Dead Man Riding (2 page)

‘We couldn't,' Midge said.

‘Give one logical reason why not.'

Imogen said, ‘They'd throw us out, that's why not.'

‘Your college? They needn't know.'

‘Oh, so we start deceiving people, do we?'

I was pleased with Imogen for being so sharp with Alan. She'd shown signs recently of being altogether too impressed by him – especially since he'd sent her a rather laboured sonnet cycle tucked in a small basket of roses. I worried sometimes that rivalry over Imogen might threaten Alan and Kit's long friendship. As far as Midge and I could tell, Alan was the favoured one but she hadn't taken us into her confidence and it was hard to be sure because there weren't many opportunities for men and women to meet. No question, of course, of Imogen being alone with either of them. Safety in numbers was the motto of various college authorities as far as they tolerated any social contact at all between the sexes. But at any of the occasions where we were allowed to mix, chatting for a few minutes on the pavement after lectures or at plays or concerts like this, you'd usually find Imogen with Kit on one side and Alan on the other, the two men staring at her or each other with that little crackle of electricity in the air that means storms ahead. We'd got through to the last week of Trinity term with no thunder and lightning but I could tell from the way that Kit was glancing from Alan's face to Imogen's and back that this business of the reading party mattered to him as well.

Before Alan could answer, the toe of a brown brogue nudged his grey silk knee and a voice above our heads said, ‘You're wanted, both of you.'

Unlike the other two Nathan was in modern dress, in his case flannel trousers that looked crumpled and grass-stained even in the half-light, a tweed jacket with wood shavings clinging to it, a soft collar and a tie worn in a loose loop with a tight knot so that it looked more like a noose. Even by student standards he was not a fussy dresser. He was tall, plump and bear-like. Unfashionably, he wore sideburns and a bushy beard, ginger brown in colour, so that his round face was framed in a mass of hair that seemed a perpetual fire risk in view of his fondness for pipe smoking. He was short-sighted and his thick-lensed glasses were often smeared with paint, as now. His excuse for being even more untidy this evening was that he was scene builder and property master for the play. Nathan had been baptised Nathaniel, but nobody used the name, any more than they expected Midge to answer to Millicent. If there hadn't been storms between Kit and Alan, Nathan was probably the reason, the best-tempered one of their trio, less brilliant than Kit and not as serious-minded as Alan with a love of practical jokes and conjuring tricks. Nathan would go to endless lengths to get a friend out of trouble – then more lengths to climb into his room and sew his pyjama legs together or serve him sausages that squeaked when he dug a fork into them. He'd have rather gone to art college than Oxford but his father had insisted and he was studying theology from – as he put it – a safe distance. The distance was so safe that in two years he claimed not to have learned the way to the lecture halls and the man assigned to be his tutor had bumped into him in The High without recognising him. By his own account the only reason he'd survived so far was that theology dons were the laziest creatures this side of the South Seas and it would have been too much trouble to send him down. That might have been true, or it might simply have been that everybody liked Nathan. Alan twitched his knee away.

‘Already?'

‘If you don't get a move on it will be pitch-dark before we get to the Masque of the Worthies and all my lovely work will be wasted.'

Kit was on his feet already, in one supple movement. Alan followed more slowly and Imogen gave him back his plumed hat. The two of them flourished the hats at arms' length then held them over their hearts in a courtly bow to all of us. Imogen watched as they walked away.

‘May I join you, ladies?'

We nodded and Nathan sat down on the flattened grass where the other two had been. Midge asked him, ‘Are you going on this reading party with them?'

‘Wouldn't miss it for the world. I've never met a centaur in the flesh before.'

Imogen, ignoring his nonsense, said, ‘He invited us to join them.' I was surprised she'd bothered to mention it.

‘Jolly good idea. We can swim in the river and help with the haymaking and have all kinds of larks.'

I pointed out that haymaking would be over by the time they got there but nobody took any notice. Midge was still trying to make sense of his earlier remark.

‘Do they have centaurs in Cumberland, then?'

‘Not sure about the plural. As far as I know, Alan's uncle is the only one.'

‘Alan's uncle?'

‘Great uncle, I think. Old as the hills and as mad as King Lear.'

‘And half horse?'

‘At least half, from what Alan says. He's got this stud of Arabians. Only thing he cares about. The story Alan heard from his father was that the old boy kicked around the world a lot when he was younger, native wars, piracy on the high seas and goodness knows what. Anyway, at some point he fetches up in the desert, saves the life of some sheik or other high-up and gets presented with a stallion and two mares as a reward. So he ships them back to Southampton and sets up a stud in Hampshire.'

‘I thought you were going to the Lake District?'

‘Hampshire was about twenty years ago. The Centaur's a migratory beast. Apparently he keeps quarrelling with his neighbours and having to pack up his saddlebags and move on because he's made the place too hot for himself. He's used up most of England now and is within sight of the Scottish border. It's the very last bit of the Lake District he's in, overlooking the Solway Firth.'

‘I know where you mean. It's the view when you're looking north from the top of Skiddaw.'

They all looked at me, wondering why I thought that added to the story, and of course it didn't. The fact was I loved the Lake District but hadn't dared set foot in it since I'd come back to England. It was where we'd spent family holidays when my father could tear himself away from whatever city he'd been practising and politicking in at the time. My brother Stuart and I had walked for miles with him over the fells, rowed on Ullswater, learned to climb on the crags at Dungeon Ghyll. Suddenly and sharply, I wanted to be back there on Skiddaw's slatey summit looking out over the Solway to the Scottish hills.

‘Did his wife and family migrate with him?' Imogen asked.

‘Neither chick nor child. He travels light, does Uncle Centaur. Apart from his mares and stallions, of course.'

Midge said, ‘I think you're making this up.'

‘Come with us then and see.'

‘Perhaps we will.' From Midge of all people. She was teasing him of course.

‘You'll come, won't you Nell? You're an adventuress.'

‘Nathan.' Midge spluttered with laughter and slapped him lightly on the back of his hand. ‘Apologise to Nell. Adventuress means something entirely different.'

‘Does it? I'm sorry. All I meant was Nell's been all over the shop and probably done all kinds of things—'

‘That's even worse.'

Again, Imogen ignored their nonsense. She seemed to be following some line of her own.

‘I suppose he has a housekeeper or somebody?'

‘Suppose so.'

‘And he's invited you all?'

‘To be honest, he's only actually invited Alan, but all we need is a barn or something for a roof over our heads, hay to sleep on and ale and bread and cheese from the local inn. So Alan's written to ask if he can bring a friend or two.'

‘That's you and Kit?'

‘Yes, plus Michael Meredith probably.'

‘What?' Imogen sat bolt upright. ‘Mr Meredith coming with you. But he's a
don
.'

‘He's Alan's and Kit's tutor.'

‘But I thought he—'

‘All right, not officially any more but they still see him. Kit says he's the only man in the university who makes sense of philosophy.'

Imogen said nothing. I sensed that for a moment or two, under the influence of the stars and the swans and the men dressed as Spanish grandees, she'd been playing with the idea of accepting the invitation, the way you do play with things when they're safely impossible. Then the involvement of Michael Meredith had made the thing so far out of the question that she wasn't going to think about it any more. In any case, at that point the play started again.

*   *   *

Candlelit figures came and went across the platform by the lake, drifting into the light and out of it as what they were saying to each other wandered in and out of hearing. ‘…
which he would call abbominable. It insinuateth me of insanie
…' Time to think of other things like what I was going to do in the long vac. My new stepfather had invited me to join them in Athens and probably meant it but I couldn't afford the fare, even third class. If he'd guessed that he'd probably have paid it for me but though I liked him I didn't want to put myself under any obligation. Beside me, Midge was fidgeting again. When I looked her way she mouthed, ‘What time is it?' I looked at my watch. Ten to ten. She started getting up.

‘We'll have to run.'

We all motioned to her to sit down. There were still streaks of light in the sky and fluttering home like scared schoolgirls was more than Imogen and I would stand. ‘…
To congratulate the Princess at her pavilion, in the posteriors of the day; which the rude multitude call the afternoon
…'

I wondered if Michael Meredith really intended to join their reading party. With most dons the question wouldn't need asking because you couldn't imagine them sleeping in barns and living on bread and cheese. Meredith was different. For one thing, he wasn't so very much older than we were, probably under thirty. For another, he was quite capable of doing it just to annoy the university authorities. In the small world of Oxford Meredith was famous or, more accurately, notorious. He was such a brilliant classicist that his college had very little choice except to award him a fellowship. Once installed – and college fellows are notoriously difficult to shift – he'd set about trampling under foot most of the conventions that had kept Oxford snug for the past six hundred years or so. Stories grew round him. For instance, it was a condition of his fellowship that he should read the lesson in chapel once a term, in Latin naturally. He was an agnostic so, according to legend, simply slipped a copy of Apulius's
The Golden Ass
inside the Bible and read a passage about Cupid and Psyche without any of the drowsy congregation noticing. He complained in public about the stupidity of some of the pupils who came to him from the public schools and said he could take a boy at random from any board school in the country and make a better classicist out of him. He proved it, rumour said, by secretly coaching the son of his college scout and entering him for Moderations under an assumed name, with the result that he came out second from top on the list. (His opponents denied the story. His supporters, mostly undergraduates, said of course the authorities had hushed it up.) There was no telling whether it was one of his real or legendary offences that had led to his removal as Alan's and Kit's tutor but it was no surprise. Though the college could take away his tutorial pupils it couldn't stop him lecturing on philosophy, either as part of the official university course or unofficially to anybody who cared to come along, women included. Among his other eccentricities, he was a leading figure in the campaign to allow women to take degrees, just like the men. It didn't make him any more popular with the die-hard dons that his lectures were always packed out, with people standing at the back. Alan and Imogen had met when he gave up his seat to her.

‘I Pompey am, Pompey surnam'd the Big
…' We'd got to the masque scene now. The last of the light was gone from the sky but the platform was bright with torch flares, held on long poles by assorted courtiers and rustics. There was a cough from behind us.

‘Excuse me sir, do you know where Mr Alan Beston is?'

It was a lad of about fourteen in cap, jacket and heavy boots. He was holding an envelope. Nathan pointed towards the platform where Alan was standing in his plumed hat as the King of Navarre among the courtiers.

‘There's a telegram come for him. Been in his pigeon-hole all afternoon and the porter said as I was coming home this way I should look in and give it to him, in case it was urgent.'

‘Thanks. I'll give it to him when he comes off.' Nathan held out his hand, but the boy kept hold of the envelope.

‘The porter said I was to give it to him directly, nobody else.'

Before we could stop him he was stumping towards the platform, weaving dangerously in his thick boots among the hems of delicate summer dresses spread over the grass.

‘Shouldn't worry,' Nathan said. ‘They'll think it's part of the play, another messenger come with despatches.'

The play was near its end now. We were only a few minutes from the heart-stopping moment when the jokes, the romance and the rough comedy are cut off in just two lines with the brutality of an express train crashing into buffers. ‘
The King your father – Dead, for my life! Even so; my tale is told.
' The messenger of death would come in a punt across the lake. If you strained your eyes you could just see the ripples like black treacle in the torchlight where the punt was already moving.

Meanwhile the porter's boy had managed to push himself to the side of the platform. We saw him tug at Alan's cloak and shove the envelope into his hand. Luckily the attention was on the masquers at this point, not the King's party, so he was able to thumb the envelope open and glance at the telegram. I'd picked up the opera glasses Midge had brought with her and was watching, more from amusement than anything. When Alan bent his head to read the telegram his face was shaded by his hat so it was only as he looked up that I caught his expression. It was thunderstruck. Not grief at bad news, as the princess was about to get in the play, but shock and incomprehension.