she followed the fashion of this little group. Yet, like many people, she was very conservative about her dentist. She had been to Mr Yeats for many years, ever since she was a child, and so when her teeth ached badly, she found someone to look after baby for the afternoon and came to London. Even so, had there been more time to spare after her visit, she would not have spent it in going to see her father, but Inge's lack of sympathy with Donald's difficulties at the office had put her into a very rare hostile mood towards her mother, and this mood in turn had given her an equally rare feeling of conscience towards her father. Nevertheless, such an access was hardly enough to accommodate her to a tête-à-tête with Gerald; she banked upon his being out if she called unannounced. She could salve her conscience by leaving a note. He was, however, in.

Gerald was delighted and terrified at seeing her. He cleared his mind of criticism of her dowdiness by putting it down to the visit to the dentist and fussed unduly over her extracted teeth until she said rather softly, 'Oh, for heaven's sake, stop, Daddy. Anyone would think I'd had
all
my teeth out.' Gerald tried to hide his soreness, but not so successfully that Kay did not feel irritated both with herself and him. She really wished she could return his affection even if she could hardly be expected to respect him.

She tried to treat him to her confidence by telling him about Robin's treatment of Donald. 'It's absolutely incredible, isn't it? It just shows how we can grow up with someone and know so little about them. But then I've always been so fond of Robin that I probably didn't notice. I knew he'd got a bit pompous, of course, but I put that down to Marie Hélène. I'd no idea he'd turned into a sort of petty Caesar. Donald says everyone there complains of it.' She stopped and waited for Gerald's comment, but as none came, she went on. 'It's so frightfully shortsighted too. Donald's obviously cut out for the job. All the other directors saw it at once. And he likes it. He even thought at one moment of suggesting that he stayed with them permanently, but, of course, he wouldn't think of it now. The meanest thing is the way Robin pretends that the job isn't important when he'd made all that fuss about it himself. Of course one ought to have realized. He's always been eaten up with jealousy. Look at the way he goes on with John.' She paused, and wondered if she should mention Inge's monstrous attitude, but even her annoyance at it could not bring her to criticize her mother to Gerald, so she ended, 'Well, I only hope Robin doesn't go too far. Donald can be a very dangerous hater.'

Gerald felt deeply embarrassed. He would have loved to curry his daughter's approval by siding with her, but he reminded himself of his new friendship with Robin. In the end he contented himself by saying that he had never viewed the scheme with favour.

It was the worst thing he could have said. 'Oh really, Daddy,' she cried, 'isn't that typical of you? Why on earth didn't you say something at the time? But no! let everything get in a mess and then say, "Well, I never liked it but I didn't dare to say so!" No wonder we've never been able to regard you as the proper head of the family.'

There was a very uncomfortable silence as they both reflected that she had gone too far. Gerald determined to make a desperate effort to retrieve the occasion. She had given him her confidence and he had failed, the least he could do was to return it. He told her of his problem over Melpham. 'It's not for public consumption, of course,' he said.

'I doubt if I know the public who could digest it,' she laughed. Nevertheless, she plied him with questions, and intelligent questions too. She remembered that Donald greatly respected her father as a scholar; here, at least, there was a matter in which she could talk to him without overtones of family history.