Poet's Pub

by Eric Linklater

  “I certainly will,” said van Buren. “I’ve just finished work on a formula for synthetic fuel myself—automobile fuel, not man fuel—and I can share your feeling.”

  “And I’ve just finished a new book of verse,” said Saturday.

  “What the devil’s that?” asked the professor. “No, not verse. I know what it is, worse luck. That slithering and rubbing at the door.”

  Keith opened it.

  A mild, a little startled, ivory-pale face appeared. It had light-coloured eyes vaguely blinking behind silver-rimmed eyeglasses, and beneath it were a tie and collar such as dissenting clergymen wear. A tallish stooping figure sidled into the room.

  “Why, Wesson,” said van Buren, “you’ve come at the right time.”

  “I was looking for a… I thought of having a drink,” said Mr. Wesson gently.

  “You’re on the point of it. Miss Benbow, Professor Benbow, let me introduce a compatriot of mine to you: Mr. Æsop Wesson, who collects books.”

  “I always wondered where they all went to,” said the professor gravely.

  “Not modern books, professor. Nothing is of much interest to me until it is—oh, quite old. And then almost everything is interesting. Isn’t that curious? I bought Hepplewhite’s Cabinet-maker and Upholsterer’s Guide last week for £60, because it was printed in 1789. I don’t care much about cabinet-making, of course, though I did some fretwork when I was a boy, but I think old things are interesting. And the Comte de Buffon’s Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux a gift copy of the author to Helvetius—I paid £80 for that on the same day.”

  “Holly, here, gets his information on birds rather more cheaply,” murmured Keith.

  “Oh, it wasn’t for information that I bought it. Indeed, I can’t read French. But the date of it is 1770 and it is very rare.”

  “Mr. Wesson,” said the professor firmly, “we have two duties on hand. One is to drink the health of our friend Holly, who has just invented a new kind of cocktail, and the other—against which the former may unhappily militate—is to exercise our judgement on Mr. Keith’s brewing of lamb’s wool, a respectable drink at one time much in vogue in England.”

  “Mix enough for half-a-dozen, Holly,” Keith directed. “Which shall it be, the light or the dark?”

  “The dark,” said Joan, “The Oxford blue. We’re not going to drink Cambridge in your pub, whatever we do outside.”

  “And there they are christened for you, Holly. Oxford and Cambridge are good enough names for them, aren’t they?”

  “Anything that a lady like Miss Benbow suggests is all right, sir,” said Holly politely; and deftly poured measures of this and measures of that, crystal clear, faintly yellow and richer orange, a glass delicately poised with the rising meniscus unbroken, a drop, two drops of wormwood, a fluid ounce of sweetness and an ounce of twice-distilled strength… gravely, intent on his task as an alchemist seeking the elixir, the aurum potabile, Holly poured his chosen liquors into a long silver shaker, added broken fragments of ice, screwed down the top, and, like a man with the palsy, shook. His hands were clenched on either butt, his muscles were taut, his face set like a mask. And all this time his audience watched him silently as if a conjuror were at work, and where paper flags had gone in the doves of peace might emerge. Then the rapid shaking changed to a long swinging movement like an old-fashioned concertina-player swinging his instrument to spread its melody wider, more powerfully. And at last he was done. He set six glasses on the bar and poured into each a liquid, at first cloudy-blue like the sky at morning, that slowly cleared to a hue ineffable and serene.

  “To you, Mr. Holly,” said the professor, “I drink, for the only time in my life at such an hour as this—and I shall suffer for it—a cocktail honoris causa. Joan, my dear—gentlemen: Mr. Holly, for his contribution to the art of life.”

  Solemnly they drank and Holly watched. His mouth was a little open, the lips were nervous, he flushed and grew pale again. His eyes were very bright. Joan had an uncomfortable feeling that he was going to cry. He did indeed mutter something that ended in a sniff; he blew his nose with uncommon intentness; and then he remembered the sixth cocktail that stood on the bar, and drinking it off he immediately became calm and assured. “Thank you,” he said, and was not without dignity.

  “Now it’s your turn, Keith,” the professor reminded him.

  Saturday said, “I shall want assistance. I wonder if you—?”

  “Why of course,” Joan replied, and went with him.

  “Been busy since you landed?” said Mr. van Buren to Mr. Wesson.

  “Well… yes, in a quiet way I suppose I have. There were the two books I already mentioned to you. And I bought some other things. A note-book of Garrick’s with copies of poems and letters in it. And a lot of letters written to him by different people. Doctor Johnson, and… oh, contemporaries, you know.”

  “What letters are those?” asked the professor.

  “Personal gossip; letters such as we all write. From Johnson, and Sir Joshua, and… but I have scarcely had time to examine them.”

  “I thought that Johnson’s letters were all known.”

  “These may be unrecorded. But I have hardly looked at them yet.” Mr. Wesson laughed, a little throatily, and lit a cigarette. Professor Benbow stared at him in a way that Mr. Wesson found embarrassing. “They are at my bank,” he said, and turning to van Buren asked him, smiling: “and how is your work progressing? Yours is real work, unlike my dilettante book-collecting.”

  “It’s done,” van Buren said shortly.

  “Ah!” said Mr. Wesson.

  “One of the few books I have which would be of any interest to you, Mr. Wesson—I can’t afford finery,” said the professor, “and I don’t know that I want to—is a first edition of Donne’s Poems. The 1683 edition, you know, with the two original blank leaves. What would you give me for it, supposing I was willing to sell?”

  Mr. Wesson coughed. “It’s difficult to say, offhand. So much depends on, oh, the condition it’s in.”

  “It’s perfect.”

  “Well. The 16—?”

  “The 1683 edition, with the two blank leaves.”

  “Of course. The two blank leaves. Would you take, say—”

  “Would you give me £100 for it?”

  Mr. Wesson played with the stem of his glass and stared hard at a globule of blue liquid that still rolled stickily in the bowl. “I should have to think that over,” he said at length.

  The professor laughed. “Don’t worry. It’s not a serious offer. I should hardly like to exchange old Donne for a cheque. I’m frightened of what he might say, if I ever meet him across the Styx.”

  Saturday and Joan returned with a bowl that perfumed the room and made all mouths water with its rich October smell. Lamb’s wool is a mixture of hot ale, the pulp of roasted apples, a little sugar, and a little spice. Much depends on the quality of the apples; more on the ale. Saturday had discovered that even the best apples and the oldest ale are improved by an egg or two beaten up in thin cream with enough whisky to counteract the fatness of the cream. His lamb’s wool was drunk in silence, the silence of appreciation, the quietness of content. The professor, indeed, smacked his lips and meditatively said “Yes,” as if answering at last the doubt which he had harboured. The wonder in van Buren’s face changed perceptibly into an expression of perfect happiness. Only Mr. Wesson sipped hurriedly at his glass and seemed troubled by the silence. He misunderstood it and construed it as the consequence of his unwelcome presence.

  He was on the point of saying good-night and leaving them when the professor said, “What is it that you have been working on, van Buren—if I may ask? You said something about synthetic fuel.”

  Mr. van Buren hesitated and covered his hesitation by offering the professor a cigar. Then he said,

  “Civilization depends on transportation, as your Mr. Kipling once pointed out. And more than half of our present transportation depends on petroleum, so that if the oil wells went
dry, or if they passed into certain hands, many of us would be awkwardly situated. So certain people, from time to time, have tried to find a substitute for petroleum, or to make petroleum themselves without having to tap the earth for it. I have attempted, in my own way to solve that problem.”

  “And how did you go about it?” asked Mr. Wesson.

  “That at present is my own affair,” said van Buren gruffly.

  Mr. Wesson apologized. “I realize the value of secrecy,” he said. “A book collector appreciates the need for discretion as well as anybody. I remember once—”

  He described a perilous campaign to secure a copy of Castiglione’s Courtier, but his story excited little interest, and Mr. Wesson discovered that he was feeling sleepy.

  “I don’t like him,” said Joan when he had gone.

  “He’s a fool of a book collector,” said the professor.

  “Is he?” asked van Buren with interest.

  “I laid two traps for him. I don’t know why, except that I suspected him of crass ignorance when he began to talk about Johnson’s letters—I don’t believe he has found any new ones; he doesn’t deserve to—and I hate to see good books or even good letters handled as if they were stocks and shares. He fell into both traps.”

  “I didn’t notice them myself,” admitted van Buren.

  “But Wesson should have seen them if he has any real interest in his job. I talked of Donne’s Poems as having been published in 1693. They came out fifty years before that. But Wesson didn’t query my date, so he knows nothing about John Donne. And I maintain that bibliophile worthy the name ought to know something about him. The second trap was in the price I mentioned. A copy of the Poems went for £150 last month—a keen book collector would surely have noticed that—but Wesson flinches at a mere hundred.”

  “I met him on the Loretania a week ago,” said van Buren. “I put him down as harmless. He’s inquisitive and he’s got money. He told me about his own business and he wanted me to tell him about mine. But I didn’t encourage him. I decided that he was one of those people who don’t need encouragement.”

  “He’s an American citizen, isn’t he?” asked Saturday.

  “He is,” admitted van Buren, “and I suppose there are some British citizens that you aren’t particularly proud of. I expect that Wesson knows something about the books he has bought, but is in fairly complete ignorance of the million he hasn’t. He may be a genuine collector though he isn’t a scholar. Don’t think I’m defending him though, because I’m not. I don’t like him any better than a bad smell.”

  “He hasn’t an American accent,” said the professor.

  “I guess a man who spends his time among old books will lose any kind of a human accent,” replied van Buren.

  CHAPTER III

  Quentin Cotton got out of his car and walked into “The Downy Pelican.”

  “Good morning, George,” he said to the Boots. “Is Mr. Keith in his office?”

  “I think he’s in his sitting-room, sir. I’ll find out.”

  “Don’t bother. I’ll go up and see.”

  He ran briskly up the shallow stairs, turned right, and facing him in the corridor saw an extremely pretty girl with red hair, an expression of humorous unconcern, and an attractive uniform—frilly about the cap and apron, cut roundly in the neck—of white and green.

  “Hullo,” he said, “who are you?”

  “I’m a maid,” she replied coolly.

  “Then you’re defrauding my sex—no, don’t go. I want to talk to you. I’m always talkative in the morning. You haven’t been here long, have you?”

  “Long enough to learn my way about. Good-bye.”

  She continued her way, which Quentin had halted, and Quentin, turning to walk beside her, explained, “I’m a friend of Mr. Keith’s—”

  “A man in his position must have all sorts of acquaintances, I suppose.”

  “And so many compensations. Where are you going now?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “My general interest in humanity is narrowing to a focus on you.”

  “I don’t pose for strangers,” she replied, and went up a staircase which, as it was steep and unobtrusive, apparently led to the servants’ quarters.

  Quentin walked thoughtfully towards Saturday’s rooms.

  Saturday was playing with unapt and hesitating fingers on a typewriter. Little metallic rushes, sudden jars and a tinny discord told that another couplet of “Tellus Will Proceed,” his new poem, had been translated from an inky, scribbled-on, drawn-on piece of notepaper to moderately accurate typescript. He was making a single copy only, for carbon paper puzzled him and (as he used it) generally repeated the lettering on the back of the original sheet.

  Quentin looked over his shoulder and read from the page that stuck, like a letter too big for the letterbox, out of the top of the typewriter:

  “And like a racing cloud that runs around.

  On stark Helvellyn, his beard was blown about

  In the wind, but louder than the wind his shout

  Daunted the sea: ‘How goes it, Twinkletoes?’

  Then, like the bell of St. Hospice in the Snows,

  So clear and silver-thin, the Star replied.

  ‘What ship is that?’ And the great Dutchman cried

  ‘The Tellus out of Chaos; Captain—God!’

  And laughed again with ribald hardihood

  As blacker waves leapt on the labouring bows.…”

  “You haven’t told me about this,” said Quentin. “What does it all mean?”

  Saturday, staring glumly at almost indecipherable manuscript, looked up, searched, and handed him a page on which, under the title, was written, “Ship Tellus will proceed to Apogee for orders.”

  “You see?” he asked.

  “Tellus is the earth, so far as I remember, and Apogee sounds reasonably like a port on the West Coast of Africa. But I don’t understand about the captain.”

  “The captain is the Flying Dutchman; a sort of cosmic Flying Dutchman; sometimes he thinks he is God.”

  Quentin looked grave. “And the passengers?” he asked.

  “The hold is full of rats.”

  “Talking rats?”

  “Yes. Damn you, don’t be so confoundedly sceptical. I’m sick of doing piddling little things. I’m bone-weary of microscopic, pedantic, analysed-emotion-and-synthesized-effect. I’m trying to do a big thing. I may have made a fool of myself—no, I’m damned if I have—or if I have I didn’t expect you to be the first to say so.”

  “My dear old fellow, I’m saying nothing of the sort. But we—you and I and all of us—have got into the habit of looking sideways at anything deliberately ambitious. We’re inclined to go slow, in this year of grace, and count our steps and watch the next man’s expression and chop logic small enough to be sure that there aren’t any bones left in it. We’ve given up epic and satire on the grand scale and throwing our caps over the moon. But if you can do it—or if you have done it—I think Tellus and the Dutchman is a splendid idea. Especially the rats.”

  Saturday grunted, “I’m bloody sensitive about it.”

  “I know. Just like a mountain would be if it really produced an elephant after getting accustomed to ridiculous mice.”

  “Do you mean February Fill-dyke?”

  “I’ve said the wrong thing again. But you’re suffering from poet’s itch. Forget that manuscript and tell me who is this new pretty girl you have here.”

  Saturday’s expression changed. The unhuman grief of authorship lifted and he looked eager, happy, interested in things beyond the seed of his mind.

  “Where did you meet her?” he asked.

  “In the corridor as I was coming along. I spoke to her and she answered flick! like a schoolboy’s catapult.”

  “That doesn’t sound like her. She’s rather quiet. And she doesn’t impress nearly so much at first sight as when you have studied her a little. She’s reticent, like a shop window with one necklace or one hat in it. Bu
t you know there’s more behind.”

  “A delicatessen shop with three pepper-corns in the window is what I would compare her to. She isn’t your type at all, Saturday. You like the receptive kind, the chalice woman; the tactful underliner of what you say.”

  “I don’t. I like independence more than anything else. But a girl can be independent without contradicting everything she hears.”

  “Not if she’s honest. People talk such rubbish. Anyway this red-haired lily of the ballet wouldn’t agree with me.”

  “Red-haired! But Joan hasn’t red hair.”

  “Then who’s Joan? The one I met is as red as a new penny.”

  “Joan is Joan Benbow, old Benbow’s daughter.”

  “I might have known. You’re so damned above stairs in your fancy. I’m democratic. The girl I have been talking about is a maid of some kind. How many copper-crowned ones have you?”

  Saturday thought. It was difficult to efface the image of Joan Benbow and substitute for it a brief procession of maids. “You mean Nelly Bly,” he said at last. “She came here from an agency, in the ordinary way, a week or ten days ago. She’s a pretty girl, isn’t she?”

  “Yes,” said Quentin drily. “Tell me about Joan.”

  “No,” said Saturday. “But you’ll meet her. How long are you staying?”

  “Two or three days if there’s a corner for me to sleep in.”

  “I’ll have to get another bed put in my room for you. We’re full up. I’ve done well out of your suggestion, Quentin.”