The Black Fox A Novel Of The Seventies (3 page)

rative. The folk-story being retailed that afternoon—as an illustration of the epoch of Law as contrasted with that of Grace— was the curious and brutal tale of the Hebrew Hercules— a tale of magic and violence, lust and trickery, truly as suited for melodrama and opera as it is incongruous with ritual and worship. Liturgy can, however, render the human ear and mind wholly'impervious to the most obvious and shocking sense. And no doubt Canon Throcton with many years of inurement and an immediate and rapidly growing obsession, would have caught nothing of the story had not, in one verse, the sing-song voice of the lector informed the quietly wool-gathering congregation, "If my head be shaven then my strength will go from me." Hardly knowing why he did so, Canon Throcton glanced over to the opposite stall, only to find that its occupant was glancing away, glancing away with that hurried appearance of unconcern which tells us how near we had been to surprising their inspection of us.

A CATHEDRAL CLOSE IS IN ITSELF NO PROTECTION FROM THE

atmospheric effects of autumn—quite the contrary. The climate on its part, adjusting the balance after the intense early August heat, had become dank, and the small gothic-girt world of the four canonical residences, the Deanery and the Palace, illustrated the Bishop's quotation about the whole site being a sink. Spring might waken the inhabitants to a certain lively asperity and expectations of summering in the Alps; autumn could only sink them in reminiscence at best, recrimination at worst and rheumatism as a constant middle and provocative term. Canon Throe-ton's short-cut hair was greying and in the darkening mornings as he shaved he saw a stubble bleaching toward hoar-frost whiteness reaped from his chin. When shaving—especially with that weapon which in his time was d,e rigeur —a Krupp hollow-ground razor—the skill of hand and steadiness of outward attention, let free, he had often noticed, a clear thaw of reverie. The deepest emotional layer would rise at that time and almost, one could imagine, would stand, like the uncanny "Red Cap Sly" of the sinister Ring Stone Ballad) at one's shoulder and almost in the corner of one's vision. Of course one could not look it straight in the eye, and so make it vanish. For to do that he would have to take his eye off the sweeping stroke of the flat-laid blade and that would be penalized by a neat but free bleeding line. "Satire should, like a polished razor keen, Wound with a touch that's scarcely felt or seen," He could not resist ever so slightly yielding to the habit to mouth the line and, sure enough, a moment after a fine line of crimson showed where the razor's last stroke had swept away the white foam and the almost as white stubble. The faint sting of the fine wound a moment after confirmed his eye. Vexation spread like a small haemorrhage over his mood. It might take a week to heal and for a day or two he'd have to wear a silly little dab of cotton-wool on it. "1 care for my appearance," he muttered to himself as he dabbed the spot very uninclined to be staunched, "as though I were that greasy, ignorant crooked fop. . . ."

He checked himself and swivelled his eye round the mirror's field. It was physically safe now to do that and indeed almost a mental necessity, so external had seemed the malignancy of the hatred. Simpkins was a fool, yes and a knave too. But one's privilege and pleasure was not to rage at such a creature—his r6le was to watch the jackanapes while it was blindly unaware that it was eyed and known by the one person it would be most anxious should never know. Really it was Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter all over again. Then reflecting, as he went on dabbing, that that story hardly showed the wronged man, who took his revenge by being an onlooker, in a pleasant light, Canon Throcton shifted quickly to self-pity. He was getting old—the quick scarring and slow healing of his skin proved that. And he had nothing to look forward to, because his rightful advance had been barred by a mean, greasy little rat . . . Again he was so shaken by the overboiling of his rage that he could hardly believe that the scalding jet of it was not striking him from an external source, "I mustn't live so much in reverie," he counselled

himself as he adjusted a final patch of cotton. "I'm a lonely man" self-commiseration again turning his major anger into a minor key. 'Well, all the more need for objectivity," he summed up.

The Calendar caught his eye, as he turned round to finish his dressing. It hung on the wall to mark the terms in which he was specifically "in Residence" and so responsible for presiding over the Cathedral duodiurnal services and any other days—such as preaching dates—which were "of obligation." He had had none of the latter lately: the former would not start till the new year. Since the last unhappy attempt not to be accused of "sulking in his tent" he had not felt equal to facing Simpkins' smug superciliousness, however much he had thought he was certain of his own superiority. "I might," he sanctioned his withdrawal, "be startled into telling him the truth." As both his judgment as an obvious gentleman and his passion as a repressed hater confirmed this advice it was naturally taken. So the days had gone as they do: slowly each to each because of their monotony, but, for the same reason, when looked back upon with uncanny speed.

He gazed at the Calendar, that oblong of numbers headed by the seven pagan names, and then realized where temporally he was. The Installation would be at Evensong today. As he settled down to breakfast, his sister, breaking the silence with the same words, showed that she too felt that further avoidance was impossible. She was relieved, if the relief had in it a cast of surprise, when he replied. Though a quotation it was both apt and objective—indeed almost humorous,

" 'And the days of mourning being accomplished then shall the mourner anoint and tyre himself and go forth again among men.' You see I have complied to the date and the letter," and he pointed to his cotton-dabbed cheek, adding, 'The usual accompanying smile is pretermitted in the hope of discouraging

further cutaneous haemorrhage." Miss Throcton felt the surface relief spread at the obvious gaiety, while being aware of an almost disquieting doubt as to its cause. There was something in her brothers tone of voice that did seem to say that not smiling was not at all difficult.

Throughout the service, however, Canon Throcton felt a certain gladness due to a feeling that was odd but curiously pleasant —he felt quietly numb. True enough the dark end of the cold last day of the wettest month of the year was chilling enough in all conscience in the vast dank gloom of the huge weatherworn archaeological fossil in which these few survivors kept on their minimal service. But the numb that the Canon felt was not physical though it had about it the relief with which we feel a nerve anaesthetized by an injection. To say that he didn't seem to be wholly present would itself have been only half the odd truth. He felt himself, he realized, present in space, in the Cathedral. It was about Time that he found he had doubts, coldly pleasant ones—the date, that seemed quite irrelevant. Yet he did not seem to be present in any other alternative date. Time itself did not seem properly important. The ordinary unquestioned importance and supremacy of the present—and Canon Throcton was proud of his punctuality—was somehow reduced to a commonalty with past and future.

In fact, he had found in the dusk of the vestry, prior to the service, that he could amuse himself, by perceiving a moment or two before it became actual, what was about to happen. He felt as if the Bishop had always and would always be saying, "J ust like a small family . . ." Indeed before the sentence rolled out in its slow boom he had completed it in his own mind, ". .. met together for a birthday party of their youngest," and the throat episcopal followed the prescient dictate of his foreseeing mind. So he was equally prepared for Simpkins' smirk and small spatter of sub-sarcasms. Even the happy sally that his cotton-wool

whisker was a budding if premature tribute to St. Nicholas did not stir the slightest resentment, for he was already waiting to hear the moderately nasal snigger continue, "Of course you have been away from our dull routine, lost amid the Arabian alembics and astrolabes, studying another calendar and alien feasts." He even took the conclusion of the sentence out of his satirist's lips by replying, "So you would repeat that as you are now to be out and about our Father-in-God's wider business, I should now aid properly in the domestic duties."

He did not even smile frostily at the new Archdeacon's look —half childish disappointment at the aborted boast, half nervous surprise. Indeed Simpkins was sufficiently disconcerted to turn nervously to the small mirror-faced cabinet and picking out the brush from behind it, to give a touch or two to his coiffeur. Perhaps the flourished surplice sleeve and the brush disturbed some dust—there was certainly enough about. Suddenly he gasped, fumbled in his robes, just in time dragged out a large pocket-handkerchief and into its crumpled mass discharged a sneeze that shook even his compacted curls. A second and a third explosion followed, leaving the sneezer gasping but with the offending particle of dust evidently discharged. He fumbled to replace under his surplice the handkerchief which had had to face and contain the three charges.

Feeling a not displeasing disgust Throcton turned away to don surplice, hood and scarf. Once more his interest had started outrunning the present and glancing the future, as sight-seers run ahead of a procession so as to see it pass some particular street corner. And again he was able to produce for his private pleasure five-second-ahead prophecies. He whispered under his breath, in front of the Bishop's confirmatory boom,

"Come along Archdeacon. The Dean, you know, can't be here. Gout again—it sounds like Dickens. But it's the real thing and hurts, well like what Catholics believe about purgatory. I must see that everyone knows his position. Quite a time since an installment. Never neglect detail: see to it yourself. Canon, follow us as soon as you are robed. The two juniors are already with the choir. Special Lesson. . . ."

The Chief Shepherd, pushing his new sheep-dog before him, went through the door dividing the shepherds' retiring room from that of their singing sheep. As the linen and lawn-enlarged figures left the inner room vacant and silent, for a moment the one left to himself found his mind blank. The next sentence, which he had been reading one line ahead, that dialogue soundtrack was vacant. Then his attention was caught by the hairbrush that had been left lying by the drinking glasses. A shudder of disgust, as strong as a rigor, shook him. He went over and lifted the object. The disgust rose to nausea, as almost under an external compulsion he touched the tangle of black hairs that now matted the bristles making a loose web in their stiff woof. It was with the relief that a sleeper feels a nightmare being broken by a noise in the house, that he heard the Bishop's boom, "Canon Throcton, Canon Throcton." Putting the brush into its place behind the mirror he hurried out, was quickly marshalled and the processional rite began.

Again he found that he could not bring himself to attend to the words, but played instead the game of petty prevision— "Now the organist will cough: now the litany clerk's wife will sneeze." But this time it was not the First Lesson but the Second Lesson which brought him suddenly back to present-minded attention. The words that had roused him seemed to be the middle of a sentence and insignificant, if not quite senseless, "Paul having shorn his head, for he had a vow." Again he looked up blindly aware of attention. Again he found that he had been a moment too late. The now fully installed Archdeacon was examining with an interest more archaeological than religious—considering the time—the carving of his stall's canopy.

The rest of the service Canon Throcton's mind spent wondering what was going to happea when it was over. When he tried to stretch his previsionary insight that far he could observe that it refused to work. Then his mind turned to consider his emotional state. He had heard that men severely disappointed or overstrained could get heart attacks or chronic indigestion. But it was really ridiculous for a sound scholar left to exercise his gift, to let a petty piece of caddishness not merely sour his temper but actually disturb, yes addle his mind! Like all intellectuals this fine linguist could hardly bring himself to believe that his emotions might not obey rational instruction. None the less it was his automatic reflexes that took his body safely and in seemly movement back again into the vestry. It was almost the same level of consciousness that, with the proper tone and the right excuse—the one which he had not called up and the other that he could not recall—extricated him from the Bishop's quite kindly invitation that they should all warm themselves before the big fire in the Palace hall with a cup of tea.

Again the same levels evidently ordered that he should disrobe so slowly that by the time he was again in his outdoor clothes he found he was alone. He could just hear the sub-verger pacing about in the transept waiting to lock up when he should come out. Then his surface consciousness came back with the same unpleasant vividness that it had had, when, half an hour before, he had last been alone in this narrow dingy dim room. He felt at the same time the rising revulsion and compulsion—the drive that sent him across to the dirty little cabinet and the closing of his throat that was almost a retch. The brush was now in his hands. He raised it till he could see the flakes and clotted specks of dandruff and smell the blend of the cheap-scented Macassar oil and stale perspiration. Then he seized the comb—itself a small laocoon with the coils of hair that had wound round its

prongs—and curried strongly the brush's bristles. The comb became nearly choked. He threw the brush back onto its shelf and with a piece of paper drew off most of the tangled hair that he had reaped. Dropping this on the table he peered again into the cupboard. In a corner he discovered a small bottle of the hair oil. The dust had made a kind of mud round where drops had spilt down the neck. He put the bottle on the table by the piece of paper and investigated again. This time, in the very corner of the shelf (it must have been hidden behind the bottle) he found a small screw of soiled tissue paper. Untwisting this, he saw with a fresh disgust a number of flakes like minute clippings of parchment. For a moment it seemed as though he would fling the whole of this routage into the waste-paper basket. Indeed he looked under the baize-covered table to find it but doing so his attention was distracted. He bent down further. His face when he rose was flushed, though the exertion had been slight. What he had retrieved was the pocket-handkerchief that had had to endure such a storm of the nasal elements, and then, when it should have been stored in its subsurplice pouch, had fallen and evidently been kicked under the table. He held it between his thumb and finger. Disgust was clearly very strong but some positive passion was stronger. He no longer tried to find the waste-paper basket. For a moment he hesitated, then was caught by a choking cough and with his disengaged hand put his own handkerchief to his mouth. He retched for a moment and his face went livid. Then, as though it were as natural a semiconscious gesture as was putting his own handkerchief back into its pocket, he thrust this other handkerchief, the small wrap of combings, the little almost dried up oil bottle and the paper twist of nail-parings, into one of the big side pockets of his overcoat. The last wheeze of his cough modulated into coherent whispering, "The Dean is now all but a dotard. The Cathedral's becom-