Kingsley Amis - Dear Illusion - Selected Stories

Luncheon, consisting mainly of toothsome and expertly cooked river trout, was pleasant enough, enlivened moreover by much interesting talk from Macneil on the subject of local history; he has his own style of being agreeable. After the meal, as arranged, he took me over to the family tomb in the grounds. This, especially the interior, proved sadly unspectacular. It was strange none the less to see a plate in the wall with the legend ‘ Segnu Aleku Valvazor , 1841–1891’ and a Latin text mentioning eternal rest. Macneil told me that when — but this is another piece of talk which I feel instinctively calls for ipsissima verba .

‘Not more than a couple of weeks after the burial,’ he said, ‘a party from the village came up and broke open the coffin and found… a corpse. A corpse showing unmistakable signs of decay, not Aleku in his habit as he lived. There were no more rumours after that.’

I was startled, and exclaimed, ‘It took a damned lot of nerve to lead that coffin-breaking expedition.’

‘Yes, nobody seemed to know who did. Not a local man, it was said.’

‘When was this place built?’ I asked him.

‘In its present form it was completed in 1891. You’re quite right, Mr Hillier, the year of the baron’s death, by a melancholy coincidence much remarked on. No sooner had the Count prepared for a return to traditional practice by entombing the family dead outside the castle proper than his younger brother…’ He spread his hands.

‘Then there’s a burial chamber in side the castle proper.’

‘Oh indeed, an extensive one. I’d be happy to show it to you in the morning. I must be getting back to the library now; we take a large number of journals and I do so hate getting behind with them.’

We were strolling quite companionably towards the castle when he asked me something that filled me with suspicion on the instant.

‘Are your whereabouts known to your people in England, Mr Hillier?’

I replied carefully and truthfully, ‘No, at this moment not a soul has more than the vaguest idea of where I am.’

‘Dear dear,’ he said, ‘a most unwise omission in a country like this. If I may, I’ll send a man to the telegraph station. Tomorrow.’

Whether he does or he doesn’t, my vaguely based conviction that nobody here should know of this letter, much less be given it to post, has become intensified. I’ll be sure to get it off to you myself in the morning, along with one to Connie. Not that the story’s over yet by a long chalk, I bet.

I write this in the parlour I described to you earlier. Outside, the colours of the lawns and shrubs are beginning to fade as evening approaches; Magda has just brought me a lamp. Still Lukretia has not returned. With Macneil’s permission I brought here the library copy of De Mortuis Viventibus by Lartius Calasanctius, all of whose works I thought I knew; this one I’d never even heard of, but I’m too strung up to do as much as open it. Shameful of me. Perhaps I’ll be more capable tomorrow.

I’ll write again as soon as I have more news. Good luck with the James Barnes Hitchens prize.

Yours aye,

Stephen

VI — Countess Valvazor’s Journal

1 September 1925 —… The last was no dream, but a memory of that fatal night, all except the moment when Stephen was there in my place, helpless as I was, and I woke cursing Aleku for a devil and a hound of hell. Now I have fed my hatred enough, and can come to the events of this very evening.

After making my arrangements with Magda, I found Stephen in the parlour with one of Robert’s ancient tomes on his knee. He sprang up and we kissed with every show of passion, but I immediately sensed a constraint in him. And yet it was he who, breaking the embrace, gave a look of misgiving and mistrust.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked gravely. ‘Is it your nurse?’

‘I stayed with her till she died,’ I told him, ‘that’s why I’m so late. It was quite peaceful. A good death. I had to go, Stephen.’

‘Of course.’ His voice was so gentle that I wanted to kiss his feet.

‘I’m sorry I rushed off without seeing you, but I just didn’t know…’

‘I understand.’

I tried to brace myself. ‘If I were to ask you to go now, this evening, not as far as Arelanópli but farther than Nuvakastra, and wait there for me to join you, and if I said it was very important to both of us for you to do that, would you go?’

‘After being told nothing more? Not even just how important “very important” is?’

‘Meaning we… might never see each other again.’

‘“Might”?’ he said, still gently. ‘How likely is “might”? Nine chances in ten? One in a hundred?’

‘Oh, darling…’ I felt great tenderness for him, and great exasperation. ‘You’d have to have it all spelled out, wouldn’t you?’

‘Yes. Otherwise I might feel I was being got out of the way for some sinister purpose.’

‘Sinister? I don’t understand, Stephen.’

Now his look was stern. ‘Neither do I. Last night I saw the funeral of Baron Aleku Valvazor in the year 1891.’

‘You were remembering the picture in my sitting-room. That sort of thing often happens in dreams.’

‘This was no dream. I saw it.’

‘That’s impossible,’ I insisted.

‘It happened. I watched it from your bedroom window. At least that’s where I started.’

‘How could you see anything?’ I asked in bewilderment. ‘It was dark.’

‘Outside it was light. When the… performance was over I found I was standing in a strange, completely bare room in some other part of the castle. I had the devil’s own job finding my way back, in fact—’

I interrupted him. ‘All right, what if it did happen? How could it have anything to do with me and my sinister purposes?’

‘It has something to do with you all right. You were there. I recognized you.’

‘I was where?’

‘At the funeral. In 1891.’

‘Nonsense,’ I said coolly. ‘I was in somebody’s dream in 1925. Somebody I had just made a certain impression on, if I’m not flattering myself. But I’m going to humour you. Let’s suppose you’re right: you weren’t dreaming, you saw Aleku’s funeral, though I’m far from sure what that means. You couldn’t have seen me at it, because I wasn’t born then. But you might quite well have seen this person.’ And I opened my locket and showed him mummy’s picture. ‘My mother. She was there.’

‘It was you,’ he said, but he said it with lessened conviction.

‘You took it to be me. Of course you did. You would take it to be me rather than a person you’d never so much as thought about. Aren’t we always doing that? Taking someone for a person we know, even when the person doesn’t look anything like the someone? Haven’t you often done that? In your dreams?’

The truth of that observation obviously struck him with some force, and turned him almost sullen for the moment. ‘Well, how did I get to that strange room?’

‘Darling, you walked there in your sleep. How else could you have got there? I couldn’t have carried you.’

‘No’, and a rueful grin.

‘That’s better,’ I said, trying to sound as much like an English governess as I could. ‘Now let’s have no more childish talk of sinister purposes.’ With that I kissed him in a very ungovernessy fashion.

A little later he said, ‘All right — devilish odd, though,’ but I knew already that I had disarmed his suspicions. With his cheek against mine he went on softly, ‘But what was your real purpose? In trying to get rid of me?’

‘That was rather silly. I wasn’t trying to get rid of you. Did I sound like it?’

‘Not much, no.’