Hearing Secret Harmonies - Anthony Powell [72]
‘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 sexual 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 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