The Earl told the vicar about the events leading up to Maloney’s death: the deep suspicion he was under, his inability to produce any defence, his escape on the motorbike and secret return by night, his attempt to break into the Earl’s rooms, his fall from the second storey and the horrible manner of his dying. Though no one knew what his religious affiliation was, the Earl ordered an Anglican burial, to take place that very day, and delegated the arrangements to Osborne. No one knew of any family or friends, as Maloney had never mentioned any, and Rogers advised that he had received no letters during his stay at Llanvygan.
The Earl also repeated his request to me to carry out what we had agreed the day before, and to do so without delay. It then occurred to us that we couldn’t catalogue the Persian codices, as planned, since neither of us knew Persian. We could understand nothing beyond the pictures. He suggested that I should select the five that seemed from their illustrations to be the oldest and most valuable, and take them to London.
I did this, and packed my bags. We had lunch, and I took my leave of the Earl, promising him that I would return with the manuscript as soon as I could.
Next came the touching farewell to Cynthia. It was our first parting. Choking with emotion and British reserve, she stammered:
“I do hope you’ve enjoyed your stay with us … ” And we were both overcome by an embarrassment that conveyed more than eloquence.
I arrived in London that evening, at my little hotel among the endless rows of similar establishments around the British Museum. Having unpacked, I went down to the dining room to face the compulsory roast beef and the gruesome vegetables that always accompanied it.
After the meal I sat gloomily stirring an orange liquid and debating whether the inability of the English to make a decent cup of coffee was the result of Puritanical Methodist inhibition, when a hand — the heavy hand of a stone statue — descended on my shoulder.
I looked up and discovered an old acquaintance standing over me. I felt mildly pleased to see her. It was Lene Kretzsch, who was studying history at Oxford on a Prussian state scholarship. Her vacations were usually spent in London, working in the British Museum, during which time she would stay at my hotel. As a fellow-researcher in the Reading Room I was a sort of colleague, and we were good friends.
However, I also went in some trepidation of her. If I felt low I would avoid going back to the hotel for supper in case she joined me for a beer afterwards. It wasn’t that she was ugly. On the contrary, she was quite a handsome woman in her own substantial way, and she was always a hit with men. You might even say she was attractive, but she belonged to that class of girl whose stockings have just laddered, or who has just lost a button, or whose blouse has burst open, giving a chap the impression that she was in a state of non-stop physical development.
The awe she inspired in me was the result of her personality. Lene Kretzsch was Gemütmensch—thoroughly genial — and really just a large lump of kindness and generosity, but at the same time she was a totally modern woman, always two weeks ahead of the latest thinking. She hated sentimentality and romantic slush, and was a militant advocate of the Neue Sachlichkeit—the ‘New Objectivity’.
This was how our friendship began: I set myself on fire and she put me out. I’d been sitting by the hearth with The Times. I’ve never been able to handle English newspapers — apparently one has to be born with the knack of folding these productions into the microscopic dimensions achieved by the natives — and, as I flicked a page over, the entire room filled with newsprint.
Just at that moment, it seems, the young bellboy topped up the fire, rather carelessly. The Times burst into flames, and I took on a resemblance to the Burning Bush. The details escape me. All I know is that in a trice Lene was towering over me, stamping on the blazing pages, sousing me with whatever cups of tea were on hand in the room and tugging at my hair in the belief it was being singed. Then she hauled me off to her room, washed me down, stripped me naked and dressed me in some extremely masculine woman’s garment, which was far too big for me anyway — and all before I could murmur my undying gratitude. Then she gave me a thorough scolding for being so inept.
From that day on Lene could not be persuaded that I was anything other than helpless, hapless, and clumsy, and that I would rapidly come to grief unless someone took charge of me. Which she did.
Every day she would burst into my room without knocking (what’s the point of knocking, anyway?) and hurl my clothes around the room in order to sew a few buttons back on. She warmed my milk for the night. She sharpened my safety razor. In the Reading Room she would descend on me as I was about to leave, bundle my notes together and tuck my briefcase under my arm. If I didn’t hang on to it very firmly she would carry it back herself.
The situation got rather worrying until luckily, one specially warm summer’s day, it occurred to her that the heat of London was bad for me, so she packed my bags, booked a ticket for the train and despatched me to Scotland.
This was not a bad idea. I had a fine time touring round the lochs and did not return until after the start of term, when she was safely back in Oxford. However we still met in the vacations and our friendship continued, though in a less tempestuous form. Fortunately for me, Lene liked to change her protégés on a regular basis.
This was the other thing about her that shocked me: her boundless and wide-ranging love life. Now I’m no Puritan, and I take the view that everyone’s love life is their own affair. I also realise that Lene’s willingness to give herself was simply part of her larger benevolence and generosity. It was her unprecedented versatility that terrified me.
For two days she might be seen with a Chinese engineer, then for a week with a Canadian farmer, who made way for a French gigolo, who would himself be replaced by an ageing German classical philologist on tour and a Polish ping-pong champion, simultaneously. And all these lovers, and myself, would be told about all the other lovers, in hair-raising detail and with a total absence of emotion, though she did make occasional reference to das Moralische, which versteht sich von selbst (I never quite discovered where the self-knowledge came in) — but it was all perfectly objective, quite terrifyingly objective.
And behold, no sooner was I back from Llanvygan than I was again firmly under her wing. After heaping relatively mild abuse on my appearance, she hauled me off for a beer. I never dared compete with the quantity of beer she drank, or the number of cigarettes she smoked. Through a haze of gentle melancholy I sat until closing time observing her epic consumption and listening to her tales: how she had pulled two Oxford athletes out of the river, how she saved a wealthy Scot from moral ruin after he had succumbed to an uncharacteristic fit of generosity, and how she seduced a Professor of Theology who had preserved his innocence until the age of forty-five.
At this stage I had no idea what impact her militant personality would have on my Welsh adventure. Had there been none, I should not have said so much about her, for I too am a qualified enthusiast of the ‘New Objectivity’ and am not in favour of purely incidental characters. But let’s take things one at a time.
The next day I set out to execute my commission.
It was not a difficult one. When I called on the Director he had already received the Earl’s letter. He explained to me, at great length, that it was quite unprecedented in the history of the Museum for an item in its possession to be given away. However, in view of the Earl’s exceptional role as a contributor to the collection … and he waxed lyrical about the treasures the Earl had presented when he had succeeded to the title.