Poet's Pub

by Eric Linklater

  “How utterly peaceful it is,” said Joan. “It looks as though nothing could ever happen there except the coming of night and the coming of morning, and then night again, all through the centuries. Think of them all quietly sleeping in there. Everybody and everything sound asleep except ourselves and the moon.”

  “It’s the most peaceful place in England,” Saturday agreed.

  CHAPTER XV

  On Sunday morning there was a certain air of fatigue about “The Pelican.” The English Sunday is normally a languid day on which even the sun frequently rises a little later than its advertised time. Nor, once they and the sun are up, do the English rush feverishly into motor-cars as the Americans do; nor do they paint themselves, dress extravagantly, and smack their lips in the anticipation of eating en masse at a too noisy restaurant; nor do they invade theatres, or abandon themselves to the epileptic intoxication of dancing; nor do they murder peace in any other of the glittering pastimes which profane and foolish people imagine to be enjoyment. On the contrary the English Sunday is a haven of peace; a full haven, perhaps, with its cargoes of bacon and eggs and marmalade and roast beef and potatoes and cauliflower and apple-pudding and plum-cake and so on; but still a haven. On Sunday England borrows the wisdom of the East and meditates; that is to say both mind and body become idle, spirit and flesh yawn together, and though it is written that Allah hateth him who yawns, yet God undoubtedly recognizes the yawner as one of his own Englishmen, such a one as he would choose for his highest enterprises. On Sunday John Bull becomes as placid as Buddha and looks (if you will sometimes substitute an umbrella for the lotos) not unlike Gautama in his well-fed solid security. On Sunday England is idle as a South Sea island; idler, perhaps, for we gather no hibiscus, spear no fish, nor laugh loud enough to attract a neighbour’s notice.

  The most godlike thing in England is its Sabbath calm, for in what other way do we surely ape divinity as in our seventh day lassitude? God took his ease, and so do we. Can you imagine God—at any rate such a God as made England, and that alone is a fair title even for Heaven—can you imagine God dancing on a Sunday afternoon as Siva of the Hindus dances? Can you imagine him joining a queue (the Milky Way) to see the Dioscuri, the Pleiades, Antares and the Snake, Arcturus and his precocious juvenile, or any other sidereal box-office attraction? God took his ease, and so does England. True, it may be necessary to relate some invasions of that ease; but they will not be related with any expression of approval. Six steps and a platform is the proper conception of a week, the ultimate step of Saturday night being steeper than the others. And on its platform the weary “Pelican” now rested.

  Some of those who had dined so well on the previous evening looked pale. It was a spiritual pallor perhaps, for several decided to go to church. Most of them lounged, however, or moved slowly from chair to bookcase or on to the pleasant lawn and into the grateful shade of the elms. They moved with an easy dignity and grace, not very intent on their going, but rather as well-fed carp, in an aquarium tank who know that one place is very nearly as good as another. An aristocratic assumption—which is shared by aquarium carp—that no one would disturb them wherever they might go lent this dignity and ease to “The Pelican’s” visitors; an aristocratic realization that, though the world might stare, the world did not matter, for it lay outside the tank and was forbidden by law to carry walking-sticks. But the assumption was false, and the carp deluded, for the world was going to invade their tank.

  The first arrival from the outer lands was Lady Mercy Cotton, who came like a foreign disturbance indeed, driven by a chauffeur in maroon-coloured uniform in a maroon-coloured Isotta-Fraschini limousine. It was her custom to visit unexpectedly the different pubs which she owned; not, as she was careful to explain, to spy out irregularity or incompetence, for she recognized from afar competence wherever profits were made and incompetence where they were not. She visited her pubs because she was interested in them and liked to look at them, and she visited them without warning because she was a busy woman who seldom could predict a free day for herself.

  “Well, Mr. Keith,” she said, “and how are you getting on? I know you’re getting on very well of course. I met Roger Baintry and Mrs. Anstruther and the man who makes biscuits—Brackley, isn’t it? Yes, Brackley’s Bran Biscuits. A dreadful idea. I always thought bran was something you make a mash of and gave to horses, but people will eat anything nowadays that’s sufficiently unpalatable and properly advertised with pictures of fat children and a doctor’s certificate. He makes a lot of money, I’m told. Brackley, I mean. And he and Mrs. Anstruther and Roger all insisted how much they had enjoyed themselves here. So have other people. And ‘The Pelican’s’ making money, which is the most satisfactory proof of all. I’m heartily indebted to Quentin for the first time in my life—he’s here, isn’t he? he said he was coming—for introducing you to me. Who is that pretty girl over there?”

  “That’s Miss Benbow. Professor Benbow’s daughter. They’re both here.”

  “I’m glad to be reassured,” said Lady Mercy. “I have an old woman’s distrust of pretty girls who are alone in the world. How is your cook suiting you? the man you told me was a genius, and who had been in the Navy. I think everybody in the Navy is either a hero or a genius. I could never get into a hammock or understand navigation and all those electrical devices for bringing a shell out of the bowels of the ship and putting it straight into the gun. And they have to remember a hundred things like that when ordinary mortals would be too sea-sick to call for a steward. I believe in having the biggest Navy we can afford, just as an excuse to breed more sailors. I like them. Your man’s name is O’Higgins, isn’t it?”

  “O’Higgins is splendid. If ‘The Pelican’ is a success it’s he whom you have to thank far more than me.”

  “That’s very nice and modest of you. Modesty is a rare virtue nowadays. Montaigne would be hard put to it to-day to find one of his favourite kind of lovers, young men with something of the shy boy in them when they—why there’s Quentin.”

  “How are you, mother?” Quentin asked. “It’s nearly a month since I’ve seen you.”

  “I was talking to your father about you yesterday. He said that you ought to get married. And I have implicit faith in your father when he talks about important commonplace matters.”

  “I think it’s a good idea myself,” said Quentin.

  “I am glad to hear it. Young women are frequently so ambitious that they drive an idle husband to work, and though I am far from advocating—as some people do—indiscriminate work, work for works sake, I still think that serious occupation of some kind would be good for you. It would give you something to write about. And there are so many pretty girls that marriage is really no hardship. Miss Benbow, for example—”

  “You mustn’t talk about her in that light way, mother. Not while Saturday’s here.”

  Lady Mercy turned to Saturday and her mobile eyebrows rose alarmingly.

  “Have you been combining business with pleasure, Mr. Keith?” she asked.

  Saturday looked uncomfortable, and said a little stiffly, “I have asked Joan Benbow to marry me.”

  “And if she is as sensible as she is pretty, she will,” declared Lady Mercy. “But she mustn’t take you away from ‘The Pelican.’ Let us go and talk to her.”

  Lady Mercy was in very good humour, and as she had momentarily exhausted her surplus of energy her conversation with Joan was less one-sided than that with Saturday. Joan, who had surfeited rather on moonlight than on marrow pie the previous evening, looked more fresh and vigorous than the majority of “The Pelican’s” guests; which is gratifying to the dietician but disappointing to moralists. She and Lady Mercy rapidly established an harmonious understanding, and Quentin and Saturday found that they were not expected to contribute much to the colloquy.

  The most active brain in “The Pelican” was Mr. Wesson’s. Mr. Wesson had obtained what he wanted and was considerably embarrassed by it. He had hoped to acquire sufficient informa
tion about van Buren’s discovery under the protective disguise of a harmless book-collector; and he had hoped to get away with that information still under the protection of the disguise. But circumstances had driven him to plain burglary. He had seen his time grow short, for van Buren would be leaving “The Pelican” in a day or two, and on more than one occasion he had been prevented in an attempt to examine the documents. He was, of course, unused to such work, and only filial exigence and a disillusioned clientèle had driven him to this robuster exploit. And now he was saddled with a black leather portfolio and a sheaf of papers which would convict him with unpleasant certainty as a common thief. Immediate escape was of necessity his next step. He might make a copy of van Buren’s papers—though it would take him hours to do that—but he realized the extreme improbability of being able to return the portfolio before its removal had been discovered. He had no skill in opening locked doors and drawers, and he had to wait, to steal the documents, for an opportunity which was a pure gift of fortune. And fortune does not make gifts of that kind in quick succession. Therefore, since he could not return the portfolio, he had to escape with it. Nor was there time to lose.

  Mr. Wesson knew all about the sailings of Atlantic liners. It was unfortunate that none of them happened to be leaving Southampton the following day. Nor was there one from Liverpool. But the Turbania would sail from Glasgow at two o’clock on Monday afternoon. Mr. Wesson decided to become a passenger on the Turbania. At that time of the year there was not a multitude of West-bound travellers, and he felt sure of being able to get a berth. He had two spare passports in different names and with different photographs. They had cost him a lot of money, but it was worth going to some expense to be able to change one’s personality at will. He had only to clip his eyebrows, part his hair on the other side, alter the shape of his mouth (which he could do very well) and throw away his glasses to become Edward P. Huttar, a druggist of Indianapolis.

  He thought it better to sacrifice his luggage and leave “The Pelican” unobserved. In that way his absence would be unnoticed till the following morning (van Buren would probably not discover the disappearance of his papers till then, or even later), by which time Mr. Wesson would have vanished… only in Glasgow a certain Edward Huttar would be enquiring in a strong Middle-Western accent whether he could make a last-minute reservation on the Turbania.

  Mr. Wesson consulted a local time-table and found that there was a train leaving Downish at 1.55 p.m. which by devious paths would take him to Crewe, from where he could get without further trouble a connection to Glasgow. He packed an attaché case with a few shirts, a suit of pyjamas, some toilet trivia, and the embarrassing portfolio, and prepared himself to wait with fortitude till 1.55.

  Meanwhile, Lady Mercy’s party had grown. Several people, anxious to meet her, had persuaded either Quentin or Saturday—standing semi-connected on the fringe of her dialogue with Joan—to introduce them, and Lady Mercy liked meeting people though she had no inflated ideas about the importance or attractiveness of humanity in general. Professor Benbow had been summoned to the group by his daughter; Mr. van Buren had been eager to renew his friendship (a friendship of one meeting; but American hearts are warm) with Lady Mercy; Mrs. Waterhouse considered that it was due to her as the wife of a distinguished explorer and author to be introduced, and regretted having sent Diana to church; Sigismund Telfer was interested in people who had more money than they spent, for he contemplated a new literary review—a pity that Jacquetta, who had a bluff engaging manner, had also gone to church. So had Lady Porlet and one or two more. But the majority of those who had felt no inclination to worship God went to Lady Mercy, and the lounge of “The Pelican” was like a morning salon.

  The conversation, however, was not literary. Lady Mercy heard an enthusiastic account of the Elizabethan dinner from those whose digestions had not been seriously disturbed and a more qualified appreciation from the sufferers—a story such as survivors of a shipwreck might tell, who have had time to notice the glory of the sunset as their vessel sank beneath the purple waves. And from gastronomy the talk turned to crime, that specific luxury of civilization. A jewel-thief had recently robbed an actress in a London hotel.

  “It’s a case of supply and demand,” said Lady Mercy. “And where the supply is well advertised the demand becomes brisker. But luckily the market is localized. I’ve never had a thief in any of my pubs. They’re all a fair distance from London and the modern thief dosen’t like to travel far from his base.”

  “Murderers frequently live in the country,” said Mrs. Waterhouse impressively.

  “So do their victims,” added Quentin; and Mrs. Waterhouse looked puzzled, as though her concept of cause and effect had been complicated.

  “I once travelled in the Blue Train with a man who had served fourteen years imprisonment for robbing a bank and hitting the caretaker on the head with a gold watch; one of those very large and heavy gold watches—he showed it to me, a little proudly, I think, though he had given up burglary—that swung on the most massive chain I have ever seen. A dreadful weapon. It almost killed the poor man and broke the mainspring of the watch. Have you ever been at a highland gathering where people throw the hammer? The assault on the caretaker must have been just like that.”

  “But how could you bring yourself to talk to a burglar?” said an ash-blond lady of thirty-five with wiry neck muscles and jade earrings. “I should have fainted, I know. My nerves instantly tell me if there is anything foreign in the atmosphere. If I were to go into a house where there was a criminal of any kind, every nerve in my body would jangle like a fire-alarm. I react intensely to everything.”

  “Lend me your car for an hour,” said Joan to Quentin in an aside. “I feel a besoin de m’en aller.”

  “Certainly,” said Quentin, “but it’s getting near lunch time.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “A bad sign. You’re probably sickening for something. Shall I come with you?”

  “No I want to be alone.”

  Quentin had left his car in a small alley called Pelican Lane a few yards from the inn. Lady Mercy’s moroon-coloured Isotta-Fraschini was also there, for one of the few disadvantages of “The Pelican” was that its garage was more than a hundred yards away, the old stables of its coaching days having been pulled down.

  Quentin watched Joan drive away to feed her fancy in solitude for an hour. Saturday was busy with some detail or other of administration. Quentin strolled moodily along the almost deserted Sunday street, wondering what he could do to discharge his promise to Nelly. Because of his failure with van Buren he had avoided her since the evening painted so notably with her Russian pigments. He had sat closely with van Buren, walked with him, talked with him, but the old man had never again mentioned oil. And all the time Quentin’s mind had been burdened by the secret of Nelly’s disclosures, a secret which inflamed his imagination and made him impatient of other subjects, eager only to discuss and re-discuss the topic which he could not even mention. It had required a Spartan discipline to keep silent about it, and Quentin was feeling a little tired as even the Spartans themselves must occasionally have felt. Moreover he was at a loss and did not know what to do except look for Nelly and admit his incompetence. It was a cheerless prospect.

  In these several ways Joan, Saturday and Quentin missed an amusing story of the uplands of Asia, told by Colonel Waterhouse.

  “It was the only table in the countryside,” he explained, “and as I was to be entertained a table was clearly necessary, so my host sent his servant for the solitary exhibit. They tied it on the back of a horse and the horse took fright and ran away, for it was the first time that it had ever been ridden by a table.…”

  Saturday, having finished his work, looked idly out at Downish High Street. Little Miss Tibbs of the millinery shop was going home from church under the protection of a lilac sunshade, and as she passed a shop with green shutters—the street was suffused with light—it struck Saturday that there was someth
ing in Telfer’s sino-colourist theories of poetry.… It required an imaginative observation to see and be impressed by a crane flying across a black cloud. The observation was specific, but the weakness of Telfer’s poem was that the accompanying imagination was unspecific, a general emotional background to imagination rather than definite vision. In the same way little Miss Tibbs with her lilac sunshade and the green shutters and the sunny street could be made into a poem which tickled the brain without telling it anything.…

  Little Miss Tibb’s lilac parasol

  On a sunny Sunday morning

  Bobbed by a shop with green shutters.…

  I must ask Telfer about that, he decided. And then another thought struck him: had he locked up his own poem when Joan returned it? He couldn’t remember having seen it since then, nor did he remember having put it away. He was on the point of going to reassure himself when like a trumpet a motor-horn sounded and a vast blue charabanc slid into the oval of light made by the open door of “The Pelican.” A superb monster on fat white tyres, its sleek polished sides a gorgeous blue variegated with a gold name in bold running script. A charabanc as powerful as a tank—but no more like a tank than a Bond Street exquisite is like the Piltdown Man— and impressive as an Ambassador’s limousine—and yet more like a bus than a limousine, for thirty travellers (which is more than follow even the least important of ambassadors) looked at “The Pelican” from its superb upholstery, A Cleopatra’s barge of a charabanc; and its name was the “Blue Bird.”

  A brisk young man with a badge in his buttonhole got down and walked confidently into “The Pelican.”

  CHAPTER XVI

  The Giggleswade Literary Society was a cut above the Giggleswade Dramatic Association and definitely superior to the Giggleswade Debating Club. Once upon a time the Literary Society and the Dramatic Association had been one flesh, and if Miss Horsfall-Hughes had never heard of Pirandello they might so have continued. But in 1926 when the annual discussion arose as to whether they should produce the Gondoliers or the Mikado for Christmas, Miss Horsfall-Hughes tried to make hay out of dissension by suggesting a ridiculous play about several characters who were in search of an author. “Several creditors, I suppose you mean,” interjected young Mr. Saunders, who hoped to be Nanki-poo. Whereupon Miss Horsfall-Hughes lost her temper—having just discovered Pirandello she felt obliged to defend him—and accused the Society of hyprocrisy, blatancy, cheapness, nastiness, little-mindedness, lack of originality, Victorianism, brains like rocking-chairs, blindness, aspidistras, and general illiteracy. A number of people applauded her, and following her from the Church Hall, in which the meetings of the Society took place, declared themselves divorced from it for ever. Immediately, under a lamp-post, a new society was formed with Miss Horsfall-Hughes as its first president, everyone of whose members pretended to be familiar with the works of Joyce, Proust, Stendhal, Virginia Woolf and Mr. Eliot. And what was left of the old society made the very happy choice of Iolanthe for their Christmas production.