‘Young man, read the paper I gave you. It is illegal to sell these things. One may now only give them to museums, not even to other individuals, and then only to museums that don’t make a profit from exhibiting them.’
‘It’s amazing!’
‘It stops law-abiding people in their tracks, but criminals take no notice. The world is as mediaeval as ever. Didn’t you know?’
‘I suspected it.’
His laugh cackled. ‘Help me lift the top tray onto the bed. I’ll show you some curiosities.’
The top tray had a rope handle at each end. He grasped one end, I the other and, at his say-so, we lifted together. The tray was heavy. Not good, from my point of view.
‘What’s the matter?’ he demanded. ‘Did that hurt you?’
‘Just the Armadillo,’ I apologised.
‘Do you want to sit down?’
‘No, I want to see your knives.’
He knelt on the floor again and opened more boxes, removing the bubble wrapping and putting each trophy into my hand for me to ‘feel the balance’.
His ‘curiosities’ tended to be ever more fearsome. There were several knives along the lines of the American trench knife (the genuine thing, 1918) and a whole terrifying group of second cousins to the Armadillo, knives with whole-hand grips, semicircular blades and rows of spikes, all dedicated to tearing an opponent to shreds.
As I gave each piece back to him he re-wrapped it and restored it to its box, tidying methodically as he went along.
He showed me a large crucifix fashioned in dark red cloisonne, handsome on a gold chain for use as a chest ornament, but hiding a dagger in its heart. He showed me an ordinary looking belt that one could use to hold up one’s trousers: ordinary except that the buckle, which slid easily out into my hand, proved to be the handle of a sharp triangular blade that could be pushed home to kill.
Professor Derry delivered a grave warning. ‘Thomas... ’ (we had progressed from ‘young man’) ‘Thomas, if a man — or woman — is truly obsessed with knives, you must expect that anything he or she carries on their person may be the sheath of a knife. One can get key rings, money clips, hair combs, all with hidden blades. Knives can be hidden even under the lapels of a coat, in special transparent sheaths designed to be stitched onto cloth. A dangerous fanatic will feed on this hidden power. Do you at all understand?’
‘I’m beginning to.’
He nodded several times and asked if I would be able to help him replace the top tray.
‘Before we do that, Professor, would you show me one more knife?’
‘Well, yes, of course.’ He looked vaguely at the seas of boxes. ‘What sort of thing do you want?’
‘Can I see the knife that Valentine Clark once gave you?’
After another of his tell-tale pauses, he said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘You did know Valentine, didn’t you?’ I asked.
He levered himself to his feet and headed back into his study, switching off the bedroom light as he went: to save electricity, I supposed.
I followed him, and we resumed our former positions in his wooden armchairs. He asked for my connection with Valentine, and I told him about my childhood, and about Valentine recently leaving me his books. ‘I read to him while he couldn’t see. I was with him not long before he died.’
Reassured by my account, Derry felt able to talk. ‘I knew Valentine quite well at one time. We met at one of those ridiculous fund-raising events, all for a good cause, where people stood around with tea or small glasses of bad wine, being civil and wishing they could go home. I hated those affairs. My dear wife had a soft heart and was always coaxing me to take her, and I couldn’t deny her... So long ago. So long ago.’
I waited through his wave of regret and loneliness, unable to comfort the nostalgia.
‘Thirty years ago, it must be,’ he said, ‘since we met Valentine. They were raising funds to stop the shipment of live horses to the continent to be killed for meat. Valentine was one of the speakers. He and I just liked each other... and we came from such different backgrounds. I began reading his column in the newspapers, though I wasn’t much interested in racing. But Valentine was so wise ... and still an active blacksmith... a gust of fresh air, you see, when I was more used to the claustrophobia of university life. My dear wife liked him, and we met him and his wife several times, but it was Valentine and I who talked . He came from one sort of world and I from another, and it was perhaps because of that that we could discuss things with each other that we couldn’t have mentioned to our colleagues.’
I asked without pressure, ‘What sort of things?’
‘Oh... medical, sometimes. Growing old. I would never have told you this once, but since I passed eighty I’ve lost almost all my inhibitions, I don’t care so much about things. I told Valentine I was having impotency problems, and I was not yet sixty. Are you laughing?’
‘No, sir,’ I said truthfully.
‘It was easy to ask Valentine for advice. One trusted him.’
‘Yes.’
‘We were the same age. I asked him if he had the same problem but he told me his problem was the opposite, he was aroused by young women and had difficulty in controlling his urges.’
‘ Valentine ?’ I exclaimed, astonished.
‘People hide things,’ Derry said simply. ‘My dear wife didn’t really mind that I could no longer easily make love to her, but she used to joke to other people about how sexy I was. Such a dreadful word! She wanted people to admire me, she said.’ He shook his head in love and sorrow. ‘Valentine told me a doctor to go to. He himself knew of all sorts of ways to deal with impotence. He told me he’d learned a lot of them from stud farms! He said I must be more lighthearted and not think of impotence as an embarrassment or a tragedy. He told me it wasn’t the end of the world.’ He paused. ‘Because of Valentine, I learned to be content.’
‘He was great to so many people,’ I said.
The professor nodded, still reminiscing. ‘He told me something I’ve never been able to verify. He swore it was true. I’ve always wondered ... If I ask you something, Thomas, will you answer me truthfully?’
‘Of course.’
‘You may be too young.’
‘Try me.’
‘In confidence.’
‘Yes.’
Nothing, I’d told Moncrieff, was ever off the record. But confessions were, surely?
The professor said, ‘Valentine told me that restricting the flow of oxygen to the brain could result in an erection.’
He waited for my comment, which took a while to materialise. I hesitantly said, ‘Er... I’ve heard of it.’
‘Tell me, then.’
‘I believe it’s a perversion that comes under the general heading of auto-erotic mania. In this case, self-inflicted partial asphyxia.’
He said impatiently, ‘Valentine told me that thirty years ago. What I’m asking you is, does it work?’
‘First hand, I don’t know.’
He said with a touch of bitterness, ‘Because you’ve never needed to find out?’
‘Well, not yet, no.’
‘Then... has anyone told you?’
‘Not first hand.’
He sighed. ‘I could never face doing it. It’s one of those things I’m never going to know.’
‘There are others?’
‘Don’t be stupid, Thomas. I am a mediaevalist. I know the facts that were written down. I try to feel my way into that lost world. I cannot smell it, hear it, live it. I can’t know its secret fears and its assumptions. I’ve spent a lifetime learning and teaching at second hand. If I went to sleep now and awoke in the year fourteen hundred, I wouldn’t understand the language or know how to cook a meal. You’ve heard the old saying that if Jesus returned to do a replay of the Sermon on the Mount, no one now living would understand him, as he would be speaking ancient Hebrew with a Nazareth carpenter’s accent? Well, I’ve wasted a lifetime on an unintelligible past.’
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