Anthony Powell: Hearing Secret Harmonies

‘I do not kill, if not killed.’

He seemed glad to have an opportunity to make that statement, gnomic to say the least. It sounded like a favourite apophthegm of a luminary of the cult to which they all belonged, the familiar ring of Shortcuts to the Infinite, Wisdom of the East, Analects of the Sages. For some reason the pronouncement seemed also one recently brought to notice. Had I read it not long before in print? The Murtlock standpoint, his domination over Fiona and the others, was becoming a little clearer in a certain sense, if remaining obscure in many others.

‘I don’t think we’ll be killed. Deaths crayfishing are comparatively rare.’

‘You spoke not of death, but of killing.’

‘The latter is surely apt to lead to the former?’

‘There is killing — death is an illusion.’

This was no help so far as deciding how the afternoon was to be spent.

‘The point is whether or not you would consider the killing of crayfish to be in Harmony?’

Once more his smile made me feel that it was I, rather than he, who was being silly.

‘Not all killing is opposed to Harmony.’

‘Let’s kill crayfish then.’

The odd thing was that he managed never to be exactly discourteous, nor even embarrassing, when he talked in this way. It was always close to a joke, though a joke not quite brought to birth. At least you did not laugh. You accepted on its own merits what he said, unintelligible or the reverse. I wondered — had not some forty years stretched between us — whether, as a contemporary, I should have been friends with Scorpio Murtlock. Indications were at best doubtful. That negative surmise was uninfluenced by his manner of talking, mystic and imperative, still less the style of dress. Both might have been acceptable at that age in a contemporary. In any case fashions of one generation, moral or physical, are scarcely at all assessable in terms of another. They cannot be properly equated. So far as they could be equated, the obstacles set up against getting on with Murtlock were in themselves negligible.

The objection to him, if objection there were, was the sense that he brought of something ominous. He would have been ominous — perhaps more ominous — in a City suit, the ominous side of him positively mitigated by a blue robe. His accents, liturgical, enigmatic, were also consciously rough, uncultivated. The roughness was imitated by Fiona and Henderson, when they remembered to do so. Rusty never uttered. No doubt Murtlock’s chief attraction was owed to this ominousness, something more sexually persuasive than good looks, spectacular trappings, even sententious observations. Certainly Fiona was showing an altogether uncharacteristic docility in allowing, without any sign of dispute or passive disapproval, someone else to make all the going. It might be assumed that she and Rusty were ‘in love’ with Murtlock. Probably Henderson shared that passion. Murtlock himself showed no sign of being emotionally drawn to any of them. In the light of what had been reported, it would have been surprising had he done so.

‘What do we need?’

He spoke this time in a tone of practical enquiry.

‘A circle of wire mesh kept together by a piece of iron. Something like the rim of an old saucepan or fryingpan does well.’

‘The circle, figure of perfection — iron, abhorred by demons.’

‘Those aspects may help too.’

‘They will.’

‘Then a piece of preferably rotting meat.’

‘Nothing far different from a sacrifice for a summoning.’

‘In this case summoning crayfish.’

‘Crayfish our sacrifice, rather.’

The requirements took a little time to get into order. A morsel of doubtful freshness was found among bones set aside for stock. The four of them joined in these preparations usefully, shaping the wire-netting, measuring out cords, fixing the tainted bait. When the trap was assembled Murtlock swung it gently through the air. Even in undertaking this trial of weight, which showed grasp of the sport, there was something of the swaying of a priest’s censer.

‘And now?’

‘The crayfish beds, such as they are, lie about a quarter of a mile away.’

The brook flowed through fields of poorish pasture, tangled with undergrowth as they sloped down more steeply to the line of the stream. Once the trap was slung among its stones Murtlock seemed satisfied. If the others were bored, they did not dare show it during the long period when there was no sign of a catch. Conversation altogether flagged. Murtlock himself possessed to a marked degree that characteristic — perhaps owing something to hypnotic powers — which attaches to certain individuals; an ability to impose on others present the duty of gratifying his own whims. It seemed to matter that Murtlock should get what he wanted — in this case crayfish — while, if the others were bored, that was their affair. No particular obligation was laid on oneself to prevent it. When at last the circle of iron showed signs of possessing the supposedly magical properties he had attributed, four crayfish caught, this modest final success, obviously pleasing to Murtlock, was for some reason exceptionally pleasing to oneself too. By then afternoon was turning to evening. Again he took the initiative.

‘We’ll go back now. There are things to do at the caravan. Barnabas must water the horses.’

‘Sure you won’t dine?’

‘Yes.’

‘I can easily run up something,’ said Isobel.

‘The day is one of limited fast.’

Fiona had not explained that when the dinner invitation had been issued some hours earlier.

‘Nothing else you want?’

‘No.’

‘A bottle of wine?’

Then I remembered that they abstained from alcohol.

‘No — have you a candle?’

‘We can lend you an electric torch.’

‘Only for a simple fire ritual.’

‘Come back to the house. We’ll look for candles.’

‘Barnabas can fetch it, if needed. It may not be.’

‘Don’t start a forest fire, will you?’

He smiled at that.

‘Only the suffusion of a few laurel leaves.’

‘As you see, laurel is available.’

‘Pine-cones?’

‘There are one or two conifers up the road to the right.’

‘We’ll go back then. Take the bucket, Barnabas. The gloves are on the ground, Fiona. Rusty, carry the trap — no, Rusty will carry it.’

None of them was allowed to forget for a moment that he or she was under orders. When the crayfishing paraphernalia had been brought together we climbed the banks that enclosed this length of the stream. After crossing the fields the path led through trees, the ground underfoot thick with wild garlic. At one point, above this Soho restaurant smell, the fox’s scent briefly reasserted itself. Here Murtlock stopped. Gazing towards a gap between the branches of two tall oaks, he put up a hand to shade his eyes. The others imitated his attitude. In his company they seemed to have little or no volition of their own. Murtlock’s control was absolute. The oak boughs formed a frame for one of the blue patches of sky set among clouds, now here and there flecked with pink. Against this irregular quadrilateral of light, over the meadows lying in the direction of Gauntlett’s farm a hawk hovered; then, likely to have marked down a prey, swooped off towards the pond. Murtlock lowered his arm. The others copied him.

‘The bird of Horus.’

‘Certainly.’

‘Do you often see hawks round here?’

He asked the question impatiently, almost angrily.

‘This particular one is always hanging about. He was near the house yesterday, and the day before. He’s a well-known local personality. Perhaps a retired kestrel from a ‘Thirties poem.’

The allusion might be obscure to one of his age. So much the better. Obscurity could be met with obscurity. A second later, either on the hawk’s account, or from some other disturbing factor in their vicinity — the quarry end of the pond — the duck flew out again. Rising at an angle acute as their former descent, the flight took on at once the disciplined wedge-shaped configuration used in all duck transit, leader at apex, main body following behind in semblance of a fan. Mounting higher, still higher, soaring over copper and green beechwoods, the birds achieved considerable altitude before a newly communicated command wheeled them off again in a fresh direction. Adjusting again to pattern, they receded into creamy cavernous billows of distant cloud, beyond which the evening sun drooped. Into this opaque glow of fire they disappeared. To the initiated, I reflected — to ancient soothsayers — the sight would have been vaticinatory.