That night Mark Stewart was waiting for Irvine Gould in the White Horse bar, and he was one or two drinks ahead of the amiable professor.
“Hi, Mark, sorry I’m late,” the gangly American said in his watered-down southern drawl.
Mark gave him a half-hearted salute. “I take it that you’ll have your customary pint of best English ale. Can’t take the stuff any more myself after German lagers. Too flat, too warm…” He ordered a pint at the bar. “But if you’re determined on researching the habits of the locals, then you might as well understand the reason for their flatulence.”
Professor Gould realised that Mark was masking his fear for his sister with an external bluffness that was typical of the British officer class.
“Any news today about Marda?”
Mark shook his head slowly. “Bugger all, professor. I’ve spent a week ingratiating myself with a bunch of gypsies who’ve been camped near the common for about six months. The police suggested I try them out. Some of the locals have visited their Madame Rosa. I had my fortune told, but nobody had seen Marda. Anyway, I don’t think she’d get involved with them.”
“What did the crystal ball say? A tall dark stranger would change your life?”
“No, it’s a lot of balls, but I thought I needed to jolly them along. I didn’t find out anything. The police aren’t too helpful, except for that old so-and-so in Shere, Constable Ben McGregor. He keeps sniffing around, hasn’t come up with much, but at least he’s trying. As for the rest…I don’t know. Anyway, how’s
The professor gulped down his pint. He had noticed how the locals tended to do just that. When in Rome…“As I think I told you,” he said, belching into his hand, “my interest in genealogy is only a sideline. Medieval church history is my bag, as the saying goes.” The professor sometimes liked to think he was “cool”; he believed he could “relate” to the flower-power movement, for example. “My bag, man,” he said self-mockingly, “my area of specialisation. They’ve got great church records in this area, especially in Guildford.”
The captain, joining in the self-parody, felt it was his duty to play up to the professor’s stereotypical image of the English gentleman. “Sounds a bit dull to me, old boy.”
“Not at all. Fourteenth-century England was as bloody and as lively as Vietnam. Your guys were fighting all over France, pacifying the Welsh and kicking the crap out of the Scots, although the Scots gave as good as they got. And the English were fighting each other. It’s no wonder that so many hooked up with the Church.”
Gould had already explained his interest in St. James’s church and its unique architectural heritage. “I’ve been working my butt off to finish a paper on the church and its anchoress.”
“Bit far from the sea for mermaids, aren’t we?”
“Everyone around here knows about the anchoress. You mean to say you don’t?”
“Only joking. English sense of humour.”
The academic ignored the jibe. “I can see your glass is empty. Let me get you another.”
Over the next round of drinks, Gould explained his work on female hermits, and Christine Carpenter in particular; as well as the possibility of an interesting French connection to Christine. The professor meant to keep his description short and sharp, but he was an academic, and his learning and enthusiasm resulted in a long monologue.
“Sorry, Mark, I must be boring you.”
“No, not at all, but I can’t understand why an eighteen-year-old bird would want to lock herself away in a bloody wall. Sounds a bit insane, not to mention insanitary, to me.”
“No, it’s a fascinating case, and I have some really interesting new material that I unearthed in Bordeaux. So few English-or American-scholars work on French medieval records. They were so bureaucratic then…”
“They still are, Irvine. They still are. I’m glad the Frogs are out of NATO, I can tell you…”
“Yep, can’t stand us Yanks running the show. The trouble with us is that we’re fixers, not preventers. We could have soothed de Gaulle’s feelings and prevented this cock-up. Same back home. I despair when a failed movie actor becomes governor of California. I know they’re weird out there but
Mark Stewart enjoyed teasing the professor, despite the fact that Gould’s lazy drawl made him suspect the man was falling asleep in mid-sentence.
“Politics and films are the same in the USA. Washington is one big B-movie, always looking for the happy ending.” Mark was trying to coax the anglophile into xenophobia.
“No, I guess you’re right. We could learn a lot from you Europeans, except how to stand up to the Russians. You guys are so weak the Russians could march to the Channel tomorrow.”
Mark let it go because he had learned from their earlier conversations that Gould was a passionate advocate of nuclear disarmament, who wanted to ditch the bomb and force the West Europeans to build up bigger conventional armies…until the Russians were ready to talk peace.
The professor continued, “But culture, that’s different. I wince when I see American tourists over here. Why do they all look fat and stupid? It’s better over there, honestly, but we still spend more on chewing gum than books. We can’t spell any more. All those fast-food signs, the letter ‘U’ for ‘you,’ and all that. America is becoming a monument to bad grammar and trivia. We measure our art in dollars, love in the number of orgasms, and churches have become supermarkets, or the other way around.”
Gould took another big swig of his beer.
“And the South! Heck, I regard myself as a loyal southerner, but it’s like Palestine before Christ; there are more prophets than rocks, and each one of them wants his own church. I just wish more architects would find God. If they do find a good design, in typical American fashion-if you’ve got a good thing, overdo it. I don’t know, Mark, all these prophets, all these lousy churches and yet God, the great architect, has died. God has expired and fifty thousand do-gooding social workers have sprung up in His place.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself, buddy,” Mark said in an atrocious imitation of Gould. “Your films are great. That’s what’ll change the world. I think that the future will have a slight American accent, lots of Coca-Cola and bugger-all communists.”
The professor laughed. “I hate the Coca-Colaisation of the world. That’s where the Gaullists are right. We need individuality. That’s why Sergeant Pepper is British. That’s why I love you Brits, you have so many eccentrics. Here eccentricity is tolerated, even encouraged. Back home, so much of being an American is not to let your individuality become a social embarrassment, a nuisance in the commercially conformist drive for happy consumers.”
“You’re not a Marxist, are you, Irv?”
The professor ignored the dig. Despite his attempts to ape the current flamboyant vocabulary, he was a scholar and too deeply immersed in his period to pass convincingly for a member of the beat generation. He was not a political activist, despite his hostility to American involvement in Vietnam and his pro-disarmament views. His real world was the Middle Ages, and he could not help but return to it. “I’ve found some incredible material on the Anchoress of Shere-Christine Carpenter-in an abbey near Bordeaux. I should get a few more articles and a conference paper out of it at least.”
The army officer did not understand the world of academic papers and conferences, which seemed a waste of time to him. But he appreciated the professor’s passionate energy, so he put on his best intently listening face.
“The trouble is, the local historian-amateur historian-a Catholic priest who’s written one or two minor things about Christine and the traditions of anchorites-male anchoresses, that is-is rather elusive. I wrote to him from the States, and we’ve met once. He lives just outside Shere. Now he’s surely an English eccentric, a bit of a recluse, I guess. Harmless nut, but he knows his stuff. Bit cocky about his knowledge of the Shere anchoress; might be able to make him eat his words, though. I called him to say that I’ve almost finished my paper and he gave me the brush-off. Weird. You’d think a priest would be vaguely polite, especially if he’s an historian who’s in my field. I’ll try again before I leave. Maybe I caught him on a bad day.”
The Englishman looked pensive. “I don’t remember meeting a priest when I went round with the reward leaflets,” Mark said. “What’s his name?”
“Duval. Father Duval. He lives at Hillside, an old rectory about a mile or so from here. Kind of difficult to find. Have you come across it in your wanderings?”
“No. I’ve checked out nearly every house or farm around Shere, using the electoral roll. But perhaps a priest
