Poet's Pub

by Eric Linklater

  I suppose other people have made the same discovery, he admitted, but none the less it is humiliating. I may be a little different from other men, however, for circumstances alter cases, and as Joan is obviously more beautiful and better in every way than all other girls, so in my case there is a better reason for humiliation.

  And comforted by this reflection he went to bed.

  CHAPTER XI

  Downish High Street was cool and clear in the morning, as if it had been washed with liquid air. The sky was blue except for a few indignant-looking sleepy clouds that the dawn had caught napping, and already the sun had warmed the air and was bringing out the colour in the old red roofs, the green trees in the street, and the fat gold letters over shop doors that spelt the chemist’s name and the butcher’s and the baker’s and other well-contented names. Shopkeepers were polishing their glass and preparing tubs of potatoes, baskets of carrots and sheaves of rhubarb for the day’s display. Early citizens came to their doors, looked up and down the street with satisfaction, and turned again as they sniffed the breakfast bacon. “Ah!” said Mr. Lamb the butcher, smacking a sirloin familiarly, “it’s good to be alive on a day like this.” And “Betsy!” shouted Mr. Trig of the Red Lion, “fill my mug for me, Betsy. It flatters humanity, does such a morning.”

  “Fifty-four to-day,” said little Miss Tibbs of the millinery shop, “and I feel like a girl of eighteen.”

  Pedalling desperately over the worn stones, ringing his bell for jubilation (for there was no other traffic in sight) and whistling to spend benevolently his surplus breath, came John Jellicoe Judd, the newsagent’s boy, on a red bicycle. He had been to the station to meet the London train. A stack of papers filled the fore-carrier and another stack the after-carrier of his bicycle. All the world’s news was in his care: what this admiral had rashly spoken and that politician more rashly done, all the blood spilt overnight between Chicago and Cabul, a few obscure births and an illustrious death or two, the toilet secrets of three rival actresses, the marital infelicities of a jockey, and an interim report of the League of Nations; news of the world, a harvest of rumour and the busy gleaning of sharp-scissored sub-editors; all balanced on a red bicycle.

  John Jellicoe Judd (his birth, in August, 1914, had been expedited by patriotic excitement) stopped outside “The Pelican,” whistled more shrilly than ever, selected a bundle of papers, threw it into the open door, and went blithely on his way.

  “Young villain,” amiably commented the Boots as he retrieved the bundle in which, securely tied, were several copies of The Times, the Daily Telegraph, the Morning Post, the Daily Mirror, the Daily Sketch, various weekly papers, and, most eagerly sought of all, the Daily Day. It was a Daily Day that the Boots extracted from the bundle, and after being amused by the sporting cartoon, visibly stirred by the racing forecast, and sucking in his breath at the alarming death-rate of insured readers, (“Though some say that it serves ’em right,” he murmured) he turned to the magazine page.

  “Well, now,” he exclaimed in delight. “’Ere, M’ria, Bill, ’Erbert, V’ronica! Come an’ look at this.”

  “W’y,” they said, coming up rubbing their hands, tidying their hair, buttoning their waistcoats, “W’y, George, wot’s the excitement, George? Been left a fortune, George? Or ’ave you been chosen as the winner of the beauty competition, George?”

  “Never you mind about beauty,” said George, “you read this. There’s a picture, too, on the back page.”

  “Oooh!” they said. “Well, I declare! A piece about ‘The Pelican’! ’Oo wrote it, George?”

  “’Oo wrote it? A journalist, of course. ’Oo d’you think writes pieces for the papers?”

  “Everybody who’s got time to,” said the saturnine Bill.

  “Shut up, Bill,” they said. “Trying to be smart on a fine morning like this! Ought to be ashamed o’ yourself, Bill!”

  Everybody took a copy of the Daily Day. It was too early for visitors to be downstairs, and they settled themselves to read in comfort the neat compact-looking article on “The Pelican.”

  It was entitled POET’S PUB.

  It began complacently with the offer to satisfy a purely hypothetical curiosity:

  “If anyone wants to know whether poets are practical or not, let him—or her—go to Downish and visit ‘The Pelican.’ ‘The Pelican’ is one of our oldest English inns, and from the time of Henry VIII (who established it by dis-establishing the monastery which previously stood there) it has had many landlords, red-faced, hearty, jovial men such as you are introduced to by Dickens. But it has never had a better landlord than Mr. Saturday Keith, the well-known Oxford Rowing Blue and poet.

  “At a time when so many earnest people are asking ‘What can be done with our poets?’ or ‘What is the future of English poetry?’—and answering these questions by gloomily shaking their head—Mr. Keith has solved the problem in his own way by taking his muse to a wayside temple of Bacchus, who is, indeed, the godfather of all the Muses.

  . . . . . .

  “The atmosphere of ‘The Pelican’ has apparently been suitable for poetic contemplation, as Mr. Keith has newly completed another book which will shortly be in the hands of his publishers. The title and the nature of the contents are so far a strictly kept secret, and many people will be curious to see how far keeping a ‘pub’ has affected his style or choice of subject. Perhaps—who knows?—new Canterbury Tales are being born. Certainly the guests who have lately been entertained at ‘The Pelican’ are interesting enough to provide suitable material for such a collection.”

  . . . . . .

  “What do these lines of dots mean?” asked Veronica.

  “They means one of two things,” said the knowing George. “Either the journalist ’as said something which ’e shouldn’t of—told a risky story or something like that—or else the printer ’asn’t ’ad room to put it all in, so ’e puts a row of dots instead.”

  “A dam’ good idea,” said Bill, “the more the merrier.”

  “Bill!” exclaimed Maria reprovingly.

  “Well, you must admit that this isn’t very interesting,” said Veronica. “What does ’e want to talk about Canterbury for?”

  “It’s better further on,” said George.

  “What will interest people for whom poetry has little appeal,” they read, “is that a new cocktail has just been invented at ‘The Pelican.’ Mr. Holly, who looks after the American Bar with a skill that many visitors are eager to acknowledge, has succeeded, where so many of his confreres have failed, in mixing a blue cocktail; or to be exact two blue cocktails, one light and the other dark. They have been christened Oxford and Cambridge, and the secret of their composition is being cherished even more assiduously than the name of Mr. Keith’s new volume of poems.”

  “Fancy ’Olly ’aving ’is name in the papers,” said Herbert.

  “They’ll ’ave ’is photograph next.”

  “An’ fancy a man like the guv’nor writing poetry,” said George. “That’s what beats me. A big upstanding fellow with all ’is wits about him, an’ as strong as an ox, an’ as nice an’ simple to talk to as any one of us. Nicer than you, Bill. An’ yet ’e goes an’ writes poetry.”

  “It’s something people can’t ’elp,” said Maria. “Like being sea-sick. I knew a postman once—”

  “Is that the Daily Day?” said a cool voice. “Let me see it, will you?”

  Nelly Bly had come in unnoticed. She reached over Bill’s shoulder and took his paper from him without a scruple on her part or resistance on his.

  She glanced rapidly down the column, said “Damn!” handed the paper back, and walked out again.

  “Like a bloomin’ empress,” said Bill.

  “I’ve never known an empress what swore like she does,” said Maria.

  “I’ll bet you ’aven’t,” said Herbert with apparent simplicity.

  “W’y should she say ‘Damn’ anyway? What’s it got to do with ’er what’s in the paper?”

 
“She’s a nice girl,” said George, “an educated girl. You don’t know what educated people think about the newspapers. I was a waiter in a club once, and the way some of them swore and cursed at what they read would astonish you. Nearly all educated people lose their temper when they read the paper. She’s a nice girl is Nelly, and I don’t think any the worse of ’er for an odd damn or two.”

  “She’s that stuck-up,” said Maria. “That postman I happened to know used to say about people who were stuck up—”

  “Come on,” said George. “What’s postmen anyway? They won’t do our work for us, will they? The guv’nor’ll be down in a minute.”

  The Daily Days were carefully refolded and along with the Daily Telegraphs and the Daily Mirrors laid out in their accustomed places. The morning work of “The Pelican” went on.

  The article entitled Poet’s Pub created a slight flutter when the residents under “The Pelican” became aware of it, but as they read and discovered that no names except Keith and Holly were mentioned, their excitement sensibly abated. Still, it was pleasant to find that their temporary abode had sufficient interest to be served up as an addition to the morning bacon and eggs of two million British subjects, and everybody except Mr. Telfer was pleased at the attention given to Saturday’s new poems.

  “I never read advertisements,” said Mr. Telfer when it was pointed out to him.

  Diana Waterhouse took the opportunity to extract from Saturday the promise of an autographed copy, while Jean Forbes and Mrs. Mandeville shook him warmly by the left and right hand respectively. Mr. van Buren offered him an introduction to an American publisher, Mr. Wesson enquired whether there would be a signed and numbered édition de luxe, and Professor Benbow remarked genially, “You’ve got the bowling Keith. Now we’ll see if you can score.” Joan, who was genuinely in love, went so far as to ask permission to read the poem before it went to the publishers.

  Lady Porlet confided to Mrs. Waterhouse that the mere thought of poets bewildered her. “I can’t think what they find to say,” she said.

  “Sermons in stones, you know,” said Mrs. Waterhouse with a pleasant condescension, though she herself would have been at a loss to find a text in Old Red Sandstone or a thesis in a brook.

  “But many of them, I’m told, are irreligious,” objected Lady Porlet.

  “The bishops are to blame,” confided Mrs. Waterhouse. “If they don’t know what to believe how can other people?”

  “Ah!” said Lady Porlet happily. “Archbishop Laud (1573–1645) declared that the Communion Table was more important than the pulpit. And then there was Cardinal Newman. His influence in Oxford was supreme about the year 1839.”

  In a few minutes Mrs. Waterhouse was routed completely and left Lady Porlet to rehearse alone her tabloid stories of Famous Churchmen through the Ages, a well-known series of cigarette pictures.

  “I must take Mr. Holly’s album back to him,” she decided.

  Holly’s mood was unenviable. The publicity given to him by the Daily Day had swollen his pride and at the same time increased his nervous fears. He saw himself at one moment as a great man justly recogized by all England, and at another as the quarry of every crook in the kingdom bent on wresting from him the secret of his marvellous cocktails. Now he puffed out his chest, and now reflected miserably that perhaps he had been happier while still unknown to fame.

  In this state of mind the return of his cigarette picture album was some consolation, and for a few moments he thought of offering Lady Porlet the loan of another, only partially filled one. Then he realized the folly of adding to his anxieties, and wisely said nothing about it. Lady Porlet’s gratitude, however, and her ready understanding of the value of his collection, were very gratifying.

  But if the sun, on this pleasant Saturday morning, shone only fitfully on Holly, it showed an unclouded face to Ignatius O’Higgins. His crew were at battle stations, the kitchen of “The Pelican” was like a battleship’s turret in action, and O’Higgins was happier than the singing gunner’s lads on the fighting Téméraire. His pots and pans were moved deftly here and there, filled with this and that, lids clapped on them, slid into hot ovens. Already the proleptic savours of the Elizabethan dinner stole richly to the roof. Already steam whispered coyly in certain pots, and already great coffers of pastry gaped for an unexampled hoard of riches: beef and capons and fish and orchard-fruit and spice and fruit from the Levant. The sober edicts of cookery schools were defied, as timorous injunction was defied by Nelson, and the laws of dieticians had been set at naught. Like a smuggler’s cave, a poacher’s den, a gun-station of the Téméraire, then, “The Pelican’s” kitchen was full of bustle and heat and the promise of plenty.

  In the cellar Keith anxiously examined the Malmsey he had apparelled, the white Bastard and the Sack. For some time he had been experimenting with the elegant mixtures of our ancestors, and though he felt a little doubtful of their reception he was determined to offer them. Sweetness and heaviness might be urged against them, but if they had not been too heavy to clog the nimble wits nor sweet enough to make sickly the subtle flame at “The Mermaid,” why should “The Pelican” be frightened of them? “Toujours l’audace,” said Saturday. He tasted the Malmsey. “Encore l’audace,” he murmured, and tasted it again.…

  About this time Quentin was nervously trying to bring round his conversation with Mr. van Buren to the subject of oil, and Joan was warmly arguing that her father had overstepped his parental authority on the previous evening.

  “If any one thing was lacking to convince me that I am in love with Saturday, it was this,” she said.

  “I only ask you to postpone your decision for a few months,” said Professor Benbow.

  “You want me to sit on the fence, and wait till the chickens are hatched, and look before I leap?”

  “If you care to put it in any of those ways.”

  “That is, you’re trying to persuade me to be cowardly and middle-aged, a safety-firster. Well, I’m not going to be.…”

  “And since when have you been interested in petroleum?” asked van Buren.

  Quentin was ill-at-ease. He had rehearsed, between saying good-night to Nelly Bly and falling asleep, a dozen moves that might open the subject of oil with van Buren, and none of them had stood the cool scrutiny of morning. He had practised before a mirror expressions so unscrupulous as to persuade himself that he felt unscrupulous; and now he felt like a bashful pickpocket. He wished that the day was long past, that van Buren was a hundred miles away, that he had never been tempted into making such a dreadful promise. He thought of leaving Downish hurriedly on a fictitious errand, but honour rooted in dishonour stood too tall for that. If he could only work up a real curiosity in petroleum wells his task might be a little easier, but they were so uninteresting that he could think of nothing connected with them that he honestly wanted to know. And then inspiration came to him.

  “I’m looking for a setting for my next novel,” he said. “I want to do something as realistic as a Lancashire cotton mill and yet adventurous at the same time. Something with crude action in it, but action that is of genuine significance in modern life, and I thought perhaps a setting in Mexico or the Russian oil-fields would suit me.”

  “Do you mean to go to Mexico or Russia to see the fields for yourself?”

  “Of course, if I find it necessary,” said Quentin with sudden determination.…

  “If Keith shows himself to be a real poet my objections will disappear,” said the professor. “At present he is only a publican with an amateur taste for writing verse.”

  “You haven’t seen his new book,” said Joan.

  “And I don’t intend to see it. I dislike reading unpublished poetry as much as I dislike seeing a newly-born baby. Neither can be handled in comfort or security.”

  “What do you mean to do, then?”

  “Precisely nothing. I shan’t make myself ridiculous or give you a chance to be romantic by forbidding the marriage. But in the meantime I withhold
my sanction to it. And I know you well enough to be sure that you won’t readily defy me if you think for a few minutes of your life as you have lived it till this moment.”

  “I think you’re being incredibly mean.”

  “A father’s first duty is common-sense, and common-sense is seldom generous.…”

  “So you see,” said Quentin, “if you have discovered anything that will radically affect the future of the oil-fields, I should be wasting my time by visiting them. Before I had written my novel they might be deserted, or at any rate archaic survivals.”

  “I don’t think you need worry about that,” said van Buren.

  “Then your discovery isn’t so very important after all?”

  “It’s important enough to make me chary about discussing it even with the son of my old friend Lady Mercy Cotton.”

  “I see,” said Quentin. “I’m sorry if I have appeared too inquisitive.” And he thought, “Well, I’ve come to a dead end. I can’t go any further in that direction.…” He was depressed at having been beaten, but at the same time he felt relieved at having a good excuse to abandon, for the moment at any rate, his unwilling part in the conspiracy.

  “What about a game of bowls?” he suggested.

  “An excellent idea,” said van Buren.…

  Joan and her father returned from their walk in a cheerful mood. The professor had repeated his argument of the previous evening and Joan had been convinced.

  “If you are sure that Keith’s new poem will be a success,” he said, “then I am not asking very much when I want you to wait until it has been declared a success. I am asking you to bet on what is, in your opinion, a certainty.”

  “Of course it’s a certainty,” said Joan. “I read some of it after breakfast.”

  “Then will you bet on it? Will you stake yourself on it, remembering that the race can’t be started till the publisher’s put the book in the paddock, and consequently that you can’t pay or be paid for some time after that?”