Anglo-Saxon Attitudes (6 page)

'In the first place, I haven't,' said Gerald, 'and in the second place, if I were to be active again I should give my energies to
England under the Confessor.'
He spoke the title of his work, so long mooted and never realized, in ironic inverted commas.

'Ah,' said Theo, knocking his pipe out on the heel of his shoe, 'if I really thought that, you know ...'

But Jasper interrupted, 'If you don't take the editorship, Gerald, you'll never write another thing: if you do, you'll write
The Confessor
and much more.'

Gerald was about to be angry, then he checked himself and said drawlingly, 'Well, at the moment, anyway, you must excuse me. I have a chance of buying a Fuseli drawing and I don't intend to miss it.'

Jasper showed
his
annoyance. 'Overrated modern
chichi,'
he said.

Gerald smiled and began to walk away, when Theo, red in the face, produced his prepared piece. 'Look here,' he said, 'we all know your
Cnut
was damned good
and
your lecture notes. But you're not Acton. It's not enough. If you don't help history now, she won't help you. You'll be classed as a second-rater.'

Gerald flushed and his heavy jowl trembled slightly. 'I don't think you mean to be impertinent, Theo,' he said, 'but you are. And what's worse, you're being melodramatic,' and he walked away.

As he got to the doorway, Rose Lorimer bore down upon him, with Clarissa Crane in tow.

'Hello, Rose,' he said, with an affectionate smile. 'Good, wasn't it? I've got to run now, my dear, but a Happy Christmas to you.'

'Oh, Gerald, you're not going before the discussion; that's too bad of you.'

'You do my discussing for me, my dear.'

'Oh, I'm afraid I shan't be able to say anything for you.' Rose took such conventional facetiousness quite seriously. 'I've a most important thing to ask Pforzheim myself about trade and the Christian mission, and about St Boniface....'

Rose's breathless excitement was interrupted by Clarissa's strangulated sophistication. 'Since Dr Lorimer's so excited, I'll have to introduce myself. I'm Clarissa Crane,' she announced in the simple, direct voice she used to take the celebrity off her name.

Gerald did not recognize the note or the name, but his sensual eye took in her slim feminine figure. He smiled.

'I know a novelist has no place here,' said Clarissa to repair the ignorance that her practised eye had recognized, 'but I'm foolhardy enough to be writing about the seventh century, and Dr Lorimer kindly brought me along. I wanted particularly to meet you, because you can tell me something about Melpham.'

This second mention that evening of Melpham finally removed any glamour that Clarissa might have had for Gerald. His professional eye had already detected a shop-soiled frigidity beneath her chic. 'I know nothing whatsoever about Melpham,' he said curtly. 'If I remember rightly, Bishop Eorpwald died in 698; my interests begin roughly at 950.'

'Oh, but you knew the Stokesays frightfully well. Dollie's told me a lot about you. She's a great friend of mine.'

At the mention of Dollie Stokesay's name, Gerald's face softened again. 'How is she?'  he asked eagerly.

'Oh! wonderful, as usual,' said Clarissa.

It seemed a curious description to Gerald of chronic dipsomania, but he let it pass. 'I haven't seen her since before the war,' he said. 'I wish I could help you about Melpham, but there's nothing to tell. I was simply a friend of Gilbert's and I knew even less then than I do now of the seventh century.'

'Gilbert Stokesay? Oh, that's terribly interesting. Everyone talks about his work now, except, of course, Dollie. It seems so incredible to think of her in connexion with Futurist manifestos and so on. I don't suppose she's ever read a line. Gilbert Stokesay! Oh, I shall certainly ring you up,' Clarissa said. Melpham might just help with the novel, Gerald Middleton was rich and distinguished, but Gilbert Stokesay was a smart name; there was no doubt of Clarissa's determination to keep in touch. Gerald had refused to see innumerable Americans who were writing theses on his dead friend's work, but
they
could not bring him news of Gilbert's widow. It would tax his ingenuity to avoid saying anything about Gilbert or Melpham for half an hour, but it was an ordeal he was prepared to undergo if he could hear from Clarissa a first-hand account of Dollie. Anything to get news of her, without actually seeing her. 'That will be delightful,' he said, and disappeared through the doorway.

Clarissa said loudly to Rose, 'I'd no idea he was such a charmer.'

Sir Edgar was piloting Professor Pforzheim round the room. He advanced towards a tall, military-looking man wearing orange suede shoes. 'Professor Pforzheim, you must meet Colonel Brankscombe,' he said; 'he's the fellow who's going to bear witness against you in
The Times
tomorrow.'

'Fascinating lecture,' said Colonel Brankscombe. 'Afraid I can't hope to do you justice, but I've got the salient points, I think.'

'Are none of your colleagues here?'  asked Sir Edgar.

'No, Ottery doesn't seem to have made it.' The Colonel turned to Professor Pforzheim as if in apology. 'If you'll let me know where you're stopping, I'll let you see what I've written tonight, if you like.'

'Oh,' said Professor Pforzheim in chuckling delight, 'this is quite wonderful.
The Times
is willing to be checked. I don't think any foreigner would believe it. Thank you very much, but I am sure that it is quite unnecessary,' he added, with a little bow; 'the accuracy of
The Times
is proverbial, you know.'

Once again Sir Edgar was forced to avoid catching a compatriot's eye. That was the trouble with foreigners, the unnecessary embarrassing things they said.

'But where is Middleton?'  cried Pforzheim, as they watched Colonel Brankscombe leaving. 'I wished so much to speak to him.'

'I'm afraid he's left,' said Professor Clun, seizing an excellent opportunity.

'What?'  said Sir Edgar with annoyance, 'Middleton gone?'

'He had some rare drawing to see,' said Professor Clun, suggesting almost that it might be pornographic. 'The rich can never resist a bargain.' And he laughed, not so much at the observation, as at the pleasure in turning Gerald's words against him. Sir Edgar, however, was not favourable to malice.

'I suppose we can none of us do that, Clun,' he said shortly.

Professor Clun's dislike of Sir Edgar was very great, but he was anxious to avoid any overt disagreement. He turned to Pforzheim. 'Well,' he said, 'you gave us just the thing for the occasion. I only wish there was an opportunity to talk a bit on the more scholarly level.'

Sir Edgar frowned, but Professor Pforzheim only smiled. He estimated Professor Clun's abilities more highly perhaps than his English colleagues, and suffered less than they did from his deficiencies.

'Oh, but you are quite right, my dear man,' he said. 'My lecture was a
Denkschrift.
You, of course, want something more solid. Well, the discussion is yours.'

Poor Professor Clun was perplexed. It was gratifying to have his point of view taken seriously, but then, of course, it was only to be expected; Pforzheim was a good Continental scholar, and it was only in England that serious scholarship was underrated. On the other hand, the last thing he wanted was to prolong the 'discussion'. 'I hardly think Sir Edgar would care for a discussion of technicalities this evening,' he said with a confiding smile.

Sir Edgar's reply was lost, however, in another of Clarissa's gestures. 'I'm Clarissa Crane, Sir Edgar,' she said. 'I've really no right here. ...'

Sir Edgar did not exactly recognize the character of her intervention, but he could see at once from her appearance that it was a time-wasting one. 'Not at all,' he said. 'Delighted. Well, I'm afraid we must cut our conversation short. The discussion's four minutes overdue. Fire any questions you like at Pforzheim. He's told me to give you all
carte blanche,'
and he led the way back to the dais.

The discussion, to Professor Clun's discomfort and to Jasper's delight, went with a bang. Praed was deeply interested in Professor Pforzheim's view about the Kharkov hoard, didn't he perhaps lay a little too much emphasis on the presence of Bactrian coins? Naturally the greatest interest attached to anything from that area, but, after all ... Grayson was interested in the Carolingian decrees to Marseilles merchants, but surely this was only another instance of brilliant imperial propaganda, to talk of Roman survival seemed to ignore... Prescott gave other instances of the restrictive decrees of the Cordova Caliphate ... Drake questioned the relevance of St Gregory's attitude to the slave trade.

Jasper's purring was almost audible, Clun's terrier-barking could even be
heard
once or twice - 'Perhaps I may say, Mr Chairman ...' But Sir Edgar seemed deaf to such interruptions. Professor Pforzheim's survey had been broad, his replies were as rich in depth. It was not Sir Edgar's intention that such a remarkable performance should be curtailed for a lot of tiresome Association business. He equally ignored all Rose Lorimer's flustered bobs, becks, and smiles. He was convinced that the growing oddness of Rose's views was only a temporary aberration in a fine scholar due to overwork. His whole aim was to protect her from herself until he could persuade her to have a long holiday. As to Clarissa's occasional attempts to rise from her chair, he had already marked her down as a time-waster and he was not quick to change such judgments.

Now little Hilda Ferguson, fiercely Scots with her flaming red hair and shrill soap-box voice, rose to express her agreement with the lecturer's very clear exposition of the Ethiopie position, but at the risk of being theological she would like to stress the very deep mark on the whole social order of that area left by the Monophysites....

Professor Pforzheim dealt with this point also very aptly, but the introduction of religion into the discussion was too much for Rose Lorimer. She was on her feet. Clutching her old far coat around her and smiling benignly from beneath her roses, she spoke, her childish voice almost cooing the carefully enunciated syllables.

'Those of us who worked most closely with Professor Stokesay, and to whom his memory is not only most dear but always alive, have experienced this evening a quite remarkable pleasure in listening to Professor Pforzheim's wonderful lecture.'

She paused and, throwing back her fur coat from her shoulders to reveal a purple crochet jumper, she smiled vaguely round the room as a signal that she had much to say. Professor Pforzheim bowed from his chair at the compliment and smiled as to an old friend, but Rose seemed oblivious to individuals.

'I am among those who owe all that they know to Lionel Stokesay, and not only all that I know, but all that I have dreamed of what the past can yield up to us if we approach it with reverence and dedication. And not only the past but the past that lies in the present.' Here she smiled mysteriously. Sir Edgar began to look uneasy, but Jasper sat back with a smile of delight. 'I was one of those, common in my girlhood, for whom the study of history was a very dry discipline, and I well remember how, in that old hall at Manchester - now, I understand, pulled down - I went, with a certain reluctant scepticism, to hear the famous Lionel Stokesay lecture. That scepticism was soon washed away through the floodgates which his discourse opened for me.'

Jasper could not forbear giving a special smile at Professor Clun, as though including him in a bond of peculiar pleasure at Rose's reminiscences. It was more than the little man could bear, and he muttered audibly, 'It's a pity a lot of other things weren't washed away.' Theo, who was as disgusted at Clun's lack of chivalry as he was delighted at the likely length of Rose's contribution, said, 'Shame!' in his broadest Yorkshire. Rose noticed no interruptions.

'Sir Edgar has criticized Professor Stokesay's last years, he has called the writings of those last years journalism. Well, I have crossed friendly swords with our President before now and I do not hesitate to do so again.' She smiled archly at Sir Edgar, who slumped into his chair until he seemed to be no more than a black hump. 'I saw a lot of Lionel Stokesay at the end of his life, and I know how deeply, how seriously, he felt that it was his duty to bring his great historical knowledge to bear upon the troubled events of those years. Nobody, of course, likes the Nazis.' She said this as though referring to the usual antipathies to spiders or muddy boots in the house. On political matters her mind was as naïve as her voice. The embarrassment of the audience was perhaps greater than that of Professor Pforzheim, who had blushed scarlet. 'But Lionel Stokesay felt above everything that he must do all in his power to preserve peace. In his efforts to do so, I believe, he showed himself a great statesman as well as a great historian, and his sadness when all his efforts proved unavailing was tragic to see. It killed him.'

Rose was unable to continue for a moment, and then, pulling her fur coat around her, she leaned forward and, smiling through her tears, she said: 'But these are now only memories. What is important is that we have heard this evening a lecture which can, if we follow its lead, take us out of the petty lanes and alleys along which students of medieval history tend nowadays too easily to stray, to that broad road with its glorious ideal prospect upon which Lionel Stokesay trod all his life. So commanding is the scene which our lecturer laid before us this evening that it may seem churlish to ask that it should have been even wider. All the same, there is one aspect of that strange, important watershed period of the past, which has been given the foolish label of the Dark Ages, that I would like to mention. Professor Pforzheim has told us something of the continuous trade of the Northern pagan world and something of the spread of trade which went with the preaching of the Gospel, but does he not think that the division between these two worlds - the pagan and the Christian - is really rather artificial? Was there so much that finally separated them? Once there had been compromise, that is. It has always seemed to me, and I fear I have laboured the point more than once in print' - she smiled in childish glee round the room - 'that in their eagerness to keep the saving of souls for themselves, to destroy the Church of Iona, the Roman missionaries made so many compromises.' She seemed now to be listening to two voices and her utterance became increasingly confused. 'Is there not, or perhaps I should say, was there not, a filling of the holy vessels with blood that came from more ancient sacrifices than that which we remember on Good Friday? And I would ask, perhaps, if the older force which conquered then in the realm of spirit may not also have overflowed and transformed even the material life of the time, even the trade?'