Michael Cox - The Meaning of Night

The bare bones of the plot, at least, were now clear to me: my mother and her friend, Laura Tansor, who was in the early stages of pregnancy, had gone to France together; I had been born there, and had been brought back to England as the son of Simona Glyver, not of Lady Tansor. But the motives and passions that lay behind this simple sequence of events were still hidden from me, in an unknown number of secret places. How could they now be brought into the light?

Towards her who had sat on my bed every night as a child, who had walked with me on the cliff-top to watch the sun setting, and who had been the axis on which my little world had revolved, I felt both bitterness and pity: bitterness for keeping the truth from me; pity for what she must have suffered to maintain her friend’s secret. Her actions had been a kind of betrayal, for which I must censure her; and yet what better mother could I have had?

There was still so much to discover, but, slowly, I came to an acceptance: I was not the son of Captain and Mrs Edward Glyver. My blood was not theirs. It connected me instead to other places and times, and to another name – an ancient and distinguished name. I had nothing of the man I had thought was my father in me, nothing of the woman I had called my mother. The eyes that were reflected in my mirror on rising every day were not her eyes, as I had always liked to think. But whose were they? Whom did I resemble – my real father, my real mother, or my dead brother? Who was I?

The questions went round and round in my head, day and night. I would wake from fitful sleep in a state of extreme agitation, as if the ground had been cut away from under my feet and I was falling through infinite space. I would then get up and wander the silent house, sometimes for hours on end, trying to repudiate this dreadful feeling of abandonment. But I could not. I did not belong here, in this place I had previously called home, where the past no longer seemed to hold any meaning.

Little by little, I began to examine my situation with a clearer and cooler eye. I did not know yet why this thing had been done – that knowledge would only come later, and gradually; but if what I had deduced from my mother’s journals were true, then a simple fact, of extraordinary consequence, would follow: I was the heir , lawfully conceived, to one of the most ancient and powerful families in England .

It seemed absurd. Surely there must be some other explanation? But, after returning again and again to the journals, I could reach no other conclusion. Yet what use was the knowledge that I was convinced I now possessed? Who else would believe that what my mother – I still could not call her by any other name – had written was the honest truth, and not some fantastic fiction? Even if believed, how could it be proved? Unsubstantiated imputations, uncorroborated possibilities – nothing more. Such, surely, would be the immediate verdict if I went to law. But where was the substantiation? Where the corroboration? The questions began to multiply once more, hammering insistently in my brain until I thought I would go quite mad.

I looked again at the synoptic account of the Tansor peerage in Burke’s Dictionary . Four densely packed columns contained the names and pedigrees of people of whom I had never before heard, but who I must now call my ancestors. Maldwin Duport, the 1st Baron Tansor, summoned to Parliament in 1264; Edmund Duport, the 7th Baron, made an Earl under Henry IV, but who died without issue; Humfrey Duport, the 10th Baron, attainted and executed for treason in 1461; Charles Duport, the 20th Baron, who turned Papist and went into exile with James II; *and then my nearer relatives – William Duport, the 23rd Baron and founder of the great Library at Evenwood; and at last my father, Julius Duport, the 25th Baron, who had succeeded to the title because of the death of his older brother; and my own deceased brother, Henry Hereward. I began to fill a note-book with their names, the dates of their births and deaths, and with every fact concerning their lives that I could glean from Burke, or from other authorities to which I then had access.

How strange it was, how infinitely strange, to consider myself as a member of this ancient line! But would I ever be given a place in some future epitome? Would a curious heraldic scholar, a hundred years hence, look into Burke and read of Edward Charles Duport, born on the 9th of March 1820, in Rennes, Ille-et-Vilaine, France? Only if I could find some source of unequivocal and incontrovertible proof to supplement the indirect and oblique testimony of my mother’s journals. Only then.Concluding the entry in Burke were the following notes on the Tansor peerage:Creation—By writ of summons, 49 HEN. III, 14 Dec., 1264. Arms—Quarterly, 1st and 4th Or three piles enarched throughout issuant from the dexter base gules; 2nd, Per pale indented ermine and ermines on a chevron per pale indented or and argent five roses gules barbed and seeded proper; 3rd, Argent gutty d’huile a lion’s rear gamb erased azure and transfixed through the thigh by a sword in bend sinister proper hilted pommelled and quilloned or. Crest— A demi man crowned royally proper crined and bearded argent vested in a robe gules lined ermine holding in his dexter hand a sceptre and in his sinister an orb gold. Supporters —Two lion-sagittarii each drawing a bow and arrow proper and banded about the temples with a fillet azure. Motto —FORTITUDINE VINCIMUS.

The Tansor arms were illustrated at the head of the entry. Contemplating the unusual device of the lion-sagittarii, *I knew, with redoubled certainty, that what I had inferred from my mother’s journals was the truth. On the wooden box that had once contained my two hundred sovereigns were displayed the same arms.

Fortitudine Vincimus † was the Tansor motto. It would now be mine.

From time to time, Tom would call and we would talk desultorily for half and hour or so. But I could see his dismay as he surveyed the sea of paper spreading across the work-table and spilling over onto the floor; and I also saw that he had observed the darting look of wild absorption in my eyes, which all too obviously signalled an eagerness to return to my work – to which I never attached any specific character—as quickly as possible. He had not entirely forgiven me for passing over the opportunity to go to Mesopotamia with Professor S—, and was concerned, I could see, that I was making no attempt to secure any other form of employment. My capital had diminished more quickly than I had anticipated, largely as a result of my years abroad; debts left by my mother, which she had been keeping at bay with her writing, had also been paid out of it, and it was now becoming imperative for me to find a source of regular income.

‘What’s happening to you, Ned?’ Tom asked one March morning, as I was walking him to the door. ‘It pains me to see you like this, shut up here day after day, with no firm prospect in view.’

I could not tell him that I had in fact formed the clearest possible ambition. Instead, I prevaricated by saying that I planned to go to London to find some suitable temporary position until a permanent course of action presented itself.

He looked at me doubtfully. ‘That is not a plan, Ned,’ he said, ‘but you must do what you think best. London, certainly, will offer many more opportunities than Sandchurch, and I would urge you to make your move soon. The longer you stay cooped up here, the harder it will be for you to break away.’

The following week, he called again and insisted that I leave the house and take some air, for in truth I had not stepped outside for several days.

We walked along the undercliff, and then down to the smooth area of wet sand washed by the waves. The sky was a perfect blue – the blue of my Heidelberg memories – and the sun shone in brilliant majesty, throwing down glancing points of light onto the ever-swelling wave-tops, as if God himself were casting a myriad new-born stars across the face of the waters.