Lempriere's Dictionary (8 page)

He was in love. There was no doubt as he made his way back up the lane towards his home. She had charmed him and he would follow her anywhere. He would range widely over what territory he might, pursuing her wishes over seas and oceans, through lands where strange and fierce peoples lived, the Hyrcanians, Sacians and Parthians who twisted backwards on their horses to fire arrows in retreat. He would follow the Nile until it split in seven and tinged the Middle Sea, scale the utmost peaks of the Alps from where he would view the monuments to his victories and
beyond, the alien seas which lapped at the outermost isles of Britain that even now he heard faintly as their whispering reached him across the hospitable curves of the lush summer landscape which held him safe to its bosom while his imaginings sought out the most perilous corners of the earth in tribute to his Aphrodite. His Aphrodite. That thought was bittersweet, tainted with the accompanying thought that it would never be true. She had invited him to her house; that was something. The Lemprière household came into view. He would tell his mother of the invitation first.

The front door, in fact every door, was open. His mother was airing the corners, as she put it.

‘I met Juliette Casterleigh in the lane today.’

‘Yes John?’ She walked past him carrying a large spider by one leg and threw it out the door.

‘We talked of books.’

Marianne Lemprière squashed a woodlouse which was attempting an entrance over the window sill.

‘Her father wants help in his library.’ Marianne caught another spider, stamped on an ant and smote a small, brown beetle with an edition of Menander that had been lying on the table.

‘What exactly is the request?’

She turned from her insecticidal labours for a moment and smiled at him. Her son, she admitted to herself, was an odd child. She loved him very much.

He smiled back and explained to her about the library and his vital role in its completion. She pretended reluctance, as much for the pleasure of hearing her son cajole her into acceptance as any real misgivings. But he had already carried the day. A stray thought struck her.

‘Why does Mister Quint not do it?’ she asked, suddenly remembering her son’s former teacher. ‘After all, he is engaged by the Casterleighs now, is he not?’

Her son looked up.

‘Of course you should go,’ she said. ‘But you must ask your father, John.’

Charles Lemprière, upstairs in his study, surrounded by papers of every description, heard all. He wrote quickly on the sheet lying before him. “With regard to your letter, and your objections to my assertion that …” He paused, then crossed out the last clause and wrote, “I beg to differ. A vessel of such a tonnage might indeed put in at a port as I describe. Lorient perhaps, or Nantes, Rochelle or even another. Might charts be procured? Tonnage against harbour draughts may well confirm Philips’ account …” He stopped again. Captain Guardian, his correspondent, did not believe in Philips.

It was Philips who had requested the meeting. Facing each other over a table at the dingy inn in Saint Helier, Philips had spoken of a ship. He knew neither its name nor its purpose. According to Philips (and this was a phrase Charles would have frequent recourse to in the years which followed) the ship made a twice-yearly voyage up the western coast of France to a port where her cargo was unloaded; on her return voyage south she rode high in the water. Philips had introduced himself as a marine surveyor. He was a young man with a clever face, dressed in black. He spoke with a peculiar intensity of this ship and offered two peculiar details. First, she was said to displace above four hundred tons. A large ship then, too large for the coastal trade. And second, her design; for she was an Indiaman. A Company ship.

Philips told his story with compelling candour. But what business had a Company ship putting in at a French port? Their meeting had lasted less than an hour. John, barely six at the time, sat in solemn silence throughout. His own excitement had mounted. He listened and nodded. The meeting concluded, he had returned to his study and searched through the very papers which faced him now. He had found the account he sought, written in his father’s hand. “I have found the ship,” his father had written. “She sails by the Pillars of Hercules and north, up the coast of France to a port I must discover.” But he had never found the port. Within the year he was dead; drowned in calm seas off the coast of Jersey. And Charles Lemprière had not seen Philips since that day at the inn.

He had taken up the search for the vessel, drawing in correspondents the length and breadth of the mainland. Ebenezer Guardian was only the first, but Eben suspected this Philips. It was as if he had been brought into existence only to fire Charles’ curiosity and, that task accomplished, had vanished into thin air.

Still the search went on, and though this ‘ship’ was still a phantom, no more than a handful of unrelated facts, there had been other facts since then, incidental discoveries, enough to draw him on. Somewhere in the morass of receipts, bills, bonds, affidavits and orders of acquisition which lay strewn about the room, there was a pattern. Somewhere within the pages of handwritten accounts, diaries, letters and notes ran a thread. But he could not find it. A single memorandum, a scrawl on a dog-eared endpaper might supply the link, the key to the pattern. It was here, buried here somewhere. Perhaps he had already seen it and missed its significance.

The voices in the kitchen below were silent. He looked over his half-completed letter and thought of the ship. Why could his son not plug this gap instead of Casterleigh’s. No, no, he checked the thought, remembering his wife’s angry tears of Sunday last. Let the boy get on, let him follow his own path.

Charles Lemprière reached for a stack of papers on the far side of the desk. Keep him away, he thought. Keep him away from all of it.

Papa would be pleased with her. Papa would kiss her and compliment her. She was his jewel. He needed her as nobody else. Papa loved her. Clever Papa. Poor, stupid Father Calveston. How funny he had looked, especially when the potato had started to dry, all those little cracks. How he had cringed to her! She made him play a game. He had to crawl and fetch her handkerchief whenever she dropped it. He said sorry so much, she told him to be quiet in the end. He told her everything she asked. He seemed so eager to talk, to please her. Even when he blubbered he went on and on about things, things that she knew Papa would want to hear. She would tell him how foul and filthy Father Calveston was, for it was surely true, but not about her feelings when he picked her handkerchief up. She would not tell Papa about that. She would not anger him. Father Calveston had had those feelings too; when she left his thing had gone up again. She would tell Papa about that. Yes, she thought, as she climbed the stairs.

Facing east, the window threw a slanted lattice of shadows across the floor and over the brilliant white wall behind. A frame for the figure which moved into that light and threw its image on that wall. Arms raised and braced against the folding shutters, its body broadened in girth by the angle of the light, the figure looked like a primitive man turned to stone. Slight movements shook its upper arms and shoulders as if pitting its strength against the solid wooden frame: a slow testing of familiar thoughts, as rope is tested and paid out foot by foot. A coarse, rough braid of thought. And on the day the floor gives way beneath, you may hang by it for your very life. How firm are the most trusted foundations, and what are the things which must be done to protect them? These were slow, visceral questions, asked in the flexing of the arms, the straining of the shoulders. The time had come to answer those questions, to provide the answers. Not as palliatives to some mood of enquiry, but as tablets of marble: answers that would eradicate the very possibility of such questions being asked again. Never asked again. Behind the house, the pack was barking and wailing. Why had they not been fed? Casterleigh turned from the window in some annoyance, just as Juliette burst into the room.

‘Papa! Papa!’ she was laughing and out of breath. ‘Sit down Papa, let me tell you-of my day.’ His annoyance rose to anger at her intrusion.

He turned as she ran to him holding her skirts.

‘Silence!’ he barked.

Instantly, she was quiet, her face blank. He looked at her, saw the dependable fear in her eyes. He was soothed. He rested against the desk, then spoke again.

‘Tell me of the boy,’ he said.

Summer was announcing its end in the sky, sending small, dark clouds over Jersey. Compacted and black with rain, they looked unnatural against the deep, continuing blue behind. A brisk south-westerly was whipping the tops of the taller grasses. The clouds passed quickly and silently overhead, their shadows racing across fields, lanes and houses. Despite the sun’s intermittent appearances and the strong breeze, morning dew still clung to the stems of the grass through which he tramped. The path was not walked often and had become overgrown. His shoes were wet through, yet he hardly noticed this. He came to the stile, climbed it and made his way up the lane towards the Casterleighs’ home.

The house stood in open lawns but two screens of trees, staggered at angles to each other, concealed it from casual view. Lemprière rounded the second line of trees and came upon his first sight of Casterleigh’s country house. Only half a century old, its plum-red bricks had withstood the corrosive effects of the sea air well. The colour stood out violently from the gentler greens of the surrounding lawns and made the house seem larger than it was. Even so, it must be thirty or forty yards across, he estimated. The four angles were rounded and set with bay windows, giving the edifice the look of an oval. All the many large windows were set with scarlet-gauged bricks, and pilasters ran the height of the building between them, ending in elaborately carved stone capitals which, in their turn, supported an entablature extending, so far as he could tell, all about the building. Two of the pilasters rose higher than the others to define an attic-storey on the centre of the roof, and, on their tops, stood two intricately carved stone figures. But even with his eye-glasses he was unable to distinguish their exact features. Two stone staircases ran up in parallel to meet on a balcony in front of the main entrance, the doors of which now flew open as if pulled violently from within.

‘Enter, John Lemprière, your doom awaits!’

Intoned in mock-solemnity, the words betrayed Juliette’s presence in the cool shade of the entrance hall within. He made his way up the staircase to his left. Juliette advanced to greet him, smiling, as his eyes adjusted slowly to the dimmer light in the entrance hall. On the ceiling, chubby cupids aimed playful arrows at each other.

‘Come, Papa wishes to see you.’ The look of alarm on his face prompted her. ‘Don’t fret. He only wants to thank you.’

In his pocket was a list of ancient authors he had compiled two days previously. He clutched it like a charm. Juliette chattered over her shoulder as she led him through the house. Her voice lilted and Lemprière fancied he heard a cadence beneath her words not truly belonging on Jersey. French perhaps. They passed through an antechamber to the drawing room beyond it.

‘Papa, Doctor John Lemprière has arrived to set our world to rights.’ And with that introduction, she left him alone with the Viscount.

Casterleigh stood over the writing desk at the far end of the room. Even in the frock-coat the man was wearing, Lemprière noticed the powerful shoulders, the thickness of his arms. He gave an impression of strength only barely held in check by his surroundings. When he turned to greet his guest there was a quick, strong control to his movement which was echoed in the lines of his face. His greying hair was swept back over his head and his eyes, fixed on whatever object they chose, seemed not to blink. A large, roman nose gave him a hawkish appearance.

‘Thank you for coming to our aid, Mister Lemprière. It is quite fortuitous that an island of Jersey’s size should hold the man for the task.’ He toyed with a paper knife on the desk. ‘I have given instructions to Mister Quint, with whom, I believe, you are formerly acquainted?’ Lemprière nodded. The Viscount stared him squarely in the face. Lemprière was beginning to feel he was being scrutinised more thoroughly than the situation demanded. ‘To work then. Until later, Mister Lemprière.’ He extended a large hand.