Anthony Powell: Hearing Secret Harmonies

‘What message do the birds foretell?’

Even allowing for that sort of thing being in his line, Murtlock’s question, put just at the moment when the thought was in my own mind, brought a slight sense of shock. He uttered the words softly, as if now gratified at being able to accept my train of thought as coherent, in contrast with earlier demur on the subject of death and killing. Even with intimates that sort of implied knowledge of what is going on in one’s head, recognition of unspoken thoughts passing through the mind — in its way common enough — can be a little disconcerting, much more so to be thought-read by this strange young man. The ducks’ coalescence into the muffled crimsons of sunset had been dramatic enough to invoke reflection on mysterious things, and such a subject as ornithomancy was evidently of the realm to which he aspired. The process was perhaps comparable with the intercommunication practised by the birds themselves, their unanimous change of direction, well ordered regrouping, rapid new advance, disciplined as troops drilling on the square; more appositely, aircraft obeying a radioed command.

This well disciplined aspect of duck behaviour must have been partly what entranced the generals, when with such fervour both of them had demonstrated the triangular formation. The evening came back vividly. Duties of the day over — I had been conducting officer with a group of Allied military attaches — we had been sitting in the bar of the little Normandy auberge where we were billeted. Bobrowski had almost upset his beer in demonstrating the precise shape of the flight. Philidor was calmer. Some years after the war — he was in exile, of course, from his own country — Bobrowski had been knocked down by a taxi, and killed. Oddly enough Philidor, too, had died in a car accident — so a Frenchman at their Embassy said — having by then attained quite high rank. Perhaps such deaths were appropriate to men of action, better than a slow decline. Aware that a more than usually acute consciousness of human mortality had descended, I wondered for a moment whether Murtlock was responsible for that sensation. It was not impossible.

‘I was thinking of the Roman augurs too.’

‘They also scrutinized the entrails of animals for prophecy.’

He added that with a certain relish.

‘Sometimes — as the Bard remarks — the sad augurs mocked their own presage.’

One had to fight back. Murtlock made no comment. I hoped the quotation had floored him. The rest of the walk back to where the caravan was parked took place in silence and without incident. At the caravan our ways would divide, if the four of them were not to enter the house. Separation was delayed by the appearance of Mr Gauntlett advancing towards us.

‘Good afternoon, Mr Gauntlett.’

Mr Gauntlett, wearing a cowslip in his buttonhole, greeted us. He showed no sign whatever of thinking our guests at all unusually dressed, nodding to them in a friendly manner, without the least curiosity as to why the males should be wearing blue robes.

‘Happen you’ve seen my old bitch, Daisy, this way, Mr Jenkins? Been gone these forty-eight hours, and I don’t know where she’s to.’

‘We haven’t, Mr Gauntlett.’

A farmer, now retired as close on eighty, Mr Gauntlett lived in an ancient tumbledown farmhouse not far away, where — widower, childless, sole survivor of a large family — he ‘did for himself’, a life that seemed to suit him, unless rheumatics caused trouble. His house, associated by local legend with a seventeenth-century murder, was said to be haunted. Mr Gauntlett himself, though he possessed a keen sense of the past, and liked to discuss such subjects as whether the Romans brought the chestnut to Britain, always asserted that the ghosts had never inconvenienced him. This taste for history could account for a habit of allowing himself archaisms of speech, regional turns of phrase, otherwise going out of circulation. In not at all disregarding the importance of style in facing life — even consciously histrionic style — Mr Gauntlett a little resembled General Conyers. They both shared the same air of distinction, firmness, good looks that resisted age, but above all this sense of style. Mr. Gauntlett had once told me that during service (in the first war) with the Yeomanry, he had found himself riding through the Khyber Pass, a background of vast mountains, bare rocks, fierce tribesmen, that seemed for some reason not at all out of accord with his own mild manner.

‘Maybe Daisy’s littered in the woods round here, as she did three years gone. Then she came home again, and made a great fuss, for to bring me to a dingle down by the water, where she’d had her pups. The dogs round about knew of it. They’d been barking all night for nigh on a week to drive foxes and the like away, but I haven’t heard ‘em barking o’ nights this time.’

‘We’ll keep an eye out for Daisy, Mr Gauntlett. Tell her to go home if we find her, report to you if we run across a nest of her pups. We’ve all been crayfishing.’

I said that defensively, speaking as if everyone under thirty always wore blue robes for that sport. I felt a little diminished by being caught with such a crew by Mr Gauntlett.

‘Ah?’

‘We landed four.’

Mr Gauntlett laughed.

‘Many a year since I went out after crayfish. Used to as a boy. Good eating they make. Well, I must go on to be looking for the old girl.’

He was already moving off when Murtlock addressed him.

‘Seek the spinney by the ruined mill.’

He spoke in an odd toneless voice. Mr Gauntlett, rare with him, showed surprise. He looked more closely at Murtlock, evidently struck not so much by eccentricity of dress as knowledge of the neighbourhood.

‘Ah?’

‘Go now.’

Murtlock gave one of his smiles. Immediately after speaking those two short sentences a subtle change in him had taken place. It was as if he had fallen into — then emerged from — an almost instantaneous trance. Mr Gauntlett was greatly pleased with this advice.

‘I’ll be off to the spinney, instead of the way I was going. That’s just where Daisy might be. And my thanks to you, if I find her.’

‘If you find her, make an offering.’

‘Ah?’

‘It would be well to burn laurel and alder in a chafing dish.’

Mr Gauntlett laughed heartily. The suggestion seemed not to surprise him so much as might be expected.

‘I’ll put something extra in the plate at church on Sunday. That’s quite right. It’s what I ought to do.’

‘Appease the shades of your dwelling.’

Mr Gauntlett laughed again. I do not know whether he took that as an allusion to his haunted house, or even if such were indeed Murtlock’s meaning. Whatever intended, he certainly conveyed the impression that he was familiar with the neighbourhood. Perhaps he had already made enquiries about haunted houses round about, the spinney by the old mill entering into some piece of information given. Murtlock would have been capable of that. Mr Gauntlett turned again to continue his search for Daisy. Then, suddenly thinking of another matter, he paused a moment.

‘Is there more news of the quarry and The Fingers, Mr Jenkins?’

‘They’re still hoping to develop in that direction,’ said Isobel.

‘Ah?’

‘We mustn’t take our eye off them.’

‘No, for sure, that’s true.’

Mr Gauntlett repeated his farewells, and set off again, this time in the direction of the old mill.

‘How on earth did you know about Daisy being at the spinney?’

‘The words came.’

Murtlock spoke this time almost modestly. He seemed to attach no great importance to the advice given, in fact almost to have forgotten the fact that he had given it. He was clearly thinking now of quite other matters. This was where we should leave them. Henderson had set down the bucket containing the crayfish. Rusty was sitting on the grass beside the trap. When Fiona handed over the gardening gloves she allowed a faint gesture in the direction of humdrum usage to escape her.