Hearing Secret Harmonies - Anthony Powell [70]
‘And they just let you take notes?’
‘Scorp didn’t mind that. He even urged me to.’
Gwinnett spoke as if that permission surprised him as much as it might surprise anyone else. He took the black notebook from under his arm, and began to turn its pages. They were full of small spidery handwriting.
‘Listen to this. When I first went to Ken Widmerpool’s place, and met Scorp, I was reminded of something I read not long before in one of the plays by Beaumont and Fletcher I’d been studying. I couldn’t remember just what the passage said. When I got back I hunted it up, and wrote the lines down.’
Gwinnett’s hand shook a little while he held the notebook in front of him, but he managed to read out what was written there.
‘Take heed! this is your mother’s scorpion,
That carries stings ev’n in his tears, whose soul
Is a rank poison thorough; touch not at him;
If you do, you’re gone, if you’d twenty lives.
I knew him for a roguish boy
When he would poison dogs, and keep tame toads;
He lay with his mother, and infected her,
And now she begs i’ th’ hospital, with a patch
Of velvet where her nose stood, like the queen of spades,
And all her teeth in her purse. The devil and
This fellow are so near, ’tis not yet known
Which is the ev’ler animal.’
‘Scorpio Murtiock to the life.’
‘He did shed tears during the rite. They poured down his cheeks. That was just before he gashed Ken.’
‘The familiar contemporary slur of our own day gains force of imagery in additionally giving your mother a dose.’
‘The kid in the play was the prototype maybe. Scorp’s in the same league.’
‘The girl called Fiona is a niece of ours.’
Gwinnett seemed taken aback at that. The information must have started him off on a new train of thought.
‘I don’t know how that nice kid got mixed up with that kind of stuff. Rusty’s another matter. She’s just a tramp.’
He brushed some of the mud from his sleeve. He appeared to feel quite strongly on the subject of Fiona, at the same time was unwilling to say more about her. That was like him.
‘I have to get back. I just wanted to make a few notes on the spot. I’ve done that. They’ll be useful. How do I find where I’ve parked, Nicholas?’
‘We’ll go as far as the top of the hill, and have a look round. You’ll probably be able to recognize the country better from there. Why don’t you have a sleep at your pub, then come over to us for lunch?’
‘No, I’ll sleep for an hour or two, if I can, then get back to London. I want to write while it’s all in my mind, but I’ve got to have my books handy too.’
He made a movement with his shoulders, and gave a sort of groan, as if that had been painful. He was not at all well. I was rather relieved that he had refused an invitation to lunch. It would not have been an easy meal to sit through. We walked up the field together in silence. Round about the circle of elder trees the grass had been heavily trodden down. Rain was descending quite hard now. Gwinnett’s story had distracted attention from the weather. The men with flags were beginning to pack up, the inspecting party massing together again, on the way back to their cars; a few hardy individuals, Mrs Salter, for instance, continuing to talk with the quarry representatives, or make notes. Gwinnett and I reached the summit of the rise.
‘Have a look from here.’
The far side sloped down to the waters from which The Fingers drank, when at midnight the cock crew. The Stones would probably need an extra drink after all that had happened during the past twelve hours. I did not mention the legend of their drinking to Gwinnett. It might seem a small matter, after whatever he himself had witnessed up there. We stood side by side on the edge of the hill. Fields and hedges stretched away in front; a few scattered farms; clumps of trees; telegraph poles; a pylon; far distant bluish uplands. The roofs of the small town, where Gwinnett was staying, were just visible in rainy haze. Main roads, hard to pick out in light diminished by heavy cloud, were marked from time to time by the passage of a lorry. Gwinnett stared for some seconds towards the country spread before us, rather than looking immediately below for his recent place of ascent. He pointed.