The Rebel Angels

"Yes, and if my old friend Ozy finds anything I shall borrow any part of it that can be bent to support my research on the Filth Therapy. What your Mother is doing is Filth Therapy at its highest – though to call that wonderful substance in which she buries the fiddles filth is to be victim to the stupidest modern prejudice. But I am inclined to think of Ozy as a latter-day alchemist; he seeks the all-conquering Stone of the Philosophers exactly where they said it must be sought, in the commonest, most neglected, most despised. – Please take me to see your Mother again. She enchants me. She has in the highest degree the kind of spirit that must not be called unsophisticated, but which is not bound by commonplaces. Call it the Wild Mind."

Another meeting would be easy, as I found the minute I returned to One Hundred and Twenty Walnut Street.

"Your man is very handsome," she said. "Just what I like; fine eyes, big nose, big hands. That goes with a big thing; has he a big thing?"

This was mischief, meant to disconcert me, to make me blush, which it did to my annoyance.

"You watch yourself with him, my daughter; he is a charmer. Such elegant speech! You love him, don't you?"

"I admire him very much. He is a great scholar."

Hoots of laughter from Mamusia. "He is a great scholar," she peeped in a ridiculous falsetto, holding up her skirts and tiptoeing around the room in what I suppose was meant to be an imitation of me, or of whatever my university work suggested to her. "He is a man, in just the way your Father was a man. You had better be careful, or I will take him away from you! I could love that man!"

If you try it, you'll wish you hadn't, I thought. But I am not half-Gypsy for nothing, and I gave her an answer to choke her with butter.

"He thinks you are wonderful," I said. "He raved about you all the way home. He says you are a true phuri dai." That is the name of the greatest Gypsy women; not the so-called "queens" who are often just for show to impress gadje, but the great old female counsellors without whose wisdom no Kalderash chief would think of making an important decision. I was right; that fetched her.

"He is truly a great man," she said. "And at my age I would rather be a phuri dai than anybody's pillow-piece. I'll tell you what I'll do; I'll make sure you get him. Then we'll both have him."

Oh God, what now?

The New Aubrey IV

1

It was near the end of November before all Cornish's possessions were sorted and ready for removal to the public bodies for whom they were intended. The job, which had seemed unmanageable to begin with, had called for nothing but hard work to complete it and Hollier and I had worked faithfully, giving up time we wanted and needed for other tasks. Urquhart McVarish had not exerted himself to the same extent, and possessed some magic whereby a lot of his sorting and note-making was undertaken by the secretary from Arthur Cornish's office, who in her turn was able to provide a couple of strong men who could lift and lug and shuffle things about.

Hollier and I had nobody to blame but ourselves. McVarish was in charge of paintings and objects of art, which can be heavy and clumsy, so he could hardly have been expected to do the work by himself. But Hollier was in charge of books, and he was the kind of man who hates to have anyone else touch a book until he has examined it thoroughly, by which time he might as well put it in its final place. Except that there rarely is any final place for books, and people whose job it is to sort them seem always to be juggling and pushing them hither and yon, making heaps as tall as chimneys on the floor, when the space on tables has been filled. My job was to sort and arrange the manuscripts and portfolios of drawings, and it was not work I could very well trust out of my own hands. Indeed, I wanted no help.