Hearing Secret Harmonies - Anthony Powell [56]
‘Nietzsche thought individual experiences were recurrent, though he put it rather differently. But what did you mean by saying “that too”?’
‘I was astonished to hear that as a child you should have known Trelawney.’
‘Only by sight. I did not meet him till years later. It is true that, as a child, he haunted my imagination – at times rather more than I liked. Haunting the imagination was the closest we came to acquaintance at that early period.’
‘Haunters of the imagination have already come close to the imagination’s owner. From that early intimacy would you give any credence to the claim of Scorpio Murtlock that in him – Scorpio – Trelawney has returned in the flesh? Some proclaim that as well as Scorpio himself.’
The question was asked this time very quietly, put forward in this unemphatic manner, I think, deliberately to startle. In fact there can be little doubt that Canon Fenneau had such a motive in view. I took the enquiry as matter-of-factly as possible, while accepting its unexpectedness as an impressive conversational broadside. It would have been bad manners to admit less.
‘You know Murtlock too?’
‘Since he was quite a little boy.’
Fenneau spoke reflectively, almost sentimentally.
‘What was he like as a child?’
‘A beautiful little boy. Quite exceptionally so. And very intelligent. He was called Leslie then.’
Fenneau smiled at the contrast between Murtlock’s nomenclature, past and present.
‘You still see him?’
‘From time to time. I have been seeing something of him recently. That was why I was aware he would be known to you. You may have read about certain antagonisms Scorpio was encountering. I believe a good deal never got into the papers. In consequence of this rumpus there was some talk of a television programme about the cult – one of the series After Strange Gods, in which Lindsay Bagshaw recently made a comeback, but perhaps you don’t watch television – and I was approached as a possible compère. I had to say that I had long been a friend of Scorpio’s, but could not publicly associate myself, even as a commentator, with his system, if it can be so called. Mr Bagshaw himself came to see me. It transpired, in the course of conversation, that Scorpio had visited you in the country.’
‘That was produced as a reference?
‘Mr Bagshaw seemed to think it a good one.’
I did not often see Bagshaw these days, but made a mental note to take the matter up with him, if we ran across each other.
‘Murtiock was one of your flock in his young days?’
That was an effort to set the helm, so far as Fenneau was concerned, in a more professionally clerical direction; not exactly a call to order, so much as a plea for better defined premises for discussion of Murtlock’s goings-on. If I were to be brought in by Bagshaw as a sort of reference for Murtlock’s respectability – on the strength of allowing the caravan to be put up for one night – I had a right to be told more about Murtlock. That he had been a pretty little boy might be a straightforward explanation for extending patronage to him, but, anyway as a clergyman, it seemed up to Fenneau to provide a less sensuous basis for their early association together. After further biographical background was given, enquiries could proceed as to whether Fenneau himself had set Murtlock on the path to become a mage. Fenneau was in no way unwilling to elaborate the picture.
‘Scorpio once sang in my choir. That was when I was in south London. His parents kept a newspaper shop. As ever in these cases, there was an interesting heredity. Both mother and father belonged to a small fanatical religious sect, but I won’t go into that now. It was with great difficulty that I secured their son for the choir. I should never have done so, had Leslie himself not insisted on joining. His will was stronger than theirs.’
‘Did you yourself introduce him to what might, in general terms, be called alchemy?’
‘On the contrary, Scorpio – Leslie as he was then – already