Anglo-Saxon Attitudes (3 page)

'Of course, I've no right at all to consider doing a
historical
novel,' said Clarissa, her eye trying to avoid the glistening circle of butter-grease that grew ever larger around Dr Lorimer's lips. 'But somehow I feel the past speaks for us so much at this moment.' It was the critics, in fact, who had spoken so determinedly against her knowledge of modern life in her last novel. 'And then those extraordinary dark centuries, the faint twilight that flickers around the departing Romans and the real Arthur, the strange shapes thrown up by the momentary gleams of our knowledge, and, above all, the enormous sense of its relation to ourselves, its nowness, if I can call it that. The brilliant Romano-British world, the gathering shadows, and then the awful darkness pouring in.'

Rose, who, when the muffled voices of her
idées
fixes
were not working in her, was a very down-to-earth scholar, could make nothing of all this darkness and light business. She contented herself with eating as much of the buttered toast as possible; then, taking out a packet of Woodbines, she lit one and blew a cloud of smoke in Clarissa's direction, as though she was smoking out a nest of wasps. 'I'm afraid you won't find much of all that in Pforzheim's lecture, dear,' she said kindly; 'it's about trade.'

'Oh, but
that's
so fascinating.' Clarissa felt shy and was unable to stop talking. 'The furs and amber from the Baltic, the great Volga route. Yes, even in the darkest times, the persistence of trade. Think of Sutton Hoo! the homage of the barbarians to civilization, that great Byzantine dish!'

'Inferior factory workmanship,' said Rose, and she did not this time add 'dear'.

Clarissa collected her poise around her embarrassed shoulders. 'But what I want from you,' she said, a simple, intelligent seeker once more, 'is the whole story of the clash of the pagan and Christian worlds in England.'

'Oh! that's a very large request, I'm afraid,' said Rose. She had suffered too much for her theories not to be suspicious of such a frontal attack. 'Did you read the articles I sent you?'

'Oh, yes,' said Clarissa, 'and found them fascinating, absolutely fascinating. But it was the background that I wanted: you see, I'm no scholar. I know nothing really, for example, of comparative religion. Of course, I've read Frazer and Dr Margaret Murray about the witches ..."

She stopped, alarmed at the sudden change in her hostess's expression. A deep pink had spread over Rose's rather grubby cheeks, giving them a curious likeness to the soiled flowers in her hat.

'I'm afraid, dear,' she said, 'if you want to talk about witches, you've come to the wrong person. I'm a very plain scholar. An historian, you know, is not the same thing as an anthropologist.' Her little-girl voice took on quite a hard timbre. Frazer, Margaret Murray indeed! She was always being confronted with this awful confusion. Her theory, her
knowledge
of the nature of the early medieval Church, was not based on folk-lore and fancy and that sort of thing. She was a factual historian, trained by Tout and Stokesay. And then - what she saw so clearly sometimes nowadays - the conspiracy, the strange age-old conspiracy which she alone had guessed at, was something beside which Dr Murray's Dianic cult and Divine Victims paled into childish insignificance. Clarissa, realizing the magnitude of her blunder, began to extricate herself, but Dr Lorimer was listening now to voices quite other than Clarissa's cultured tones.

Really! thought Clarissa, if collecting historical material is going to be as tiresome as this, I wish I had accepted the offer of writing a travel book on Angola. Seeing Dr Lorimer's blank expression, she raised her voice. Heaven knew how deaf the old thing was!

'Of course, the Melpham excavation seems to me so fascinating,' she shouted, averting her eyes from a nearby party of goggling schoolchildren.

'Yes,' said Dr Lorimer distantly, 'it is very fascinating.' She decided not to tell this stupid woman just how fascinating. She would return the conventional judgement, 'But you must remember that Bishop Eorpwald was a very unusual person. So much we know from Bede alone. We can't judge everything by Melpham.'

'Did you take part in the "dig"?'  asked Clarissa in a sporty voice that she somehow felt necessary for the colloquialism.

'Bishop Eorpwald's tomb was excavated in 1912, dear,' said Dr Lorimer sharply. 'I was only a girl.'

Clarissa poured herself out a cup of cold tea and drank it in her confusion. 'I've always been awful about dates,' she explained.

'Well, you must try to get them right in your book, mustn't you?'  said Dr Lorimer; then, noticing her guest's embarrassment, she relented, and said, 'There was no reason why you shouldn't think I helped at Melpham. Fifty-five must seem as old as the hills to a girl like you.'

Clarissa reflected that the simple, too, had their charms. She almost regretted her Woman's Hour talks in the 'Middle Age Looks Back' series.

'And anyway,' Rose added, 'I
look
as old as the hills. As a matter of fact, it was a great compliment to pay to a pupil of Professor Stokesay's. Melpham was the crown of his work, in my opinion. No. Everything he did was wonderful. He taught me all I know. And so vigorous right up to the end, though he rather left his old colleagues behind them. He became a man of affairs, dear,' she ended, as though this was some sort of physical metamorphosis.

'Yes, I remember,' said Clarissa. 'He was one of the men of Munich, wasn't he?'  and instantly regretted the contribution. But she need not have been anxious, for Rose smiled vaguely. 'Yes, bless his heart,' she said, 'he'd gone quite beyond my little world.'

'And you really think that the wooden figure ...?'  Clarissa tailed away in query.

'Oh, a fertility god, dear,' said Rose. 'No doubt of it at all. Of course, the carving's very crude. Much cruder than the few finds they've made on the Baltic Coast. Due to native workmanship, no doubt with the Continental tradition almost lost. That accounts for the large size of the member, you know.' Clarissa felt that she need not have feared to finish her sentence. 'But it's an Anglo-Saxon deity all right. A true
wig.
One of the
idola
Bede was so shocked about. Or pretended to be, shall we say?'  she added mysteriously.

The significance of the mystery, however, was lost on Clarissa. 'And is there nobody alive now who was with Stokesay at Melpham?'

'No,' said Rose ruminatively. 'Or wait a bit. I believe Gerald Middleton was there. But he was only a young student, of course, and it's quite outside his period.'

'Oh,' said Clarissa, 'Middleton's
World of Canute.
Of course, I've read that, or looked at it, perhaps I should say. It's rather heavy, isn't it?'

'Well, we think Gerald Middleton's a great stylist,' said Rose, and added archly, 'but then we're not novelists.'

'Fancy Middleton being alive,' said Clarissa. 'Shades of the schoolroom!'

Rose was nettled. 'Gerald Middleton can't be more than ten years older than me. He only left off lecturing two years ago. He's not much over sixty,' she decided.

'He hasn't written for a long time, I think,' Clarissa sought forgiveness.

'No, I'm afraid not. He doesn't thrive any more than I do in this world of increasing specialization. He'll be there this evening though, I'm sure. All the serious early medievalists will be, you know. You're quite privileged. I'll introduce you to him and then you can ask him about Melpham. Not that he can tell you anything that isn't in Professor Stokesay's articles.'

Clarissa saw a chance for independence. 'As a matter of fact I know someone who was a friend of Professor Middleton, a very
great
friend at one time,' she added with a coy laugh. 'Dollie Stokesay. But you probably know her too.'

Dr Lorimer, who was not willing to accept from Clarissa the suggestion of old scandal about a colleague, said, 'I saw her, of course, once or twice when she kept house for her father-in-law. But she never helped Professor Stokesay with his work, whatever she may have done in the home.' And then she added, 'I'd no idea
she
was still alive.'

'Oh, indeed, yes. We're near neighbours,' Clarissa cried, as though this gave Mrs Stokesay a peculiar claim to life. 'Darling Dollie! I simply can't imagine her in the academic world. She's such a marvellous Philistine.' She paused, and added reverently, 'But a wonderfully integral person.'

This was not a concept that claimed Dr Lorimer's attention. 'We must be going, dear,' she said, and she beckoned to the waitress. 'Pforzheim's a brilliant lecturer - the greatest medievalist in Germany today. You're quite privileged, you know. I'm sure you'll find a lot of inspiration in his talk.' She picked up her two shopping-bags. 'But there won't be any witches, I'm afraid,' she added with a chuckle.

Clarissa insisted on taking one of the bags from her and instantly regretted her politeness. It seemed incredible that any shopping-bag could be so heavy. She did not know, and Dr Lorimer did not remember, that at the bottom of this bag were many milk-bottles that should have been returned to the dairy, as well as many empty tins intended for the dustbin. A most peculiar smell disturbed Clarissa as they walked out of Lyons'. Dr Lorimer had also forgotten a tin of dog's meat she had bought for her fox-terrier a month ago.

'Let's go by underground, shall we, dear?'  said Dr Lorimer. 'I love the rush-hour tubes; so full of interesting types.
Your
raw material, I suppose.'

Clarissa's heart sank.

Mrs Clun's heart sank as she recognized her husband's mood. Her thin frame shivered as much with alarm as with the intense cold. She had followed him out on to the porch to ask him about the sherry, and now she had been there Over ten minutes listening to his strictures while the east wind whistled into every open crevice of her afternoon frock. Mrs Clun was extremely thin and not very young; also she had never worn enough underclothes since a time many years ago at the college garden party when her husband had reproved her publicly for looking 'lumpy'. She tried always to tell herself how proud she should be that after so many years he noticed her figure at all.

Professor Clun's dapper, soldierly little body was well padded. 'If, of course, you're going to regard every suggestion I make as a criticism,' he said, and his hard green eyes glared above his toothbrush moustache, 'then I must wash my hands of the whole matter.'

Mrs Clun knew that she must listen carefully so that she might interpose a softening word at the right moment, but her mind kept travelling to her blue woolly upstairs in the bedroom. She smiled, a vague watery smile. Professor Clun noticed her red, frostbitten nose and resented it.

'I'm sure,' he continued, 'that I've no wish to give my time to these household matters. I have, as you very well know, a great deal of work on my hands. It's bad enough that I have to go to this lecture. I don't relish the idea of spending an hour listening to Pforzheim, able though he is, let alone the prospect of hearing Rose Lorimer air her crazy theories afterwards. If Sir Edgar were a better chairman, or even if Middleton had some modicum of the sense of responsibility which his position ought to give him, we should not waste hours of precious, time on these pointless generalities. The whole concept of these Stokesay Annual Lectures is entirely out of date. If we want to know what Pforzheim or any other Continental authority has to say, we can perfectly well read it in the journals. Any sensible executors with a little more
savoir-faire
than Sir Edgar or Middleton would have had the terms of Stokesay's will annulled long ago. The money could be most conveniently used for research projects or publications. When I think that I shall have to pay my own fare to the Verona conference next summer ...'

'Yes, Arthur,' said Mrs Clun.

'What do you mean "yes"?'  said her husband sharply. 'You know nothing at all about it. This affirmation of statements of which you are entirely ignorant is among your most irritating habits, Ada. But, for heaven's sake, let us stick to the point we're discussing. If we are to entertain the Graysons this evening - and I've already said that it was necessary - we can at least do it competently. Why you should choose this moment to suggest South African Chablis, I cannot conceive. The Graysons will hardly wish to come out to Wimbledon to drink an Empire wine. What sort of story do you want them to carry back to Manchester?'

'I was only thinking of what you said about economy ..."

'That was on the occasion of the research students' party. Do have
some
sense of what is fitting. We're not rich people, but there is no need for contrivance. We haven't got large private means like Middleton, but we're not paupers.' Indeed, with his own salary and his wife's private income, they were really very comfortably provided for.

'I shouldn't think that Muriel Grayson would know one wine from another,' said Mrs Clun, stung by the cold into contention. 'She's a very nice, homely Lancashire body, but not stylish at all.'

'That's hardly a matter for you to judge, Ada,' said Professor Clun, beginning at last to feel the cold himself. 'You don't pretend to style, and I shouldn't wish you to do so.' Although, after long years of bullying, his wife had acquired a certain suburban gentility, she had brought him her private income from a distinctly plebeian source. Arthur Clun fully recognized the limits of her achievement and required no more of her. 'Well,' he added, 'I hope that the rest of this evening's entertainment can be left to your own judgement, unless you wish me to contract pneumonia. You may well feel pleased that you have not to travel in a draughty underground train, as I have.'

'Do you really need to go, Arthur?'  Mrs Clun asked, hoping that a little cosseting would thaw his mood.

'Has anything I have said suggested that I am making this journey on a frivolous impulse?'  he snapped. 'Of course I must be there. You seem to have no sense of my position, Ada. Besides, all sorts of things come up after the lecture. The editorship of the new
Medieval History
series is on the agenda. Heaven knows what silly suggestions may be made about that. Middleton's well aware that he's past that sort of thing, but if some of those disciples of his, some of his bobby-sox fans' - and he laughed at his little modernism - 'get going, they may over-persuade him. Roberts and Stringwell-Anderson will try hard for it. They know very well that their contributions will have to be confined to scholarship, not to philosophical generalities, if I'm the editor.'