‘No more snow, and a fine frosty morning, sir.’
‘So I see. Thank you Biglow.’
He went off down the stairs whistling between his teeth, apparently none the worse for the disturbance of the night, and entirely forgiving of my strange behaviour.
I had no time to brood over those things however, and indeed had scarcely embarked upon my breakfast when I
heard light, bounding footsteps on the stairs and Dr Valentine Dancer made his entrance.
He had introduced himself, waited while I ate, and drunk a cup of tea and not for a moment been still. His face was fresh, and pink-cheeked from the cold air, his hair stuck up like the bristles of a brush and he wore an egg-yellow muffler wound around his neck many times and dangling down to his waist. I would have taken him for a keen office clerk or even an apprentice, for he did not have any of the gravitas of a schoolmaster and dean.
I had expected him to take me along to the library – and had made up my mind that I would not admit to having been into it already – show me the Vane archive, and leave me alone to get on with my work. Instead, he had suggested, moving about the room, darting to the window, prancing around me, that we go out for a tour of the school.
‘The morning’s so good, the air’s as clean as a whistle – why frowst indoors? Plenty of time for that.’
I agreed gladly, pleased to have an opportunity of clearing my bleary head and eyes, and keen too, keen as one of the young schoolboys would have been, to be out in the snow.
As we walked, I looked closely at Dr Dancer. He had the curious, cheery look about him that is ageless – the face of an elderly infant, so that I could hazard no guess at how old he might really be. But, whatever his age, he proved to be an excellent, exuberant companion, tirelessly running up staircases, flinging open doors, crossing quads and playing fields, to show me classrooms, dormitories, drawing schools, gymnasiums, assembly hall, dining hall, another, more workaday library, all the offices of a huge school, and one such as I had never before seen.
And, as he explored, he talked; he was an inexhaustible mine of history, anecdote, legend, curious fact, about the place that was obviously his life, his hobby, his home, and his boundless enthusiasm. I was entertained, and
interested, amused, and informed, but, above all, I was taken out of myself by this energetic little man.
At last we crossed a further playing field, went through a wicket gate and so out onto the towpath beside the River Thames. Dancer gestured to right and left. ‘Boathouse. The weir. Are you an oarsman?’
‘No, no.’
‘Sportsman at all?’
‘No. I played cricket and football of sorts at my mission school, many years ago. Nothing since.’
We were standing looking up river towards a graceful wooden bridge that curved across it to the opposite bank.
‘If it gets much colder the river will freeze,’ he said excitedly, ‘and we shall have skating for Christmas.’
The bare branches of the willow trees, and the blades of tall grass and rushes, were iced white and stiff with frost. There was no wind, no sound at all save the rushing of the weir, and the cheeping, chattering sound made by a small party of coots and moorhens circling close to the bank.
‘It is,’ I said quietly, ‘the most beautiful spot. It is perfect, it cannot be faulted.’ I, who had travelled and seen such exotic sights, the glories of the world indeed, spoke the truth as I saw and felt it, most fervently.
‘The bridge is particularly beautiful – the curve of it, the gentleness of the arch …’
‘Ah – the haunted bridge!’
‘The …’
He chuckled and seemed to do a little jig at my side.
‘We have two ghosts at Alton – perfectly friendly and harmless, the pair of them. The shadowy man in grey who crosses this bridge at dusk, and the servant laying places at table in Scholars’ Hall. Though neither, I think, have been sighted lately. Perhaps you will be lucky!’
We walked on, and mounted the bridge. The wooden boards were slippery with frost, so that I almost fell and Dancer had to grab my arm. Then, leaning on the rail and
looking at the glittering surface of the water, I said lightly, ‘And are there really no other ghosts, in such an ancient place?’
‘None. Odd, you will agree. But none. It is a good, a happy place. It has always been so – for the most part.’
I said nothing.
‘It quite disappoints the boys. They’d love some good midnight groaning and clanking of chains. Bloodthirsty creatures, boys.’
‘Yes.’
‘So you have nothing to worry about, Mr Monmouth.’
I saw that he was looking very closely at me, and that, for the first time, he was also standing absolutely still.
I wanted to tell him, I had a tremendous urge to unburden myself, beginning not with the events of the previous night, but going back to the evening I had arrived in England. And I might indeed have spoken, but, at that moment, there was an eerie noise from up river, and looking in that direction we saw a flock of wild geese bearing down upon us, honking as they went, and the sound grew louder and mingled with the leathery clapping of their great wings. Dancer and I watched entranced, turning to follow them as they disappeared round the bend in the river. ‘What a sight that is!’ He was on the move again, bobbing up and down with excitement.
It was cold and we began to move off the bridge.
‘We’ll walk up river. We can see the line of the buildings to such good effect from here. The chapel looks best of all,’ Dancer said, as proudly as if he were master of the place.
I went along beside him, looking where I was bid, listening again.
I did not speak of anything, after all.
He ended our tour outside a row of houses set behind neat front gardens, behind Scholars’ House.
‘Bachelor masters live in the boarding houses, or rooms
in the High Street, some senior masters in the cloisters. But …’ he flung open the front gate with a grand gesture, ‘we married men live here!’
A door stood open, and in the doorway a little huddle of solemn children, all with the red-cheeked, gnome-like face of Dr Dancer. Behind them was a tall young woman carrying an infant. We went up the path.
‘Hetty, my wife – Mr James Monmouth, our visitor.’ He then extended his arm to the young ones. ‘And Evelyn – Isaac – Japhet, and – ’ here, he swept the baby out of his wife’s arms – ‘Hector,’ he concluded with a flourish.
I was ushered into his study, a young maid brought tea, the children were banished. It was a handsome room overlooking lawns and bare cedar and elm trees, with the open playing fields beyond. Books lined the walls, mainly, I saw, works of history, and a fire burned in the grate. His desk was piled high with papers.
‘I have everything a man could wish for, and the best of all, Monmouth, is that I know it, I know it. Happy that man!’
Coming from any other, it would have sounded intolerably smug but I could only smile, warming even more to Dancer, disarmed by his innocent pride and pleasure in his life, and work, his family and his situation.
‘You will stay to lunch, of course,’ he said, ‘though I fear it will be a bear garden. Still, they must stare their fill of you and ask you every question under the sun and then they will have had enough and leave you be.’
‘It is very good of you to be so hospitable and I am extremely grateful, but …’ I set down my teacup, ‘the fact is, I am very anxious to go into the library and be shown the Vane papers so that I may begin work at once.’
Dancer stopped swivelling in his chair. The room was silent His face was serious now, and wary.
‘Plenty of time for that,’ he said.
‘No, Dr Dancer, there is not. I cannot intrude upon the school and take your hospitality for granted for too long.’
‘Oh, we are perfectly happy to have you, perfectly …’
‘Nevertheless, I wish to get down to work.’
‘So be it then. I will take you directly after lunch.’
He got up and went to the window, hands clasped behind his back. From elsewhere in the house, I heard muffled roars of rage, then running footsteps. Laughter, the banging of a door.
‘I take it,’ I said calmly, ‘that you, too, are about to use your best efforts to deter me from the work I propose to begin.’
After another few, silent moments, he came back to his chair, but again sat very still, staying any movement with his feet upon the floor.
‘What do you know of Conrad Vane?’
Briefly, and somewhat wearily, too, for I had answered the question before, I told him.
‘Oh yes, yes, all that, the travels, the exploration – all that was perfectly in order, so far as I know. Admirable even, in its way.’
‘But then …’
‘All that came much later, at the end of his life. It was incidental, it did not make up for the man, nor for what went before.’
I waited for him to continue.
‘Do you know why you are so intent upon pursuing your interest in the man, what it is about him that so fascinates you?’
‘No, I confess to you that I do not, it is a mystery, a puzzle. But from many years ago, when I first read of him, in a book in my late Guardian’s library, I was strangely drawn to him and the fascination – for you are right, that is exactly what it is – has never waned, indeed, I have felt myself to be more and more in thrall to it.’
‘To have come under his spell?’
I shrugged.
‘There is a power, an attraction, exerted by evil …’
‘Oh come!’
‘Yes, evil. Others have found themselves drawn by it – magnetised, as they were in his lifetime. Conrad Vane was an evil man, Monmouth, evil and depraved, and he used the power of wickedness, a dreadful power, over others, the innocent, the naive, the immature, the foolish. I have read, and I have heard some of the stories and investigated them, to my own satisfaction. It was enough.’
‘And what are these stories? What did he do?’
‘He was cruelty personified – the stories are of that and of corruption of the innocent as well as more ordinary, unpleasant human traits – spitefulness, deceit, brutality, debauchery, viciousness, cunning. It began when he was a boy – no, perhaps it began at or even before his birth, and, in the end, he was obliged to go abroad and, I daresay, pursue his evil career among other devils.’
‘I cannot believe we are talking of the same man – Vane, the great explorer, the sensitive chronicler of places – peoples and their customs … the solitary adventurer.’
‘I agree. From what I have discovered, there did indeed seem to be two, very contrasting sides to the man – Jekyll and Hyde, no less.’
I tried to make sense of what Dancer was telling me. Beyond the windows, blackbirds pecked at the frozen grass. The sky above the trees was almost silver. A beautiful morning. A perfect day.
‘I am grateful to you,’ I said at last. ‘I have received hints, and veiled warnings. No one has begun to speak the truth until now.’
He smiled and began, very gently, to swivel his chair round again.
‘So I have deterred you,’ he said, ‘I am profoundly glad of it. Now, you will stay to enjoy lunch.’
‘No, Dr Dancer, you have told me things, but you have
made no difference, you have not deterred me. Why would I be deterred?’
His face was not so much serious as sad.
‘You have whetted my appetite even further. My fascination is keener still.’
He groaned.
‘What a subject!’ I went on. ‘What contrasts, what a host of extraordinary contradictions – what questions it raises! I scarcely know where to begin. I am unable to believe my luck. I shall in the end present the portrait, the study, of a very rare man indeed before the public.’ I was becoming carried away by what I was saying.
‘There is more,’ Dancer said.
‘Ah, yes, the warnings! Beware!’
‘The power of evil to do harm is very real, very strong.’
‘I have no doubt of it.’
‘Many suffered.’
‘Dancer, the man is dead!’
‘And does that mean that it has ended there?’
‘Oh come, man!’
My words were brave, I heard my own voice, blustering, full of scorn. But they were hollow and I was trembling within.
Dancer was looking at me as if he were weighing something up, deciding whether or not to speak.
‘Well, what is it?’
He shook his head.
‘What is your own interest in Vane?’ I asked sharply.
‘None. I have none. Once, I read a little, out of idle curiosity. After I had heard rumours, I began to delve into such archive as the school possesses. I discovered enough to make me retreat, to retreat and close the books and turn my back. Vane was acclaimed a great man by some, after his death. Well, perhaps, in some ways, he became one. He ventured where no man had previously dared to venture, discovered much. But he was also a liar, a time-server, a
bully, a cheat and worse. He lived as he wished, he had his way, at the expense of others, because it pleased and amused him to do so, because it helped him to achieve his own ends, because he was corrupt and in love with power. That is how he obtained satisfaction. When he was forced to leave this country for his evil doings, he went abroad and swaggered there. He used and abused the ignorant and the innocent, though all the while he showed a face of honeyed sweetness to the world. Is this the man in whose company you would spend your hours? Your time alone? Leave him, Monmouth, let him rot.’