Poet's Pub

by Eric Linklater

“You may be right. If you are it certainly gives us somewhere to aim at. I was beginning to wonder what to do. At first I thought we would overtake them or strike their trail somewhere. They must have made for the North Road. But after drawing blank at York I began to get doubtful.”

  “I’m rather good at this kind of thing, don’t you think? The last few days have wakened me up. There’s more in life than we think. An adventure round every corner. I tell you, Saturday, my next novel is going to be an eye-opener. It’s going to show—what there really is in life, under its appearance of peace. We’re too apt to forget that there’s blood and nerves and bone under the skin of life, which is all that most of us see.”

  “How did you explain the charabanc to your planter friend?” asked Saturday.

  “That was easy. I told him, as I said before, that you too were a planter, on leave, and when I added that you’d been drinking pretty heavily he seemed quite to take it for granted that you might want to drive round in a charabanc.”

  The “Blue Bird” sped steadily northwards, roaring gently, the susurrus of tyres on the level road mingling with the hum of the engine and the brave noise of the wind. The countryside was changing in appearance, and the light changed with it to the golden glow of evening.

  CHAPTER XXII

  Mr. Wesson took off his curiously shaped eyeglasses and put them into a little leather case.

  “Thank goodness I don’t have to wear those any longer,” he said. “I find something oddly humiliating in spectacles, though there are certain people who wear them with considerable dignity. But for me they are part of an always changing uniform.”

  He sighed and looked about him, at the pleasant landscape of small fields rising to a line of trees, undulating grass-land and hedges that grew under easy control; not mathematically clipped and measured hedges, nor altogether sprawling and unruly hedges; but hedges that knew their place and neither presumed on liberty nor stood too stiffly to attention. And there were farmhouses that seemed a natural part of the country, so mellow and old and happy in their lot they looked.

  “A friendly comfortable land,” said Mr. Wesson. “In my country they mostly build frame houses that stand on the surface and never look permanent. These houses of yours seem to grow out of the earth itself. I’ll tell you a funny thing. When you see a deserted farm-house in the States, anywhere from New York to California, it’s an ugly thing, a scarecrow, broken, dirty thing that you shudder at. But here a ruined house is pretty, it’s a thing to write poetry about, it makes you feel tender and sorry for it. And that’s a remarkable difference between my country and yours, though I can’t just explain what it signifies.”

  Joan was beginning to think better of Mr. Wesson. At “The Pelican,” in his character of a wealthy and obtrusive book-collector, he had been definitely unpleasant. He had carried about with him the circumstantial evidence of his occupation, and his conversation had consisted of extracts from Messrs. Sotheby’s catalogues; often inaccurate extracts, her father said, though to Joan and most of the others accuracy and error had been undifferentiated in their capacity for boredom. Now Mr. Wesson confessed that he had been quite as bored as his audience.

  She had recovered from the shock of her abduction. It is difficult for anyone who is young and perfectly healthy and, moreover, exhilarated by rapid movement in the open air, to remain in a condition of shock for any considerable time. And though the sinister little brown bottle of vitriol had made her shrink back as if from a pit full of snakes—she had felt her heart almost wither with horror—yet Mr. Wesson had been so very apologetic about it, and had so assured her that he had no intention of hurting her, that Joan had almost forgiven him. He reminded her, during his earnest protestations, of statesmen who like their countries to have a truculent-looking army and navy, and yet assure the world that nothing could be more domestically inclined than their cruisers, nothing more indicative of international camaraderie, more typically gemütlig, than their heavy artillery.

  And Mr. Wesson had confessed that he was, in a way, a criminal. He admitted that he had stolen some papers belonging to van Buren and that in consequence he was forced to flee. He had made this confession to show Joan that he had acted, in forcibly borrowing Quentin’s car, only under dire necessity. He was in fact an unfortunate man, not a desperado, but one who had been driven by sheer force of circumstance firstly to become a thief and secondly (on two occasions indeed) to insult a lady. The latter fault weighed more heavily on him than the former.

  He had laboured his apology till Joan began to feel uncomfortable, and assured him that she did not in the least object to abduction, and that she was ready to accept his regrets for having threatened to pour vitriol on her.

  They fled smoothly northwards.

  If the first instinct of man is for self-preservation, his first weakness is over-confidence. He may be ready to run away at one minute, but the next minute he is just as ready to stop. No one, savage or citizen, can be steadfast in flight, for the memory of a savage is short and so is the wind of a civilized man. Physical weakness and mental instability too often combine to give the appearance of reckless bravery.

  Joan had long ceased to be nervous, and Mr. Wesson grew careless. His surroundings all suggested security, and two hours, three hours of flight were like two or three doors shut fast behind him. He drove more slowly, until his pace became not that of a fugitive but the easy progress of a Sunday afternoon excursionist. A few cars overtook them, who a little before had roared past all cars.

  In the little mirror which gave him a glimpse of the road behind, Mr. Wesson saw a dark red limousine reflected. It was gaining on them and he drew into the side to let it pass. But the limousine, after it had come very close, dropped to the rear again. Mr. Wesson thought no more about it but continued to talk to Joan of automobile roads in the States, the necessity for chivalry, and the possibility of stopping somewhere for tea, for Joan, who had had no lunch, was getting hungry. Then, in the square of mirror, he saw the dark red limousine again, and somehow it worried him.

  It was too far away for him to see the driver, and when he slowed down so did the limousine. Joan looked over her shoulder and bit her lip to restrain an exclamation of delight; for she recognised Lady Mercy’s car, which Mr. Wesson had not seen before.

  “Do you know whose automobile that is?” asked Mr. Wesson.

  “I’m not sure,” said Joan, and blushed for the puny falsehood.

  Mr. Wesson resorted to a simple trick. Round a bend in the road, where the hedges hid him, he stopped short. And presently, into the square of mirror, shot the dark red limousine. At once the Bentley leapt forward, as when the starter’s pistol wakes to flying life the statue of a runner, for Mr. Wesson had seen behind the glass in the twilight interior of the limousine a girl with red hair and an apple-green dress. A girl whom, not long before, he had tied to a bedroom chair. Naturally it worried him, for Nelly had no more right to appear in public than a ghost. She had been deprived of movement and the privilege of speech, and her return to active life was as inexplicable as it was inconvenient. In his startled mind Mr. Wesson reviewed every knot that he had made in his elaborate neckties, and saw again her slender ankles and pleasant wrists securely lashed to the spars of an ordinary but apparently substantial bedroom chair. He remembered her open mouth—such a sight as only a dentist customarily sees—and the silk handkerchief he had carefully thrust into it. And after binding Nelly to silence and the bedroom chair he had tied a leg of the chair to his bed so that she could not, by a series of muscular spasms, shuffle across the floor. She had no business to be at liberty and Mr. Wesson’s confidence was shaken by her appearance, though he comforted himself by thinking that the Bentley had probably fleeter heels than the Italian car.

  His mobile face assumed its most determined expression and the speedometer promptly indicated sixty miles an hour, the needle trembling nervously at this extreme velocity.

  In ten minutes’ time the limousine had been left a good distance
behind, but as the road was undulating it was still, from vantage points, intermittently visible. Mr. Wesson ingeniously decided to lure Nelly on to a false trail instead of merely trying to out-distance her, and when he came to cross-roads where he was under observation from the limousine (he had reduced his speed somewhat) he turned to the left, though his proper course was northwards. He had all the confidence which an American motorist in England naturally has, and which comes from the knowledge that England is only a little island where one cannot go seriously out of one’s way. There were a large number of roads in the island, a multitude of small towns, a pleasant variety of scenery, and no possibility of being stranded in the middle of a prairie, a mountain range, or a desert. So Mr. Wesson now drove rapidly westwards and had the satisfaction, every so often, of seeing the limousine following him. It was hilly country that he drove through; hilly for a small island, that is.

  “Do you know where we are?” he asked Joan.

  “Somewhere in Yorkshire, I suppose,” she answered, for though Joan knew several capitals in Europe and the more widely advertised towns of France and Italy (together with the principal exports of Japan, Australia, and South Wales), she had only a vague notion of her own country’s geography, and this rapid progression was very bewildering.

  “Thank you,” said Mr. Wesson, who had heard of Yorkshire and was pleased to fancy himself familiar with his surroundings.

  He drove in silence for some considerable time and when there was no sign of the limousine behind—though he felt reasonably sure that it still held to this misleading trail—he took a convenient road that branched northward again.

  “If we go this way we’re pretty sure to reach Scotland, aren’t we?” he said.

  “I suppose so,” said Joan, with a sigh. The pursuit of the limousine had encouraged her to think of escape, but the speed of Quentin’s car and Mr. Wesson’s masterly driving had disappointed her. And she was hungry.

  “There’s a lot of desolate, hilly country before us,” she said. “The borders are very wild in parts.”

  “I’ve driven from New Mexico to Oregon,” said Mr. Wesson.

  “Did you stop anywhere for tea?” asked Joan.

  “I’m very sorry,” said Mr. Wesson. “We’ll pull up at some place quite soon if you’ll promise not to run away or talk to people.”

  “But how far are you going to take me?”

  “I’ve been considering that, but I find it difficult to decide because there are so many towns all round here. You say the border country between England and Scotland is pretty lonely?”

  “Very lonely.”

  “Then I’ll probably leave you somewhere there. I can’t drop you beside a telegraph office or a police station.”

  “Even if I promise not to interfere with your plans?”

  “The temptation would be too strong for you,” said Mr. Wesson simply.

  Joan felt an impulse towards angry denial of this assertion, and indignantly said, “You wouldn’t trust me?”

  “You put me in a very awkward position,” said Mr. Wesson.

  His profile was serene and grave. Joan’s anger began to weaken as the thought came to her that it really might be difficult to keep such a promise. She leaned back and faintly contemplated the prospect of being deserted on some desolate moor or hill-road in the marches of southern Scotland or northern England.

  “The weather is quite warm,” said Mr. Wesson, as though he read her thoughts.…

  Nelly Bly drove fiercely up hill and down, her heart hot with the joy or anxiety of pursuit, desperately intent on catching another glimpse of the flying Bentley. She had not seen it for a long time now, but she felt confident—or almost confident—after having caught it once and followed it so closely for twenty glorious miles. Why Wesson had turned westwards off his proper road she could not understand. The evidence which he had so gratuitously left behind pointed without a doubt to Glasgow as his destination; and now he was going west—or southwest it seemed, for the afternoon sun was in her eyes—on a route absurdly divergent from the road to Scotland. And yet she must follow him wherever he might go. Up hill she went, breathlessly expecting to see her quarry far off when she reached the top. Down hill she raced, eager for the next summit which might show her a dark patch on the road, a dark patch and a little cloud of dust behind it which should be the fugitive car. Impatiently she slowed down for a corner, and as she pulled round the Isotta bumped sadly and significantly. One of the tight fat tyres had gone damnably, tearfully, hopelessly flabby and soft.

  She stopped at the roadside and sat still, miserably looking ahead and seeing nothing. Her confident heart felt suddenly flat and empty like the punctured tyre. Her lower lip quivered under her teeth and the triple “damn” which she muttered to her loneliness dissolved in a triple sniff.

  She got out and looked at the dismal mis-shapen tyre. A limp and ugly-looking thing, a defeated thing, a flaccid drooping thing. Jacks, she thought, and levers. Nuts to unscrew, bolts and spanners, dirty hands. Struggling and wrestling. A patent hydraulic jack, perhaps. But how did you use them? She had never changed a tyre. There had always been a man to do it. She sat down on the running-board and cupped her chin in her hands. She felt dispirited and weary.

  It had been a tiring day for her. No one can unmask a villain, hold him in parley, feel the quick spring of triumph and the black ebb of defeat, endure the threat of vitriol, be tied to a bedroom chair with neckties, break loose, and then pursue the criminal for miles and hours and miles again without feeling tired when abruptly disaster comes.

  The struggle to free herself from Mr. Wesson’s chromatic neckties had been very severe. He had tied his knots like an expert, and her legs and arms had been as securely fastened to the struts and legs of the chair as a broken limb to a splint. Nelly had tried to wriggle and found that she could not wriggle. She had tried to twist, and could not twist. By a series of contractions and spasmodic efforts of every muscle in her body—every muscle from her throat to her toes, she thought—she had managed to move the chair an inch or two, but the necktie which tied it to the foot of the bed kept her from going farther than a few inches, even if she had had the strength to progress by what seemed principally diaphragmatic and abdominal force. And all the time she was exasperated almost beyond endurance by the gag which filled her mouth.

  Her discomfort was increased (though there was no one to see her) by an embarrassment which people often suffer in a dentist’s chair when the little suction-pumps which are supposed to remove excess of saliva fail to cope with the rush. Nelly’s mouth began to water, and as Mr. Wesson’s silk handkerchief was soon saturated she dribbled in a way which only a child could have endured. Angered by this more than by anything else, Nelly wrenched her shoulders from side to side, and was rewarded by hearing the back of the chair creak. Then she discovered that she could rock backwards and forwards, and without waiting to be frightened of bumping her head, she leaned first forwards and afterwards threw her weight violently backwards.

  The chair toppled and fell. It was only an ordinary bedroom chair, not made for such rough usage, and a sharp double crack sounded cheerfully as it met the floor. The back had broken off. Nelly could wriggle now, and some snake-like writhing brought one necktie over the end of a broken spar, the coils fell loose, and Nelly’s right hand was free. In a few minutes she stood up free altogether, and as she stretched herself and rubbed her wrists and ankles she noticed the screwed-up pamphlet which Wesson had used to tighten a leg-band. Curiously she picked it up and unfolded it. A picture of the Loretania, that proud ship, decorated its front page, and on the back page was a list of steamers with parallel columns of ports and dates. Half-way down the list was the name Turbania (16,600 tons) and opposite it a faint, pencilled question-mark. Nelly’s heart leapt up as if at a rainbow—and indeed such a bright and obvious clue was very like a rainbow—for the Turbania was to sail from Glasgow for New York at 2 p.m. on the following day. And had not Wesson said that by the morrow he would
be on his way to America? This was more than a clue; it was a finger-post.

  How her pursuit, at its inception, had been deflected from railway to road by the timely interposition of Lady Porlet has already been told. And now her pursuit, after bringing her in sight of the quarry, was halted by the magnificent Isotta going lame.

  She looked apathetically out at rolling moorland. Where was she? Yorkshire, she surmised. It was always safe to say Yorkshire after you had been driving northwards for a long, long time.… The West Riding, possibly. Ilkley Moor, perhaps; of which she knew nothing except that there was a song about it in dialect practically incomprehensible to anyone but a patriotic and imaginative Yorkshireman.… “On Ilkla Moor baht ’at.”… Baht ’at, indeed, for like a new calamity it occurred to Nelly that she was not dressed for motoring. Hitherto she had been so single in purpose as to think nothing of her appearance. Now she realized that a maid, in maid’s uniform, was incongruous as the driver of an opulent limousine.

  She took off the frilled apron and threw it into the back of the car. Her apple-green dress was plain and non-committal, but she could not persuade herself that it was the kind of costume the owner of an Isotta-Fraschini would normally choose. And then, to complete her discomfiture, she remembered that she had no money. Not a penny. In one small pocket she carried a small silver cigarette-case which contained three cigarettes—Gold Flake—and three cards on which was printed with no more distinction than the Gold Flake lettering:

  HELEN BLYTHESDALE

  The Daily Day

  Whether as a casual contributor to the Daily Day she had the right to put its name on her cards Nelly had never completely made up her mind, but on more than one occasion the addition had been useful; and that, she decided, was an adequate excuse for retaining it.

  Three cigarettes and some evidence of a journalistic vocation, no money, a punctured tyre, and Ilkley Moor—if it was Ilkley Moor—all around. No matches even. But luckily the car had one of those ingenious contrivances which, in response to pressure, glow brightly and suffice to light a cigarette. Nelly smoked one of her Gold Flakes and decided listlessly that she had better look for some tools with which to change the wounded tyre.