Of course, I picture her cavorting with those dashing Argentine polo players. Highly sexed, horse-disfigured hidalgos. It’s widely known that sitting on horses enhances the libido.
I wonder if my mind has completely recovered from its episode; it seems a little erratic in its opinions.
Venetia appears again and immediately behind her, pushing a trolley, comes the woman from the village, in a floral housecoat. Thanks to my days as a ghillie, I know that these women are selected from among the locals for their degree of devotion and desperation. They also have a belief in the ancient wisdom that
everyone knows their place
.
‘This is Mrs Wilbraham. This is Mr Cathar, the son of a friend of his lordship.’
‘Pleased to meet you, sir,’ she squeaks.
Perhaps she is disappointed that I don’t have a title. She retreats, sidling backwards for a few steps, like someone receiving an MBE at Buckingham Palace, before turning slowly to see if she is possibly needed on some noble whim.
‘What sort of tea would you like?’
‘Oh, just builders’. I have simple tastes.’
‘What a pity,’ says the Countess.
‘What was that, dear?’
‘Young Richard likes builders’ tea.’
‘Jolly good. Now we have some absolutely terrific lemon sponge bought at the church sale. The only problem, being the laird, as you would say up in Scotland, is that you have to buy a lot of sponge cake. And huge onions. So eat up. Or if you prefer, there are sandwiches. By the way, jolly smart car you have.’
‘Sadly, it’s not mine. It’s way above my pay grade. Actually I don’t have a pay grade at all.’
‘Too bad. But you look like a bright fellow to me, like your father.’
‘Unfulfilled promise, I think is the phrase. I would love some lemon sponge, it looks delicious.’
‘The proof of the pudding is in the eating,’ Huntingdon warns.
It is strange how easily I fall into this familiar and superficial conversation, which often involves dogs and horses, the management of shoots and the bloody useless government. It is a defensive way to converse, one that establishes shared values, while avoiding any form of intellectual pretension.
After tea – excellent sponge cake – Huntingdon leads me to the archive, which is housed underneath the first floor in a semi-basement that was once, he tells me, a storeroom for food and supplies because it is always cool and dry. He shows me five huge dark wooden cabinets, each with four drawers.
‘This is what we call the archive. It’s never been properly catalogued, but I have looked through most of it at one time or another. You’re interested in the Crusader period, aren’t you? My alleged ancestor was on the Third Crusade, you said. There are some papers or parchments, which are probably Victorian, collected by my grandfather. To be honest, I think it was one of these your father lost, nothing too valuable. And here’s a picture of your father and me. I got it out for you. Look at the size of those spliffs. You look quite like your father.’
In the photograph are two slender young men, with long hair and patterned trousers, standing in a punt, smoking weed. They are smiling, sharing a beautiful cosmic joke. My father never lost that look of satisfaction with his induction into the inner workings of the universe.
‘Different times, different zeitgeist. But good times. Good times. I would start on cabinet two if I were you. Cabinet one is mainly estate bills from the nineteenth century. Let me know what you find, and I will arrange with the secretary to print it out for you. You should perhaps stay until Sunday night to do justice to the material? Can you do that? Good show. Dinner will be at seven forty-five. No need to dress.’
I have brought my new suit, just in case.
In the picture my father, I have to accept, does look like me. I recognise the eyes, quite widely spaced, and the thin nose. His smile, although a little skewed, is also like mine. When this picture was taken, he and Huntingdon were younger than I am now. I see that they are both wearing Afghan – possibly Pakistani – embroidered waistcoats. Wisdom and deeper understanding were believed to spring from the East. The West, according to Herbert Marcuse, was clapped out, on its last legs; the one-dimensional society could not last. Liberation from the affluent society, from false needs, would free the West, particularly in the matter of repression. Marcuse was big on repression; he spotted it lurking everywhere, but particularly in sexual politics.
I have two dictionaries with me, Anglo-Norman French and Latin, and I start eagerly – feverishly – on the archives. My plan is to have a quick look through and to put aside anything that may be of interest. I know that Henry, Earl of Huntingdon was already in Acre when Richard arrived. I also know that, although he set sail from Acre in Richard’s ghost ship, the
Frankenef
, he did not go with him when the King and a few knights turned back and set off from Corfu up the Adriatic in two galleys. We also know that the
Frankenef
was later seen in Brindisi, but it is unlikely that Henry of Huntingdon and his companions would have struck out for home from there. Marseilles is the obvious jumping-off point, and the letter in the museum seems to confirm that Huntingdon was in Marseilles in January, which could mean that he was planning to make his way via Normandy to deliver the Holy Cross to Rouen before returning home, as he promised his wife.
Je n’en mantirai
.
But I need confirmation. Also, I have no idea how big the cross was. Presumably it was the bigger portion of Helena’s cross, which was carried into battle twenty times. The Crusaders triumphed in every one of these battles until the catastrophic defeat at Hattin. In Ridley Scott’s movie,
Kingdom of Heaven
, the cross is a huge, silver-encrusted and bejewelled object that glints in the sunlight. This film reliquary seems to be a grand version of the one in Barletto, Italy.
After two hours I have retrieved three documents that could be interesting. One mentions a Templar
commanderie
on an island beyond the port of Marseilles. It may be that Richard of Hastings, who was Master of the Templars in England between 1160 and 1185 and a relative of Henry Huntingdon, helped them on their way.
It’s time for dinner. I have put aside the three documents, two on parchment, and one that is clearly a later copy on paper. I go to my bedroom, which overlooks the darkened park, studded with huge trees, and dress hurriedly. I am breathing too fast. I adopt Ed’s remedy and put the plastic bag which contained my new shirt over my head, and breathe in slowly until my hyperventilating stops.
We take a sherry before dinner in a bigger drawing room, hung with plenty of family furniture and ancestral portraits. The ancestors in grand houses always look smug, as though they have delightful private memories. Their skin is pinkish and their eyes are small. This look may just be the rictus of sitting for a portrait.
‘Did you find anything interesting?’ Venetia asks.
‘Yes, some very interesting letters, or at least copies of letters. They are not in themselves amazing, but the dates and places mentioned may help me build up a picture of what happened when Richard the Lionheart sailed for home.’
‘Did he have important Crusader treasures with him?’
‘That’s what I am trying to find out.’
‘We have had this stuff under our noses for hundreds of years, but we’ve rather taken it for granted. As one does,’ says Huntingdon.
We go in for dinner. Candles are burning on a long table. A young woman waits on us. She is studying catering and hospitality at a local college; she comes in to help when the family has visitors. She has that soft covering that is increasingly the norm; her face is creaseless. The first course is a plate of smoked salmon, which I try to hide under a lettuce leaf.
I ask Venetia about her polo ponies.
‘Are polo ponies really ponies?’
‘No, they are not ponies, as in Shetlands or anything like that, but they are usually quite compact, so they were called ponies. In Argentina they are often the gauchos’ workhorses, and the best ones are used for polo.’
‘Venetia has about thirty at any one time, don’t you, darling?’
For a moment I think he’s talking about gauchos.
‘Yes, I do. I sell them to English players if I can.’
‘Loses money of course. When we were married the idea was that it should wash its face. Hasn’t happened so far.’
‘Do you have a significant other?’ Venetia asks.
‘I do. She’s a Canadian journalist.’
‘Where is she now?’
‘She’s in Toronto.’
‘Do you visit her there?’
‘No, not at the moment. I met her in Jerusalem, but four weeks later she was taken hostage in Cairo. That was a couple of months ago and she’s still recovering.’
‘How awful,’ says Huntingdon. ‘How absolutely beastly. Was she harmed?’
‘She wasn’t treated well.’
‘Poor you,’ says Venetia. ‘And poor, poor girl. What’s her name?’
‘Noor. She’s half Palestinian.’
‘I’m desperately sorry.’
She puts her hand on my forearm for a moment.
Huntingdon pours us all another glass of his favourite Sangiovese. He knows the grower, a wonderful fellow called Aldo: ‘Down-to-earth chap, who knows how to live.
Vivre pour vivre
, as the French say.’
I ask how he squares this
vivre pour vivre
business with his dislike of the European Union.
‘The problem with the EU is that they want to impose a sort of straitjacket on all of us. The French, the Italians, even the wretched Greeks. The Greeks would be far happier pottering about in their little boats trying to catch the odd octopus for supper or renting their spare room to tourists, than trying to keep up with Stuttgart and Frankfurt. They’ll never do it, so what’s the point? Different temperaments. Different culture. One size does not fit all.’
‘Boring,’ says Venetia in a loud singsong.
Huntingdon doesn’t take offence. Actually I think he makes some sense: in my experience in Jerusalem, for instance, Arabs and Jews, despite hundreds of years living side by side, seem to live only to proclaim their differences. The Scots see their prime virtue as not being English and the Canadians take comfort from not being Americans.
‘Sorry,’ Venetia says, ‘I am afraid my husband is something of an obsessive.’
‘We are having a beef stew now. Or roasted vegetables,’ says Huntingdon.
‘Two of our many children are vegetarians, so we are always prepared for the young,’ Venetia explains, as if to apologise for the vegetable dish.
‘Stew for me,’ I say, not wanting to look like a self-obsessed food faddist.
‘That’s the ticket. Your father was great fun, you know. Great fun. Rather wild. The girls liked him. He was what you young call a “babe magnet”. There weren’t many girls in Oxford in those days; there were only enough to go round if they went round fast enough. Your father was very good-looking and, as far as I can remember, he was never without some young girl. He regularly climbed over the walls of the women’s colleges late at night.’
‘I never really knew what happened when he was sent down.’
‘It was really a grave injustice. Your father didn’t supply drugs to Sam Gordon-Mowbray. There was no commercial transaction. They both smoked a bit of weed, and dropped acid occasionally, but because Sam was the son of the Foreign Secretary, they had to find a scapegoat. I am afraid your father took the rap because he had spent the evening with Sam before he died.’
‘Was he as good-looking as Richie?’ Venetia asks.
‘Very nearly.’
The suggestion that I am good-looking always makes me anxious. It’s unearned.
I quickly ask Huntingdon, ‘Do you think the incident ruined my father’s life?’
‘Yes, I do, to some extent. I think that is true. He was bitterly disappointed to be sent down. Humiliated. And – I have often thought about this – possibly it drove him to his – forgive me for saying this – sillier ideas. But I still kept up with him. All our meetings were joyous. The difference was that when I got married for the first time I settled down. When he got married a few years later, to your mother, he kept right on with the alternative life. It had become a mission. I think possibly that it was, as you suggested, a reaction to Oxford. He often said there was more to life than Oxford. He felt that the people in charge were repressing us, and of course he had clearly suffered a miscarriage of justice. Being in court was humiliating for him.’
He pauses. He seems to be considering carefully. A small speck of spume has gathered in the corner of his mouth. Venetia reaches across to wipe his mouth with a napkin.
‘It was a great shame. I loved your father. But it was a life lost. Absolutely.’
After a few glasses of port in front of the fire, which is still crackling quietly and persistently, Huntingdon is dozing, his mouth open. Venetia asks me to sit next to her on the sofa and she whispers in my ear: Huntingdon is impotent and she wants to have sex with me when he’s gone to bed. She breathes a warm, alcoholic dew on me. I am not sober either.
‘I’m engaged.’
‘I’m married. Don’t be a wuss. I’ll come up to your room when he’s gone to his bedroom.’