Lempriere's Dictionary Read online

  The offspring seemed to be making repeated and unsuccessful efforts to scale the steep bank on the far side of the path. He would run at it, allowing the gathered momentum to drive him up its face to within a foot or two of its summit. He would hang there for perhaps a second, still, before thundering down to the track again. Zigzagging; an appropriate manner in which to approach one’s god, thought Charles Lemprière as he watched the distant figure from his study window. The eye-glasses had been worth the outlay, though not an absolute insurance against mishap, he reflected as his son lost a foothold and sprawled chaotically in the road.

  John Lemprière spat dust and gingerly picked himself up. No damage, good. Was that the second or third bell? Dust covered him from the waist down. He brushed vigorously and touched his spectacles. They had returned him at the ripe age of twenty-two to a second childhood. Running, jumping, making the steep climb down to the strand and throwing stones at the sea; he liked the ache in his muscles that told him his body was reawakening. He stopped and stretched, feeling the pleasurable tension crawl up his spine. Ahead of him, the church beckoned. Normally his mother and father came but they had stayed home this day. To discuss something, they had said. He marched on, the faint discords of the church band tuning up reached him as he drew nearer. St Martin’s, already ancient at the time of William the Conqueror, extended its long nave out to catch all comers, its spire pointed up towards heaven. Amor dei, subjective and objective genitive, Quint’s lesson echoed in an obscure chamber of his memory. Whose love indeed? God’s for me or mine for God? He breathed in the scents of apples and grass. The sky was blue without limit. Or mine for another. He savoured the forbidden taste of the thought. ‘Another’. Who might she be? An outlandish woman from beyond the pale of this world. A strange woman, an unfathomable woman. He would save her. He stopped at the lych gate to let fat Mother Welles through. And worship her.

  Lost in this random stew of thoughts, the young scholar allowed his favourite musings a silent parade before his inner eye. White, distressed limbs and golden tresses mingled with vague heroic deeds. Strange beasts slavered before his sword, turned their spit red. He dried the tears of ox-eyed women and broke the chains which bound them to the black rock. Their flowing skirts were so white against that adamant surface.… It went on and he did not see the carriage trundle slowly down the lane to the church. Pebbles cracked and skeltered out from beneath its iron-banded wheels. A nostalgic regret was already forming in his mind as the pleasing thoughts fled from the noise. They left only their silhouettes, whose lines wavered before breaking and settling back into the scenery which re-composed itself before the young man’s gaze. The blue sky threw its light down onto the fields below.

  The carriage wheels came to a slow halt, intruding more subtly into his daydream now, the two merging as John Lemprière watched the image of Aphrodite descended from aether to earth in the guise of Juliette Casterleigh. The sun-burnt Cyprian, eyes wide and fishing nets forgotten at the sight of the goddess’s birth, had his counterpart in the young Lemprière. His gaze unreturned, he watched slack-jawed at the vision of Venus Epistrophia in a spume of cream linen placing a delicate foot on the cracked foot-plate of the Casterleigh carriage.

  Twenty years out of date, the gilt on the rails shouting 1760 to anyone who could ascend the height to listen; this bothered Juliette Casterleigh not a chit. The importance of the carriage lay not in the discomfort its seats afforded, nor even the ample evidence of its increasingly frequent repairs (Jersey’s thoroughfares being pitted with ruts and potholes) but in its relative position (foremost) among the muster of vehicles which assembled each Sunday to mutely affirm their owners’ degrees of standing in a community which valued the testimony a pound well spent might buy.

  ‘Good Morning Miss Casterleigh.’

  ‘Good Morning Pastor.’

  ‘Good Morning Miss Casterleigh, your father not gracing us today?’

  ‘Good Morning Mister Carteret.’

  A nod to the farmers’ wives, a tilt of the bonnet (and nothing more) to their sons. Intricate scales of greetings and ‘good day’s accompanied her passage to the most forward pew of the church, where she was lost to Lemprière’s adoring gaze. Settled in her seat, she reflected on those behind her and resisted firmly, this week as every other, the impulse to turn and watch the slow files of worshippers as they made their way in. The accents of Jersey French reached her ears from the back of the church, mingled with snatches of English. The conversations of St Martin’s parishioners were garbled together in the vaulted ceiling of the church.

  Not so below. From the front pews, the protocols of island life sorted and catalogued the worshippers according to wealth and standing. Landowners shaded into tenant and fee-farmers, who mingled with the cannier artisans. Behind them jostled the bulk of the congregation, farm and orchard hands, shepherds and vraikers who, along with their wives and children, were busily exchanging the choicer anecdotes from the preceding week. The church echoed with this bustling hum, from which Juliette was excluded. She sat on the front pew, a solitary figure.

  And why should it be otherwise, she thought to herself. Because I am flesh and blood, no more or less than they. She pondered this. Yet they doff their caps and bonnets, their brats make clumsy curtseys and bows. What do they see? Take away my fine clothes, my coach, the manor and the acres which surround it. What would be left? A wretch fit only for the fields or the backstreets? Perhaps.

  The last members of the assembly were taking their seats. The church settled towards hush. She remembered the day Lizzie Matts had insulted her in the street in Saint Helier. The slut had made a comment and her friends had laughed. She had slapped her in the face without thought or hesitation. She had caught the girl’s lip with her ring and it had bled a little. When she told Papa he had laughed. And he reminded her of it when they had spoken some weeks later. ‘Remember this, my jewel’, he had said, ‘shepherds may change, but sheep will always be sheep. The shepherd may be a lowly creature, scarcely better than his flock. But to the sheep he is a god, they are certain of it. And if one runs off, it is not because he does not believe in its god. Precisely the opposite, the sheep is pleading for the god to show his face, his power. We play to the pit, my love…. Remember that.’ She had laughed then, to please Papa. Later she had come to understand his words better. And so I strut before them, she thought. And I enjoy their envy.

  Indeed there was envy, new money, it was whispered, as if the slight edge of hostility in the island’s deference to the man she called her father had no precedent in the serf’s curse on his seigneur, the serf’s son on his heir. The Casterleigh thousands, obscure in origin to be sure, spoke as loud as any decayed dynasty’s ailing fortunes. And where we end will scotch the lowliest beginnings, is that not true?

  Is that not true? His cool hand on her white neck as he had planted that sentiment in her mind. Oh yes, it was true. His other hand showed her the spread of their lands on a map spread out on the hall table. His forefinger ran along contours and boundaries.

  ‘They were ours for the taking, my Juliette, mine by force often enough. You have played your part in all this, played it to perfection. But now there are other parts for you to learn. Can you do that I wonder?’

  ‘Of course, Papa.’ Why should he ask?

  His thumb massaged the nape of her neck, tenderly, and the frescoed ceiling hurtled into view as her head went back. Little cupids.

  Lemprière’s neck underwent more strenuous convulsions as he craned and angled from several rows back for a view past her bonnet. Aphrodite played her part to perfection though, her head never turning more than a few degrees to either left or right. He had never seen anything or anyone quite so beautiful as Juliette Casterleigh in his whole life and now, stranded in voyeuristic frustration, he felt already the pangs which he believed to be the pangs of love. After all, what was a goddess without her unacknowledged devotees? Indeed, he was not alone in these devotions, even if the fantasies concocted about Juliett
e by the sons of the wealthier farmers were alloyed with rather baser motives. The sermon dragged on, the Reverend Calveston’s bald pate glistened with sweat as his favourite metaphors and parables issued from his lips.

  ‘We are all footsoldiers for Jesus’ army…. And sin, which is our inward foe…. For is that not just as it is in life?’

  In keeping with his practice the last six weeks, he seemed to be directing the whole sermon at the Matts family. It was rumoured that Lizzie Matts had punched him in the eye, but no-one, as yet, knew why. Nobody had the nerve to ask the priest. Lizzie would not tell. It went on. Juliette’s eyes never left the reverend’s face. Lemprière wrestled half-heartedly with his inward foe. His neighbour’s stomach growled in anticipation of lunch. The service ended.

  ‘Move along there, John, move along.’ He wanted to stay, to watch her as she made her way out, but the hunger of Pierre Dumaresque and family would not wait. He moved along the pew and was carried down the aisle on the newly penitent tide.

  ‘A true crapaud at last.’

  ‘Tell us about Ovid, Lemprière.’

  ‘Toadeye!’

  The unwelcome tones of his ex-classmates greeted him as he emerged, blinking furiously, into the strong sunlight.

  ‘Good morning, Wilfred. George.’ He tried to hide his timidity behind formality, but his tormentors were having none of it. Edging past them he felt something about his ankles, stumbled, and fell headlong in the path. Wilfred Fiedler withdrew his outstretched boot. A moment later he withdrew too the grin that was threatening an affected peal of laughter.

  ‘Oh, brave Mister Fiedler!’ Lemprière heard a girl’s voice, but hard. The sarcasm wiped Wilfred’s face blank.

  ‘Heroic Mister Fiedler! To fight such mighty battles, Major Peirson would be green with envy. Allow me to wish you well in your forthcoming campaign against the bailiffs. Now, move along.’ And summarily dismissed, Wilfred Fiedler departed, pondering, among other matters, how Fiedler père was going to react to his offending the daughter of his principal creditor.

  The dust on the churchpath tasted, if anything, slightly worse than that of the lane. Lemprière replaced his eye-glasses just in time to see his tormentors moving down the lane at a brisk trot. He began to gather himself together and, as he did so, a delicate white hand grasped his forearm and hauled him to his feet. For a moment she held him. He smelt scent, mingled with a faint tang of perspiration. Her cheeks glowed red still with her late annoyance and her black eyes gazed concernedly into his. When she asked if he was fit to walk he felt the slight wisp of her breath on his cheek. ‘Out of me way, you both. Come now.’ Fat Mother Welles demanded passage and was not to be denied. Her imperious bulk was followed down the path by the slighter figure of his saviour, ‘Take care John Lemprière,’ cast carelessly over her departing shoulder. How did she know his name? He watched openmouthed and absently dusted his clothes as she stooped to enter her carriage. A sharp tone to the coachman, and they moved off. If Lemprière had not vigorously suppressed his strong desire to run after the carriage and peer into the shrine of the goddess he would have seen Juliette Casterleigh leaning forward, elbows on knees with an expression of studied contemplation on her face.

  But he did not. He had imagined the goddess and she had come. He had fallen at her feet and she had elevated him. He had been beset by enemies and she had protected him. He was Paris faced with the outrage of Menelaus, the cuckold’s horns tipped with bronze to gore him. The sweaty fear of pain, the dull throb of thickened blood in his temples, the strength-sapping wrench in the pit of his stomach, the smell of anticipated harm: and then Aphrodite with a cloak of sea-mist. To wrap it round him, hide him and spirit him to safety, yes, he was hers for the taking. He walked on towards home, imagining the goddess furling him in cloud. It touched his skin with cool, electric fingers, stealing under the folds of his clothes, touching him. If he tried to cry out she would stop him, she would place her hand which was nothing but the mist of thought and yet it was her hand…. Over his mouth. He would kiss that hand, being borne upwards through the aether, safe in her close embrace.

  Lost in these thoughts, he began the climb up the hill towards Rozel. Sandy-coloured dust exploded out from his feet as he kicked aimlessly. His spindly legs stood out like a marionette’s and from a distance the reflected backlight from the track shaved them to pins. They danced, kicked and sprang as Lemprière decided to run the last half-mile home.

  He was greeted at the door by his father.

  ‘Good morning John. Were we missed at church?’

  ‘Father Calveston had his eye on the Matts girls….’

  ‘Ha! And you had an eye on Father Calveston. That leaves one eye for the road.’ His son’s strenuous brushing had not been completely successful. ‘So at what was this surplus eye directed I wonder? The Matts family too perchance? Ha, ha! Come now, lunch awaits.’ This last was almost bellowed. His son was more than a little taken aback at this hearty badinage. Charles Lemprière’s manner was more normally reserved. On entering, his mother’s constant sniffing hinted broadly at the reason behind his father’s dissembling jollity. What had they been discussing? The meal proceeded similarly. His mother sat in virtual silence while his father carved mutton, commented on the vegetables or the weather, joked and made small-talk. The son did his best as his father, in the space of an hour, doubled the number of words he had spoken to him in the past year. But his mounting bafflement did not fail to discover the tension behind this charade of good humour.

  The meal over, John Lemprière escaped to his room in some disarray. He picked a book at random from the small stack by the bed on which he had thrown himself and held it, his arm dangling over the side, like a talisman. Solid and cool to the touch, its compact weight obscurely reassured the young man. If he brought the book up and opened it he would immediately find himself in a, what was it, an elsewhere. Yes, an elsewhere that was here, that was also him. There for him at any moment, an anchorage of memories; a nice phrase. The book warmed in his hand and the moisture from his fingers smoothed its passage as it slid in leisurely fashion from his grasp to land with a thud upon the floor. And why had he not said that he had exchanged greetings with Juliette Casterleigh? Normally he would. Secrets bred secrets bred secrets; secret pleasures. She had saved him, perhaps, he groped hopefully, for a purpose? He dragged himself away from the tempting vistas to which this speculation might lead and fumbled on the floor for the book. He bent his arm round to display the title on the spine; ‘Sextus Propertius, Opera’. The Roman Callimachus. They all claimed that.

  He remembered his first meeting with the poet. Not a meeting, a passing glance exchanged between countrymen on soil foreign to both. Quint’s classroom entered his thoughts and revisited its tedium upon him. The dull monotone throbbed in his memory as he recalled the airless room and its malcontent inhabitants. Quint’s views on the Ancients were eccentric and applied as dogma. Endless afternoons reciting grammatical rules by rote and learning passages of Latin prose had been the schoolmaster’s stock in trade. He had resented the boy’s precocious ability and derided his youthful taste for the lyric poets. In return, the boy had gleefully pointed out the most minor of Quint’s mistakes and argued interminably against the merits of the prose writers whom Quint professed to favour, and in whose defence he might even have been said to wax lyrical. His exaltation of Tully, whose pompous, inflated rhetoric might run for pages unhindered by punctuation, knew no bounds. Tully was the ‘complete master of oratory’, he contained ‘a compendium of figures that may dance for us if we construe them correctly’, his ‘eloquence was unbounded’. The young Lemprière had wondered when Mister Quint had had occasion to hear Mister Tully. In such a schema neither Lemprière nor Propertius had fared well. Propertius ‘was of some interest for his archaisms, but to be esteemed far below Tibullus’, while Lemprière, master at the age of fourteen over any text Quint was likely to teach in the foreseeable future, was fast becoming an embarrassment. He had left school the follo
wing year to pursue the Novi Poetae on his own. The train of thought petered out and he lay there with his mind blank for a long time. Familiar sounds of domestic activity reached him vaguely from below. His room was very still, the only movement his arm swinging almost imperceptibly at the side of the bed, his hand still holding the book. Like a pendulum, counting nothing and the hours passed empty-handed.

  Outside, the sun was setting and the young man turned again to his book. He read idly as the vast red disk seeped out of sight. Flicking from page to page, scarcely conscious of the breaks between the end of one poem and the beginning of the next, he savoured the lateness of the moment. A final sliver of red narrowed to the greying blue behind it and dusk fell. He turned the page.