Part 12 (1/2)

'Scorp said these rites can't be performed with any hope of success, if those taking part are in a normal state of mind and body. I haven't had anything to eat or drink myself now for thirty-six hours. I didn't want to miss the chance of a lifetime, to see played out in the flesh all the things I'd been going over and over in my mind for months like Tourneur's scene in the charnel house.'

'What were they trying to do?'

'The idea was to summon up a dead man called Trelawney.'

'How far did they get?'

Gwinnett gave a slight shudder. He was detached, yet far from calm, perhaps no more than his normal state, now aggravated by near collapse.

'They got no further than the fight between Ken and Scorp.'

Gwinnett's use of these abbreviated first-names gave a certain additional grotesqueness to what was already a sufficiently grotesque narrative.

'Did they have a sc.r.a.p during the rite?'

'In the middle of it.'

'The horned dance?'

'No during the s.e.xual invocations that followed.'

'What did those consist of?'

'Scorp said that among the ones taking part in the rite they should have been all with all, each with each, within the sacred circle. I was a short way apart. Not in the circle. Scorp thought that best.'

Gwinnett again put up his hand to his head. He looked as if he might faint. Then he seemed to recover himself. Heavy spots of rain were beginning to fall.

'Did everyone in the circle achieve s.e.xual relations with everyone else?'

'If they could.'

'Were they all up to it?'

'Only Scorp.'

'He must be a remarkable young man.'

'It wasn't for pleasure. This was an invocation. Scorp was the summoner. He said it would have been far more likely to be successful had it been four times four.'

'Not Widmerpool?'

'That was the quarrel.'

'What was?'

'It had something to do with the union of opposites. I don't know enough about the rite to say exactly what happened. Ken was gashed with a knife. That was part of the ritual, but it got out of hand. There was some sort of struggle for power. After a while Scorp and the others managed to revive Ken. By then it was too late to complete the rites. Scorp said the ceremony must be abandoned. It wasn't easy to get Ken back over the fields, and down the hill. As well as doing the recording it was all wrecked when he fell he'd been concentrating the will. He'd been giving it all he had. He wasn't left with much will to get back to the caravan.'

'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 pa.s.sage 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 gra.s.s 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 ma.s.sing 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 c.o.c.k 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 pa.s.sage 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.

'There they are.'

He spoke in his usual low voice, quite dispa.s.sionately. A long way off, where two hedges met at a right angle, what might be the shape of a yellow caravan stood in the corner of a field. The sight of it seemed to cheer Gwinnett a little, convince him that he had not dreamt the whole experience. Now he was able to turn his attention to the land below, from which he had first approached The Fingers. While rain continued to fall he established his bearings.

'That was the path.'

He pointed down to a sharp decline in the ground, not far from where we stood. Away below to the left, in a hollow overgrown with yet more elder, thick in thistles and ragwort, two or three abandoned cars were slowly falling to pieces. They must have been driven in there, and dumped, from a nearby gra.s.s lane. Gwinnett's vehicle, not visible from where we stood, was somewhere beyond these. He raised his hand in farewell. I did the same.

'See you in London perhaps?'