The Blasphemer: A Novel (33 page)

‘Not really, but I do listen to a lot of jazz.’

Hai-iki and Wetherby exchanged a look.

Daniel didn’t notice. ‘Wetherby, you remember Nancy?’

‘Of course, of course.’ Wetherby kissed Nancy on the hand she had held out to shake, an extravagantly antiquated gesture, even for him. ‘She is my dentist.’

‘Yeah? Better watch out then. That was how she got me into bed.’

‘I remember you saying.’

Nancy snatched her hand away in mock indignation. ‘So that’s why you wanted to become one of my patients!’

Wetherby smiled, exposing his brace again. ‘Of course.’

While Wetherby introduced Nancy to Hai-iki, Bruce led Daniel to one side and, speaking softly, said: ‘Actually we, urm, were talking about … Wetherby was asking about you and Morticia, saying that they’re worried about you over at Trinity.’

‘They?’

‘You know, the provost. Members of staff.’

‘Really? What did you say?’

‘Nothing compromising. You all right? You look like you’ve got fleas.’

‘Got a rash,’ Daniel said, scratching his hips. ‘Nancy put acid in my bath.’

‘Ooh, that’s dark. Even by her standards.’

‘She didn’t intend to. I mean, she didn’t know I was getting in it.’ He was scratching his ribs. ‘What did you make of Wetherby?’

‘Very tall.’

‘Apart from that.’

‘Quite liked her. Is she single?’

Daniel was scratching his chest. ‘I didn’t mean like that. Anyway, she’s – he’s – straight. I mean, did you like him? I’ve always thought
you two might get on. He looks a bit mad but he’s a decent bloke.’

Bruce dropped his voice. ‘Thought you’d told Wetherby about your, you know, whatever it was, hallucination, vision thing …’

‘No, did you tell him?’

‘You didn’t want me to?’

‘You’re a credit to your profession, Bear. Did you show him all my medical records while you were at it?’

‘Sorry. It sort of slipped out.’

‘What did he say?’

‘Think he was surprised.’

‘Surprised?’

‘He was holding a breadstick and it snapped in his hand when I told him.’

‘Bruce and I were talking about this angel you saw,’ Wetherby said, appearing at Daniel’s shoulder and making him jump.

‘Wasn’t an angel,’ Daniel said distractedly, his eyes searching the room for Nancy. ‘It was an …’

She was talking to a man who looked to be in his mid-thirties and was wearing an expensively tailored, cream-coloured suit that showed off his tan. He had the sculpted face and curling hair of a Michelangelo statue and something about the way Nancy was standing, like a ballet dancer with her arms behind her back and the heel of one foot tucked into the arch of the other, made it look as if she was trying to impress him.

‘Of course,’ Wetherby continued, ‘99.9 per cent of all sightings are hoaxes. People make these claims to get attention, or to compensate for some inadequacy.’

Bruce shot Daniel a look, but his friend had not heard this slight. He addressed Wetherby instead. ‘Wasn’t there a famous sighting in the First World War?’

‘The Angel of Mons?’

‘Yeah.’

‘A textbook hoax. Do you know much about it?’

‘Don’t know anything about it, apart from the name.’

‘Well, the name refers to the first major battle of the war and, for the heavily outnumbered British, the first major defeat. They called
it an orderly withdrawal but it was a full-scale retreat.’ Wetherby dipped his shoulder slightly in order to follow Daniel’s sight line. When he saw he was staring at Nancy talking to the handsome man he said: ‘Do you know about Mons, Danny?’

‘Huh?’ Daniel looked at him with confusion in his eyes. ‘The
mons
? Sure. The soft mound of fatty tissue just above the vagina. Protects the pubic bone. Why?’

Wetherby raised his eyebrows and turned back to Bruce. ‘Anyway, the point is, something odd happened while the British were retreating. The Germans failed to press home their advantage. Just stopped in their tracks. A rumour spread that an angel had intervened. The Angel of Mons.’

‘Well, obviously,’ Bruce deadpanned. ‘What other possible explanation could there be?’

Daniel was looking around Wetherby’s shoulder again, only half listening. He could see Nancy was enthralled by the statue’s conversation, touching his arm as she laughed at his jokes. Unbelievable.

‘What is?’

Daniel must have given voice to his thoughts because Wetherby was looking at him and repeating his question. ‘What is unbelievable?’

‘Um, that the British government started the rumours about the angel to make it look like God was on their side,’ Daniel said, thinking quickly.

‘Actually they did not,’ Wetherby said, moving over slightly so that he was blocking Daniel’s view. ‘The rumour began with a short story by Arthur Machen. He wrote it for a London newspaper, I forget which one. It opened with an account of how the Mons battlefield had been shaken by the sound of British troops calling out the name of St George. The saint duly appeared, along with thousands of archers.’

‘Handy,’ Bruce said, taking a sip of champagne.

‘Very. The air darkened with arrows and ten thousand Germans lay dead, though none bore a wound.’

‘I get that with my patients all the time. The old ones anyway. I
find an injection of diamorphine into the ball of the foot works best. They can’t prove a thing.’

Wetherby nodded thoughtfully, running with Bruce’s conceit. ‘I imagine the admin is a terrible bore though. All those death certificates. And having to forge medical records to show your patients had been in poor health.’

Bruce grinned.

‘What death certificates?’ Daniel asked, losing his thread again.

‘I was telling Bruce about this short story. Within a few days of publication, Machen received a letter from the editor of the
Occult Review
asking whether the fiction had any foundation in fact. Though he explained that it was entirely made up, the magazine ran an account of it anyway, as if it were based on truth. In the following months, various parish magazines did the same. Even the
Tablet
ran it, complete with a supposedly eyewitness account from an unnamed Catholic army officer. The myth of the Angel of Mons was spreading like …’

Daniel was paying attention now. ‘A virus?’

‘Exactly, exactly, I thought you would like that. The rumour became so widespread that by Christmas nineteen fifteen the
Illustrated London News
had dignified it with an illustration. You could buy sheet music for something called “The Angel of Mons Waltz”. Have a copy of it somewhere. Is everything all right, Danny?’

Nancy was drinking from the statue’s wine glass. ‘Sorry,’ Daniel said. ‘Carry on. I
am
listening. They cashed in on the hoax?’

Wetherby was gaining an audience among the other guests. He drew himself up, enjoying the role of lecturer. Hai-iki was standing close to his side looking up at him in rapt fascination, her head barely reaching his chest. ‘The myth of the Angel of Mons was by this stage evolving and mutating rapidly. According to some versions, the medieval longbow men were strange luminous clouds in human form.’

Bruce shook his head. ‘And what did this Machen bloke make of it all?’

‘Well, he was getting desperate. He appealed for the nonsense to stop but this merely provoked another author, Harold Begbie,
to weigh in. Begbie felt the story was so inspiring for the troops he wrote a book defending it. It was called, let me think,
On the Side of the Angels
, and in this he suggested that the revelation about the Angel of Mons may have come to Machen by telepathic means direct from the battlefield.’

‘Poor guy,’ Daniel said. ‘Machen, I mean.’

Nancy was flicking her hair back, laughing at whatever it was the statue was saying. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. How could she do this to him in front of all his colleagues?

‘It got worse. There was only one piece of …’ Wetherby made two inverted comma signs with his long fingers, ‘“evidence” that was not anonymous. This was a statement from a young nurse, Phyllis Campbell. She had been working at a dressing station near Mons, at one of the railway halts. There she claimed to have met two of the men who had seen the angel, a Lancashire Fusilier who had seen a tall man in golden armour on a white horse, holding up his sword, and a major in the Rifle Brigade who had “seen something”, though he was not sure quite what. Machen figured that if he could prove to the world that this evidence was no evidence at all, the myth would die and the record could be set straight once and for all. So he publicly challenged Nurse Campbell to produce sworn affidavits from the two soldiers. She partly wriggled out of it by saying that the fusilier refused to go on the record because he feared this would get him into trouble. All she would offer was a quotation from a letter that she said the major had sent her, though she would not show it to Machen. The passage described how the major had had hallucinations while marching at night. He said everyone in his company had been reeling about the road and seeing things too.’

Bruce grinned again. ‘Such as?’

‘Flashing lights. Strange shapes. And an ethereal figure who calmly walked through a hail of bullets towards them and then led them to safety.’

Bruce drained his glass. ‘So the only evidence offered for the Angel of Mons was a letter describing hallucinations suffered by soldiers drunk from fatigue?’

Camilla was clinking a glass with a spoon. ‘It’s ready! If everyone would like to come through …’

Daniel was relieved when he saw the statue was seated at one end of the table next to Hai-iki, while Nancy was in the middle, opposite him, in between Bruce and Wetherby.

Nancy made no attempt to disguise her dislike of Bruce, turning her back on him as soon as they sat down. He already had his broad back to her. ‘So,’ she said, addressing Wetherby. ‘What have you got to say for yourself?’

Wetherby looked shocked. Said nothing.

‘Neither witty nor spontaneous,’ Nancy continued. ‘I like that in a man.’

Wetherby nodded and smiled. Nancy was his kind of woman. ‘Thank you,’ he said.

‘I can’t keep calling you Wetherby,’ Nancy continued. ‘What do your friends call you?’

‘Wetherby.’

Nancy grinned and patted his leg. ‘How’s the brace?’

He smiled again, unconvincingly. ‘Good, I think.’

‘No trapped food?’

‘No.’

‘And how’s work? You keeping busy?’

‘One struggles on.’

‘I appreciate what you’ve been doing for Daniel, with the professorship thing. Means a lot to him.’

‘And he means a lot to us.’

‘How about you? You’re happy at Trinity? You’ve been there for ever, haven’t you? When are you going to take over from the provost, what’s his name …’ She clicked her fingers impatiently.

Wetherby leaned in to her, close enough for Nancy to detect the sour smell of champagne on his breath. ‘It allows me to indulge my true passion,’ he murmured.

‘Which is?’

‘Detective work. I have been trying to track down an alternative opening to Mahler’s Ninth.’

Two plates of asparagus were placed in front of them.

‘A new recording?’

‘No, no, an alternative version written by Mahler himself but lost, or destroyed. I am sure you are familiar with the Ninth.’

Nancy thought for a moment. Shook her head. ‘I’d probably recognize it.’

‘It was his last completed symphony. His meditation on dying. A premonition of his own death and the imminent carnage of the First World War. The long passages for strings at the end are as close as music has come to expressing silence itself. But it is the opening movement that has always intrigued scholars. It is long and sinuous, a loose sonata in major and minor keys that combines tenderness with savagery. Not to everyone’s taste and I must confess I have always found it jarring and unsatisfactory. Mahler may have been having a mental breakdown when he wrote it. Not only had his young wife’s infidelity recently been revealed to him, but he had also been diagnosed with a heart condition. It is thought that the hesitant, syncopated motif of the opening reflects Mahler’s irregular heartbeat. Can you keep a secret?’

‘No.’

Wetherby smiled thinly. ‘A letter has come into my possession which proves that he wrote drafts and sketches for an alternative opening, one which makes more sense in terms of its musical and philosophical development. He published a limited edition of it, but subsequently changed his mind and had all but one copy of the sheet music destroyed. No one knows where it is but the Mahler community has known about the rumours for years. Hai-iki there is helping me trace it.’ He gave a little wave down the table and Hai-iki raised her glass of water to acknowledge him. ‘She has recently returned from a research trip to Berlin.’

Nancy nodded. ‘And the letter says?’

‘He mentions to whom he gave the missing copy. Not by name, but … Let us say the field has been narrowed considerably.’

‘Hum it,’ Nancy said, picking up an asparagus spear and taking a bite.

‘The original version? I could not do it justice. But it is
beautiful …’ He leaned over so that Nancy could feel his hot breath in her ear as he added in a whisper, ‘Like you.’

Nancy stopped chewing.

‘It’s on at the Barbican,’ Wetherby continued nonchalantly. ‘I’m going to it next week. Perhaps you would consider accompanying me.’

‘That’s a kind offer.’

‘And
that
is a non-committal answer.’ Wetherby stared at the untouched asparagus on his plate. ‘I have embarrassed you.’

‘Not at all.’

Wetherby leaned in closer again. ‘You are used to being told you are beautiful, I think.’

Nancy smiled.

‘Used to it,’ Wetherby continued in a whisper, ‘but not tired of it.’

‘Do you ever tire of being called an intellectual?’

‘Never.’ Wetherby smiled and brushed the back of his hand against Nancy’s leg. ‘The truth, of course, is that I am in love with you.’

Nancy’s eyes widened.

‘You probably do not remember when we first met,’ Wetherby continued in his barely audible voice. ‘But I do, and I have been unable to stop thinking of you since.’