‘I’ll be waiting at the corner
Of the bottom of the street,
In case a certain little lady goes by.
Oh me, oh my,
In case a certain little lady goes by’
sang Carl May. ‘I wish I’d learned the ukelele,’ he said, ‘but in the circles in which I moved when a child it wasn’t done!’
He and Bethany were in the May Gallery. The morning sun shone in the east window and made the place almost cheerful. Workmen – they wore glasses and were elderly – gently inched in from outside a large earthenware vat dating from the sixteenth dynasty, the great days of Egypt. The hieroglyphics were worn: it seemed to the untrained eye a rough-hewn if workmanlike artefact.
‘Why’s it so special?’ asked Bethany. She wondered how many questions she’d asked in the last few weeks, in order to make Carl feel good by supplying her with answers. She wondered how she was going to get out of this. She wondered if Hughie Scotland could help. She was frightened of Carl May, who seemed to get happier and jollier with every day that passed. She didn’t even correct him, saying, ‘I’m leaning on a lamp post on the corner of the street,’ and just as well, as it happened.
‘This jar contains the dust of ancient liver,’ said Carl May. ‘Liver cells are rich in DNA. The ancient Egyptians mummified their dead to keep them in good shape for their journey to the next world. Nothing died unless you wanted it to in that fair land, under the wide Mesopotamian sky: everything went on for ever: so there was nothing to fear. The God Osiris died only as the sun set: he rose again. The priestess aroused the God and gave birth to the King and all was well in the world of men. And because there was no fear of death, no terror, simply a passing on, agreeable or disagreeable as it might be, all men were good, and all women too, and kind. Sometimes a bit stupid, of course. But they didn’t shut their children up in kennels, or beat them, or torture them, or rape them, to express their disapproval of life, because life simply was, infinitely variable, infinitely long-lasting, and there was happiness upon earth. And the secret of it all lies there in the dust of all those livers, which are so very rich in DNA.’
‘How do you know it’s people’s livers? Couldn’t it just be dust?’
‘Imperial Caesar, dead and turned to clay,’ said Carl May, ‘could stop a hole to keep the dust away. Dear little Bethany, we know it’s liver because the hieroglyphics say so. Embalmers sucked the brains of the dead out through the nostrils, and the entrails out through I’ve forgotten where, including the liver, and saved them all in case of need in great big separate labelled jars like this one. This is a liver jar.’
Bethany felt quite dizzy and blackness made clouds around her. She’d never fainted in all her life, not even when her father had suggested she made a one-armed man happier than he ever had been in his life before – a service the complete in body must always surely be happy to render the incomplete – and she’d seen her father’s choice for her had a hook instead of a hand, and she was only fourteen, but she thought she might faint now.
‘I knew this existed,’ said Carl May. ‘That moony fellow Isaac King tried to say it didn’t, but I knew he was lying. They had it at Liverpool University all the time. The pool of livers! I think we must get old Holly over and show him what we’ve found. Would you like that?’
Bethany hadn’t liked the way Dr Holly had looked at her. She didn’t much like the way anyone looked at her. At first she had thought the looks were admiration and envy; but now everyone seemed to think she was somehow cheating. She didn’t know what she was supposed to have done. Carl May was being good to her. She was being good to him. Yet somehow she seemed to have stepped out of line. At home, there had never been this particular feeling of unrightness. Things at home were sometimes sleazy and sordid; here they never were: servants cleaned the bath and changed sheets: cats never passed worms on the table: but luxury seemed to make things worse, not better. Nothing was real. Perhaps she was just homesick.
‘I liked Dr Holly very much,’ said Bethany. ‘It would be good to see him.’
And Carl May wondered, now what is the matter with this fragrant girl, this Scotland hand-on, this product of the outer suburbs, this despoiler of my celibacy, this firm-fleshed luxury, this stirrer to pleasure, this brightness which flickers on and off like the sun behind a yew tree on a windy day, this little liar – what is the matter with her? I know what it is, she has a lover. She can’t be bothered to turn the brightness on for me. She’s thinking of him and anything will do for me.
‘Is something the matter, Bethany?’
‘It was the thought of all those livers mixed up, that’s all; it made me feel quite faint.’
‘I hope they’re not too mixed up, Bethany, or we’ll have a hard task in front of us. I hope they’re still nicely layered so we can tell one individual from the next. Are you sure that’s all that the matter is?’
‘Well, Uncle Carl…’
‘Don’t call me uncle, Bethany.’
‘Sorry. It’s what I used to call my father’s friends, back home. And talking about my dad, I had a phone call from him yesterday. He’s not too well.’
Then he knew she was lying. She’d had no such phone call. Every morning at Britnuc Carl May was handed a private pink folder, in which were reported the substance of all phone calls made and received at Eton Square, the King’s House, the Coustain residence, and many another household besides, not to mention industrial firms and government departments. Knowledge is power, as Carl May had been told at school: ‘Scientas est potentas’. Carl May the sceptical, Carl May the shrewd, looking up the original text, found ‘scientas est potestas’ instead. Knowing is to be empowered. More like it. But, understanding why the misprint was preferred, he told no one; just hugged the empowering truth to himself. Truth was power. Truth was so disagreeable you could, if you had the stomach for it, keep it pretty much to yourself. Joanna his wife was one of the very few who understood these things; in her bones, in her blood, for no good reason: in her genes: Joanna May, Carl May’s ex-wife, to whom he had trusted his being; here in this very room: this place, no longer young, no longer his, no good to him; but empowering him, proving yet again the world was what he knew it was, the empire of despair, beneath the little tent of blue that men call sky.
‘She must die, or she’ll go on to ruin other men,’ said Carl May aloud, or just about. The removal men from Carling Antique and Rarities Specialist Transport let slip the giant jar – they felt it had a life of its own, sometimes, but hoped they were wrong – only a couple of inches, but it made quite a bang on the cold marble floor. Carl May seemed not to notice. They breathed again. Carling Transport was a subsidiary of Garden Developments. They specialized also in the moving of rare trees and plants.
‘I’m sorry, darling, I didn’t quite catch that,’ said Bethany.
‘Just something from Othello, my dear.’
‘Oh. We didn’t do Othello in diction.’
‘No,’ said Carl May. ‘I daresay it’s not often done in girls’ schools.’
‘Can I go home to see my dad, since he’s poorly?’
‘Beauty and the Beast,’ Carl May said. ‘Of course you can, my dear. But be back by five thirty this evening. Such a pity you can’t come with me to the lido. I rather thought of going there this afternoon.’
‘The lido?’
‘The Brent Cross Lido. A charming place, prettily landscaped; though I’m afraid the chlorine fumes don’t do the shrubs and flowers much good. Joanna’s favourite place, it seems.’
‘You be careful, my darling,’ said Bethany, ‘don’t be outdoors too long. They say the fallout’s dreadful: worse than Windscale. And to be frank with you, I’m not a lido sort of person. Now the south of France…’
Oh yes, she had a lover. She laid her hand on his arm, a pretty hand, long-fingered, each finger slightly trembling, promising pleasure, but promiscuous.
‘I’ll be back this evening,’ she said and, suddenly giddy and happy again, whirled round the musky gallery, yellow skirt flaring, white shirt gleaming, gold shoes glittering, murmuring fond farewells to the embalmed remains of Gods and kings, waving goodbye to the stolid wooden funereal peasants, even dropping a quick brave appalled kiss on the crown of the liver jar, and then back once again to Carl.
‘I don’t think you got the Othello quote quite right,’ said Bethany. ‘But a good try, Carl-O-Carl! We didn’t do it at diction, but my dad did take me to the theatre a lot. He said there was no need not to be cultured, just because I was kind.’
‘Four,’ said Carl, but Bethany did not even notice. Bethany said, ‘And I may be the Beauty but you are not the Beast. You are not even a fiend in human form, you are just a little boy in a right old state, you silly thing!’ And he was about to say ‘five’ – he’d given her to five – but Bethany was gone, emerald eyes and all, in a flash of yellow white and gold, and in strolled Jacko, Petie, Elwood, Dougie and Haggie so he let her go. The lads claimed to be a pop group. Theirs, they maintained, was a new close-harmony rock sound. They called themselves Barbers of the Bath. Carl backed them with recording studios, equipment, venues, wheels, even though they took little advantage musically of what was offered. Some people will do anything for money, the better to maintain the illusion that they have some purpose in life; and this failing, this conceit, suited Carl very well.