The Dark Labyrinth (11 page)

In the vestibule, Baird met Fearmax. He had called to leave a cheque for Hogarth. From time to time during the last few months when their paths had crossed they had been in the habit of exchanging civilities. Now Fearmax walked down to the corner of the street with Baird. He looked pale and tired. He walked with an eccentric springiness beside the young man, remarking that spring would soon be here, though it was plain to see that his mind was not on the weather. He said that he was going abroad for a short holiday—to Egypt he thought. He hoped the weather would not be too hot. Baird, who knew what Cairo could be like in June and July, said nothing. It was not the best time of the year to visit Egypt, and he wondered whether Hogarth knew of the journey. “Hogarth is a remarkable man,” said Fearmax with vehemence, “a very remarkable man. He has been of considerable use to me—both as a friend and a doctor,” Baird found it curious that Hogarth had never introduced them. “He has attended all my séances this year: I've been trying to put him in communication with his dead wife, you know.” This was rather an interesting sidelight on Hogarth. Fearmax shook his head and sighed, watching the shining toecaps of his shoes as they performed their eccentric progress under him.

Baird suggested that the Lebanon or Greece would provide a cooler climate for a rest during the late spring and summer than Egypt, and Fearmax nodded very precisely. “I wish, however,” he said, “to make one or two observations on the pyramids. And I imagined the sea-journey will be refreshing. I am going on … Let me see.” He fumbled in his wallet and produced a green ticket for Baird's inspection. “A large comfortable summer-cruise boat, the
Europa
. It is only half-full I'm told.”

It was this piece of information that decided Baird, for want of any other, to ask for a reservation on the
Europa
before he next visited Hogarth. The civil servant in the dingy office above the roar of Whitehall had been more than accommodating. There were certain independent inquiries that the Foreign Office would like made in Crete. It appeared that a certain quantity of small arms had been shipped across from an organization in Palestine. It had been gathered and hidden in caves—possibly the labyrinth which had been mentioned recently in the Press as having been discovered by Axelos. The Foreign Office would like to know what it meant. It might mean a danger to the monarchy in Greece, which England had determined to maintain. Could Baird undertake such an inquiry and report back as soon as possible?

It sounded to Baird as if the old Abbot John had once more tired of his search for higher truth and was entering politics—for want of a war to interest him and exploit his talents as a man of action. It would not be so unpromising an adventure as he had at first thought. He would go and see; the investigation into the Böcklin business would fit into place neatly enough. He wondered, as he pressed Hogarth's bell, whether Axelos would remember him after all these years?

He found a note waiting for him. Hogarth was out, but the note suggested a rendezvous in a familiar pub later that evening. Baird spent the rest of his time packing and touring the bookshops for suitable reading material with which to while away the journey. He did not fancy that Fearmax's conversation would provide sufficient entertainment to justify setting forth bookless.

He was surprised to meet Graecen. He knew his work slightly, and did not like it; but the man was pleasant and friendly, and apparently an old friend of Hogarth. The analyst himself was delighted with the news that Baird was going; he had been kept in touch with developments by phone, and had heard all the details.

“Graecen will introduce you to Axelos,” he said, “who will interest you a great deal. He's a real character from a film—a German film. No doubt you could stay at Cefalû.”.

Graecen was charitable enough to echo these sentiments. The invitation he had received was explicit enough; and he liked the look of this young Army officer who seemed to be, for a change, moderately well-read and whose manners had not been abbreviated with his weaning. He was also secretly rather glad to have at least one acquaintance on the
Europa
. The sudden prospect of leaving England—almost in itself a death—perplexed and troubled him. London, which he loathed normally, seemed to him for the few days left, too enchanting a capital to lose. He walked across the Green Park, hat in hand, talking softly to himself, wondering what could be expected of a future which had been so clearly and abruptly circumscribed. It hurt him too that Hogarth's manner showed no special tenderness or consideration towards himself. Indeed, Hogarth protested firmly that he did hot believe that his old friend was under sentence; when Graecen pressed him and gave him his proofs, Hogarth simply snorted and laughed. “Well, if it's death, Dickie,” he said. “It's death. You may steal a march on us, but we'll catch you up in the end. See if we don't.”

Another of Graecen's preoccupations had been with the question of the Cefalû statues. He had managed to get the chemical expert of the Museum to part with small quantities of his reagents without, he thought, arousing his suspicions as to the validity of Axelos's claims. The new nitrous oxide process promised to tell one, in the case of stone-cutting, not only the approximate age of the stone but also the nature of the instrument used to shape it. With these he hoped to keep a sharp check on his eccentric friend.

His mood, however, as they all drove down to Southampton in his big car, was one of sentimental taciturnity. He was leaving England—perhaps for ever. Baird sat in front with the driver, while in the back Hogarth and his son held an endless discussion as to the capabilities of the car. Graecen saw the hedgerows flowing by with a sharp and useless regret; every turning of the great main road held memories for him—memories of great country houses buried in trees: houses where he had spent so much of his time idling, flirting, and cultivating the fine five senses. There, beyond Winchester, was Bolser, where he had had that miserable love affair with Anne Granchester. What a bitch! How miserable he had been, and how ineffectual. The road bent northward through an immense avenue of dusty oaks. Behind them, hidden from sight, lay the old house. It belonged to the National Trust now. And what had happened to Anne? She, by rights, should also belong to the National Trust, he found himself thinking vindictively. She had become in later years a sort of beauty spot trampled flat by the feet of the worshippers; a sort of Niagara Falls of a woman. Why had she never let him love her? He grimaced and tucked his chin deeper in his coat collar. At any rate she had been good for two not unsatisfactory sonnets. What a life, he thought—or rather what a death. Leopardi could not face it when it finally came. Could he? He held his breath for a second and closed his eyes, imagining what it felt like to surrender his identity. Nothing. He felt nothing, heard nothing save the soft uniform ticking of his own heart. Hogarth was speaking.

“You know, Dickie,” he was saying. “It's very romantic of you to go off like this into the blue—very romantic.”

Graecen was flattered. It was really, when you considered it. A poet
en route
for Elysium. It was curious that he had never written a poem about death.

Baird leaned back from his seat beside the driver and suggested lunch at a wayside inn. They all got out in the rain and hurried indoors. It was still cold.

“Ah,” said Hogarth. “How lucky you are to go south.”

“Yes,” said Baird, whose enthusiasm mounted at the thought of the perennial blue skies and temperate winds of the Mediterranean. It was as if a film had lain over everything—the magic of Greece, Egypt, Syria. He felt the premonitory approach of the happiness he had known before the war.

They had an excellent meal before continuing their journey. Graecen, who had rather a tendency to be frugal when it came to ordering food, stood them a lavish lunch. His cigar-case was full too: so that they settled back in the car with the air of millionaires making a pilgrimage to Carlsbad.

“This chap Fearmax,” said Baird suddenly. “What is he?”

Hogarth looked at him for a second, and quietly closed one eye. “I want Dickie to meet him,” he said. “He is the founder of a psychic society—almost a religious brotherhood. Dickie, he will do your horoscope, read your palm, and terrify you.”

Graecen looked rather alarmed. He was very superstitious. “I
think you do him an injustice,” said Baird, and Hogarth nodded. He said: “Fearmax is most interesting. He has hold of one end of the magic cord of knowledge. There's no doubt that he is a very curious fellow, and a suffering one. I hope the blue sky does him good too.”

They cruised down to the dock, where the
Europa
lay at the great wharf, like a rich banker smoking a cigar. Hogarth's son was thrilled by her size and the opulence of her lines. It was too late for prolonged conversation, and when Hogarth and son stumbled ashore after an admiring inspection of Graecen's state-room, there was little to do but to wave to them, and watch them get into the big car. There was no sign of Fearmax. Baird noticed the couple he afterwards came to know as the Trumans standing at the rail waving shyly to an old lady who stood sniffing on the pier.

A thin spring rain was falling once more. The gleaming cobbles stretched away into the middle distance—a long aisle of masts and funnels. Graecen stood for a little while gazing over the side with a sudden sense of hopeless depression. The boat-train was in and a straggle of passengers advanced towards the gangway of the
Europa
followed by their baggage piled high on trucks.

“I expect we'll leave tonight,” he said.

“Yes,” said Baird, his heart suddenly leaping at the idea; he settled his neck back against the wet collar of his coat and repeated the words to himself slowly. They would cleave that blank curtain of spring mists, dense with wheeling sea-birds, and broach the gradual blue horizon in which Spain lay hidden, and the Majorcas. He wondered why Graecen should look so downcast.

“I suppose you feel sad, leaving England?” he said lightly; it was merely a conversational politeness. He was not really interested in anything but this feeling of joy which slowly grew inside him at the prospect of leaving it all behind.

“Yes and no,” said Graecen guardedly. He was sad because there was no one who shared his confidence in the matter of his death-sentence. He felt all of a sudden damnably alone; he wondered whether there was a ship's doctor to whom he could speak openly—to create that sense of dependency without which his happiness could not outface the shadow which lay over him. Baird was pleasant enough—but too self-contained and uncommunicative. He went below to supervise his own unpacking.

It was now that Miss Dombey came down the deck at full tilt, being dragged along by her fox-terrier, which advanced in a series of half-strangled bounds towards the ship's cat. “John,” she cried in piercing recognition, and would have been carried quite past him had not the lead conveniently caught itself in some obstruction. It was an unexpected displeasure. Miss Dombey was still the red-freckled parson's daughter he had known so long ago in the country; only she had become more strident, more dishevelled, less attentive to her dress as the urgency of her Mission had increased: the Second Coming, he remembered, had been predicted for the following year. Miss Dombey had been working frantically to advertise its approach in the hope of preparing as many souls as possible for the judgment they would have to face. Her voice sounded more harsh, more emphatic and crackling than ever. She talked like someone with a high temperature. She was going to Egypt to try and prepare the infidel for the expected event. Baird swallowed his displeasure and exchanged a quarter of an hour's small talk about the village. Miss Dombey had seen his father: she said so with the faintest reproach. He was looking much older and seemed to have fewer interests. Tobin was bedridden, and his wife had been gored by a bull. Miss Tewksbury, the postmistress, had been sentenced to six months for writing poison pen letters to the Vicar's wife: it was curious—she had always been so fond of the Vicar.

Baird excused himself and went below full of annoyance at the thought that he was going to have her for a travelling companion. Through an open door he caught sight of Fearmax wrestling with a cabin-trunk. So he had arrived after all. His own dispositions were easily made. He had taken the barest necessities for the journey. The two anthologies he put aside for the moment. His little India-paper copy of the
Phaedo
seemed to be the sort of thing one always took on journeys and never read. Lying in his bunk and idly turning the pages he fell asleep, and when he awoke there was that faint interior stir of excitement, that faint preoccupied stillness of a great ship heading out to sea, that told him they were off. It was true. A strip of dark sea curled between them and the bleak grey cliffs with their small fractured groups of houses shining dun and drab in the late evening light. The
Europa
moved without a tremor—as if she were moving down rails. A bell rang somewhere, and the fans in the corridors suddenly started to bore out their little furry cones of sound. Then they too fell silent; and from the very heart of his preoccupation he distinguished the small even pulse of the ship's engines driving them southward.

Baird entered the saloon in dread of Miss Dombey, for he saw that he would sooner or later have to introduce her to Graecen—the innocent Graecen who had done nothing to deserve such an imposition. To his surprise, however, they seemed to get on quite well together. It was perhaps because no sooner had he introduced Miss Dombey than he found she had introduced her own Mission. “Thousands are living in the shadow of death,” she said juicily to Graecen. “And my job is to prepare them for the state of death, to wake them up, to shrive them, if necessary.” This struck something of a chord in Graecen's heart. He had been pondering on his condition as he unpacked, and these forthright propositions seemed to him to refer almost directly to his own mental and spiritual state. Had he thought enough of death? Had he prepared himself? The idea had seemed repugnant to a poet, a hedonist. Miss Dombey's vehemence gave him a jolt. It was like meeting a prophet. She clawed her hair off her forehead and gave him a brief outline of what was going to happen when the Second Coming started to be fulfilled. Graecen listened to her with incredulity mixed with a certain not unpleasant fear; it reminded him of his childhood at Rickshaw Hall—the stories of hellfire and brimstone which his mother had told him and which he had believed. Miss Dombey was enchanted by so influential a convert. She pressed upon him no less than five separate tracts, which he promised to study at leisure. Baird looked on curiously at this little scene, wondering whether Graecen's obvious good nature made him indulgent; but, to his surprise, when Miss Dombey left them, he turned to him and said: “Baird, what an extraordinary woman. Thank you for introducing her.” In some obscure way he felt glad to be in touch with someone actively concerned with death—even if it wasn't his particular death. The tracts, however, were awful. He tried to read them but gave it up as hopeless. The prose, to begin with, was so bad; one could not be carried away by fairy tales of the Second Coming written in this Praed Street vein. Nevertheless, Graecen clung to Miss Dombey.